“Meanwhile… in a land far, far away… a desperate plea…” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The family that stands securely at the forefront of ensuring that people in other countries see us all as the quintessential Ugly American, sure made their point this last week. That reference comes from a 1958 book and film written by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer that basically shows how inept the American Diplomatic corps was back then. Lederer was a Captain in the U.S. Military and saw action in the Pacific theatre in World War 2. Burdick was a political scientist who served in Vietnam. The novel was so compelling that it caused then-President Eisenhower to order an investigation, and it became a central theme during JFK’s run for President.
When my family started visiting Europe in my mid-teens, I tried desperately to avoid being tagged as an American. I remember on my last trip to rural England, there was an elderly couple from Fresno, California, whom we had to eat breakfast with at the B&B. They were textbook Ugly American Tourists. As soon as they left the table, I apologized to everyone there. If they were still alive, my guess is they would shamelessly pander to the Trumps.
So, ProPublica just exposed Don Jr and his bride, whatever woman, with severe body dysmorphia, had a huge wedding in May, paid for by one of Putin’s rich thugs. “Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin. The oligarch Umar Kremlev spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.” There were quite a number of reporters sharing the lede on this one. It’s quite the read.
On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.
“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.
That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.
Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has beenfinanced by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.
The guest list numbered around 50. It included Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Eric Trump — and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves, speaking Russian.
“It was really small, like, just really close friends,” Trump Jr. later said on his podcast. “Tried to keep it really tight. And it was just awesome.”
Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.
If you want some shock and awe for your Monday afternoon, read this. Or, read The Great Gatsby.
As for the Grifter-in-Chief, he was out making a fool of himself in Ireland. Always, gracious, the Irish helped him in that quest. He bumbled through the entire thing and probably pissed off his legal wife by joking about her absence. He pissed off the Irish and the UK at the same time by mentioning how gung-ho he was about Irish Unification. Of course, he was mostly there to open a new Golf Course. Goddesses forbid he actually be there for an actual diplomatic meeting. But let’s go straight the diplomatic mess he made. This is from PBS News. “Trump touches a nerve while in Ireland by saying reunification would be ‘fantastic’.”
U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that a unified Ireland would be “fantastic” as he waded into a complex and politically charged subject during a weekend visit to a tournament at his Irish golf course.
At a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in Dublin, Trump said he would love to see the reunification of the Republic of Ireland with the United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland.
“I don’t want to cause any problems but I’d love to see it unified,” Trump told a reporter who sought his opinion on the issue. “It’s going to happen eventually. It may as well happen now.
“I think it would be a fantastic thing,” the Republican president said, adding that “the U.K. will have something to say about it, obviously.”
At his next stop, Trump acknowledged there is “no good answer” to the reunification question as he addressed business leaders from both countries gathered at the U.S. ambassador’s residence.
Competing visions of Northern Ireland — whether Irish or British — drove decades of violence in the six-county region that has a Protestant majority and has remained part of the U.K.
Previous American presidents, including Democrat Joe Biden, who has strong emotional ties to Ireland, have avoided commenting directly on the subject.
Ireland, long dominated by its bigger neighbor Britain, became a self-governing Catholic-majority country a century ago. Northern Ireland was split between two main communities: nationalists, most of them Catholic, who desired union with the rest of Ireland, and largely Protestant unionists, who wanted to stay British. Tensions eventually exploded in the Troubles involving paramilitary groups on both sides and British troops.
A 1998 peace accord that the United States was instrumental in negotiating largely ended the violence, but left Northern Ireland’s ultimate status unresolved. That agreement allows for a vote on unification if it appears likely a majority of people would vote for it. U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Wednesday that the U.K. would only consider allowing a referendum “when public opinion has changed to the point where the call has to be considered.” Burnham’s office referred back to that comment when asked about Trump’s statement.
