Democrats scored a big win last night as Virginia voters supported a redistricting plan favoring Democratic candidates. Trump’s plan to get Republican states to redistrict is coming back to bite him.
Virginia voters on Tuesday approved a Democratic redistricting plan that could allow the party to pick up as many as four new seats in the midterm elections, NBC News projects.
With 97% of the vote in, the “yes” vote on the ballot referendum held a narrow lead of 3 percentage points.
Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger
The special election is a major victory for Democrats as they seek to gain control of the narrowly divided House this fall. Democrats have now won statewide votes in California and Virginia to redraw congressional maps as part of a mid-decade redistricting arms race that began last year when President Donald Trump urged GOP-led states to alter their district lines.
Republicans had hoped they could insulate their three-seat House majority, but the result of the redistricting back and forth may end up being close to a wash.
The constitutional amendment that was on the Virginia ballot Tuesday sought to authorize the Democratic-controlled Legislature to bypass the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission and implement a new congressional map through the end of the decade.
Democrats’ proposed map is designed to leave just one solidly Republican district out of 11 in the state. Currently, Virginia is represented by six Democrats and five Republicans in the House.
After Republicans enacted new maps last year in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina, Virginia offered a rare, seat-rich prize for Democrats — who control the redistricting process in fewer states — as they sought to respond.
“Virginia just changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms,” Virginia Democratic state House Speaker Don Scott said in a statement. “At a moment when Trump and his allies are trying to lock in power before voters have a say, Virginians stepped up and leveled the playing field for the entire country.”
In a statement, Gov. Abigail Spanberger said she was looking forward to campaigning with candidates to win the new newly drawn congressional seats and said she was committed to returning to the state’s bipartisan redistricting after the 2030 census.
There will likely be court challenges, but for now it’s looking good for Democrats. Now Republicans are talking about redistricting in Florida, but that may be problematic.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has said he intends to call a special session of the state Legislature to draw a new map, which could net Republicans as many as four or five seats.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
But those efforts face a big hurdle, as the Florida Constitution includes anti-gerrymandering language that prohibits redistricting with the intent to favor political parties. Changing it would require a snap popular referendum that would need to reach a 60 percent threshold — a heavy lift with time running short.
“This war is not over. Next week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is hauling the Florida legislature back into a special session to redraw maps because Republicans know they are on the verge of an epic defeat in November,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday night in a statement.
“If Florida Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pick-up opportunities for Democrats, just as they did with Trump’s gerrymander in Texas.”
Some Republicans have also expressed concern about redistricting backfiring on the GOP in the state.
Alex Alvarado, in an analysis for the Civic Data and Research Institute, wrote Republicans could potentially go from four to seven competitive seats, but warned, “Aggressive redistricting strategies aimed at maximizing Republican seat count may paradoxically increase Republican vulnerability to adverse electoral conditions.”
That’s particularly true when political winds are blowing hard against President Trump and his party.
Yes, Trump’s poll numbers keep getting worse.
The Guardian: Trump approval slips as polls show warning signs for Republicans ahead of midterms.
A trio of political polls indicate public approval of Donald Trump’s management of the US economy, immigration and the Iran conflict is slipping, flashing warning lights for Trump-aligned Republican candidates with six months to go until the US midterm elections.
Polls by Reuters-Ipsos poll, Strength in Numbers-Verasight and AP-NORC had the president’s approval rating hovering in the mid-30s, at 36%, 35% and 33% respectively, which are near his lowest numbers.
The poll showed that Trump’s handling of the economy has fallen to 30% approval, down from 38% in March, while 72% said the country is headed in the wrong direction, a figure unchanged since February. Just 23% approve of how he is handling the cost of living, while 76% disapprove.
A Reuters-IPSOS poll published on Wednesday also found that Trump’s signature migrant deportation policies could harm Republicans in November’s congressional elections: 52% of Americans said they were less likely to support a candidate who backs Trump’s approach to deportations, significantly more than the 42% who said they were more likely to support such a candidate.
That poll also found division on the issue was greater on the issue among non-aligned voters, or independents, with 57% saying they prefer a candidate who opposes Trump’s deportations and 32% preferring candidates who support Trump on the issue.
A bit more from the Guardian article:
The president’s immigration policy was supported by 50% of the country in the weeks after his January 2025 inauguration. But according to Reuters, only 40% currently approve. After the clashes between immigration enforcement agents and protesters early in the year, resulting in two protester deaths in Minneapolis, the administration has slowed its detention of immigrants.
An NBC News decision desk poll separately found that Trump’s personal approval rating has hit a second-term low, with 37% of adults approving of Trump’s performance as president, while 63% disapprove. Among those, 50% said they disapprove strongly.
Despite some signs of fracturing in Trump’s base, the NBC poll found 83% of Republicans still give Trump a positive approval rating, down 4 points from earlier this year – and his handling of the economy was strongly approved by 52% compared to 58% previously.
But the challenges faced by Republican candidates to defend their twin majorities in Congress are stark. The poll found that one-third of Americans believe the country is on the right track while two-thirds believe it is on the wrong track.
It was almost exactly this time 20 years ago that the bottom began to fall out on George W. Bush’s approval ratings. And as Bush’s numbers in most polls fell into the 30s for the first time in late winter and early spring, the culprit was clear: the Iraq war.
History could be repeating itself with President Donald Trump in 2026. Just swap Iraq with Iran.
Three new polls released Tuesday showed Trump’s approval rating in the mid-30s: 36% in a Reuters-Ipsos poll, 35% in a Strength in Numbers-Verasight poll and 33% in an AP-NORC poll. They follow an NBC News poll over the weekend that showed Trump hitting a new low of 37%.
Over the past month now, eight of nine quality polls tracked by CNN have shown Trump in the 30s.
The only exception was a Fox News poll pegging Trump at 41%, but even that showed Trump with his worst numbers in its polls since 2017.
Read Blake’s in-depth analysis at CNN if you’re interested. You can also read Paul Krugman’s Substack today for a deep dive on how Americans view Trump’s economy: Bad Vibes and Broken Promises.
On April 7, President Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran’s “whole civilization will die tonight,” capping a week of increasingly unhinged posts about the war in Iran (in another, the president told Iran’s leaders to “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell. … Praise be to Allah!”). The posts have drawn sharp criticism from political and media figures across the political spectrum, including prominent right-wing voices who backed Trump in 2024. Tucker Carlson called the threats against Iran’s civilian infrastructure a war crime and now says he regrets helping elect Trump, while Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Theo Von, and Tim Dillon have also spoken out.
In Congress, Rep. John Larson has introduced 13 articles of impeachment against Trump, with more than 85 House members publicly backing either impeachment or invoking the 25th Amendment. All of which raises the question: how much of the general public wants Trump impeached? If even his most right-wing supporters are breaking away, support among the broader public is presumably pretty high.
A new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll conducted April 10-14, 2026 finds 55% of U.S. adults say the House should vote to impeach Trump. 37% oppose, and 8% are unsure. A surprising percentage of both Republicans and Trump’s own 2024 voters say they would support impeachment if a vote were held today.
That net +18 verdict puts Trump in the neighborhood of the numbers Richard Nixon saw at the peak of the Watergate scandal in August 1974 — more on that comparison below. The toplines and crosstabs for this poll can be found on the Strength In Numbers website.l [….]
Our new poll shows that 55% of U.S. adults support the House voting to impeach Trump, while 37% oppose and 8% are unsure.
