We, the people who never wanted Trump as president, have been forced to deal with his lies, his clownish nonsense, and his rage-filled public behavior since he came down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy on June 16, 2015–nearly 11 years ago.
There really wasn’t a break in the madness after he lost the 2020 election. He constantly found ways to make himself the center of attention, and then we had our hopes raised with all the prosecutions, most of which ended up failing because–incredibly–he was elected for a second time.
Speaking for myself, it has been a long hard road. Even if he actually leaves the White House in January, 2029, he will likely still find ways to keep himself in the news. I wonder if I will live to see the day when he is really gone.
For the past few days, we have waited for his name to be removed from the Kennedy Center building, while he fought repeatedly in the courts to keep it there. I think it has finally been taken down now, but I’m not really sure, because the huge tarp covering the front of the building is still in place.
The curtain started to come down for President Donald Trump at the Kennedy Center on Saturday.
After a day of legal maneuvers and thunderstorms, workers began the process in the early morning hours of removing the letters spelling out the Republican president’s name from the facade of the iconic performing arts venue. They were a few hours past a court-ordered deadline and did their work shrouded by a tarp, much to the frustration of onlookers who had gathered for hours hoping to witness a dramatic moment symbolizing the limits of Trump’s power.
As the sun rose over Washington, the tarp remained in place, leaving it impossible to determine whether all the letters had been removed. Shortly after midnight, the Kennedy Center asked a judge to extend the deadline until noon EDT, citing the storms for delaying the work. The court agreed to that request Saturday morning.
The removal of Trump’s name closes one of the more unusual chapters in the history of the Kennedy Center, which began construction in 1964 and was dedicated to the memory of the slain president, Democrat John F. Kennedy. At what is typically one of the few relatively nonpartisan spaces in Washington, Trump has wielded tremendous influence over the venue during his second term.
Though he rarely discussed the Kennedy Center during his 2024 campaign, Trump moved quickly to oust the institution’s leadership when he returned to office in January 2025 and replaced it with a board of trustees that named him chairman. His name was quickly added to the building.
Why did Trump want his name on a memorial created by Congress for a president who was assassinated? Trump is a year older than I am. He was alive when Kennedy was murdered and the nation mourned. Did he know what happened? Did it have any effect on him? Apparently not.
The Washington National Opera, which recently severed its longstanding relationship with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, has filed a lawsuit that demands more than $17 million from the center that the opera company estimates it is owed.
The suit, filed Thursday, says that since the opera company struck out on its own this year, Kennedy Center officials have refused to release the money, which the court papers say includes endowment funds, other donations and income that was collected for the company’s benefit.
“W.N.O. reluctantly files this case to preserve its future and to protect its donors and artists,” lawyers for the opera said in court papers, which identify the funds as donor gifts received over years that are “critical” to its operations.
In a statement responding to the lawsuit, Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the center, said that the relationship with the opera company “financially burdened” the center for more than a decade. The statement noted that taking into account the company’s endowment, an external accounting firm had calculated that the company had “accumulated a $72 million deficit to the center” between 2011 and 2026, the years it was an affiliate of the institution….
The opera left the center in January, nearly a year after President Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center led to an exodus of audiences, artists and donors. Officials at the center said then that they had decided to part ways with the opera, which had played there since 1971, “due to a financially challenging relationship.”
The opera’s lawsuit, filed in the United States Court of Federal Claims, details the tensions that arose before the company’s departure. It lists the federal government as the defendant because the center was established by Congress….
The lawsuit says that the day before the separation announcement, Donna Arduin, the Kennedy Center’s chief financial officer, told leaders of the opera company that money in a fund containing bequests and other contributions to the opera had been used as collateral for a line of credit.
The suit says Ms. Arduin asserted that those funds belonged to the center, but the opera company contends they were expressly reserved for its benefit. The suit did not specify how much money was said to have been used as collateral.
Unbelievable. They took funds that were donated specifically for the opera company and spent it on something else–just like Trump is stealing money that Congress has allocated for specific purposes and using it for his ballroom, his arch, and who knows what else. For Trump, taxpayer money is nothing more than an ATM for him to withdraw funds from.
By Suzanne Valadon, 1920
Trump is so self-centered that he probably doesn’t know the names of all of his grandchildren. Nothing seems to matter to him except for his personal desires and his rapidly changing attitudes toward people and institutions, based whether they praise him and bend to whatever his wishes are at any moment in time.
He covered the Oval Office in gold, paved over the Rose Garden (Melania had already wrecked it in his first term), and turned the West Colonnade into a “Presidential Walk of Fame,” with gold-framed photos and gold-lettered plaques, with insulting descriptions of the presidents he dislikes. He even put up idiotic gold signs to designate these places–as if no one knows where the Oval Office or Rose Garden are.
Then he tore down the East Wing of the White House with no warning, and began building an illegal “ballroom.”
Tomorrow, Trump is going to force the country to deal with a UFC fight on the White House lawn. We’ve already had to watch him turn the White House into an embarrassment worthy of the Beverly Hillbillies. The White House grounds looks like a junk yard, as he prepares for a public UFC fight on his birthday.
A commercial airline pilot that spoke to MeidasTouch this evening has filed aviation safety reports after powerful lighting used during the construction and testing of the UFC octagon on the White House grounds allegedly shone directly into their cockpit during a nighttime approach into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), creating what the pilot described as one of the most severe visibility disruptions they have experienced in their career.
The pilot, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the incident, was flying into Reagan National on a recent flight when aircraft on approach encountered intense white light associated with the UFC event held on the White House South Lawn.
According to the pilot, the lights illuminated the cockpit during the final stages of landing, a critical phase of flight when pilots rely heavily on visual references. The pilot described the incident as “10 times worse than any laser illumination event” the pilot ever experienced.
While laser strikes on aircraft are a known aviation hazard, the pilot emphasized that this incident did not involve lasers. Instead, it involved powerful white event lighting that they said created a similar, and potentially more dangerous, effect by overwhelming pilots’ vision during approach.
Following the incident, the pilot filed reports with both the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), a confidential reporting program used by aviation professionals to document safety concerns and hazards.
We are supposed to be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but Trump has ruined that by turning the anniversary into a celebration of himself. I hope there are thunderstorms tomorrow. And bugs.
AccuWeather warns that on Sunday, Washington looks like it will be hit with a “a heavy thunderstorm late in the afternoon,” in which “downpours and lightning could impact the events at the White House.”
By Indira Baldano
The temporary stadium built on the White House lawn includes a roof arching over the UFC’s famous Octagon arena itself, but guests watching from the stands will not be fully covered.
Making matters worse, the hot and humid conditions, paired with the bright lights of a UFC fight, could attract swarms of bugs.
“This event is going to draw a big crowd,” University of Maryland entomologist Michael Raupp told Axios. “But guess what? There are going to be even more bugs joining.”
And the bugs will attract bats.
“If you have this banquet of small flying insects,” Raupp added, “the bats are going to say, ‘Oh, baby!'”
UFC boss Dana White has acknowledged that weather (and wildlife) could be an issue.
“The three big problems, as far as I am seeing right now, are rain, lightning and a ton of bugs,” White told TheHollywood Reporter last week, recalling a recent White House dinner where guests were bothered with “clusters” of gnats.
He added that’s he’s worked with his production team to prepare for these potential issues.
The biggest threat to Donald Trump’s lavish UFC birthday bash may not be a lawsuit, a heatwave, or Americans outraged by the spectacle at the White House.
It might be the bugs.
As crews put the finishing touches to the sprawling outdoor arena erected for UFC Freedom 250, organizers are grappling with a problem that every Washingtonian knows all too well: summer insects descending on bright lights in the nation’s swampiest city.
The latest weather forecast has Washington, D.C. at a temperature high of 91 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, with “hot with intervals of clouds and sun; a thunderstorm in spots late in the afternoon.”
“Downpours and lightning could impact the events at the White House,” says the ominous warning from AccuWeather, a global weather tracking service that boasts “superior accuracy”.
But AccuWeather’s bug tracking may be even more concerning for the president as he celebrates his 80th birthday watching burly men ground-and-pound in a cage fight.
“Warm weather and the metabolic rate of insects increases causing bugs to invade homes and gardens in search of food. With a rise in rain, notice an increase in mosquitoes, stink bugs, roaches and termites,” the site says, warning of “extreme” risk on Sunday.