Trump’s comments Saturday, along with recent statements about the Falkland Islands, a small British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean that Argentina calls Las Malvinas, could also be viewed as a dig at Britain, given his anger over London’s refusal to be drawn into the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
So, does anybody think there was any kind of strategy to that move or was it just his usual blather linked to something in the past he’s garbled up. The true winner of the Ireland Visit was its President Catherine Connolly. The picture of Orange Caligula over there having to sign something on a desk so small it would cramp a 4th grader was the cheekiest move I’ve seen in probably forever. This is from The US Sun. “Catherine Connolly takes thinly-veiled swipe at Donald Trump with 3 gifts containing pointed message on global issues”. I still laugh every time I read this. As obvious as it all was, including a firm speech, it probably went right over his awful hairdo. This was visit was labelled a brief courtesy call even though Dementia Don wouldn’t know what a courtesy is let alone perform one.
IRISH President Catherine Connolly presented Donald Trump with a St Brigid’s Cross – recognised as a symbol of peace – during his brief courtesy call.
He was also given a collection of poems which contained the famous Michael Longley sonnet Ceasefire.
Considering Connolly was a long-standing critic of Trump before she took up office, the choice of gifts may be considered as pointed.
Connolly, an independent TD before she was elected president, had previously accused Trump of being “volatile” and “acting like a bully”, and was critical of his actions in the Middle East.
For his part, Trump mistakenly referred to Ms Connolly as “he” when asked about critical comments she made against him in relation to the US-Israeli war against Iran in the Oval Office on St Patrick’s Day this year.
Considering the context, the meeting of the two presidents on Saturday morning was always likely to present her most substantial diplomatic test since assuming office.
As it was, the engagement, heavy on ceremony, passed off without major incident.
Trump’s substantial motorcade rolled through Phoenix Park shortly after 9am.
He emerged from his car to shake Ms Connolly’s hand before the pair smiled while briefly posing for photographs.
I have to mention this part since Don Jr. was in tow but not Melania. Also, the protests in Dublin were first class. You can watch some of that below too. Wow! What a delegation!
“Trump then introduced Connolly to his delegation, including his son Donald Jr and some of his grandchildren.”
The best gift was this one, however. As it was directly targeted to his unconstitutional and likely criminal plan to rid the country of immigrants of color.
Another targeted gift, this time relating to immigration, came with the choice of Navigatio Sancti Brendani – The Voyage of St Brendan.
This Latin text tells the story of a sixth-century monk from Kerry who sailed into the Atlantic on a seven-year search for the Promised Land of the Saints.
The Aras said it “comes from an era when the Irish were a people of departure”.
A translated version with an introduction was given to Trump.
I have to say, that was a classy way of calling the bugger out for what he really is. As always, I’m proud of my Scotch/Irish roots and both the Scotch and the Irish took to the streets and give him a what for. Meanwhile, there are signs the U.S. economy is becoming more troubled. As for me, with my doctorate in economics, my proof in the pudding is the price of gas and groceries. But, I’ll sure this one with you because long-term Treasury bonds are are the proverbial canary in the coalmine to the financial sector and the FED where both my Grandfather and me spent some time making sure the auctions happened come the hell of two world wars or Mardi Gras, in my case. This headline is from CNBC. 10-year Treasury yield hits 5% before reversing as traders await Fed meeting. I bet trading desks all over the world are working overtime today.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury note yield moved lower after reaching a multiyear high on Monday ahead of this week’s Federal Reserve interest rate decision.
The benchmark rate — which influences mortgages, auto loans and credit card debt — was last down 2 basis points at 4.955%. It had earlier reached 5.014%, its highest level since October 2023.
The 2-year Treasury note yield, the most sensitive to short-term Federal Reserve interest rate policy, fell less than 2 basis points to 4.626% after it touched the highest since July 2024 last week.
The yield on the longer-dated 30-year Treasury bond, more sensitive to geopolitical risks, were down more than 2 basis points at 5.328%.