As for the president’s overall approval rating, there is a strong intensity gap in responses to our poll. Overall, 45% of all adults say they strongly support impeachment, while only 30% say they strongly oppose it. That is a 15-point intensity gap in favor of impeachment — the people who want Trump out are both more numerous and more committed than the people who want him to stay.
Read more analysis of these poll results and see charts at the link above.
Trump’s war is not going well and he is handling the failures badly. He can’t control himself from constantly posting on Truth Social, and apparently, he’s not in control f his behavior behind the scenes either.
When President Donald Trump learned that two American pilots had gone missing in Iran on Good Friday, he “screamed at aides for hours” and was then “kept out of the room” while his team was given minute-by-minute updates, according to a report.
An F-15 fighter jet was shot down over Iran on April 3, prompting a high-stakes rescue mission for the missing airmen. One crew member was swiftly rescued by U.S. forces after ejecting before the aircraft went down – but the second crew member spent more than 24 hours behind enemy lines before he was safely extracted.
“Trump screamed at aides for hours” after he was informed the fighter jet had been shot down and two airmen were missing, the outlet reported, citing a senior administration official. “Images of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis — one of the biggest international policy failures of a presidency in recent times — had been looming large in his mind,” WSJ reported.
Over the next 24 hours, Trump’s most senior aides and administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, dialed into the Situation Room to receive updates.
Trump was not included in the meeting but was kept updated “at meaningful moments” on the phone, according to the WSJ, citing a senior administration official.
“Aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful,” the official told the newspaper.
Trump’s dementia is obviously getting worse, and the mainstream media won’t come out and say it. This is from Heather Cox Richardson’s report from yesterday:
Alayna Treene and Kevin Liptak of CNN reported last night that by the end of last week, negotiators for the U.S. and Iran appeared to be on the verge of hammering out an end to hostilities before the two-week ceasefire ends on Wednesday. Then Trump took to the media to crow that Iranian leaders had “agreed to everything,” including the removal of its enriched uranium, and that “Iran has agreed never to close the Strait of Hormuz again.” He promised that Iran had agreed to end its nuclear program forever and that talks “should go very quickly.” Trump declared the breakthrough was “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!” and asked why media outlets questioning the alleged deal didn’t “just say, at the right time, JOB WELL DONE, MR. PRESIDENT?”
Iranian negotiators said Trump’s claims were false and that if he didn’t remove the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, they would reclose the Strait of Hormuz they had just opened. “The Iranians didn’t appreciate [Trump] negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to, and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home,” a source told Treene and Liptak.
Over the weekend, Iranians closed the strait and the U.S. fired on an Iranian vessel. On Sunday, even as two senior U.S. government officials were on television saying Vice President J.D. Vance would lead a new round of talks in Pakistan, Trump was on the phone telling reporters that he wouldn’t. On Monday, Trump told a reporter that Vance was in the air about to touch down in Pakistan just minutes before Vance’s motorcade arrived at the White House.
After Iranian officials said today they were not sure they would respond to U.S. positions or go to Pakistan for talks, Vance’s trip has been put on hold. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, complained of “contradictory messages, inconsistent behavior and unacceptable actions by the American side,” on Iran’s state media.
Trump is making everything worse with his childish impatience and his inability to stop posting nonsense and lies.
For his part, Trump blamed the Democrats for the chaos in U.S. diplomacy. “The Democrats are doing everything possible to hurt the very strong position we are in with respect to Iran,” his social media account posted yesterday. The post insisted “it will be done RIGHT, and we won’t let the Weak and Pathetic Democrats, TRAITORS ALL, who for years have been talking about the Dangers of Iran, and that something has to be done, but now, since I’m the one doing it, belittle the accomplishments of our Military and the Trump Administration. This is being perfectly executed, on the scale of Venezuela, just a bigger, more complex operation.”
As David S. Bernstein of Good Politics/Bad Politics noted, Trump’s account this morning reposted another account claiming that Iran was preparing to execute eight women, showing AI-generated images of them. Trump posted: “To the Iranian leaders who will soon be in negotiations with my representatives: I would greatly appreciate the release of these women. I am sure that they will respect the fact that you did so. Please do them no harm! Would be a great start to our negotiations!!!” As Bernstein put it: Trump urged Iran “to start peace negotiations by releasing non-existent, AI-generated women some rando posted about on X.”
He is an idiot! We can only hope to hang on until Democrats take over the House and Senate so we can impeach and remove him. Trump was on Truth Social again last night.
President Donald Trump spent the night firing off posts on his social media platform, repeatedly taking aim at both his domestic political enemies and the leaders of Iran.
The Truth Social rampage culminated in a flurry of 14 posts in less than an hour.
The meltdown came just days after it was revealed that Trump was kept out of a crisis room where they were handling the rescue of two U.S. airmen in Iran because the president had become too agitated.
“Iran doesn’t want the Strait of Hormuz closed, they want it open so they can make $500 Million Dollars a day,” the president wrote at 8.36 p.m, before arguing that Iran only wants the Strait closed because U.S. forces have it blockaded.
“People approached me four days ago, saying, ‘Sir, Iran wants to open up the Strait, immediately,’” Trump continued. “But if we do that, there can never be a Deal with Iran, unless we blow up the rest of their Country, their leaders included!”
He also ranted about non-Iran things; you can read more at The Daily Beast link. After spewing this nonsense, Trump apparently fell asleep for a few hours, and then began posting again.
Donald Trump was back on Truth Social before dawn Wednesday, hammering out four more posts in half an hour after barely six hours of sleep.
The 79-year-old president, whose nocturnal posting habits are well documented, signed off just after midnight following a 12-hour evening binge in which he spat out 19 posts—ripping into Iran, the Wall Street Journal, Democratic strategist James Carville, 81, and even the conservative-majority Supreme Court.
Picking up his tirade shortly before 6 a.m. Eastern, Trump opened with a TikTok titled “Endgame and Final Warning,” lifted from an account calling itself @devildoggae.
The clip shows U.S. historian Victor Davis Hanson delivering a solemn warning to the camera that Iran has “walked right into a noose” militarily and economically, leaving the regime with three options—go down in a blaze of glory, accept one-sided negotiations, or surrender outright—and warning that any nuclear deal is worthless unless America is willing to enforce it.
Minutes later, Trump posted a second clip captioned “Former Navy Seal Eli Crane Lights Into Mark Kelly Over His Treasonous Stunt.” The footage shows the bearded Crane, 46, an Arizona Republican and former SEAL, leaning over his microphone to grill a uniformed witness about the duty of service members to refuse unlawful orders—the very principle Kelly had invoked….
Trump then reposted two supporters who had quote-posted his own videos back at him. One, a self-described “Proud Deplorable” who writes under the handle @thewriterme and lists her interests as “America,” asked about Hanson’s screed: “What will happen next?”
Next was a post by Sami Nathaniel, a self-styled “Trump fan” posting under the handle @NathanielSami, who demanded: “Mark Kelly needs to be held accountable! LOCK HIM UP.!!!” [….]
Trump’s pre-dawn barrage suggested Iran is also still very much on the president’s mind. Before finally turning in last night, Trump had posted repeatedly about the Strait of Hormuz, claiming Tehran’s regime was “collapsing financially,” that its forces were “not getting paid,” and signing off with a self-pitying “SOS!!!”