All this could be somewhat unpleasant for the fighters gasping for air in an already slippery octagon splattered with sweat and blood, as well as UFC boss Dana White, who has made it clear over the years how much he dislikes outdoor fight cards because you can’t control the elements.
Dublin recalls the Bicentennial celebration in 1976. She was 7 years old, but she still recalls that everyone was excited. To her “it felt like something out of a movie.” The main thing I remember from the Bicentennial is that someone in government made Boston put up more street signs so tourists could tell where they were.
On the 250the anniversary, Dublin writes:
And here we are again, on the brink of celebrating America’s 250th birthday, and it’s going to yet again be like something out of a movie.
The White House is currently obscured by a giant UFC Octagon ahead of Toddler Trump’s 80th birthday party on Sunday. Of all the mortifying things Trump has done, this has brought the kind of global embarrassment that can’t be calibrated by even the most advanced of scientific instruments. Shirtless men are going to beat the crap out of each other in front of what’s supposed to be a symbol of leadership.
Now, it’s the White Trash House.
It looks like the three-ring circus it is. It breaks my heart every time I look at it. Because, despite everyone joking about it and making clever memes about it, Trump has deliberately destroyed the People’s House because he hates America….
None of this destruction should have been allowed. He could’ve built it on his own property, and it would even be on brand for Florida. But instead, he used who-knows-whose money (not his) and turned the South Lawn into a Carny Paradise. The attendees will revel in the spectacle of shirtless men beating the crap out of each other as a birthday present for an 80-year-old criminal fraud at the center of the biggest political cover-up in American history.
We’re still learning even more about the Epstein Files cover-up, something our Founders never could have imagined when they created this non-Christian nation conceived in liberty. While Trump was fixating on turning DC into Mar-A-Lago on the Potomac, his entire staff was meeting in the Situation Room to figure out how to keep protecting him, instead of giving the victims the justice they all deserve. They’ve all known for far too long what’s in those files, and they’ve done nothing about any of it.
Marcel Leprin, Suzanne Valadon and her Cat
You can read more at the link, but here’s what Dublin is hoping for tomorrow:
There’s been terrible weather in Washington all week, with thunderstorms predicted on Sunday to make Trump’s party a literal washout. You can almost believe in divine intervention when the weather seems this targeted….
If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere with great weather on Sunday, No Kings protest marches are scheduled all across the country to make sure Trump has the most miserable birthday of his entire life. It’s going to be 92 degrees here in Portland, and along with the main march downtown, there’s going to be a more family-friendly carnival-type thing in a park with A LOT of trees providing shade. I think I might opt in for that instead of baking in the streets and feeling mad.
Speaking of Portland, I’m extra proud to be an Oregonian after learning that our state was the first to drop out of Trump’s dumb “America 250” State Fair. I’m sure Oregon won’t be the last Blue state to drop out. It’ll be just like when all of the artists dropped out of Trump’s dumb “America 250” concert, which is now just him and Vanilla Ice. The “State Fair” will probably just be Alabama by the time July 4th rolls around.
One last bit of good news: Democrats now have an 82% chance of taking back the House in November!
Trump’s next big project is the giant arch he wants to build in his own honor that critics say will block views of Arlington Cemetery. But that’s not the only problem.
Construction crews building the massive triumphal arch proposed by President Donald Trump would work in two 10-hour shifts daily until the monument celebrating the nation’s military history is complete, according to a new assessment released by the National Park Service.
Erecting the 250-foot-tall arch in a traffic circle at the head of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River would take two to three years on the proposed schedule, according to the documents released earlier this month. The plan suggests a sizable disruption along a major thoroughfare in the nation’s capital.
Girl with Cat, by Merle Keller
The year-round construction schedule emerged from the NPS’s initial review of the arch’s impacts required under the National Historic Preservation Act. The Trump administration has fast-tracked the review process, which examines how historic properties and the Washington landscape would be reshaped by the towering project. The administration is aiming to commission the monument in honor of the nation’s 250th birthday this year.
According to the NPS review, construction would begin with several months of site excavation. Drilling rigs would be deployed to construct a foundation system, and caissons would be installed to 75-foot depths to reach bedrock.
“Continuous heavy equipment operations would occur during this period,” the agency said.
After the foundation is completed, crews are expected to take nearly one year building the concrete body of the arch, deploying 320-foot cranes. In the final phases, granite cladding would be fixed to the concrete exterior and golden statues would be installed on the arch’s roof, including a 60-foot-tall winged figure resembling Lady Liberty. Landscaping would complete the exterior design.
The White House claims to have a solution to any traffic problems.
A White House spokesperson Friday said the NPS worked with the Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration to develop traffic plans for the circle.
“In an effort to increase pedestrian and vehicle safety as well as efficient movement for both, we have conducted detailed traffic modeling and simulations to better understand the impacts of different contemplated traffic flows,” the official said in a statement. “After construction of the Arch, traffic delays will be minimized to the time needed to safely accommodate pedestrian crossings and the flow of traffic.”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) whose district includes Arlington National Cemetery near the arch’s proposed location, said Friday the construction outlook is a “nightmare in the making.”
“The Trump administration is pursuing an aggressive construction schedule that would require years of lane closures and major disruptions along one of the most heavily traveled transportation corridors connecting D.C. and Northern Virginia,” Beyer said in a statement to POLITICO’s E&E News. Beyer last month asked the Interior Department to disclose any traffic and transportation research it has completed.
“The public deserves a full and transparent accounting of its impacts on traffic, parking, recreation, and access to existing sites like Arlington National Cemetery,” he said Friday. “The disruption this project would cause is only compounded by this rushed process and these unanswered questions.”
There’s more at the link.
Is Trump satisfied with all these self-aggrandizing projects? Probably not. He’s always coming up with new ways to make everything about him.
I suppose I should include some serious news in this post, but there isn’t much happening except that Trump is still claiming a deal with Iran is on the verge of happening. This time the Iranians sound a bit more interested, but we’ll have to wait and see.
I hope you all are having a nice weekend.
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There’s lots of news today, so this post will be a mixed bag with stories on the Iran war, Trump’s boat strikes, last night’s primaries, the CBS/60 Minutes controversy, and more.
Trump’s war on Iran is getting stupider by the day. For several weeks now, Trump has been saying that a deal to end the war was just days away. A short time ago, he told Netanyahu not to respond to strikes by Iran in Israel. Netanyahu quickly proceeded to bomb Iran anyway. Then a U.S. helicopter went down in the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump responded even though it’s not clear that the helicopter was deliberately shot down. It may have just collided with a Iranian drone.
The US says it has carried out a series of strikes on Iranian military and surveillance sites in response to the downing of an American helicopter in the Gulf.
Air defence systems, ground control stations and radar sites were targeted near the Strait of Hormuz, the US military Central Command (Centcom) said.
In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it launched strikes on 21 targets at US bases in the region, one in Bahrain and the other in Jordan, while Kuwait’s army said it was also intercepting an attack.
Boeing AH-64 Apache
The US has described its strikes as “a proportional response” for the Apache helicopter downing on Monday, while the IRGC described the attacks as “vicious”.
US President Donald Trump had earlier accused Iran of shooting down the helicopter and said the US “must, of necessity” respond. The two crew members survived and were rescued by an American sea drone.
According to US officials, Iran used a drone to launch the attack on the helicopter. But it is not clear whether the Iranian drone had deliberately attacked, an unnamed US official told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. The semi-official Mehr News Agency reported that Iran had not claimed responsibility for the downed aircraft.
So now the war is back on, after months of Trump promising the end was near. This morning, Trump threatened Iran with more attacks.
US President Donald Trump and Iran’s senior officials have traded new threats of further action, after the two sides exchanged strikes.
Trump said Tehran had taken “too long to negotiate a deal” and would now “have to pay the price”, without giving specific details. He said Iran had been “completely defeated” and was “all talk and no action”.
It came after Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi earlier warned his country would “leave no attack or threat unanswered”, saying that the US had suffered “defeats on the battlefield”.
The US said it struck Iranian sites on Tuesday in response to the downing of a US army helicopter in the Gulf. Iran then launched strikes at US bases in the region.
