Finally Friday Reads: Daily Trumpian Buzzkills

Posted: July 24, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: 2026 Elections, 2026 MidTerm elections, Are we a democracy?, Breaking News, Iran War, Israel/Iran War, Journalism, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, SAVE Act, Senate, Take Back America, The US Road to Kleptocracy/Autocracy, Trump Chaos | Tags: , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

“Looks like Barron is advising his Dad again. I’m pretty sure this’ll bring young voters back into the cult.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m a little bit late starting today. I had to make a quick dash down to City Hall to figure out why I was getting a late notice on not paying some tax I had never even heard of at this point. Anyway, it all worked out. It wasn’t the least bit aggravating. I know what to do to resolve it.  I got the opportunity to see and experience why I love this city so much, so no damage was done. However, I learned I still have to write checks at City Hall, and was fortunate to find out I actually have one book of checks still in my desk drawer. I am still trying to figure out the last time I’d written a check, put a stamp on an envelope, and mailed it. My guess is at least a decade ago.

So, let’s see how the week’s ending now that I have done my City Hall thing. Tropical Storm Bertha turned out to be off-and-on heavy rain. I had power and AC, so no problem there. I’m finally getting to my first tea of the day. So, let’s check the headlines that will likely kill my morning love affair with my city. I see that my first suggested read is from Buzzkill Donaldo. Is there any part of our laws or Constitution he doesn’t regularly pissed on?

This is from the New York Times. “Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him. Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.” Tony Romm and Brad Plumer share the lede.

When the Trump administration canceled more than $7.5 billion in Biden-era federal grants for clean energy projects in October, it framed the move as an urgent corrective to protect taxpayer funds from waste.

But it wasn’t true.

In little-noticed court documents, federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, in the 2024 election.

The stunning admission offered an unvarnished glimpse into the way President Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing and infrastructure aid in his second term. Far from rooting out the sort of misspending that Mr. Trump sees as rife in Washington, the White House has instead sought to leverage the budget as a tool to assist its allies — or as a cudgel to hurt the president’s foes.

The saga illustrates the stakes as the Trump administration is completing a set of rules that would provide the president even greater control over more than $1 trillion in annual federal grants. To critics, the new regulation would only make it easier for Mr. Trump to strike wider tranches of congressionally approved funding over political differences.

“The risk that the Trump administration is willing to go to extreme lengths to politicize grant-making is not a hypothetical,” said Devin O’Connor, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning group. He previously served at the White House budget office under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“If they are willing to be that blatant about it,” Mr. O’Connor said of the court filing, “then I think we should take seriously when they put forward a framework that would allow for the extreme politicization of grant-making across all of the federal government.”

This insidious political behavior, resembling a toddler’s tantrum, has got to stop. I’m just glad they’re so glaringly egregious that lawyers and judges easily spot them. This story is from The New Republic. “Angry Trump Openly Urges GOP to Rig Midterms as Brutal Fox Poll Hits. As a striking Fox News poll suggests the GOP midterm position is deteriorating, a voting rights expert walks us through what Trump is really gearing up to attempt this fall—and how to defeat it.”  Greg Sargent interviews Ari Berman. This comes from the transcript of his Podcast.

Ari Berman: Hey, Greg, great to talk to you again. Thank you.

Sargent: So House Republicans just passed a massive $95 billion budget with new war funding, and it also contains $10 billion for provisions related to the SAVE Act, which is the big voter suppression legislation Trump wants. The idea is to pressure the Senate to then pass these things via the simple majority reconciliation process. Ari, before we talk about the Senate, can you just explain what these provisions are in the House budget resolution, and how would they work?

Berman: Well, that’s a good question, Greg. And I can’t really answer it, because we don’t really know. All we know is that the House passed a resolution that says that states are going to get $10 billion in grants if they pass parts of the SAVE Act. But they didn’t release any more details, so we can only speculate on what they’re trying to do. But this seems to me a backdoor way to try to pass the SAVE America Act.

So if you look at the core provisions of the SAVE Act—if you’re going to incentivize states to pass those, it’s basically proof of citizenship to register to vote, voter ID to cast a ballot, and some kind of ban on mail voting. Those are the three big parts of the SAVE America Act.

Sargent: So basically, what this is starting to look like is the House is passing $10 billion to use to essentially try to get states to pass by themselves, in their state legislatures, these things in the SAVE Act.

Voter suppression mechanisms like ending vote by mail, requiring proof of citizenship. You’d do all these things through the states, and the House would try and incentivize that.