If people who don’t use social media could see these Trump meltdowns, his polls would likely be even worse than they are now.
That’s all I have for today. I’ll post a few news links in the comment thread. Have a peaceful Wednesday.
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Katsushika Hokusai, A view of Mt Vesuvius with fat cats
Happy Caturday!!
Today’s cat art comes from Svetlata Petrova’s Fat Cat Art website. As you probably recall, Petrova inserts her now deceased orange cat into famous works of art.
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about in the Middle East, it appears there’s a danger of open conflict between Israel and Iran. Here’s the latest.
DUBAI, April 13 (Reuters) – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, days after Tehran said it could close the crucial shipping route and warned it would retaliate for an Israeli strike on its Syria consulate.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported that a Guards helicopter had boarded and taken into Iranian waters the Portuguese flagged MSC Aries, saying it was linked to Israel.
MSC, which operates the Aries, confirmed Iran had seized the ship and said it was working “with the relevant authorities” for its safe return and the wellbeing of its 25 crew.
MSC leases the Aries from Gortal Shipping, an affiliate of Zodiac Maritime, Zodiac said in a statement, adding that MSC is responsible for all the vessel’s activities. Zodiac is partly owned by Israeli businessman Eyal Ofer.
Video on Iranian news channels purporting to show the seizure included a figure abseiling from a helicopter on to a ship. Reuters was able to verify that the ship in the video was the MSC Aries but not the date it was recorded.
The incident comes amid rising regional tensions since the start of Israel’s campaign in Gaza in October, with Israel or its ally the United States clashing repeatedly with Iranian-aligned groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Iran has threatened to retaliate for suspected Israeli airstrikes on its consulate in Syria’s capital Damascus on April 1 that killed seven Revolutionary Guards officers including two senior commander
A bit more from NBC News:
The move could escalate tension in a region reeling from the war in Gaza and a recent strike, suspected to have been carried out by Israel, that killed senior Iranian military officers. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 deadly terror attack and mass hostage taking and Israel’s subsequent fullscale assault on the Gaza Strip, more than 33,000 people have died and 75,000 others have been injured.
Van Gogh’s The Siesta, with fat cats
And attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants on ships in the Red Sea have already rocked global trade as several major shipping lines and oil transporters suspended their services through the waterway.
As companies avoid the Suez Canal, which feeds into the Red Sea, and opt instead to go around Africa to get to the Indian Ocean, it can add up to 14 days to a shipping route, incurring higher fuel costs. And since ships take a longer time to get to their destinations, delays in container and commodity deliveries are inevitable.
IRNA stated that the Portuguese-flagged ship was operated by the Zodiac shipping company, which is part of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group. Zodiac said in a statement that the ship is managed and operated by the U.K.-based shipping company, MSC, which confirmed on Saturday that the MSC Aries has been “boarded by Iranian authorities via via helicopter.” The shipping company also said there were 25 crew members onboard and that it is working with “relevant authorities” to ensure their safety….
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency said on X that the MSC Aries had been seized 50 nautical miles northeast of the Fujairah, an area close to the Strait of Hormuz that forms the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
The Biden administration is using every diplomatic and military tool to contain what officials expect will be an imminent Iranian reprisal attack against Israel — in the hope that U.S. pressure can keep the conflict from escalating into a regionwide catastrophe.
Call it “the guns of April.” Though this is hardly a conflagration on the order of World War I, it’s a moment that eerily evokes the dynamics of summer 1914, when a war that every power sought to avoid suddenly appeared inevitable, with consequences that no one could predict. Officials hope that any exchange between Iran and Israel will be short and contained — and won’t draw in other powers. But they truly don’t know what’s ahead.
President Biden said on Friday that he expects that Iran will strike Israel “sooner [rather] than later” in retaliation for an April 1 attack that killed seven Quds Force operatives in Damascus, Syria. U.S. intelligence has observed signs of Iranian preparation for attack, sources said, and the expectation on Friday was that the strike could happen within 24 to 48 hours. Biden’s message to Tehran was: “Don’t.”
Long Way Home at Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World
The United States is moving on two tracks to steer this crisis away from what could be a devastating cycle of escalation. On the military front, the United States and Israel are both stressing defenses that could neuter an Iranian attack. But if Iran or its proxies succeed in a major strike, Israeli and U.S. officials have warned that it could trigger an offensive spiral that might eventually involve the United States.
Israel has the best air-defense system in the world, and U.S. officials hope the Israelis could shoot down Iranian drones, cruise missiles or ballistic missiles — the three most likely forms of attack. Israel’s defense will be supplemented by antimissile systems on U.S. destroyers that have been rushed to the region, as well as an aircraft carrier and other forces that are already there.
The Biden team warned Iran this week about the danger of overreaching, in messages sent through the Swiss Embassy in Tehran. Administration officials also asked diplomats from China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Iraq to pass the same signal to Iranian leaders.
A bit more:
The Iranians have responded through the Swiss, as recently as Wednesday, that they don’t want a confrontation with the United States. Tehran has sent the same message through China and other nations that have been passing messages.
“Iran has to respond, but it will be contained,” is how one source described the Iranian messages that have been sent through diplomatic channels. But U.S. officials worry that these reassurances might not be reliable — and that once direct conflict begins, it could move in unpredictable and dangerous ways.
The tension within the administration was palpable Friday as the window opened for expected Iranian action. The wider war that the White House has sought to avoid since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack and Israel’s devastating response seemed possible within hours. “Praying that things stay calm,” one Israeli official messaged me.
This is not good.
Here in the U.S., we are still dealing with narcissistic psychopath Trump and his Republican supporters in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to bring Ukraine military aid to a vote and increasing the danger that Russia will crush Ukraine and move to attack other European countries.
The former commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command has warned that Ukraine could face defeat by Russia in 2024.
General Sir Richard Barrons has told the BBC there is “a serious risk” of Ukraine losing the war this year.
The reason, he says, is “because Ukraine may come to feel it can’t win”.
“And when it gets to that point, why will people want to fight and die any longer, just to defend the indefensible?”
Ukraine is not yet at that point.
But its forces are running critically low on ammunition, troops and air defences. Its much-heralded counter-offensive last year failed to dislodge the Russians from ground they had seized and now Moscow is gearing up for a summer offensive.
So what will that look like and what are its likely strategic objectives?
“The shape of the Russian offensive that’s going to come is pretty clear,” says Gen Barrons.
“We are seeing Russia batter away at the front line, employing a five-to-one advantage in artillery, ammunition, and a surplus of people reinforced by the use of newish weapons.”
These include the FAB glide bomb, an adapted Soviet-era “dumb bomb” fitted with fins, GPS guidance and 1500kg of high explosive, that is wreaking havoc on Ukrainian defences.
Scene from Hieronymus Bosch’s Temptation of St. Anthony
“At some point this summer,” says Gen Barrons, “we expect to see a major Russian offensive, with the intent of doing more than smash forward with small gains to perhaps try and break through the Ukrainian lines.
“And if that happens we would run the risk of Russian forces breaking through and then exploiting into areas of Ukraine where the Ukrainian armed forces cannot stop them.”
But where?
Last year the Russians knew exactly where Ukraine was likely to attack – from the direction of Zaporizhzhia south towards the Sea of Azov. They planned accordingly and successfully blunted Ukraine’s advance.
Now the boot is on the other foot as Russia masses its troops and keeps Kyiv guessing where it is going to attack next.