Iranian defence systems, ground control stations and radar sites were targeted near the Strait of Hormuz, the US military Central Command (Centcom) said.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it launched strikes on 21 targets at US bases in the region, one in Bahrain and the other in Jordan, while Kuwait’s army said it was also intercepting an attack.
Writing on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump said: “Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore – They have been completely defeated.”
He added: “They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”
Trump’s comments were in contrast to Tuesday, when he told journalists the US and Iran were “in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal”.
Also on Wednesday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqai accused the US of “damaging this diplomatic process through the contradictory messages it sends, its repeated shifts in positions and demands, and, worst of all, through repeated violations of the ceasefire”.
I have to agree with Iran here. Trump behaves like a 6-year old child–issuing threats while claiming an agreement is close–and using posts on Truth Social to communicate threats that he probably hasn’t discussed with any of his military advisers. And where are the negotiators anyway? Jared Kushner was a the New York Knicks game on Monday night. All this because Trump cancelled Obama’s Iran agreement.
Nine months into the Trump administration’s deadly campaign against so-called drug boats, there is a pattern to the strikes. And a glaring anomaly.
The U.S. military has conducted more than 60 attacks, resulting in over 200 extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. In almost all the strikes, between one and four people lost their lives. In only one strike did the death toll of a single boat reach double digits: the first attack on September 2, 2025.
Since then, experts, lawmakers, and even military officials behind the scenes have been asking a simple but haunting question: Why was that boat packed with 11 people?
“Why would 11 people be on board a boat carrying drugs?” said a government source who attended a classified briefing where the large crew on the first boat attacked was discussed. “It’s a high risk for the cartels. That always stood out.”
One top military officer provided a plausible explanation, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, The Intercept has learned. His admission raises even more questions about a strike that a high-ranking Pentagon official called a criminal attack on civilians and resulted in a firestorm in Congress last year.
In the briefing, the high-ranking officer on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff stated that some of the people killed by the U.S. military may have been the victims of human trafficking.
Read all the details at The Intercept.
Several states held primaries yesterday. The most watched ones were in Maine and California. In Maine, Graham Platner won the Democratic Senate primary and will face long-time Senator Susan Collins in November.
It’s official: Republican Sen. Susan Collins will face Democrat Graham Platner this fall, NBC News projects, in what will be a marquee election in the fight for control of the Senate.
Collins and Platner both won their primaries Tuesday in a predictable result. Collins, first elected to the Senate in 1996, ran unopposed for renomination as she seeks a sixth six-year term.
And Platner, a veteran and oyster farmer running in his first political race, faced little Democratic competition as two-term Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign after she failed to gain traction. She still appeared on the primary ballot.
Graham Platner and Susan Collins
While the primary results were foreseeable, what happens next is anything but. The Senate election has already become a battleground over the future of the Democratic Party and what voters think is most important, as Platner faces numerous controversies about his past conduct.
And that’s before the real campaigning between the resilient incumbent and the brash outsider has even kicked off, though Platner started the general election with a series of stinging attacks on Collins at a victory speech in Blue Hill, Maine. The Democrat cast her as the “deciding vote” on Republican priorities including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation
“Susan Collins may have started her career decades ago in Washington with good intentions, but she has become just as spineless and corrupt as the establishment she now serves,” Platner said. “She got elected promising to protect Roe versus Wade, only to turn around and put on a justice, but a justice of Supreme Court who overturned it. She lied to us.”
In a statement, Collins’ campaign said, “Mainers aren’t looking for bitter campaigns, grand promises, or angry speeches riddled with lies. They’re looking for results. They want affordable health care, safe communities, good-paying jobs, strong schools, and someone who will show up and do the work.”
Steve Hilton, a Republican former Fox News host who was endorsed by President Trump, has secured the second spot in the November general election for California governor, The Associated Press determined on Tuesday. He will face Xavier Becerra, a Democrat who served in the Biden administration.
The candidates survived an unprecedented barrage of spending for a California governor’s race. Tom Steyer, a billionaire who ran as a progressive Democrat, devoted more than $216 million of his personal fortune toward his primary campaign, finishing third.
Under California rules, the top two finishers in the primary election, regardless of party, advance to the general election. There had been a chance that Mr. Steyer would face Mr. Becerra in an intraparty battle in November, but Tuesday’s outcome instead sets up a lopsided contest in a state where a Republican has not won the governor’s office in two decades.
The winner will replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cannot run again because of term limits and is considered a potential Democratic presidential candidate for 2028.
This sets up a likely win for Democrats, since California is one of the bluest states in the country.
Mr. Hilton’s top-two finish seems to run counter to Mr. Trump’s claims in recent days that California elections are “rigged” to benefit Democrats. Mr. Hilton said on Tuesday that he takes the concern seriously, but that he has had lawyers monitoring the voting process and they have not seen signs of fraud.
Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton
The November matchup is one that Mr. Becerra and many Democrats had hoped for, knowing that Mr. Hilton was not just a Republican, but one endorsed by Mr. Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in California.
Days before the election, Mr. Becerra released an ad that highlighted the differences between him and Mr. Hilton, whom the ad called “Trump’s favorite.” While the ad ostensibly bolstered Mr. Becerra’s anti-Trump credentials, it also seemed designed to encourage Republicans to coalesce behind Mr. Hilton and give him enough support to finish second and prevent Mr. Steyer from reaching the general election.
Republican firebrand Rep. Nancy Mace lost her GOP primary for South Carolina governor, potentially ending her rollercoaster political career.
Mace failed to advance to a runoff Tuesday. She was considered a top contender in the race until a series of scandals cut into her in-state support and she bucked President Donald Trump to help release the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Trump’s preferred candidate, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, and Attorney General Alan Wilson advanced to a runoff June 23.
The Palmetto State primary was for months defined by Trump’s absence from the race, despite the six Republicans candidates vying for his attention and support. Trump only endorsed Evette in the final two weeks, touting her closeness with his ally and early backer, outgoing GOP Gov. Henry McMaster.
In an interview ahead of the primary, Mace acknowledged that she likely forfeited her chance at the president’s support after her role in releasing the Epstein files late last year. She nevertheless pushed ahead, even in the face of several million dollars of negative ads from her opponents.
It’s the latest victory for Trump on the heels of his success ousting Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Mace’s ally on the Epstein files, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), among other GOP defectors.
Inflation surged in May to the highest level since early 2023, as Iran war-related fuel costs worked their way through the broader economy.
Overall, the yearly inflation rate rose to 4.2% in May from a year ago, up 0.5% from April.
“Inflation remains the major economic pain point regardless of who has to absorb it,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at One Point BFG Wealth.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union said, “the frustration for many Americans is that so many of the basics are up in price right now — gas, food, electricity, and medical care are all clear pain points that are above 3% inflation.”
“This isn’t just ‘bad vibes’ about the economy,” she added.
Rising inflation comes as wage growth is falling.
For the second month in a row, inflation surpassed wage growth, which was tracking at 3.4% in the most recent jobs report. That pace has slowed since late last year, when average hourly earnings were growing consistently at nearly 4%.
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced separately that real average weekly earnings decreased 0.2 % during May and 0.7% from a year ago.
That’s the biggest year-over-year decline in real earnings since February 2023, according to federal data.
“The index for energy rose 3.9 percent in May, after rising 3.8 percent in April and 10.9 percent in March,” BLS said. “The energy index accounted for over sixty percent” of the overall number’s rise, it added.
Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose 2.9%, as expected. From the month before, it rose just 0.2%.
The disparity between the core inflation figure and the overall 4.2% rate was due largely to the impact of energy costs. According to BLS, energy accounted for more than 60% of the total increase in prices over the month.
And what does Trump think about this?
Q: Are you concerned about the latest inflation numbers that came out this morning?TRUMP: No, I love it. I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over — do you know we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil? You know who doesn't know? Iran until right now.
Bari Weiss could be taking over the editorial leadership of another news network.
Paramount has begun preliminary conversations with several top media executives about a business-side counterpart to Weiss, the CBS News editor-in-chief, as the company awaits regulatory approval of its proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, two sources familiar with the matter told Axios.
“The search implies that if Paramount Skydance’s deal with Warner Bros. Discovery goes through, Weiss would oversee all news editorial across both CBS News and CNN,” Axios reported. “Her potential counterpart would manage business operations across both companies.”