Berman: Yeah, they’re basically paying states to do voter suppression. That’s the simplest way I can explain what the House is doing.

Sargent: Trump ratcheted up the pressure on John Thune, the Senate majority leader, to pass these provisions of the SAVE Act via reconciliation—again, we’re talking about the things that the House is basically on track to passing. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (voiceover): Everybody call John Thune at the Senate. He’s the leader of the Republican Party, and tell him to get this stuff approved. So we’re fighting so that all voters must show voter ID. We’re fighting so that all voters must provide proof of citizenship, OK? And also the no mail-in ballots.

G. Elliot Morris presents evidence on who exactly would be hurt by this law in his blog Strength in Numbers. “Poll: These Americans say they’d be disenfranchised by Trump’s election law. Few Americans have heard a lot about the provisions of the SAVE Act. Support declines the more someone hears about it,”

The “SAVE America” Act, a bill in Congress championed by Donald Trump that would require U.S. citizens to physically show documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, among other things, sounds simple enough on paper. What’s so hard about showing your passport or birth certificate to a county clerk when you register to vote?

Turns out, a lot of things. As GOP Senator from Alaska Lisa Murkowski wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week, many Americans in rural areas do not have easy access to a voting registrar to present such documents. And many people, a new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll shows, say they lack the paperwork at all — including citizens who are currently registered to vote.

Plus, our survey finds the people who are most in favor of Trump’s new election law are the ones who have heard the least about it.

In this week’s Chart of the Week I report on two questions about Trump’s SAVE Act that other pollsters are missing.

In our latest Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, fielded July 14–17, 2026, we asked how easily currently registered voters could produce documentary proof of citizenship right now if they wanted to vote.

At first glance, the answer is reassuring; 90% would clear the bar without much trouble — 74% said “very easily,” 16% “with some effort.” Only 6% of registered voters said they would manage to prove their citizenship “with a lot of difficulty,” while 2% said they could not produce one at all, and about 3% weren’t sure.

But 7% of registered voters is still millions of people. Who are these people who would be effectively disenfranchised by Trump’s new law?

The chart below shows how hard a time registered voters from various demographics say they’d have proving their citizenship status:

…

Some groups stand out. First, lower income voters. The share who’d struggle runs from 11% among registered voters earning under $50,000 to just 2% among those making more than $150,000 — a 9-point gap disenfranchising the poor the most.

Younger voters also say they’d be more likely to have a hard time proving their citizenship.

But the group most likely to say the SAVE Act would effectively disenfranchise them is Black voters: 15% say they’d struggle to prove their citizenship, vs 7% for white voters and 5% for Hispanics.

These two findings suggest Trump’s voter ID law would produce a meaningfully more Republican electorate. Nine percent of currently Democratic voters say they’d struggle to prove their citizenship vs 3% of Republicans.

You may review the chart at the link as well as read more analysis on the subject.  Lisa Needham of Public Notice has this headline today. “MAGA’s “pasta pass” talking point is height of gaslighting. They know better. They’re hoping voters don’t.”

It looks like Republicans settled on a talking point about why the SAVE America Act is totally necessary to stop non-citizens from fraudulently voting by the millions and zillions — and you will not be surprised to learn that it is hilariously stupid.

Yes, it’s time to talk about the Olive Garden’s Never-Ending Pasta Pass, the latest thing that Republicans have settled on as justification for the voter ID requirements in President Trump’s signature election suppression bill.

Ground zero for this nonsense seems to have been White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson going on Newsmax last week to discuss how she saw a tweet from Olive Garden about their never-ending pasta deal and that you need ID for it, and she just got to thinking, “Olive Garden takes pasta pass security more seriously than Democrats take election security.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson: "I saw a tweet yesterday from Olive Garden that in order to take advantage of their never-ending pasta pass, you have to show photo ID. I thought, that's weird, Olive Garden takes pasta pass security more seriously than Democrats take election security."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-07-17T12:52:30.032Z

Republican House members dutifully picked up and parroted this nonsense, with Rep. Steve Scalise appearing on CNBC to give his deep thoughts, Rep. David Kustoff racing to Newsmax to share the good news about pasta security, and Rep. Virginia Foxx going on the House floor to push this as a reason to vote in favor of the bill.