Russian Forces are deploying a new, long-range cruise missile, known as the Kh-69, as it steps up attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
The Washington DC-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), noted in its Friday report that the new air-to-surface missiles were part of Russia’s “continued efforts to improve strike packages and penetrate Ukraine’s degraded air defense.”
Russia has renewed its attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks, exploiting Kyiv’s dwindling air defense systems.
“We need air defense systems and other defense assistance, not just turning a blind eye and having lengthy discussions,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
The post was in response to a Russian missile attack overnight on April 11 that destroyed the Trypillia Thermal Power Plant. The plant is one of the primary energy suppliers to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. The plant was hit by the new Kh-69 missiles, according to the Ukrainian military.
“ISW has not previously observed the Russian use of Kh-69 missiles in Ukraine,” it said.
“Russian forces have reportedly launched Kh-69 missiles from 400 kilometers away from their targets, exceeding a previous estimated range of 300 kilometers and the 200-kilometer range of the most recent Kh-59MK2 variant,” wrote the ISW.
Shortly after congressional leaders met with Japan’s prime minister in Speaker Johnson’s ceremonial office in the Capitol on Thursday morning, the conversation turned to Ukraine aid.
Mr. Johnson was in the middle of another agonizing standoff with the ultraconservatives in his conference, after they had blocked legislation to extend a major warrantless surveillance law that is about to expire. His chief Republican antagonist, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, had intensified her threat to oust him. But on Ukraine, he offered his counterparts an assurance.
Henri Rousseau, Tyger’s Dream with fat cat
His comments, confirmed by multiple people familiar with the meeting, were consistent with what Mr. Johnson has been saying for weeks, both publicly and privately: that he intends to ensure the House will move to assist Ukraine, a step that many members of his party oppose.
Even as right-wing Republicans have sought to ratchet up pressure on their speaker, Mr. Johnson has continued to search for a way to win the votes to push through a Ukraine aid. He is battling not only stiff resistance to the idea among House Republicans, but also mounting opposition among Democrats to sending unfettered military aid to Israel given the soaring civilian death toll and humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza….
Mr. Johnson earlier this month floated bringing up the $95 billion emergency national security spending package for Ukraine and Israel passed by the Senate in February — and moving it through the House in tandem with a second bill containing policies endorsed by the conservative wing of his party, according to people familiar with the discussions.
That plan envisioned two consecutive votes — one on the Senate-passed bill, and another on a package of sweeteners geared toward mollifying Republicans who otherwise would be infuriated by Mr. Johnson’s decision to push through a bipartisan aid package for Ukraine. The second bill could include the REPO Act, which would pay for some of the aid by selling off Russian sovereign assets that have been frozen, as well as a measure forcing President Biden to reverse a moratorium on new permits for liquefied natural gas export facilities. It could also include some kind of border security measure.
Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared together Friday at the former president’s Florida estate, a show of unity as the embattled Johnson faces a threat to his leadership.
“He’s doing a really good job under very tough circumstances and I appreciate that he came to Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said of Johnson.
William Holman Hunt, The Awakening of CATscience
The focus of their joint appearance was on what they call “election integrity” — a chief priority for Trump, who continues to lie about the results of the 2020 presidential race. Trump’s attention on the issue comes in an election year when there is expected to be another tight matchup against President Joe Biden.
Johnson, who was one of the 147 GOP lawmakers who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, said Friday congressional Republicans will introduce legislation to require people who register to vote in a federal election to prove that they are an American citizen.
As he outlined the proposal, Johnson made several false claims about noncitizens voting in elections — repeating assertions Trump has made in recent days.
Former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson raised concerns Friday about the integrity of US elections in a joint appearance at Mar-a-Lago that featured false claims about voting, immigration and other topics.
Trump’s team billed the event as being about “election integrity”– a phrase he often uses to describe the lie that the 2020 election was rigged, as well as his unfounded claims about future mass voter fraud….
House Speaker Mike Johnson raised baseless concerns about “potentially hundreds of thousands of votes” being cast by undocumented immigrants in the November presidential election.
“If an individual only asserts or simply states that they are a citizen, they don’t have to prove it, and they can register that person to vote in a federal election,” Johnson said, adding that “we only want US citizens to vote in US elections.”
To solve this issue, which he called a “serious problem,” Johnson said House Republicans would propose a bill that requires people to directly provide proof of US citizenship when registering to vote for federal elections.
Facts First:The system, as it is currently set up, is working, and effectively prevents mass voting by non-citizens in US elections. Despite Johnson’s focus on this topic, it is extremely rare, according to decades of voting data and nonpartisan experts. It’s so uncommon that voting experts don’t see it as a problem plaguing US elections.
In federal and state elections, where voting by non-citizens is illegal, it occurs on a microscopic level. (It’s true that a handful of municipalities have passed laws letting non-citizens participate in local elections, like for school board. But this wasn’t the focus of Johnson’s concerns about federal elections.)
When people register to vote, they must provide a driver’s license or social security number, and their identity is checked against existing databases. Voters are required to swear under penalty of perjury that they are a US citizen, and multiple federal laws make it illegal for non-citizens to vote, which can lead to imprisonment or deportation.
This system, as shown from decades of data, is very effective at stopping non-citizens from registering and voting in federal elections.
“It happens almost never,” said David Becker, founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. “Making something illegal doesn’t stop it from happening, but we know how often it happens, and it’s extremely rare. This is a problem that is very small. And it has almost always occurred because of a misunderstanding.”
The judge in Donald Trump’s hush money criminal case on Friday turned down the former president’s request to postpone his trial because of publicity about the case.
It’s the latest in a string of delay denials that Trump has gotten from various courts this week as he fights to stave off the trial’s start Monday with jury selection.
After Van Gogh, Catcher in the Irises
Among other things, Trump’s lawyers had argued that the jury pool was deluged with what the defense saw as “exceptionally prejudicial” news coverage of the case. The defense maintained that was a reason to hold off the case indefinitely.
Judge Juan M. Merchan wrote that Trump “appears to take the position that his situation and this case are unique and that the pre-trial publicity will never subside. However, this view does not align with reality.”
Pointing to Trump’s two federal defamation trials and a state civil fraud trial in Manhattan within the past year, Merchan wrote that the ex-president himself “was personally responsible for generating much, if not most, of the surrounding publicity with his public statements” outside those courtrooms and on social media.
“The situation Defendant finds himself in now is not new to him and at least in part, of his own doing,” the judge added. He said questioning of prospective jurors would address any concerns about their ability to be fair and impartial.
Donald J. Trump, having failed to fend off a criminal trial in Manhattan that begins on Monday, said that he planned to testify in the case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star.
Taking questions Friday from reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump, when asked whether he would take the stand, responded that he would.
“I’m testifying. I tell the truth,” he said, standing just off a sunny patio of the private club with Speaker Mike Johnson behind him. “I mean, all I can do is tell the truth. And the truth is that there’s no case. They have no case.”
That is highly unlikely, but NYT reporters prefer stenography to actual reporting.
Despite Mr. Trump’s comments, it is far from a sure thing that he will testify. Instead, his comments initiate a familiar two-step: It will not be clear whether the former president will take the stand until the moment he actually does.
Mr. Trump will most likely wait to see whether the prosecution presents a strong case — and whether the judge presiding over the trial plans to restrict prosecutors’ efforts to cross-examine him, according to people with knowledge of his planning.