Bari Weiss
Among the candidates under consideration are NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde, CNN Worldwide CEO Mark Thompson and former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim. Paramount had also weighed Ben Sherwood, CEO of the Daily Beast and former ABC News president, and David Rhodes, former CBS News president and current Sky News executive chairman, according to a source familiar with the search.
One candidate faces a procedural hurdle. Because Paramount is still awaiting regulatory clearance to acquire WBD, company executives are barred from holding conversations with any WBD personnel — which would include Thompson.
Currently, CBS News president Tom Cibrowski serves alongside Weiss, reporting to George Cheeks, chair of TV media at Paramount. Weiss reports directly to Paramount chairman and CEO David Ellison….
“The Paramount brass loves Bari Weiss,” the source said. “She has the full confidence of David Ellison, who believes Bari has done a fantastic job as editor-in-chief.”
David Ellison, the chief executive of Paramount, promised to respect the editorial independence of “60 Minutes” in a call with Lesley Stahl, one of the show’s correspondents, she told The New York Times on Tuesday.
The call to Ms. Stahl, made on Sunday, was one of the first signs that Mr. Ellison was personally taking steps to calm the turmoil at the news network after the firing of the show’s leadership and several of its star correspondents. The overhaul, overseen by Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, was met with a rebuke from Scott Pelley, a star correspondent at “60 Minutes” who has since been fired.
Ms. Stahl told the news program’s staff about Mr. Ellison’s call during a champagne toast she held at the “60 Minutes” offices in Midtown Manhattan on Monday in an attempt to shore up morale at the program.
She, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim, the remaining stars of the program, had agonized about whether to stay in the aftermath of the staff changes and Mr. Pelley’s firing. But in a letter to the show’s staff Friday, they concluded that they had to remain at the show because they didn’t “want to see ‘60 Minutes’ die.”
“My toast was, ‘to us,’ meaning the survivors,” Ms. Stahl said in a text message on Tuesday. “Maybe ‘us’ with a twinge of survivor’s guilt.”
Mr. Ellison’s takeover of Paramount last year raised questions about the kind of steward he would be for CBS News. Mr. Ellison has been friendly with President Trump as his company, Paramount, seeks federal sign-off on a $111 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. He has said he wants CBS News to appeal to what he describes as the 70 percent of Americans who consider themselves center-right or center-left.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Pelley also said that Ms. Weiss had put her “thumb on the scale” for Mr. Trump during the last season of “60 Minutes,” a charge the network has denied. That assertion echoed a complaint from Sharyn Alfonsi, another correspondent, who said Ms. Weiss’s editorial guidance on one of her stories was “political.”
Last week, scores of prominent journalists, including well-known veterans of CBS News, signed an open letter to Mr. Ellison, who took over Paramount’s CBS last year, asking him to commit to the show’s independence. He has not yet weighed in publicly.
I’ll believe it when I see it, especially if Bari Weiss is still running CBS.
Scott Pelley warns CBS News is “on fire”youtu.be/Az8KobdJ84g?…
On July 17, 2025, at around 6 o’clock in the evening, President Trump’s top officials filed into the White House Situation Room — the secure bunker where classified and high-stakes national security matters are discussed and decided. This was where President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president’s national security team, watched the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Now, however, Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to gain some measure of control over a very different kind of crisis threatening to engulf the presidency: the Epstein files.
Ten days earlier, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had jointly released a memo that bluntly stated that their review had found no “client list” of powerful men for whom the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein had allegedly procured underage girls and young women. Intended to put to rest years of speculation and end the pressure campaign to release the voluminous material in the department’s possession, the memo instead had the opposite effect, setting off a backlash that was notably loud among the MAGA base.
And it was about to get worse: The Wall Street Journal was preparing a damaging article about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. The president’s desperate attempts to kill the story had failed. His team now had to get everyone onto the same page about how to counter the growing swarm of attention. They needed a gesture of transparency to appease an increasingly angry base, but also a way to convey the message that the president was sympathetic to his supporters’ concerns. Which itself was a problem, because he clearly wasn’t.
Vice President JD Vance took a seat at the head of the table in the John F. Kennedy Conference Room of the Situation Room complex. “This is a huge problem,” he told the group. Arrayed around him were the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the White House counsel, David Warrington; the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt; the deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich; the communications director, Steven Cheung; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; the associate attorney general, Stanley Woodward Jr.; and the deputy chief of staff James Blair. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, joined on speakerphone.
The vice president appeared panicked to others in the room about the way the subject of Epstein was already dividing the MAGA coalition. Some senior officials had the impression that Vance had bought into the darkest theories about Epstein and a cabal of predators hidden within the country’s ruling class. Wiles would tell others that the vice president had proved himself to be a major conspiracy theorist. Another top official said later that Vance had been pounding on the Epstein issue since the release of the memo. He was privately pressing for the administration to release all the Epstein files, everything in the Justice Department’s possession, even encouraging a congressional investigation.
Vance had also floated to colleagues an extraordinary P.R. gambit — that the White House enlist Tucker Carlson to interview Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, in prison. It might help the president if Maxwell was willing to state that Trump had not been part of any wrongdoing with Epstein.
Vance told the group he believed all the files should be released as soon as possible. He argued that Congress was going to force the release of the files eventually. It was already clear that a bipartisan coalition in favor of such action was forming on Capitol Hill, and the momentum was going in one direction. If the administration got out ahead of this and released everything voluntarily — including whatever material existed about the president — it would at least get credit for transparency. The alternative was to let the story drag on for months as information dripped out, each new revelation renewing the cycle of suspicion and fury. Better to rip the bandage off and move on.
That’s a taste of it. You can use the gift link to read the rest.
Those are the stories that caught my attention today. What’s on your mind?
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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.
Trump had his 4th physical exam this term last Tuesday. The White House claims he is in excellent health, but he hasn’t been seen in public for 7 days since the checkup. He has been posting on Truth Social, but no public appearances.
President Trump has no public events on his schedule again today. That means it has now been one week since he has appeared publicly for anything besides a pre-taped interview. His last public event was his cabinet meeting last Wednesday, one day after his trip to Walter Reed.
The Mirror US reports that Trump last held a public event on May 27, when he met with his cabinet.
The meeting came a day after Trump had a medical exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, an exam that the president said showed that he was in tip-top shape.
But critics aren’t buying it.
“They are lying to us about Donald Trump’s health,” one social media user said.
Said another: “Six days between public appearances feels like a long time for a president. Wonder if something is up or if this is just how his schedule works now.”
It’s been a troubling week for Trump regardless of the speculation over the medical exam.
The president in recent days has canceled a planned America 250 concert after a number of performers dropped out and he also pulled the plug on his $1.8 billion fund to compensate Americans who claimed to have had the federal government “weaponized” against them.
There have also been questions raised about Trump’s staging of a UFC match on the grounds of the White House.
But eyebrows were raised when the White House took longer than usual to release the results of the exam.
US Navy Captain Sean Barbabella, Trump’s doctor, said the president “remains in excellent health” and has “strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and overall physical function.”
But some doctors said that the report was almost too good to be true for a man of Trump’s age.
There’s more at the link.
Today, Trump again has no public events on his schedule.
Concerns over Donald Trump’s health are mounting as the president goes more than a week without making any public appearances
Trump, who turns 80 next week, has a packed schedule on Wednesday. He will start the morning by participating in “executive time,” followed by in-town pool call time, the daily arrival or briefing time for the rotating journalists covering the President.
He will then participate in a policy meeting from 11am until 2pm, before signing executive orders in the Oval Office at 3pm and having another policy meeting at 4:30pm. Finally, he will attend a dinner with his so-called Rose Garden Club at 7pm.
But there’s something unusual about the schedule for his busy day, every single event, with the exception of the in-town pool call time, is closed to members of the press. Trump has not made any public appearances since May 27, when he attended his Cabinet meeting.
Since that time, the president has only been seen in a pre-taped interview. His last public appearance came just a day after he made an hours-long visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — his third such visit within a year.
President Donald Trump had another medical exam on Tuesday, his fourth publicly disclosed medical exam since he returned to office for a second term.
The 79-year-old president spent more than three hours at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for what the White House described as preventive medical and dental checkups.