One basis point equals 0.01%, and yields and prices move in opposite directions.
The latest moves come after August consumer price index data reported on Friday matched expectations while remaining far above the Fed’s goal of 2% inflation, as it has for the past five years.
Last week’s CPI report was the final inflation indicator the Fed will see before it holds its policy meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Odds that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by a quarter percentage point at its policy meeting now stand at 90%, according to the CME Group FedWatch tool.
“Hiking would be the cleaner decision based on the data and current market expectations,” said Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. “I believe the market has priced that in and may rally with a hike. No change may cause a negative market reaction as it screams once again the Fed is behind the curve.”
And you know how Orange Caligula loves the FED and high interest rates. Once he wakes up, they’ll be some snorting and insults I’m sure. He’ll be steamed about that and then this headline.
JUST IN: A Trump-appointed judge blocked sweeping new USPS mail-ballot rules, warning they could cause delays, errors and disenfranchisement weeks before the midterms.
This is from Meidas News‘ Brett Meiselas. “Trump-Appointed Judge Blocks His Mail-Ballot Rules Weeks Before Midterms. A Trump-appointed judge blocked sweeping new USPS mail-ballot rules, warning they could cause delays, errors and disenfranchisement weeks before the midterms.” The delays, errors, and disenfranchisement is the plan, your honor. Thank you!
A federal judge late Sunday blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing sweeping new requirements governing mail ballots, finding that the agency likely exceeded the authority Congress gave it and warning that implementing the system weeks before the midterm elections could result in voters being unable to cast ballots.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols granted preliminary injunctions sought by multiple groups challenging the Postal Service’s recently finalized ballot-mail rule.
“The Postal Service could issue (and enforce) the Rule only if Congress gave it the authority to do so,” Nichols wrote. “But here no statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key parts of the Rule.”
Nichols, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump, concluded that the challengers were likely to prevail on their claim that major portions of the rule were ultra vires, meaning beyond the Postal Service’s lawful authority.
The ruling is another major legal obstacle for a policy that the Trump regime is simultaneously asking the Supreme Court to revive in a separate case.
Trump issued an executive order on March 31 directing USPS to develop new requirements for absentee and mail-in ballots used in federal elections.
The Postal Service finalized those requirements in August. They include new standards for ballot envelopes and unique Intelligent Mail barcodes, as well as a newly created “Federal Ballot Mail Portal.”
I frankly believe the “Federal Ballot Mail Portal” probably uses Elon Musk’s SpaceX to send those ballots to a black hole, somewhere out there in space, the final frontier. So, I slept a lot last night because it finally got cooler here and the AC got a break. I’m still waiting for the electric bill. So, all this talk about an Irish woman getting the better of Trump has made me quite cheeky today. Yes, I’m bold and disrespectful, but today I hope it came off more amusing with the thought of hearing my Irish Grandmother sing me to sleep with Toora-Loora-Looral.
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Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Orange Caligula woke up to bad reviews this morning for his latest failed production. At least this one didn’t involve ruining the grounds of the White House or bedecking the streets of the District with military parades and tanks. The Shindig in Dallas was a raging failure like everything else he’s done. Also, no one died or was sent to a gulag with this one. It wasn’t unconstitutional, but it was a bit odd.
Let’s check the headlines today.
Andrew Egger of The Bulwark suggests we “Stick a Fork in Him.” Their ‘Morning Shots’ headline was brutal, too. “Out of Gas. Out of Ideas. Out of Time. The Republicans’ window to stave off a blue wave has all but closed.” Couldn’t happen to a nastier group of protohumans.
Ever since Democrats’ major overperformance in last year’s off-year elections, I’ve been saying over and over: time is a finite resource for Donald Trump and his party. If they wanted to stave off disaster in the midterms, they would need to get moving fast to woo back disaffected members of their 2024 coalition. Every day spent failing to achieve that goal was a day wasted.