In past cases, Mr. Trump has wavered after saying that he would testify, including during his civil fraud trial last year, when he canceled his defense testimony the day before he was scheduled to take the stand.
When he was called to testify by the New York attorney general’s office, which filed the case, it did not go well. The judge in the case, who found Mr. Trump liable for conspiring to inflate his net worth, criticized the former president for not answering directly and questioned his credibility.
Testifying in a criminal case would be even riskier. In the trial scheduled to start next week, Mr. Trump is for the first time facing the threat of criminal conviction. He will be at a disadvantage with a jury in Manhattan, a heavily Democratic county.
Donald Trump is doing his best Wizard of Oz imitation. These days, Trump is not looking like the “winner” he needs voters to believe him to be. Like the title character in L Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s fantasy and the 1939 movie, there is less there than meets the eye. The 45th president’s lead in the polls evaporates while his cash stash shrinks.
His upcoming felony fraud trial in Manhattan looms. For the record, he is zero for three in his bids to adjourn the trial, and lawyers are expensive.
At the same time, the stock price of Trump Media & Technology Group – his eponymous meme stock, DJT – has plummeted this week. “DJT stock is down again,” announced Barron’s on Thursday. “Trump’s stake in Truth Social parent has taken a hit.”
Elsewhere a headline blared: “Trump’s ‘DJT’ stock dives to lowest close since Ron DeSantis dropped out”. Reminder, Trump is a guy whose businesses are no stranger to bankruptcy or allegations of fraud. He leaves wreckage in his wake.
The spirit of Trump University remains alive. Like life in Oz, so much in Trump World is illusory.
Meanwhile, Trump’s attempts to bond New York state’s $454m judgment have run into a legal roadblock. The purported bond posted to avoid enforcement pending appeal may be legally insufficient. Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, demands clarification. Whether the paperwork will be sustained will be decided at a court hearing later this month.
If the court finds the bond to be insufficient or invalid, James may be able to immediately seek to collect what the state is owed. Financial humiliation set against the backdrop of the campaign is something that Trump can ill afford.
For the record, he has already posted a $91m bond to stave off enforcement in the second E Jean Carroll defamation case. His assets are getting tied up, his liquidity ebbs. To him, image is almost everything.
To push or not to push? Rene Magritte, Memory of a Journey with fat cat
Green next addresses Trump’s political problems because of the abortion issue.
At the same time, abortion has re-emerged as a campaign issue, to the horror of the presumptive Republican nominee and his minions. The death of Roe v Wade cost the Republican party its “red wave” in the 2022 midterms. This time, it may lead to another Trump loss and Hakeem Jeffries of Queens wielding the speaker’s gavel in the US House of Representatives.
Hell hath no fury like suburban moms and their daughters. The last thing they need is a thrice-married libertine seventysomething with a penchant for adult film stars and Playboy models telling them how to raise their kids or meddling in their personal lives.
When a guy who hawks Bibles for a side-hustle refuses to say whether any of his partners ever had an abortion, it’s time to roll your eyes and guard your wallet.
Donald Trump’s acolytes gathered at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday evening to celebrate the public listing of his social media firm, even as the company’s stock continued to crater. Under the Palm Beach sky, right-wing radio host Sebastian Gorka sucked on a cigar, actor Jon Voight posed for photos, and country singer turned Bible salesman Lee Greenwood belted his runaway hit “God Bless the USA.” At the end of the song, he and the former president saluted.
In a speech, Trump encouraged investors to keep calm. “We have over $200 million dollars in cash, which is very liquid,” he said, according to a reporter from Right Side Broadcasting Network in attendance.
On Trump’s social media site, Truth Social, the mood is less ebullient. “Man I really thought we were gonna see a jump today. Especially after that party last night. There is always tomorrow,” one user lamented on Thursday morning.
“Doesn’t it seem strange that the price goes down steadily every day? Haven’t seen a green day for a while,” wondered another.
Shares of Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group, have fallen more than 50 percent since late March, as the company’s dire financial position has become more clear. Last year, it brought in just $4.1 million in revenue and posted a $58.2 million loss.
Even after tanking, however, the business is still worth more than $4 billion on paper—a number that defies normal valuation metrics. Trump loyalists have helped keep the stock afloat as a way to financially support him, though TMTG remains heavily shorted by investors who believe its shares will continue to fall.
On Truth Social, retail investors are encouraging each other to keep the faith. “When the whole world is set on ruining you with everything that they have got, it’s a good sign that you are likely on the right side of things,” one person wrote on Thursday.
Another user sought to liken TMTG to high-growth tech companies: “I don’t understand all the concern about this stock going down. All of the big stocks were very low at the beginning,” the person said. “We are less than a month into this being an actual stock. I am optimistic about [Truth Social] and will continue to hold and keep buying when I can.”
Suckers.
That’s all I have for you today. Have a great weekend, everyone!!
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Dakinikat turned me on to the world of truck drivers who have cat companions along for the ride. Here’s an article that discusses the phenomenon. CharityPaws.com: Trucker Cats May Be The Coolest Cats!
For what it’s worth, having a pet is hard work.
Love is easy enough to provide while on the road – but food, water, space, and entertainment are all needs too, and sometimes hard to come up with.
In the case of dogs especially, playtime is the hardest need to fill for truckers. After several hour-long walks, a game of tug-of-war, and an afternoon in the sun spent playing fetch, who wouldn’t be tired? But for truckers this can be time consuming and delay important deliveries!
That’s why many truckers have turned to cats as the solution for those lonely road trips. Trucker cats are the coolest cats with their chill laid back personalities and ability to make truckers feel awesome. They also have some great hearing which is why the made it to our list of “what animal has the best hearing” list. Having a companion with good hearing on board can help you find critters that may sneak around while you are sleeping or even alert you to danger!
With most of their time spent on the road in a little truck cab, cats are the perfect companion for truckers– and here’s some of the best reasons why according to one trucker’s resource:
Cats are low-maintenance: they eat less than their canine counterparts, take up less room, and don’t need as much playtime.
They’re loving and affectionate: cats are just as sweet as any other animal, once they have a chance to warm up to you.
They’re obedient, and trainable: cats can do tricks and walk on leashes, with the proper time and training!
They’re protective: though not as scary as a dog, cats are perfectly capable of altering truckers if something looks, sounds, or even smells off.
Other reasons topping truckers’ lists include cleanliness, cuteness, and the fact that having a cat in a truck is a pretty good conversation starters. Some even say that having a feline friend is a constant reminder to drive and act safely during the long haul. They are also incredibly loyal as shown by the Room 8 cat – and having that kind of loyalty on the road will make any trucker feel amazing!
Read more at the link above.
Here’s a video about trucker cats, posted on YouTube by Cheezburger.
Long Read: Are Americans Experiencing Collective Trauma?
I want to call your attention to an excellent, but very long read in The New Republic by Anna Marie Cox: We Are Not Just Polarized. We Are Traumatized. Subhead: “The pandemic. The mass shootings. Insurrection. Trump. We’ve been through so much. What if our entire national character is a trauma response?”
This is a very long piece, so I’m just going to give you some samples to help you decide if you want to tackle reading the whole thing.