In a social media post after the visit, Trump said that he had just finished his “6 month physical” and that “Everything checked out PERFECTLY.”
Trump, a Republican, turns 80 next month and was the oldest person elected U.S. president….
For a president of Trump’s age, a complete physical would be expected to include advanced heart testing, screening for common cancers and a cognitive assessment, along with basics like height, weight and blood pressure, according to Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman.
“President Trump is the sharpest and most accessible President in American history who is working nonstop to solve problems and deliver on his promises, and he remains in excellent health,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement.
Several days went by before the White House released a report on Trump’s physical, and some doctors were skeptical about its contents.
look at how swollen the area under Trump's right eye is in his latest podcast appearance
Doctors who reviewed Donald Trump’s latest medical report say it is conspicuously short on the clinical specifics that would support its rosy conclusions.
Trump’s personal physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, wrote in a memorandum that the 79-year-old president “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function,” after a roughly three-hour examination at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Trump’s neck rash
The memo reported a perfect cognitive score, enviable low cholesterol levels, and a heart that an AI analysis estimated to be 14 years younger than the rest of him….
That last claim drew immediate ridicule from cardiologists.
“When I discuss [sic] this with some of my colleagues in cardiology, everyone laughed!” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who was former Vice President Dick a cardiologist, told CNN’s Laura Coates Live.
The memo cited results from a coronary CT angiography, an echocardiogram, and the AI-enhanced electrocardiogram—but omitted the specific metrics physicians said they would expect to see from those tests. There was no calcium score, no description of arterial plaque, and no CAD-RADS score, which would assess arterial narrowing. The report simply stated there is “no arterial obstruction or structural abnormalities,” language doctors said could mean only that there is no total blockage, not that the arteries are clean.
“If I was creating a report to send to another physician, I would have mentioned a little bit more about the carotid ultrasound,” Dr. William Shutze, a Texas vascular surgeon, told The Wall Street Journal. “What amount of plaque there is going to be—because almost all of us are going to have some buildup there.”
The echocardiogram results were similarly sparse. Trump’s 2018 report included an ejection fraction, the percentage of blood the heart pumps with each contraction, but this one did not….
The report was also notably silent on Trump’s neck rash, which appeared earlier this year and prompted a memo from Barbabella saying the president was using a preventive cream for an unspecified skin condition. Prior physicals noted sun damage and benign skin lesions in some detail, while this one didn’t mention the rash at all.
Trump’s bruised left hand without makeup. I don’t think that’s from handshaking.
The report did note bruising on Trump’s hands, which Barbabella attributed to “frequent handshaking” and aspirin therapy.
On his leg swelling, a condition diagnosed last year as chronic venous insufficiency, a common circulatory problem in older patients, the report noted “slight lower leg swelling” and “improvement from last year” without explaining why….
The cholesterol numbers were exceptional: an HDL of 70 mg/dL and an LDL of 53 mg/dL. “He’s got like the best cholesterol numbers you’ll see,” said Dr. Daniel Torrent, a Georgia vascular surgeon, who called it unusual for medication to produce such results. “We don’t usually manage people to the point where they’re that good.” [….]
Trump’s physical included a prostate-specific antigen score, reported at 1 ng/mL, elevated from prior scores but still well within a healthy range.
Taken together, the doctors said, the Trump report paints an oddly perfect picture with suspiciously little supporting evidence.
“That report is almost too good to be true for somebody of his age,” Shutze said. “This seems to be a filtered narrative.”
If Trump is in such great health, why has he disappeared from public view? I’m sure the White House is lying. There is a long history of presidents’ medical problems being covered up by their doctors. But we can’t avoid noticing the problems that can easily be seen in the photos I’ve posted.Trump is nearly 80 years old. He has observable issues–the bruised hands, the gait problems, his falling asleep in meetings, and his verbal difficulties–incoherent rambling and general inability to stay on topic or even finish a sentence. And why are they giving him a dementia test with each physical? This is the fourth one that has been reported. That suggests that they are monitoring the progress of his dementia.
Here’s a video of Trump’s gait issues.
In my opinion, the bruising on Trump’s hands is likely caused by medicine being given to him by infusion, likely for dementia. The neck rash and the bumps that periodically show up on his face I have no clue about.
I know I’ve spent a lot of time on this issue, but I think it’s important and the legacy media organizations should be covering it more.
In other news, there were primaries in several states yesterday, and Democrats generally did well. The big races California are still undecided. For now, I’ll just post this gift article from The Washington Post by Theodoric Meyer, Dan Merica, and Hannah Knowles: Nine takeaways from a big primary night in Iowa, California and more.
Here are nine takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries:
1. A Schumer critic loses in Iowa
Turek defeated state Sen. Zach Wahls, a Schumer critic, in the Democratic primary for an open Senate seat in Iowa.
Turek will face Rep. Ashley Hinson, who won the Republican primary, in November. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) decided not to run for reelection.
2. Trump’s pick for Iowa governor flames out
Trump endorsed Feenstra last week in the race to succeed Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) — but Feenstra lost to Zach Lahn, a businessman and farmer whose slogan is “Iowa First.”
It marked a rare primary defeat for Trump, whose endorsement typically carries enormous weight in Republican contests.
3. Hilton, Becerra lead in California governor’s race
The race to succeed California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was rocked in April when Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the leading Democratic candidates, was accused of sexual assault and dropped out. His exit made room for Becerra, a former congressman and state attorney generalwho served as President Joe Biden’s health secretary, to rise in the polls.
Hilton and Becerra were leading the wide field of candidates early Wednesday morning. Tom Steyer, a billionaireDemocratic donor and former presidential candidate, trailed behind them. California is often slow to count ballots, and the results could shift as more are tallied.
4. Political newcomer advances in South Dakota governor’s race
Toby Doeden, a car salesman whose campaign pitch relied on describing himself as a “total political outsider” with fierce conservative values, advanced to a runoff in South Dakota’s gubernatorial race.
His lead has left three other Republicans vying for the second spot in the runoff. The trio includes incumbent Larry Rhoden, who became South Dakota governor when Kristi L. Noem resigned to become the homeland security secretary, Rep. Dusty Johnson and state Rep. Jon Hansen. The race has not yet been called, but Rhoden held the second-highest percentage of votes with most counted.
5. A strong night for former Biden Cabinet members
Becerra was not the only former Biden Cabinet member on primary ballots Tuesday. Deb Haaland, who served as Biden’s interior secretary, won the Democratic primary for New Mexico governor. She will face Greggory Hull, the former Rio Rancho mayor, in November but is heavily favored in the Democratic-leaning state.
6. Absent GOP congressman lands an opponent
Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, won the Democratic primary in a swing House seat in New Jersey. She will face Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr., who has drawn attention for disappearing from public view.
Kean has not voted in Congress or appeared in public in nearly three months as he deals with what he described in April as “a personal medical issue” that he has declined to disclose. Republicans have grown increasingly worried that his absence could cost them his seat — and possibly their House majority.
7. Los Angeles mayor’s race remains uncalled
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, was facing two challengers on Tuesday: Spencer Pratt, a Republican who became famous on MTV’s reality TV show “The Hills,” and Nithya Raman, a Democratic city council member. Pratt lost his home last year in the Pacific Palisades Fire and has aggressively criticized Bass’s handling of the fire and leadership more broadly.
Bass was leading Pratt early Wednesday morning with nearly half of ballots counted, with Raman trailing in third. If no one wins more than 50 percent of the vote, which appears likely, the top two finishers face off in November.
8. An unusual three-way Senate race in Montana
Alani Bankhead, an Air Force veteran, won the Democratic primary for an open Senate seat in Montana — and now the biggest question about the race is whether she will drop out.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana), who was expected to run for reelection, withdrew in March minutes before the filing deadline, denying Democrats the opportunity to recruit a well-known candidate. Kurt Alme, a former U.S. attorney, filed to run for the seat right before the filing deadline after coordinating with Daines and easily won the Republican primary on Tuesday.
Alme and Bankhead will face an independent candidate, Seth Bodnar, former president of the University of Montana who has raised more than $2 million — far more than Bankhead. Bodnar’s strength has fueled speculation that Bankhead could drop out so Democrats could unite behind Bodnar, which she has repeatedly denied.