Now, in the afterglow of this week’s ludicrous, somnambulant GOP midterm convention, I’m about ready to call it. Republicans are out of ideas and out of time. They have no plan to reassemble their base, no bright ideas to reassure Americans that the Trump show has brought anything but chaos and expense to their country, no reason even to hope that material conditions won’t be worse in November than they are today. The midterms are still two months away, but the MAGA GOP is a dead party walking.
Over and over again, the convention hammered home the two central truths of the party’s disastrous plight: Trump is a senile old villain whose necrotizing brain is leaking out of his ears, and Republicans’ electoral chances now rest entirely on convincing the public otherwise.
Nobody was going to tell Trump “no” about anything: If he wanted to natter on for nearly two hours on Wednesday night and then make a (mercifully much shorter) speech Thursday rehashing the same points, he’d get to. Somehow, Trump genuinely seems to think this is the ticket to winning everybody back: All he needs to do is get in front of Americans to make the case himself.
But he had nothing on offer but hours of the same reheated slurry we’ve long since grown accustomed to. There were, of course, the bald-faced lies. “Look at that,” Trump said, looking out over the half-full convention stadium. “The highest rafter, no empty seats.” There were the endless hallucinations about the American Golden Age that exists nowhere but in his own mind. “Our country has never done better,” he said. “We’re taking in trillions, trillions of dollars. There’s never been any country, not even close, that’s come anywhere near.” There were the ridiculous pie-in-the-sky promises, stripped of all pretense: “If we win, it’s $5,000 for every adult. We love our adults. It’s about time we take care of our adults.” Sometimes he was begging. “Pretend I’m on the ballot.” (More on that below.) Other times he was threatening. At one point, he led the crowd in a bizarre repeat-after-me oath in which they pledged they would show up and vote. “You know what happens if you don’t vote?” Trump said. “You go to Hell.”
Meanwhile, out in the real world, things are crashing down around Trump’s ears. Even the softest of softball interviews, like one he did yesterday with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, are now impossible for him to get through without embarrassment. On those $5,000 checks, for instance: “Why not just give the money now?” Ingraham asked. “If you have the money, why not give it now?”
Yes. We’re being bribed to vote Republican, again. This is from The New York Times‘ James Poniewozik.
Donald J. Trump has long operated on the principle that there is no problem so big that it cannot be solved by more Donald J. Trump on TV. That apparently applies even when the problem, arguably, is Donald J. Trump.
With the midterms approaching, prices rising and the war in Iran dragging on, the president’s low approval ratings have worried the Republicans running to preserve his congressional majority. Mr. Trump’s answer: a “midterm convention,” a two-night extravaganza by, for and starring himself, live from Dallas.
As in many turbulent TV productions, there were differing impulses behind its creation. It was the pet project of the president, made on the theory that he has a hold on low-propensity voters who will go to the polls only for him. The counterargument is the president’s ratings among other voters, who might go to the polls against candidates who embrace him.
Thus we got Schrödinger’s Convention, made in the paradoxical hope that it would be both watched and not watched. It was carried in its entirety on C-SPAN and in considerable part by conservative outlets including Fox News and Newsmax. It was also up against high-profile N.F.L. games each night, which one could see as a challenge or a blessing. Surely at least some Republicans would have been just as happy if no one watched.
For better or worse, some of us did. What we saw was the culmination of the decades-long trend that has turned conventions from substantive political events into pure long-form TV ads.
There was no convention in this convention. No one was nominated, no ballots cast, no running mates picked. It was pared down to the state signs, novelty costumes — the president shouted out “Mr. Wall,” a supporter wearing a suit of trompe l’oeil bricks — and hour upon hour of speeches.
In good times and bad, Mr. Trump has always been able to produce a spectacle. His 2016 convention had the chaotic energy of his first campaign. In 2020 — well, it was Covid and things were weird, but his media team still assembled a highly produced package. And his renomination in 2024 combined the emotional charge from the recent assassination attempt on him with a pro-wrestling air of belligerence.