As of last year, four in 10 Americans knew at least one person who died from Covid. This year, three in 10 Americans say they know someone who has been affected by an opioid addiction, and one in five knows someone who’s died from a painkiller overdose. In 2022, more than three million adults were displaced by some form of natural disaster—that’s more than three times as many displaced per year between 2008 and 2021. Last year, some cities saw a 50 percent increase in evictions over pre-pandemic levels. One in five knows someone who’s died due to gun violence; one in six has witnessed a shooting; 21 percent have been personally threatened by a gun. Half of Americans know someone personally who has experienced at least one of those events.
After Trump’s “grab her by” tape became public, calls to the national sexual assault hotline jumped up by 35 percent (as Michelle Goldberg observed, Trump was a walking trigger for assault survivors). During the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, calls to the sexual assault hotline spiked 201 percent. Lockdown—the first two months of the pandemic—saw a rise in intimate partner violence of 101 percent, with the rate stabilizing at an increase of about 8 percent from pre-pandemic numbers as of 2022.
Another photo of Trucker cat Percy, by Paul Robertson
And then there are the frontline workers and “essential personnel,” those who risked their lives for our safety and comfort during the spring of 2020. I assume that we agree health professionals faced trauma (and may well still). There are 22 million of them in the United States, and after the pandemic, 55 percent reported experiencing burnout, and three in 10 said they were now considering leaving the profession. The 55 million essential personnel who worked through the worst days of Covid suffered a similar toll: A year into the pandemic, the American Psychiatric Association found that 34 percent of essential workers had been treated by a mental health professional, 80 percent had trouble over- or under-sleeping, and 39 percent said they were drinking more alcohol than they had before….
These are traumas at the individual level in numbers so large that they demand national attention because there are national consequences—think of the nationwide therapist shortage and “the Great Resignation.”
So, what if the reason so many people identify as trauma survivors is that they are? What if the horrors of the last seven years do translate into a nation that is suffering more than mere political dysfunction? What if the polarization, paranoia, conspiracism, and hopelessness that bog us down have a more holistic origin than structural malfunctions or individual malfeasance?
What if our entire national character is a trauma response?
Before you say “bullshit,” remember: Cynicism is a trauma response.
Next Cox explores expert opinions about the concept of “collective trauma.”
The origin of the academic study of “collective trauma” has been credited to Kai Erikson’s 1977 book, Everything in Its Path, an account of the aftermath of the Buffalo Creek flood in Logan County, West Virginia, five years prior, which killed 125 people and destroyed 550 homes in a small mining community. In the book, Erikson writes of grappling with “thousands of pages of transcript material, whole packing boxes full of it,” that confounded him “not because the material is contradictory or difficult to interpret but because it is so bleakly alike.” He found respondents echoing one another to a frustrating degree, so much so that “a researcher is very apt to conclude after rummaging through these data that there is really not very much to say.” Eventually, however, he came to believe that the uniformity itself was meaningful; the damage done at Buffalo Creek was something more than a mere collection of individual harms.
Collective trauma, he wrote, means “a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality.” Collective trauma happens in slow motion, “A form of shock all the same…. ‘I’ continue to exist, though damaged and maybe even permanently changed. ‘You’ continue to exist, though distant and hard to relate to. But ‘we’ no longer exist as a connected pair or as linked cells in a larger communal body.”
Trucker Abdirahman Abdul and Aisha
In other words, the defining characteristic of collective trauma—and what makes it almost impossible to self-diagnose—is that people who have been through it no longer believe in the integrity of their community. How does anyone see themselves as a traumatized collective if no one feels that they belong?
So, pull back to the macro level. For a moment, put aside your or anyone else’s individual experience. Think of the country itself as a patient.
In the past seven years, the country has sustained significant, repeated damage to its institutions. The courts, elections, law enforcement, and so on are its vital organs. Trump has been punching America in the kidneys since he first floated the idea of a “rigged election.” January 6 was a heart attack. The musculature that is the justice system, well, it was always spasmodic. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery shocked many white people into awareness of our already dysfunctional law enforcement apparatus, and then the Dobbs decision drove home how easily the rights that support us can be yanked away. Were we ever really as strong as we thought?
The country was already weakened by Trumpism when the pandemic attacked our nervous systems more than figuratively. It cut away at the millions of tiny threads that knit up our towns and cities. Think of the loose social ties that grow from just seeing the same people at the grocery store (or the office) every day—think of the mail. Our national proprioception—our awareness of where our parts are in relation to one another—deteriorated. Our creaky supply chain is another symptom of this disconnect. So is “you’re on mute.”
I won’t quote any more, but these excerpts are just from the introductory part of the article. Cox later demonstrates with examples how the notion of trauma can apply to our collective experience as a nation. There is so much in the piece, that I wonder if Cox is planning to turn it into a book.
I’m not sure how the MAGA world fits into this hypothesis, but after my reading about the traumas of Appalachia–from poverty, drugs, unemployment, and breakdown of families (see my Wednesday post), I wonder if an argument could be made that the attraction to Trump as powerful father figure could also have arisen out of trauma. At any rate, I highly recommend this article.
Citing threats against individuals former President Donald Trump has targeted, special counsel Jack Smith has asked a federal judge for a narrowly tailored gag order that restricts the 2024 presidential candidate from making certain extrajudicial statements about the election interference case brought against him.
A redacted copy of a government filing — released Friday, after an order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — comes in connection with the election interference case, one of four criminal cases the former president is facing, two of which are federal.
“The defendant has an established practice of issuing inflammatory public statements targeted at individuals or institutions that present an obstacle or challenge to him,” the special counsel’s office wrote.
Whispur and DanDan, photo by Whispurer on Reddit
The government said Trump “made clear his intent to issue public attacks related to this case when, the day after his arraignment, he posted a threatening message on Truth Social.”
Trump’s Aug. 4 post read: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
Trump, the office wrote, “has made good on his threat,” spreading “disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.
“Like his previous public disinformation campaign regarding the 2020 presidential election, the defendant’s recent extrajudicial statements are intended to undermine public confidence in an institution—the judicial system—and to undermine confidence in and intimidate individuals—the Court, the jury pool, witnesses, and prosecutors,” the prosecutors wrote.
Naturally, Trump responded publicly to the filing:
At an event in Washington, Trump made his first public remarks on the filing by attacking Smith, arguing that the special counsel “wants to take away my rights under the First Amendment, wants to take away my right of speaking freely and openly.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, responded earlier Friday by calling the filing “nothing more than blatant election interference because President Trump is by far the leading candidate in this race.”
The federal prosecutors who charged former President Donald J. Trump with a criminal conspiracy over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election obtained 32 private messages from his Twitter account through a search warrant this winter as part of their investigation, court papers unsealed on Friday said.
Questions have lingered about what prosecutors were looking for in Mr. Trump’s Twitter account ever since it was revealed last month that the government had served the warrant on Twitter in January. In an earlier release of documents, prosecutors disclosed that they had obtained some private messages from Mr. Trump’s account but not how many.
The 32 messages, whose content has not been disclosed, were only a small fraction of the larger body of data that Twitter was forced to turn over under the terms of the warrant, the new court papers said. Much of the legal wrangling over the matter focused on the Justice Department’s demand that Twitter, purchased last year by Elon Musk and now known as X, not inform Mr. Trump of the search warrant.
Mr. Trump’s posts on the platform in the chaotic months after the election were mentioned several times in the indictment that the special counsel, Jack Smith, filed against him in Washington last month. What remains unclear is whether Mr. Smith’s team sought the warrant for Mr. Trump’s account merely to confirm that he had posted the messages that appeared in public, or whether they suspected that some private data in the account might also be important.