9. Another Israel critic is likely to join New Jersey’s delegation
Adam Hamawy, an Army veteran, won the crowded Democratic primary race in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D). Hamawy will face Republican Gregg Mele, a perennial candidate, in the general election, but the district is reliably Democratic.
This means the New Jersey delegation will probably gain another vocal critic of Israel’s war in Gaza. Like Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-New Jersey) — who recently won a special election and secured the Democratic nomination Tuesday for a full term — Hamawy has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
You can read more details at the gift link above, if you’re interested.
Yesterday, Trump named his chosen successor to Tulsi Gabbard–someone even less qualified than she was.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday named an ally with no background in intelligence to oversee the nation’s spy agencies, taking the helm as the U.S. remains at war with Iran after a fresh round of peace talks stalled.
Bill Pulte is the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and in that position, he has helped the Trump administration compile information to fuel investigations into the president’s perceived political enemies.
Bill Pulte
As acting director of national intelligence, Pulte will be the highest-ranking intelligence official, overseeing a vast network of 18 agencies, including the CIA and the National Security Agency. He will also be the president’s principal adviser on intelligence issues and will manage the daily intelligence briefing for the president.
Trump announced on social media that Pulte will remain as director of the housing finance agency, as well as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises created by Congress to support the mortgage market.
The director of national intelligence was created after 9/11 and is a Cabinet-level role that requires Senate confirmation, but naming Pulte in an acting capacity allows the president to bypass that process for now. It was not immediately clear if Pulte will be Trump’s permanent pick for the job.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, slammed the decision, saying in a statement that Pulte was not only unqualified, but that he was chosen “precisely because the White House believes he will provide the narrative it wants, not the intelligence we need,” Warner said.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte would become acting director of national intelligence. Pulte is stepping in to replace Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned from her post last month. Though Trump claimed his appointee “has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America,” he’ll take the position with literally zero relevant experience for coordinating 17 American intelligence agencies’ work.
But Pulte’s appointment makes slightly more sense when you consider his place in Trump’s orbit. The 38-year-old heir to his family’s massive home construction company shares the president’s love of social media bullying, golf and abusing power for personal gain. In currying Trump’s favor, he’s become the boy who cried “fraud,” using his limited portfolio to find leverage against the president’s enemies. With the broader remit his new perch provides, Pulte could do much more harm that he already has, opening the door to threats both foreign and domestic….
Before Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche would have been the slam-dunk pick for most dangerous sycophant Trump has installed. Pulte’s new appointment challenges that claim. Since stepping into his role at the FHFA — which he will still hold while overseeing America’s intelligence operation — he has acted as though he is part of the president’s law enforcement team.
Over the past year, Pulte has referred at least four members of Trump’s enemies list — New York Attorney General Letitia James, then-Rep. Eric Swalwell, Sen. Adam Schiff of California and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis — to the Justice Department for investigation for alleged mortgage fraud.
In all but one of the cases he has passed on to prosecutors, no charges have come about — a testament to the flimsiness of the evidence Pulte provided in his. A federal grand jury handed up charges against James in Virginia, but they were later thrown out and two subsequent grand juries refused to indict her. Undeterred, Pulte pushed a new criminal referral against James for alleged insurance fraud earlier this year.
It should be obvious that drawing predetermined conclusions, then searching for evidence, isn’t ideal when dealing with the life-and-death stakes of foreign intelligence. Pulte appears to have done just that from his position overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, prompting concerns from internal watchdogs about just how he gathered the mortgage documents he then passed on to prosecutors. Last year, the Government Accountability Office opened an investigation into Pulte’s actions and a federal grand jury began investigating whether he illegally shared grand jury information, though neither have issued any conclusion.
Pulte has also stretched beyond the confines of his remit in the name of pleasing Trump. Last year, Pulte inserted himself into the president’s war against the Federal Reserve’s then-Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates quickly enough. The New York Times noted in July that he would leap to echo any of Trump’s gripes about interest rates “with a post demanding Mr. Powell’s resignation.” The Times also reported Pulte drafted a letter for Trump to fire Powell that was never issued, but made its way to the Resolute Desk. Alongside the previously mentioned fraud claims, he has also targeted Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook for investigation. (Any wrongdoing proved on Cook’s part freeing up her seat for Trump to appoint a replacement would surely only be a knock-on effect.)
Since Pulte will be acting DNI, he won’t have to be confirmed by the Senate. We just have to hope that some Republicans will push back on this appointment.
One more big story: you probably heard that CBS has fired 60 Minutes star Scott Pelley because he criticized the network’s changes to the long-time new program.
CBS News fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday, jettisoning one of the network’s best-known journalists in a clash over the future of “60 Minutes,” the country’s top-rated news program.
Mr. Pelley, 68, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” joined the network in 1989. At a staff meeting on Monday, he accused the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” citing the ouster last week of the program’s leadership team and two on-air correspondents.
Scott Pelley
“We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” Nick Bilton, the tech journalist who was hired last week as the new “60 Minutes” executive producer, wrote in a memo to the show’s staff on Tuesday night.
CBS News declined to comment. In a formal letter to Mr. Pelley, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Bilton wrote that the correspondent had been “terminated for cause effective immediately.”
Mr. Pelley, in a telephone interview on Tuesday evening shortly after he was fired, said he had devoted decades of his life to “60 Minutes,” which he said he still cared about deeply.
“I have been in combat in Afghanistan,” Mr. Pelley said. “I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast.”
The firing of Mr. Pelley is among the most consequential moves of Ms. Weiss’s rocky tenure at CBS. And it is almost certain to spike tensions that have coursed through the network for months.
It also raises the stakes of Ms. Weiss’s surprising decision to replace the entire leadership team at “60 Minutes,” CBS News’s most successful franchise, and hire Mr. Bilton, who has no experience in broadcast TV, to oversee the show. The program’s viewership was up 9 percent this past season from a year prior, and the show is routinely among the nation’s highest-rated weekly broadcasts, according to Nielsen.
Those viewers are accustomed to familiar faces like Mr. Pelley, who has contributed to the program since 2004. The “60 Minutes” staff prides itself on autonomy, and it is not clear how the show’s production team may react to the firing of Mr. Pelley.
At the staff meeting on Monday, which Ms. Weiss did not attend, Mr. Pelley repeatedly pressed Mr. Bilton about the network’s decision to fire Tanya Simon, the show’s previous executive producer. He also told Mr. Bilton that he had “slender” qualifications to oversee the show and that he would “never be welcome” at “60 Minutes.”
It’s not just 60 Minutes that is being murdered. It’s CBS itself.
That’s all I have for today. What stories have you been following?
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It’s Friday, and I’m filling in for Dakinikat. I had another one of my sleepless nights last night, so please forgive me if this post is a little weird.
I know this isn’t politically correct, but I’ve always thought that Trump was a bit effeminate–in his looks and his behavior. How many “manly men” are obsessed with interior decoration even in the middle of a war?
Not to mention that he’s in an apparently loveless marriage. His wife doesn’t sleep with him or even live with him, and reportedly has to be paid to appear in public with him. Maybe Melania is just a beard.
President Trump delights in playing what he calls “the gay national anthem” whenever he wants to rev up a crowd. He’s obsessed with Elton John, was once friendly with Liza Minnelli, and has a Liberace-esque flair for gilded interiors. One of his favorite sports to watch—mixed martial arts—is basically sweaty, semi-naked dudes. And he is a deep and vocal admirer of the physique of fellow men, often announcing which ones he would cast in a movie: “They’re perfect specimens,” he said last year of the military pilots who had visited him in the Oval Office; “He looks like the Marlboro Man,” he cooed about a former Iowa state senator; “Young, handsome guy. It’s always nice to be young and handsome,” he complimented the president of Paraguay.
Some of Trump’s allies note that years before gay marriage was legalized, Trump had gay friends, took pro-gay stances, and allowed gay people to join his private club in Palm Beach starting in the mid-1990s. Ric Grenell became the first openly gay person to hold a Cabinet position when Trump appointed him acting director of national intelligence. Grenell, who is now the president’s envoy for special missions, once called Trump “the most pro-gay president in American history,” a title that Trump said he was honored to have.
Trump “dancing” to YMCA.