Scalise: "Anybody that gets on an airplane has to show a picture ID to vote. Nowadays, if you want to go to Olive Garden and get unlimited pasta, you gotta show a picture ID. This isn't complicated stuff."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-07-21T14:37:58.517Z

This isn’t new, of course — well, the pasta part is, but not Republicans alighting on some random thing they think you need ID to buy and then declaring that should mean you need one to vote.

Trump has spent several years telling people that because you need an ID to go to the grocery store, you should need an ID to vote, and he recently expanded this keen analysis: “All we want is voter ID. You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID.”

Of course, you do not need an ID to go to a grocery store or get gas, but you can understand Trump’s confusion given that he’s probably never done either of these things for himself.

Law Dork‘s Chris Geitner explains just how low the DOJ can go in his post today. “Thursday was the worst day for DOJ. So far. DOJ withdrew its subpoenas issued to New York Times reporters, but the hearing that preceded that decision showed just how degraded DOJ has become.” Again, doesn’t the U.S. Constitution mean anything to any Republican these days?

The degradation of the Justice Department in the second Trump administration is clear, is having immediate effects, and will have long-term effects. Just how degraded DOJ has become was on full display in the Southern District of New York on Thursday.

To get why Thursday’s happenings are so central to understanding how bad things have gotten, know that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is widely seen as one the preeminent U.S. Attorney’s Offices in the nation. Alumni of the office would say it was the key office, and it was openly (sometimes derisively) referred to as the “Sovereign District of New York,” due to the high view that members of the office held of the office.

Now, however, things look different. Over the past two weeks, the office tried to subpoena reporters from The New York Times and ensnared some of the reporters’ family members in a second set of subpoenas for phone records. When challenged, the office’s ability to carry out basic legal research and adhere to general ethical standards were called into question by U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian in a sharp, hour-long hearing that ended with the Trump administration withdrawing the subpoenas rather than face the almost certain likelihood of Subramanian quashing them.

Inner City Press’s Matthew Russell Lee covered the hearing live on Bluesky, and Courthouse News Service covered the hearing as well, in addition to The New York Times’s report.

It was an altogether horrifying appearance in court for Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley, as well as Kevin Sullivan, a lawyer in the office who was initially sitting in the gallery but who, Lee reported, Subramanian called up to sit at counsel’s table because he was “on all the pleadings” — apparently relating to the phone provider subpoenas.

Read more details on Subramanian’s questions and the chaos that followed at the link. The New York Times comes out looking badly too. Of course, the DOJ is the only federal department that looks like it’s at an all-time low. This New York Times headline shows the shocking state of our country’s health as HHS is being run by scaliwags like Dr. Oz, and outright nut jobs like RFK Junior. “Measles Cases Hit New Record in U.S., as Vaccination Rates Wane. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined.”Teddy Rosenbluth has the lede.

The United States has now recorded more cases of measles in 2026 than in any other year since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000, a grim sign that the country may be headed toward a new era in which the disease regularly sickens thousands every year.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. The case count toppled the record set last year, when measles infected more than 2,200 Americans and killed two unvaccinated children. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined.

Reversing course on measles would require a nationwide push to improve vaccination rates, a prospect that experts said seemed unlikely under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has halted funding for vaccine hesitancy research, downplayed the risks of measles and spearheaded a hunt for evidence that vaccines are unsafe.

In November, a panel of international experts will meet to determine whether the United States has lost its elimination status, which has long been viewed as one of the country’s crowning public health achievements.

BTW, we’re still in a hot war, and the Epstein files are still not completely public. This is from NBC News. “U.S. launches new strikes and Trump threatens ‘massive attack’ as Iran widens war. There were signs Friday that some U.S. allies in the Middle East may be losing patience with the daily escalation and lack of diplomatic progress. “It’s only getting crazier,” one senior Arab official, directly involved with diplomatic efforts, told NBC News.”

The United States launched a fresh barrage of strikes on Iran overnight after Tehran opened a second front in its pressure campaign on the world economy.

President Donald Trump threatened a major new escalation and on Thursday told Axios he is weighing whether to launch a “massive attack” on the Islamic Republic that would be “bigger than ever before.” The president’s warning and subsequent 13th night of military strikes came as oil briefly surged above $100 a barrel.

Iran has shown little sign of bowing to U.S. demands, launching new attacks on shipping as well as U.S. bases and allies across the Middle East. These two fronts have combined to increase the cost of the renewed conflict — in human lives, including American soldiers, and global prices.

The struggle for control of the crucial Strait of Hormuz has now been extended to another key trade route, the Bab el Mandeb strait, after attacks by Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea.