What were investigators looking for in the private messages?
The newly unsealed documents — an exhaustive record of the legal fight between Twitter and the Justice Department over whether to hide the execution of the warrant from Mr. Trump — added a few new details about what the government may have been seeking.
Waylon the Trucker Cat, photo by owner Nick
For example, the materials showed that prosecutors wanted to learn if there were other accounts that Mr. Trump had been logging into from the same internet address he used for his Twitter account, which during his presidency was a main channel for his public statements. But it was not clear whether looking for other accounts was merely a routine step or whether investigators had a specific reason to be asking.
The new materials — unsealed at the request of a coalition of news media organizations, including The New York Times — opened a broader window into the back and forth between the special counsel’s office and Twitter. The dispute touched on how to balance the government’s need to protect a sensitive investigation with the social media company’s desire to be transparent with its most famous user.
The documents were particularly sharp in describing Mr. Trump’s repeated attempts to obstruct federal inquiries — an argument that prosecutors used in securing permission from a judge in Washington not to tell the former president for months that they had obtained the warrant for his account.
In detailing Mr. Trump’s “pattern of obstructive conduct,” the new papers cited his attempts to interfere with the special counsel’s other inquiry — one in which the former president stands accused of illegally holding on to dozens of classified documents after leaving office.
The attorney for President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, who is facing felony gun charges, said Friday that the statute is “likely unconstitutional” and he expects “the case will be dismissed before trial.”
“On the facts, we think we’ll have a defense,” Abbe Lowell told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview on “Good Morning America.”
The younger Biden has been indicted by special counsel David Weiss on three felony gun charges, bringing renewed legal pressure on him after a plea agreement he struck with prosecutors imploded in recent months.
The conduct described in the indictment dates back to October 2018, when Hunter Biden procured a Colt Cobra 38SPL despite later acknowledging that he was addicted to drugs around that time.
While the criminal statutes cited in the indictment are clear — it is a crime to lie on a gun application form or to possess a firearm as a drug user – Hunter Biden’s attorney suggested that the charges could be unconstitutional, citing a recent appeals court ruling that drug use alone should not automatically prevent someone from obtaining a gun.
“The only change that has occurred between when they investigated [this alleged crime] and today is that the law changed,” Lowell said. “But the law didn’t change in favor of the prosecution. The law changed against it.”
With Republicans launching an impeachment inquiry on Capitol Hill, Lowell suggested that political pressure on prosecutors played into their decision, questioning the timing of the charges in light of revelations from whistleblowers about the investigation.
No kidding. The political pressure from right wing Congresspeople has been off the charts. And Special Counsel David Weiss himself was appointed by Bill Barr after political pressure from Donald Trump.
“History is also our best teacher. Yes, our past is filled with too much violence, too much hatred, too much prejudice. But can we really say that we are not confronting those same evils now?” Jackson said at the church in Birmingham, Alabama.
Trucker cat, photo by abbenquesnel on flicker
“We have to own even the darkest parts of our past, understand them and vow never to repeat them. We must not shield our eyes. We must not shrink away lest we lose it all,” she said.
The justice didn’t invoke a particular case, but as a whole her speech nodded to efforts targeting the teaching of critical race theory in schools and books about the struggle for racial equality and other topics.
“If we are going to continue to move forward as a nation, we cannot allow concerns about discomfort to displace knowledge, truth or history. It is certainly the case that parts of this country’s story can be hard to think about,” she said. “I know that atrocities like the one we are memorializing today are difficult to remember and relive. But I also know that it is dangerous to forget them.”
At times, Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, drew a personal connection to the tragedy, in which a bomb exploded at the church on September 15, 1963, killing Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson. Nearly two dozen others were injured.
“As a mother of two young women who will always be my little girls, I can imagine no greater horror than to lose a child this way,” Jackson said.
“And even now, six decades later, the magnitude of that tragic loss weighs heavily on all of us because those girls were just getting started. They could have broken barriers. They could have shattered ceilings. They could have grown up to be doctors or lawyers or judges appointed to serve on the highest court in our land,” she added.
Read more at CNN.
That’s a sampling of today’s news. Feel free to discuss anything and everything in the comment thread.
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Many of you know that I was born in North Dakota and have a long family history there as well as in Minnesota. We moved away when I was a child; but both sets of grandparents were still there, so we often went back to visit. I’m the eldest child in my family, and my other siblings don’t remember much, if anything, about North Dakota, or even about our paternal grandparents. My mother’s parents eventually moved to Indiana.
I’ve heard stories about North Dakota from my parents all my life and I guess for that reason, I still have an emotional attachment to the place. I took two trips up there with my parents, and we found the places my parents were born and grew up–my Dad in Fargo and my Mom in Hope and Lisbon. we also visited the North Dakota State campus in Fargo, where my parents met in a political science class, and Grand Forks, where my Dad got his masters degree at the University of North Dakota. We also explored the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and visited several historical sites.
It might sound strange, but when we were there, I had a real sense of belonging, a feeling that “This is where I came from.” Now my Dad is gone and my Mom has lost most of her memories–at least she can’t talk about them anymore. My Mom used to tell me that I was the only one who could carry on those memories for them.
North Dakota is one of the nation’s top sunflower-producing states, using the cheery yellow flowers for everything from bird seed mixes to cooking oils.
But before North Dakota’s many hardworking farmers start to harvest this tasty crop, the state comes alive with the golden hue of thousands upon thousands of sunflowers, all blooming together at the same time.
Known as a “superbloom,” the jaw-dropping phenomenon occurs every year toward the end of summer. Spring planting was delayed this year in North Dakota and other northern states because of cold, wet weather—but that also means that sunflowers in some parts of the state are still blooming.
Right now, many of the state’s sunflower fields are in peak bloom, with nearly all flowers showing off their delicate yellow petals. As such, the state has earned a reputation as “the best place in the United States to experience the vast sunflower blooms,” says Sara Otte Coleman, North Dakota’s tourism director, in a statement.
I found this interesting:
Blooming Sunflowers, Boris Eremin, Ukrainian artist
Ukrainian immigrants first began planting sunflowers when they moved to North Dakota in the late 19th and early 20th centuries following the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862. Sunflowers are still an important plant for Ukrainians, both symbolically and economically. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, Ukraine was the largest exporter of sunflower oil in the world, though the war has largely halted production, per the New York Times’ Christine Hauser.
As well as this scientific fact:
When they’re young, sunflowers turn their heads toward the sun as it moves in the sky, a behavior known as heliotropism. But as they mature and start to produce seeds, they mostly point east, which scientists have learned helps the plants attract bees and ultimately reproduce.
Quite a few artists have painted sunflowers, and I’ve illustrated this post with some of those works.
On to today’s news…
Trump is melting down on his imitation twitter. So far, he has posted 60 times on Truth Social, including highlighting garbage from Q-anon and 4-chan.
In the weeks since the FBI’s unprecedented search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the former president’s allies have pleaded with him to stop publicly commenting on the raid and fight the Justice Department’s investigation in the courts.
Trump isn’t listening.
On Tuesday morning alone, Trump has taken to his Truth Social platform over four dozen times to share memes and posts attacking his political enemies. Some posts are memes attacking President Joe Biden or other Democrats, while others are baseless election fraud claims or attempts to delegitimize the FBI.