But this? This lacked oomph, especially when the guest of his own honor was offstage. There were few celebrity guests, other than the perennial G.O.P. serenader Lee Greenwood (twice) and Jimmy Kimmel’s former “Man Show” compadre Adam Carolla. Arguably the biggest non-Trump speaker of the first night was a Democrat, Senator John Fetterman, who recorded an introduction for his Pennsylvania colleague, Senator Dave McCormick.
The strongest energy onscreen was negative, the speeches more warning than promise, the jeers for Democrats rivaling the cheers for the G.O.P. The praise of the administration’s record was received politely but not as loudly as the scarifying about communism, open borders and gender transition.
Oh, but it gets better. This is from HuffPo. Jennifer Bendery has the story. “Trump’s Weird Convention Just Tied Every GOP Candidate To His Sagging Popularity. Good luck in November!”
Saddled with abysmal approval ratings and the growing likelihood of an electoral wipeout in the midterm elections, President Donald Trump staged a bizarre two-day “convention” that served to link himself even more closely to Republicans on the ballot in November.
Trump was the keynote speaker both nights, but by the second night, even he seemed over it. From the beginning of his meandering, 25-minute speech, which didn’t even start until after 10 p.m. EST, Trump said he didn’t feel much like talking “because I’m getting a little bit tired of politics,” and teased bringing out an opera singer to entertain everyone.
But Trump plodded on, sharing whatever thoughts crossed his mind – boasting about the crowd size, mocking Texas Senate Republican nominee Ken Paxton’s clothes – and occasionally returning to his script to rattle off accomplishments from the past two years. He touted his role in driving up the stock market, his administration banning diversity initiatives in the government and his efforts to prevent the “mutilization” of transgender children.
By the end, after telling the crowd to vote in November in what felt like an afterthought to his remarks, Trump stood on stage soaking up the applause as balloons fell from the ceiling and tenor Christopher Macchio sang “Nessun dorma.”
If the point of this strange event was to pump up Republican voters ahead of the midterms, the real question is what it actually achieved.
Trump forced this convention on his party and made prominent GOP leaders play a central role. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Vice President JD Vance were among those who gave speeches, as were Republican candidates in very competitive races. Reps. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) participated, along with Senate candidates like Paxton and Mike Rogers of Michigan.
All of the convention’s participants tied themselves to Trump, and for anyone watching at home, the grand takeaway was that Republicans want to be associated with a president whose approval rating is at a historic low, who has dragged the country into a deeply unpopular war and who has left Americans nationwide struggling to afford the cost of living.
Meanwhile, Trump is still attacking woman reporters. He’s as nasty as every.
Trump Lunges at Female Reporter Asking About Those Supposed $5K ChecksDonald Trump can’t handle even simple questions about his midterm bribe.
This is from Malcolm Ferguson at The New Republic. “Trump Lunges at Female Reporter Asking About Those Supposed $5K Checks, Donald Trump can’t handle even simple questions about his midterm bribe.” The immaturity and mean are over-the-top. This happened a few days ago.
President Trump got in the face of ABC’s Rachel Scott after she asked him a question about the rationale behind his national midterm voter bribe.
“Mr. President, on the checks: The U.S. is still $40 trillion in debt. If your economic policies are working, why do you need an incentive for people to turn out to vote?” she asked Thursday night.
“I didn’t do it for turning out the vote, I did it as a reward for people having to put up with five years and four years of a horrible situation caused by Biden,” Trump replied. “You look at the border, you look at the crime…. It’s almost a reward for the people having to put up with Biden’s policies.”
“But you also offered checks through—”
“Not you. Not you!” Trump snapped, leaning in threateningly close to Scott. “Hey, not you,” he said again with a snarl. “Your network … you’re the worst.”