And there were signs that some U.S. partners in the region may be losing patience. Senior Arab officials told NBC News they were growing frustrated with the threats, the daily escalations and the lack of diplomatic progress.

“We have no clue where this is going,” said one senior Arab official, with direct knowledge of regional developments. “It’s only getting crazier,” said another senior Arab official, directly involved with diplomatic efforts.

“It’s only getting crazier” pretty much sums up Trump’s second term.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: WTF has this regime done to our Country?

Posted: January 30, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: #We are so Fucked, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE Minneapolis, ICE raids, Take Back America | Tags: , , , , , , | 10 Comments

“The Eighth Amendment prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’ which the real Supreme Court has interpreted to forbid torture. Of course, the Trump administration does as it pleases.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The first text message I woke up to today put a lot into perspective. “ICE on S Claiborne in Holly Grove! Please relay… 3 HOURS AGO.” It was way uptown, so all I could do was just put the word out and hope. I have a copy of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in my desk drawer, which I had left on top after trying to tame the contents of my drawers.

Which among us these days would “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor?” It’s times like these that I remember the 6 in my family who did, and 7 if you count the stepfather of one of my grandfathers, George Washington. Then there is the rest of the family who fought in all the wars to keep us free and ensure that all men and women were free and had the right to vote.

It’s been interesting to share the awful experience of having your city invaded by your own country. It’s given me a chance to reconnect with high school friends in L.A. and Minneapolis. I know many people here who daily mutually pledge to these causes down here in New Orleans, and we didn’t become a part of the scene until the Louisiana Purchase.

It’s time to stand up for what we’re supposed to stand for.

This Op-Ed in the New York Times caught my eye immediately after I tucked my pamphlet back in its rightful drawer. Lydia Polgreen, an Opinion Columnist, asked the same question that I had earlier and answered it succinctly. “This Week Has Revealed 3 Types of Americans.” I know where I stand, do you?

In Minnesota, I saw scenes that reminded me of the chaos and violence in civil wars I’ve covered in other countries. Heavily armed agents have rampaged through the streets, assaulting, tear-gassing and arbitrarily detaining people. They have fired on civilians at close range, killing two of them.

If this is a war, it is one-sided: The forces Trump has unleashed face not military opponents to their authority but ordinary people equipped with cellphones and whistles. Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota has activated the National Guard under his command, it’s true. But so far, they have been deployed to do little more than deliver coffee, hot cocoa and doughnuts to Minnesotans who have taken to the streets. There hasn’t been the kind of state and federal standoff that would constitute a classic civil war, though Walz has worried such a confrontation could soon be in the offing.

Yet the clash in Minneapolis has revealed a cleavage over the meaning of citizenship and constitutional rights perhaps as profound as the one that split the nation in 1861. The fight, now as it was then, is over that simple question: What kind of America are we?

There were the bystanders and accommodationists. On the day federal officers gunned down Alex Pretti, a nurse who cared for critically ill veterans, they were on full display. Dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns, some of the country’s richest men and women streamed into the White House for a special private screening of a hagiographic documentary about Melania Trump, the first lady.

Along with the chief executives of Apple and Amazon — the latter company had paid the first lady’s production company $40 million for the rights to the film — grandees and celebrities filled out the guest list. Beneath a glittering chandelier, gloved waiters served popcorn in glossy, black-and-white commemorative buckets. As if to underscore the transformation of the people’s house into a Trumpian Versailles, guests were sent home with French cookies emblazoned with the first lady’s name.

Then there were the aggressors. Not content to be largely silent supplicants, these Americans actively supported what had happened. Top administration figures like Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem rushed to paint Pretti as a domestic terrorist bent on slaughtering officers of the law. Never mind that he was a former boy scout and choir boy with no criminal record, his legally owned gun safely holstered. Perhaps most odiously, the conservative media personality Megyn Kelly declared that Pretti had only himself to blame for his death.

But arrayed against these powerful figures were the resisters, embodied by the two Americans gunned down in Minneapolis this month: Renee Good, a poet and a mother who had just dropped her son off at school, shot through the head by an ICE agent whom, it was baselessly claimed, she sought to run down with her car; and Pretti, who bravely placed himself between federal agents and a woman they shoved to the ground, paying for this valor with his life.