One post in particular from Tuesday morning shows a photo of Trump with the false caption, “TRUMP WON,” in reference to the 2020 presidential election. The former president then reposted the photo and wrote that the “FBI has advanced this fact even further.”
Another post included a photo with a caption that read: “81 million votes… and I’ve never seen a pro Biden hat, shirt or flag in my life.” Trump reposted the photo and said, “It is rather amazing, isn’t it?”
The investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of classified national security records is forcing Republicans into a strained defense during a pre-midterm sprint in which they’d much rather be talking about Joe Biden.
After having decried the FBI’s search of the ex-president’s home, many Trump defenders went silent uponthe release on Friday of the probable-cause affidavit that revealed the extent of Trump’s efforts to hold onto the top-secret documents. GOP worries about the developments of the case and Trump announcing a 2024 run before November are giving way to a subtle, broader warning about putting the former president too much on the ballot this fall.
“Republicans should focus on defeating Democrats, and every Democrat should have the word Biden in front of their name,” said Trump ally and former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich. “The Republican focus should be to win the election in November. Trump will do a fine job defending himself. He’ll be fine.”
Sunflowers, by Claude Monet
Some top Republicans acknowledge the growing angst and concern, as it’s become clearer that Trump may have been warehousing some of America’s most sensitive secrets in an unsecured basement — and even refused to turn them over when the National Archives and Justice Department tried to recover them. One top Republican fundraiser asked to describe the mood among donors, said, “There is enormous frustration.”
“The question is, is there willingness to express that frustration,” the fundraiser added. “I don’t know the answer to that. But there is real frustration, and with the exception of people who are too stupid to understand the need to be frustrated, it is nearly universal.”
Strained defenses and private frustrations are familiar emotions for some Republicans during the Trump era. But the stakes are particularly high this fall, with projections of a red wave in the House getting dimmed to a smaller GOP majority and as Sen. Chuck Schumer appears potentially poised to remain in control of the Senate.
Last fall, Republicans held high hopes of a “red wave” in the 2022 elections after they stormed to power in blue-leaning Virginia and nearly won the governor’s race in New Jersey. While Democrats were demotivated, the GOP base was on fire.
But in recent weeks, numerous data points have indicated Republican prospects of a smashing victory are dimming. While the president’s party tends to perform poorly in midterm elections, there are signs it is shaping up to be an unusual year, potentially enabling Democrats to hold one or both chambers of Congress.
Some of the bad signs for the GOP:
A Democratic victory in a bellwether election. The starkest sign of a shifting landscape came last week in the Hudson Valley, a highly competitive district north of New York City that has mirrored the national landscape for years. It voted for Joe Biden in 2020, Trump in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012. In a red wave climate, Democrats would have no business winning the special House election. Yet Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in a test of each party’s preferred message. Ryan ran on protecting abortion rights, combating gun violence and battling corporate greed, while Molinaro sought to make the election a referendum on Biden, inflation and “one-party” rule in Washington.
Persuadable voters are trending toward Democrats. The latest NBC News poll, conducted this month, included an unusual finding for midterm elections: Persuadable voters in the midterm election are tilting toward Democrats, the party in power. This group accounts for about 25% of respondents, who float between the parties and tend to be male, moderate, independent and exurban. They preferred Republicans by 6 points in the combined NBC News polls of January, March and May. But in the August poll, they leaned toward Democrats by 3 points.
The GOP’s “enthusiasm” edge is shrinking. In March, the NBC News poll found that Republicans held a 17-point “enthusiasm” advantage over Democrats — that is, their voters were more likely to express high interest in voting this fall. In the August poll, the GOP advantage fell to 2 points.
Mitch McConnell is downplaying expectations in the Senate. McConnell, the Republican leader, isn’t sounding too bullish about his prospects to capture control of the Senate, having predicted just two weeks ago, “There’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate.” That may be a product of the shifting environment, along with a phenomenon McConnell described as “candidate quality.” A series of first-time Republican contenders are struggling in competitive races against seasoned Democratic politicians. Recruitment failures in states like New Hampshire and Arizona have led GOP governors to decline to run.
Read the rest of the bad omens at the NBC link.
The Sunflower, by Gustav Klimt, 1907
Today is the day the DOJ is supposed to file it’s response to the Trump request for a Special Master to review the government documents that the FBI recovered in its search of Mar-a-Lago. Yesterday the judge agreed the DOJ response could be 40 pages long. It looks like Merrick Garland is planning to spell out in detail what Trump is suspected of doing.
The Justice Department on Tuesday will file publicly in court its response to former President Donald Trump’s bid for a special master to oversee the FBI’s review of materials seized in the Mar-a-Lago search.
The agency was granted permission by Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida to file up to 40 pages after it said the 20-page limit set by the local rules of the court wasn’t sufficient to “adequately address the legal and factual issues raised by” Trump’s filings.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, did not set a specific deadline for the Justice Department’s filing beyond requesting it “on or before” Tuesday. The judge also ordered the agency to file under seal more details about what it seized from Trump’s resort, and a notice laying out the status of its review of the materials.
Trump must file his reply to the Justice Department by 8 p.m. ET Wednesday night, per Cannon’s order, and the judge has scheduled a hearing for Thursday to consider Trump’s request for a special master — a third-party attorney appointed by a court to oversee part of a certain case. Notably, Cannon has already signaled a “preliminary intent” to grant Trump’s request, which could bring new complications to the DOJ’s closely watched investigation.
Yesterday the DOJ said it has already reviewed the documents.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has already signaled that it is using an internal filter team to review the seized items and separate material that could be subject to privilege claims.
In a court filing Monday, the agency said it has identified “a limited set of materials” from its search of documents taken from Mar-a-Lago that potentially contain material covered by attorney-client privilege and is in the process of addressing privilege disputes.
Chris Kise, Florida’s former solicitor general who served on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ transition team, inked a contract to represent Donald Trump in the criminal case that resulted in the FBI search of the former president’s home in Mar-a-Lago, according to two sources with knowledge of the discussions.
Twelve sunflowers in a vase, by Vincent Van Gogh
Kise, who declined to comment, began negotiations with Trump shortly after the FBI’s search of his Palm Beach estate Aug. 8. Numerous other criminal defense attorneys have said they couldn’t represent the former president in the Southern District of Florida, citing the all-consuming job of representing Trump or his reputation as a penny-pinching problematic client with a history of having rival advisers who backstab one another, according to five people with knowledge of the legal effort.
Other attorneys declined because their firms wanted to avoid the political blowback of representing such a divisive figure, according to those in Trump’s orbit who say thatKise is considering leaving the firm of Foley & Lardner — where he had briefly represented Venezuela’s government two years ago when hostilities with the United States ran high — to take the job.
Kise has won four cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous ones before the Florida Supreme Court, and he also has a reputation as a skilled political knife fighter. In the waning days of the 2018 governor’s race, Kise widely publicized damaging information about Democrat Andrew Gillum secretly accepting free tickets to the Broadway show “Hamilton” from undercover FBI agents, in contravention of Florida’s ethics laws. Gillum, who denied wrongdoing, went on to narrowly lose to DeSantis and was indicted earlier this year following the FBI investigation.
Read the rest at the link.
We’ll have to wait until Thursday for the hearing in Judge Cannon’s court to learn more about how the investigation of Trump’s theft of highly classified government documents is going. Personally, I can’t wait!
What’s on your mind today? Please feel free to discuss any topic you wish in the comment thread below.
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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.
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