To be clear: Trump says he is attracted only to women and, in fact, has been married to three of them. He once hosted the Miss Universe pageant, was caught on tape saying that he loves to grab women “by the pussy,” and was found civilly liable for sexually abusing a woman. Loads more have accused him of sexual misconduct. (Trump has denied the accusations.) “Women—I like. Men—no, I don’t have any interest,” Trump affirmed at a Board of Peace meeting earlier this year.
But there’s also little doubt that Trump has unabashedly embraced the aesthetic—the je ne sais quoi—of a certain kind of gay man. Some who are sympathetic to the president have gone even further. Blaze Media, a conservative outlet started by the talk-radio host Glenn Beck, ran a story in 2024 headlined “Donald Trump: Our First Gay President,” much in the way people talked about Bill Clinton as having been the first Black one. The story notes, in a section titled “Queen of Queens”: “He blows kisses to Hulk Hogan, weighs in on Fashion Week (‘used to be so glamorous and exciting! No stars, no fun—just boring’), and his rivalry with lesbian Rosie O’Donnell remains a gem of the catty naughties social feuds.” Pod Save America, a liberal podcast started by former aides to President Obama, declared that Trump would be a gay icon, if only he had “liberal social values.” The president, the episode’s title observes, “DEMANDS a Ballroom at the White House, Loves Musicals, & Wears Make-up.”
James Kirchick, the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, told me that Trump’s personal story, a guy from Queens making it big in Manhattan, tracks with the “typical gay story” of men of his era. In another life, he continued, the 79-year-old could be a classic aging gay, “living in Wilton Manors, sitting at a bar, making bitchy comments to everyone who comes in.” (Of course, Trump’s perch from the Oval Office confers much more power than a bar stool does, and his comments have moved markets and sent allies reeling.) “It’s a gay man frozen in amber in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before AIDS,” Kirchick said, referring to the type of gay man he believes Trump would embody. “It’s a certain age and a certain era. It’s very campy.”
The comedian and podcaster Caleb Hearon deemed Trump to be of the “old-school-gay” era, “because, you know, gay guys used to be mean before media training,” he said in an interview with Ziwe Fumudoh on her YouTube comedy show. The president, Hearon continued, should have become “a red-carpet fashion adviser,” the sort who would say things like: “That dress, honey. I don’t think so!” “That would have been amazing. I would have watched every night,” he said. “Instead, he ran for office on a platform of mass deportation, so that’s where things got tricky, obviously.”
A little bit more:
Trump’s continued patter about men’s bodies has also drawn attention. As my colleague Marie-Rose Sheinerman and I dug into examples of these corporeal appraisals, we were surprised by their sheer quantity and just how much Trump seems to delight in complimenting other men. He has given the compliment of “handsome” at least 68 times so far in his second term—or 69 times, if we count the two Thanksgiving turkeys he also collectively described as such. He is unapologetic in his preference for Cabinet members and administration officials who seem to come out of “central casting”; he praised Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is gay, for his Hollywood-worthy bona fides, before appreciatively noting that “under that beautiful exterior is a killer.”
He can almost never resist commenting on the physique of brawny men: “Look at the muscles on this guy!” he said, gazing upon a young cadet while delivering the commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy last week. Two days later, he took pains to praise the New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart, calling him a “beautiful guy” and waxing poetic about his “legs like tree trunks.” And speaking about the golfer Arnold Palmer in 2024, Trump managed to both reassert his preference for women while also remarking on the legend’s masculinity: “I love women, but this guy—this guy—this is a guy that was all man.” (He also noted Palmer’s powerful swing with “stiff-shafted clubs,” and his, um, alleged other assets: “When he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there—they said, Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.”)
I wonder if Trump would have acted on his attraction to men if he had grown up in a less repressed era? Check this out:
Paul Baker, the author of Camp!: The Story of the Attitude That Conquered the World, told me over email that when it comes to Trump, making the distinction between camp and campy is important. The latter is the more self-conscious, ironic adoption of camp. But Trump is “the original, pure form—it’s when someone’s behaviour is outrageous, excessive, subversive and unintentionally funny,” he said. “The person doesn’t realise they’re funny or that they’re camp. They’re just being themselves.”
OK, I’d better not quote any more of that article.
In the 2016 presidential contest, there has been one thing that supporters and detractors of Donald Trump have agreed on. The chest-pounding real estate mogul from New York has emerged as the quintessentially masculine candidate. Love him or loathe him, Trump’s campaign has been defined by the ways he has asserted his maleness—mocking his opponents for their low energy, bullying his critics, sneering at perceived weakness, boasting of his sexual prowess, vowing to hit back twice as hard as he’s been hit.
But academic research has picked up something that thousands of hours of campaign punditry has missed completely: Donald Trump talks like a woman. He might be preoccupied with grading women’s looks, penis size and “locker room talk,” but the way he speaks and the actual words he uses make for a distinctly feminine style. In fact, his speaking style is more feminine by far than any other candidate in the 2016 cycle, more feminine than any other presidential candidate since 2004.
More than just a comical curiosity, this fact about Trump’s mode of communication might help explain how a candidate who has been so extensively rebuked for his mean-spirited attacks on immigrants, women, the disabled and even prisoners of war has managed to attract support from millions of voters who adore the way he says openly what they feel. To some, Trump’s ascent is evidence that society still prizes the masculine over the feminine, but what’s happening is more complex, and Trump’s style has qualities that go beyond mere blustery aggression. Research has shown that the more feminine a speaker’s style, the more likable and trustworthy he seems. For Trump, who has been derided for his multiple contradictions and outright lies, that advantage might well have persuaded his supporters to listen to him and not the chorus of media fact checkers.
It’s not just a lazy stereotype that men and women speak differently. In fact, researchers who have sifted through thousands of language samples from men and women have identified clear statistical differences. Some of these differences are exactly what you’d expect—men are more likely to swear and use words that signal aggression, while women are more likely to use tentative language (words like maybe, seems or perhaps) and emotion-laden words (beautiful, despise). But other patterns are far from obvious. For example, contrary to the common stereotype that men can’t resist talking about themselves, women are heavier users than men of the pronoun “I” whereas the reverse is true for the pronoun “we”; women produce more common verbs (are, start, went) and auxiliary verbs (am, don’t,will), while men utter more articles (a, the) and prepositions (to, with, above); women use fewer long words than men when speaking or writing across a broad range of contexts.
Jennifer Jones, a doctoral candidate of political psychology at the University of California at Irvine, has combined these statistics into an index capturing the ratio of “feminine” to “masculine” words, and applied it to the language of 35 political candidates over the past decade. Hillary Clinton’s language falls above the average on this index—more feminine than George W. Bush’s, but less so than Barack Obama’s.
But Donald Trump is a stunning outlier. His linguistic style is startlingly feminine, so much so that the chasm between Trump and the next most feminine speaker, Ben Carson, is about as great as the difference between Carson and the least feminine candidate, Jim Webb. And Trump earns his ranking not just because he talks a lot about himself or avoids big words (both of which are true); according to Jones, he also shows feminine patterns on the more subtle measures, such as his use of prepositions and articles. The key then is not what Trump talks about—making Mexico pay for the wall or bombing the hell out of ISIL—but rather how he says it.
There’s much more at the Politico link.
Here we are in the middle of a war that Trump started, and he seems much more interested in his decorating projects than what is going on in his conflict in the Middle East. Some examples:
President Donald Trump has made little secret that his planned White House ballroom is a top priority, invoking the project more frequently than most other issues. And in recent weeks he has raged at anyone — including a federal judge, a Senate official and a local historian — whose actions threaten to slow construction.
On Monday, the president shared on social media a copy of a legal filing that closely resembled his own words and contended that the weekend’s shooting outside the White House campus proved the need for a ballroom.
Trump at the ballroom construction site.
“Without the construction of this great Project, the President cannot safely conduct the business of the United States,” acting attorney general Todd Blanche and two other senior Justice Department officials lawyers wrote, urging a federal judge to dissolve his order that could soon halt construction. “This is a terrible, tremendously harmful case to the United States of America, and all it stands for!”
The filing also mocked the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has sued to halt the project, claiming that the group had been “defunded by Congress due to a total lack of respect for them.” Trump posted all six pages of the filing on his Truth Social platform.
Trump’s ballroom project has embodied executive power and its limitations.