You may read more stories about these resisters at the gift link. And then, there are the journalists covering the story. This is from CNN. Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were taken into custody after a Minnesota church protest. My great-granddaddy was a Methodist Circuit rider back in Kansas and back in the day, and a fierce abolitionist. People are just oozing traditional American values here, while the Trump Regime just ignores all those years of fighting, standing, dying, and making history. Remember the Presbyterian minister in Chicago? They certainly didn’t care about his right to peacefully protest. What about the rights of journalists to report a story?

Two independent journalists, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, have been arrested in connection with a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Lemon and Fort were live-streaming as dozens of anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters rushed into Cities Church on January 18, interrupting a church service and leading to tense confrontations.

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday announced said four people total had been arrested “in connection with the coordinated attack” at the church.

The other two individuals Bondi named were Trahern Jeen Crew and Jamael Lydell Lundy.

Court records related to the arrests were not immediately available. Lemon, a former CNN anchor who now hosts his own show on YouTube and other platforms, is expected to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday.

Lemon was in L.A. to cover the Grammy Awards and was arrested after 11 p.m. local time in a hotel lobby in Beverly Hills.

“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement Friday morning. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”

“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” Lowell added. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”

Lemon has repeatedly said he was present at the demonstration as a journalist, not as an activist. In a video of the episode that he posted to YouTube, Lemon said, “I’m just here photographing, I’m not part of the group… I’m a journalist.”

Fort made the same points in a Facebook Live stream when federal agents arrived at her home early Friday morning.

“This is all stemming from the fact that I filmed a protest as a member of the media,” Fort said before she surrendered to agents.

“We are supposed to have our constitutional right of the freedom to film, to be a member of the press,” she said. “I don’t feel like I have my First Amendment right as a member of the press because now federal agents are at my door arresting me for filming the church protest a few weeks ago.”

We are burying our neighbors. Keith Porter Jr. Renee Good. Alex Pretti. Thirty-two more in custody last year alone.Six killed so far this year. They were not statistics. They were us. They were America. The killing MUST stop. Stop funding the killers. #ICEoffOurStreets

— Peggy Stuart (@peggystuart.bsky.social) 2026-01-30T15:22:27.663Z

Our fat Orange Caligula and his cronies sure want him to be king. I just don’t understand how anyone who knows our history could possibly find these events anything but outrageous breaches of our Constitutional democracy. But catch this Trump hatement today. This is reported by NBC News‘ Pillar Melendez. “Trump calls Alex Pretti an ‘insurrectionist’ and ‘agitator’ after new video of ICU nurse emerges. The president’s rebuke of the slain ICU nurse came after a video emerged of a confrontation between Pretti and federal agents days before he was fatally shot in Minneapolis.” The orange idiot has to be the center of attention, no matter how Bond villain evil he sounds.

Donald Trump on Friday called Alex Pretti an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist,” marking an increase in the intensity of his rhetoric toward the ICU nurse fatally shot by federal agents after the president recently said he wanted to “de-escalate a little bit” in Minnesota.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Pretti’s “stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces.’

NBC News previously reported on the video, shared online this week, that appeared to show Pretti in an altercation with agents just days before he was fatally shot. In the video taken on Jan. 13, Pretti is seen yelling at federal immigration agents and kicking the back of a vehicle used by agents, breaking a taillight. It is not clear what happened before the interaction.

“It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump said in the Friday post.

The Department of Justice has opened a federal civil rights probe into Pretti’s death, Deputy AG Todd Blanche said in a Friday press conference. He added that he does not know where Pretti’s phone is or the gun that he had on him before his death.

“We’re looking at everything that would shed light on what happened that day and in the days and weeks leading up to what happened,” Blanche said.

David Rothkopf, writing for The Daily Beast, has this characterization of Trump and his hatred of Free Speech. “There Can Be No More Doubt. Trump Wants to Kill Free Speech. JEFFERSON WEEPS. Don Lemon is the most high-profile reporter being targeted. Trump wants to target all of us.”

Donald Trump is seeking to execute the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the same way that his thugs gunned down Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good.

The arrest of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for doing their jobs as journalists and covering a public protest at a church in Minneapolis is a violent assault on freedom of the press in the United States of America, one of the most egregious we have ever seen from a U.S. government.

Not one but two judges rejected prior efforts by the—misnamed—U.S. Department of Justice to indict Lemon and Fort for their presence at the church protest. But undaunted, Attorney General Pam Bondi proceeded to personally direct the arrest of Lemon in Los Angeles late on Thursday night, thus reminding us that she more than any other member of the Trump cabinet deserves to be impeached—no small distinction in a group that includes deserving candidates for being fired and convicted by the Senate like Kristi Noem, RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth.

Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote in a statement, “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable” and he characterized the arrest as an “unprecedented attack” on a free press.

If anything, Lowell understates the dangers associated with Lemon’s arrest. Seeking to prosecute him represents not one but three separate attacks on freedoms so fundamental that were among the first guaranteed by our Constitution.

The latest Trump-appointed Fed Chair is like a read-it-and-weep announcement. I’m wondering what this will do to financial markets worldwide. This is from CNBC. “Trump nominates Kevin Warsh for Federal Reserve chair to succeed Jerome Powell.” Jeff Cox has the lede.

President Donald Trump on Friday named Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair, ending a prolonged odyssey that has seen unprecedented turmoil around the central bank.

The decision culminates a process that officially began last summer but started much earlier than that, with Trump launching a fusillade of criticism against the Powell-led Fed almost since Powell took the job in 2018.

“I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best,” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the selection.

The pick of Warsh, 55, likely won’t ripple markets because of his past Fed experience and Wall Street’s view that he wouldn’t always do Trump’s bidding.

“He has the respect and credibility of the financial markets,” said David Bahnsen, chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group, on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“There was no person who was going to get this job who wasn’t going to be cutting rates in the short term. However, I believe longer term he will be a credible candidate,” added Bahnsen.

Stock market futures nevertheless were slightly negative Friday morning, though off their lows since Warsh’s appointment became clear.

Warsh now faces Senate confirmation. If approved, he will take over the position in May, when Powell’s term expires. Warsh will fill the Board of Governors position currently held by Governor Stephen Miran, whose term expires Saturday. Miran can continue to serve until a replacement is named.

(Sigh). And now, the movie with the worst buzz ever!!! This is from Mother Jones. “Those Brutal ‘Melania’ Documentary Reviews Have Vanished from Letterboxd. Meanwhile, the First Lady used a Fox News appearance calling for ‘unity’ to shill the film.” I don’t think at my advanced age I’m going to start getting into porn, frankly.

Yesterday I published a story about what was quickly becoming a surprising site of capital R Resistance: the Letterboxd review page for the $75 million documentary film, Melania.

Comments were profane, fun, silly, unprintable. I included some of my favorites. The point I was making was this: Even before the movie’s release this Friday, it has become a lightning rod for anger, not least because Melania Trump’s oligarchic private premiere gala at the White House came the same day Alex Pretti was shot dead in the streets of Minneapolis amid her husband’s disastrous siege of the city. A real let-them-eat-cake moment.

But as my colleague Arianna Coghill went to promote the story today on our social media channels, she discovered the reviews have been wiped from the site entirely.

Sad.

So I sent an email to the Letterboxd press team asking why. What terms were violated? When did that happen? Even though the reviews appeared before the official release of the film, how is Letterboxd to know reviewers hadn’t seen the film itself?

They haven’t gotten back to me, and I’ll share their response when they do.

Update, Tuesday, January 27, 5:45 p.m.: Letterboxd just got back to me (they are based in New Zealand), attributing the erasure to an innocuous, automated back-end update:

This was an automatic update, caused by a previously incorrect premiere date. Letterboxd pulls through film data from TMDB, a user editable database for movies. The official premiere date was corrected on TMDB, automatically updated on the film’s main page on Letterboxd, thus preventing all reviews from appearing on the film page until its premiere. This happens from time to time on film pages through the automated sync, with no manual intervention required from the Letterboxd team.

So there you have it. Friday’s official release of the Amazon-MGM doc will provide would-be reviewers a fresh opportunity to contribute to Letterboxd’s thriving message boards.

Mo. Basuony at Filmogaz has this headline: “melania movie opens after Kennedy Center premiere as reviews turn combative.”

The melania movie reached theaters Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, after a Washington, D.C. premiere that blended red-carpet spectacle with unusually loud online blowback. The project — marketed as both a film and a companion series — has become a test case for how politics, celebrity, and platform-scale promotion can reshape a documentary rollout in real time.

The release centers on Melania Trump and the final weeks leading up to her return to the White House, with Brett Ratner directing and Melania serving as a producer with significant creative input. The premiere drew a mixed roster of political figures and pop culture guests, including Nicki Minaj, while early reactions focused less on what’s on screen and more on money, optics, and the film’s unusually aggressive marketing push.

Thursday night’s invite-only event took place at the Kennedy Center, though invitations and branding around the premiere used the phrase “Trump-Kennedy Center,” prompting immediate debate over naming and institutional politics. The red-carpet photos and guest lists quickly became part of the story, not just a prelude to the story.