The president was able to rapidly bulldoze the East Wing last year, clearing space for his planned 90,000-square-foot addition.Trump has remade independent federalcommissions — firing holdovers and installing loyalists, including his executive assistant — that have swiftly approved his project.He’s raised vast sums of money that he says can be put toward the ballroom’s estimated $400 million cost.
But so far,he has been constrained — barely — by the courts and Congress.
And it’s obvious that the ballroom means much more to him than the war or the struggling US economy.
House Democrats are set to introduce legislation aimed at blocking the construction of President Donald Trump’s planned 250-ft triumphal arch nearby Arlington National Cemetery.
“Trump’s vanity project would waste taxpayer money, brazenly violate existing law, and become yet another vehicle for his corruption,” Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia said in a statement Wednesday. “The Administration has also given no consideration to potential harmful effects on the region including impacts on air safety and traffic on major roadways.”’
Trump holds up a model of his Arc de Trump.
Alongside Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada, Beyer plans to introduce what has been tentatively titled the “‘Arlington National Cemetery Viewshed Protection Act” on Friday, just days after the designs were approved by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a panel made up of Trump appointees.
The bill seeks to prohibit the construction of the arch and the use of any federal funds for the project. Additionally, it would prohibit the construction of any triumphal arch exceeding 50-feet on any National Park Service lands within the capital region “except by express authorization of Congress.”
Democrats have argued that the proposed arch, which is set to include a public viewing deck, is an unnecessary financial expenditure, especially given the ongoing affordability crisis impacting many Americans.
“As President Trump strips away the necessary safety nets from Americans who are struggling to afford their basic needs like groceries and healthcare, he builds his unauthorized, grandiose Triumphal Arch,” said Titus. “While destroying historical monuments and artefacts important to our American identity, he is erecting monuments to honor himself.”
Unfortunately, Trump couldn’t care less about the public good. He only cares about building memorials to himself.
Trump dreams up new renovation projects nearly every day. Here are the latest ones we’ve heard about:
He boasted of fixing city fountains and power-washing a local pool — making careful distinctions between sandblasting versus pebble-blasting — and detailing efforts to repair brick walkways in a public park.
But this wasn’t a small-town mayor assuring a few dozen community members at a town hall that municipal improvement efforts would be completed in time for Little League season.
This was President Donald Trump — channeling his decades as a high-profile real estate developer — regaling his assembled Cabinet and a nationally televised audience on Wednesday with the ins and outs of beautification projects around Washington.
“I love construction. It’s very exciting,” Trump said, maintaining that the face-lift he’s helped oversee to the nation’s capital means “D.C. is looking beautiful.”
His aside lasted 10 minutes and was far more comprehensive than anything said about the other major issues discussed during the meeting, including the war in Iran. There were also only passing references to gas prices nationwide that have spiked and fears about a weakening economy that could hurt Trump’s Republican Party in its push to retain control of Congress after November’s midterm elections….
The president also said that, under his watch, construction crews were working to improve 28 fountains, then bragged about a push to renovate the “reflecting lake” or “reflecting pond” — actually the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — which he said had been steam-cleaned, fumigated and coated with “American flag blue” paint.
“Over the years, I built hundreds of pools,” Trump said, recalling his days as a construction mogul in 1970s and ’80s New York. “I always like to build Olympic-sized swimming pools.”
The president noted that, as part of the revamp, cleaning crews had removed “more than 10 dumpsters of garbage.”
President Donald Trump wants to paint the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., blue after slapping blue paint on the Reflecting Pool.
Trump, 79, revealed the latest memorial he wants to get his hands on during a nearly 10-minute rant about renovations he’s been focused on throughout the nation’s capital at the White House while surrounded by members of his Cabinet.
Trump says he wants to paint the fountain of the WWII Memorial as seen from the top of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 2, 2026.
“Now we’re looking at the World War II fountain because that’s also in pretty bad shape,” Trump declared.
He revealed he wanted to “duplicate” the fountain’s bottom with paint in a “slightly different color.”
“Actually, we’ll go with a lighter color, but Doug and I have a lot of fun doing it,” Trump told the room, referring to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
The WWII Memorial includes a series of stone and bronze sculptures surrounding a pool of water on the National Mall just down from the Reflecting Pool.
The president’s comment came after he rambled for several minutes about his administration slapping a fresh coat of paint on the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.
Trump called it the “reflecting lake” and said “nobody has ever seen anything like it” while also giving it the wrong dimensions and claiming it was longer than the tallest building in the world, which it is not.
Four massive bronze horses positioned along the roads surrounding the Lincoln Memorial still shine in the sun from their first restoration in the 1970s. But their gold-toned coating is faded and patchy, and their heavy stone bases are cracked and dirty.
The Trump administration wants them glittering with a fresh coat of gold in time for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. So in mid-April, the National Park Service handed a $5 million contract to a gilding studio in Maryland to repair the statues and cover them with a thick layer of 23.75-karat gold leaf.
It awarded the project without a full competition, according to NPS documents reviewed by NOTUS.
Four bronze horses surrounding the Lincoln Memorial are getting a glow-up for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. Kainaz Amaria, NOTUS
As Trump hurries to put his stamp on a city he’s long denigrated as crumbling and ugly, his administration has doled out tens of millions of dollars for contracts with short timelines and little oversight.
In total, the Interior Department is spending at least $95 million in taxpayer funds for new D.C. beautification projects, according to a NOTUS review of government spending data. All of the projects identified by NOTUS were initiated between December 2025 and April of this year. About $20 million in contracts, including the gilding of the four horses, have not previously been reported.
“It is within the realm of reason to say: It’s the 250th anniversary that’s coming up, and instead of spending a hundred million dollars we normally spend on the District of Columbia, we want to spend $250 million. That’s perfectly normal,” said one former General Services Administration official, making up the dollar amounts to illustrate their point. “What is not normal is the lack of transparency.”
In mid-April, the National Park Service hired The Gilders’ Studio in Maryland to restore the 80,000-pound statue pairs, known as the Arts of War and Arts of Peace. According to agency documentation, the gilding company is covering the statues in an unusually thick layer of nearly pure gold — heavier and purer than even the “extra-thick” gold the same studio used to refinish the exterior of the Wyoming state capital dome seven years ago.
The $5 million contract includes more work than just the gold leafing, although the gold itself is certain to be a significant part of the cost, with the price of gold essentially doubling over the last several years.
The National Park Service is using at least $67 million worth of park entrance fees to help fund President Trump’s beautification projects in Washington, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records.
Nearly $60 million in fees paid by visitors to national parks across the country is funding repairs to nine of the capital’s ornamental fountains, the analysis found. The government is putting another $7 million worth of entrance fees toward the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which costs $13.1 million overall, according to an internal Park Service document reviewed by The Times.
The National Park Service is spending millions in fees paid by visitors to parks across the country, like Yosemite National Park in California, to pay for restoration of nine ornamental fountains in Washington, D.C, AP
The analysis was based on a federal contracting database. The $7 million for the Reflecting Pool has not previously been reported.
Mr. Trump has proposed a host of initiatives to remake Washington in his own style and wants these projects completed by July 4, the 250th anniversary of American independence.
Some conservationists criticized the Trump administration for steering so much money to projects in Washington that appeared to be cosmetic fixes rather than urgent upgrades. National parks outside the capital have long maintenance backlogs, including repairs to deteriorating roads and water systems that threaten visitor safety.
“Our parks and public lands have been underfunded for decades, and there are many genuinely urgent projects in need of funding across the country,” said Aaron Weiss, the executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group. “Instead, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is determined to divert millions of dollars to projects that President Trump can see out his window.”
The spending is legal. Under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act of 2004, at least 80 percent of revenue from entrance fees must stay in the park where the fees were collected. But the other 20 percent can be used to improve sites that do not collect fees, such as the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington.
Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which includes the Park Service, did not respond to specific questions but defended the spending in general.
“The National Park Service has not only been focused on beautifying the district but has also been working on many deferred maintenance projects throughout the country,” Ms. Martin said in an email, adding that “we should all be grateful” for Mr. Trump’s focus on projects in Washington.
I for one am not grateful.
That’s my post for today. I hope it isn’t too weird. I just couldn’t spend time today reading about the war and elections.
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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.
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:
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