Nicki Minaj’s appearance added to the swirl: her presence at a politically charged premiere turned the event into a crossover moment that traveled far beyond film pages and into fandom and campaign-world timelines. The result was a premiere that functioned as a media event first and a film debut second.

The money and the rollout plan

The financial contours are now inseparable from public perception. The film’s backing has been described as a rights/licensing deal near $40 million plus a marketing push widely pegged around $35 million, often summarized as a $75 million total outlay — a figure the filmmakers and team have pushed back on in parts, arguing the production scope is larger than a typical standalone documentary.

So, it’s just a usual day of grifting and pummeling Constitutional law.  And how’s your day going?

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Mostly Monday Reads: Meathead

Posted: December 15, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Media and Entertainment, Take Back America | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

“No big surprise to MAGA. Things are getting interesting.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

These posts get more challenging to write each day. This year has been tough on everyone.  I haven’t thought about weekends spent watching TV sitcoms with a limited choice of three channels in a while. My only TV is still sitting in its box, untouched. That about sums up my relationship with the old-school way of getting news and entertainment. I’d rather play my guitar or piano, create another watercolor of an old New Orleans building, or walk my dog than stay glued to it the way I did as a kid. However, I grew up in an area where there was not much else to do than join the family to stare into fake realities.

I will admit to spending way too much time on my cellphone or computer now. I can find many better things out there with a virtual library and the chance to interact with friends all over the world.  It’s so damn cold out there now that I rushed the walk to sit here and stare at another sort’ve screen. The one that lets me read magazines and newspapers without getting black ink all over my fingers.

Of course, my entire family watched All in the Family. I admit that The Mary Tyler Moore Show was my favorite, and when I briefly moved to Minneapolis, I had to throw my hat in the air and visit the house on Lake Harriet that was used to style the set. Dick Van Dyke turned 100 this week. Rob Reiner and his wife lost their lives. This year has been full of days I’d rather forget. Family violence is all too common. We still don’t do well helping people with mental health and drug issues. Here’s the headline from USA Today. “Rob Reiner, wife Michele Singer’s son in custody – Live updates.”

An arrest has been made in the killing of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer.

Their son, Nick Reiner, has been taken into police custody and is being held on $4 million bail, according to Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department records views by USA TODAY. The acclaimed Hollywood director and actor was killed alongside Singer in their California home Sunday night, according to Variety and TMZ.

Their deaths continue to be under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department after the couple was found dead in their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. In a press conference on Sunday night, the LAPD said the robbery-homicide division will continue to investigate through the night and expect to release more information in the morning.

Authorities confirmed that “many family members” will be interviewed in the course of their work and that they were obtaining a search warrant to conduct a full crime scene investigation. They did not comment on the injuries sustained by Reiner and Singer.

USA TODAY was unable to reach a representative for Reiner at the time of publication.

The L.A. Times has background on Nick Reiner. “What we know about Nick Reiner, who struggled with addiction and shared his recovery with the world.”

Nick Reiner spent years struggling with addiction and with help from his father, Hollywood legend Rob Reiner, told his story to the world.

On Monday, Nick was booked into the L.A. County jail on suspicion of murder, hours after Reiner and his wife were found dead inside their Brentwood home.

Nick cycled in and out of rehab centers and experienced bouts of homelessness as a teenager.

He had gotten clean by 2015, when he worked with his father on “Being Charlie,” a semi-autobiographical film about addiction and recovery. Rob Reiner directed and Nick co-wrote the film about a successful actor with political ambitions and a son addicted to drugs.

Many aspects of the movie were inspired by Nick’s relationship with his father — including a line where the father character tells his son, “I’d rather you hate me and you be alive.” Nick said in a 2016 interview with AOL that he “didn’t bond a lot” with his father while he was growing up.

Nick gave an interview about “Being Charlie” alongside his family at the Toronto Film Festival in 2015, saying that his decision to quit heroin was driven by a practical realization.

“I got sick of doing that,” he told The Times. “I come from a nice family. I’m not supposed to be out there on the streets and in homeless shelters doing all these … things.”

During the interview, Rob said he regretted valuing the advice of counselors over the voice of his son.

“When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,” he said. “We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.”

Michele added: “We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”

Nick talked about the many different rehab centers and programs he tried without success. In 2016, he told People magazine that he lived on the streets because he refused to go to the rehab facilities his parents recommended.

“If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,” he said.

He told the magazine that he could have died on the streets.

“It’s all luck,” he said. “You roll the dice and you hope you make it.”

It’s remarkable to me that we frequently discuss the American Dream, yet it seems we lack a clear understanding of what that means. We’ve been shaped by SitComs, schools, political parties, and many other things that have left us in the dark about the very nature of our lives. Perhaps it is time to find some better ways.

I’ll keep this post brief today. Most days, I struggle to make sense of things. That’s been the reality of 2025. The reality of 2025 is also one filled with friends locked in their homes and neighbors struggling to protect themselves from our own government. I’m going to take a few days to just bake bread and sit down in front of a TV, not my own, and see if the offerings have improved. Fortunately for me, I’ve found the films of Guillermo del Toro on my last such adventure. I’m hoping to discover more. The documentary about him is also a solid watch. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually watched something without wanting to grab my cell phone instead. That’s a far road from the sixteen-year-old me and the TV console in our family room. Being with friends always brings a good end to a bad year.

So, one more read about today’s media. This is from Dr. Paul Krugman. “MAGA, the Broligarchs and the Media, This isn’t just about business; it’s about democracy.”  Be sure to refer to the chart as you read.

Warner Bros. Discovery, which among other things controls CNN, has agreed to sell itself to Netflix. But it isn’t a done deal, because Paramount has made a rival, hostile bid.

Now, most Americans, even those like me who pay a lot of attention to the economy, don’t usually take much interest in insider baseball about corporate wheeling and dealing. But this is a bigger story than usual, for three reasons.

First, there’s an antitrust issue. In an earlier era, when the U.S. government took monopoly power seriously, both proposed acquisitions would probably have been blocked by regulators.

Second, there’s a financial issue. On its own, there is no way that Paramount, which is deeply in debt and whose credit rating is “a notch below ‘junk’” could afford to buy Warner. It’s able to make a semi-credible bid only because of assurances of support from Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men thanks to his stake in the software giant Oracle. But when analysts look closely at the details, they find that Ellison’s promises of support are more than a bit squirrely:

[T]he Warner Bros. Discovery board worried that Mr. Ellison did not personally guarantee the bid under his name and is planning to contribute equity for the deal through a trust with holdings that could be modified at any time.

Adding to the risk of Oracle’s deal is the fact that Oracle is itself shaky according to the estimation of gimlet-eyed financial markets due to its huge, debt-financed bets on AI.

As Bloomberg reports, its investment grade debt now “trades like junk.”

But it’s not just about the money. For the average American, there is something fundamentally important about this corporate cage-match to win Warner Bros. Discovery. And it’s not about entertainment, it’s about democracy. You should understand that Paramount’s hostile bid is, above all, a political move in the pursuit of cementing the dominance of MAGA-supporting tech billionaires and further eroding American democracy.

Back in 2018, during Trump I, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published How Democracies Die, which described how nations like Hungary had descended into one-party authoritarianism although the formal, but now toothless, institutions of democracy remain. In the latest edition of Foreign Affairs Levitsky, Ziblatt and Lucan Way say that this process is already well underway here in the U.S.:

In Trump’s second term, the United States has descended into competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but incumbents routinely abuse their power to punish critics and tilt the playing field against their opposition. Competitive authoritarian regimes emerged in the early twenty-first century in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and Narendra Modi’s India. Not only did the United States follow a similar path under Trump in 2025, but its authoritarian turn was faster and farther-reaching than those that occurred in the first year of these other regimes.

Now, in some ways America is unusually well-positioned to resist this authoritarian push. As Levitsky et al note, we have a “well-organized and rich civil society” — ranging from law firms to universities to nonprofits — that can push back. And while some of these institutions are led by cowards, not all are. We also have unified political opposition in the form of the Democratic Party, which is very different from the splintered opposition thatfaced Viktor Orban in Hungary, for example.

Yet, ominously, Trump and Trumpism have powerful allies that had no counterpart in previous competitive authoritarian regimes. Namely, there is a network of deeply anti-democratic tech billionaires, of which Ellison is a very significant player. The Authoritarian Stack project,which tracks that network, calls it the “Authoritarian Tech Right”. I’ve put their chart of some of the keyplayers at the top of this post. Some of us refer to that network, less formally, as the “broligarchy.”

Have a good week!

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?

 

 

TRIGGER WARNING!

Really hate to add this, but this is what Trump had to say today. What an asshole!