This is not the first time Trump has crashed out after being asked a tough question by a woman. In April, he yelled “Quiet, quiet, quiet!” at CNN’s Kristen Holmes, calling her disrespectful for asking a pertinent question about U.S. relations with North Korea. He’s lobbed transphobic attacks at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, and last year told Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, “Quiet, Piggy!” He’s also lashed out at Scott before, calling her “stupid” after she dared ask about gas prices.
His angry response to Scott yet again displays his disdain for female journalists and his lack of preparedness for even the most straightforward questions.
As you can see, he’s only getting worse and more intense with his attacks and bad temper. It’s begging to take it’s toll. This is from ABC News. “Joe diGenova, loyalist tapped by Trump to oversee controversial DOJ probe targeting his foes, resigns: Sources. DiGenova had been probing officials involved in past investigations of Trump.”
A Trump loyalist who had been tapped to oversee a sprawling and controversial DOJ conspiracy investigation targeting political foes of President Donald Trump abruptly resigned Thursday, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Joe diGenova submitted his resignation to Attorney General Todd Blanche amid what sources described as growing frustrations from Trump and senior DOJ officials regarding his work on the so-called “grand conspiracy” investigation based out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida.
Sources said diGenova had pitched himself to the president as someone who could potentially ramp up the conspiracy investigation, which thus far has resulted in no criminal prosecutions despite dozens of subpoenas issued over the past year to various officials involved in past investigations of Trump.
“I resigned by letter today at 3 o’clock,” diGenova told ABC News on Thursday. “It was an honor and a privilege to serve the president and the department.”
“I’m not going to say anything further. I wish them well,” he said.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
The investigation, as detailed by Justice Department officials and other allies of the White House, purports to be examining intelligence officials and others who have investigated the president and his inner circle dating back from his 2016 campaign to the criminal probes he faced after leaving office in 2021.
I’m certainly glad things are not going well with Trump.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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“George Washington, he ain’t. “John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
How can you spend a springtime in the District without marveling over Cherry Blossom season? How do you repeatedly ignore the history and laws of the most historically significant places in the country? Orange Caligula, narcissist supreme, has done it again. This happened a few days ago. No one stopped him. He has a long history of destroying things only to replace them with something disgusting. The Jackie Kennedy Rose Garden and the Oval Office were only the beginning. He ignores we, the people and the law.
This was the CNN headline. “Par for the course: Trump forging ahead with DC golf course makeover without input from oversight agencies.” Sunlen Serfaty has the lede. The man is an international menace. No living thing is safe with him alive.
Whenever President Donald Trump gets an idea for a major project or renovation in Washington, DC, a pattern has emerged: move forward and ask questions later.
Public sagas over Trump’s proposed “triumphal arch,” the East Wing ballroom construction and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation have followed this playbook – provoking outcry and numerous legal challenges.
Now, the greenways of a manmade peninsula just south of the National Mall is next on Trump’s quest to remake the nation’s capital in his style, and they’re poised to be made over in a way that’s par for the course for this president.
The administration is on track to push ahead with turning the 300-acre East Potomac Park and its public golf course into a championship course without firstgetting approvals from two key agencies that have oversight of DC public spaces.
Neither the National Capital Planning Commission nor the Commission on Fine Arts have received any golf course plans from the Trump administration to review, officials from both told CNN. Neither agency meets in August, and ground is supposed to be broken by the start of the following month.
And based on what has been publicly reported, a project of this complexity and ambition would typically require months of regulatory reviews to examine environmental impact, questions over historical preservation, planning and design, the officials at each agency said.
On Friday, the administration provided a federal judge overseeing a legal challenge to the project with new information about the venture. It included a disclosure that the government did not finish testing soil from the demolition of the East Wing that was deposited onto the golf course before deeming it was safe.
The revelation opens the door to allowing plaintiffs to question administration officials under oath.
The DC Preservation League and two local golfers are pressing US District Judge Ana Reyes to issue an order that would bar the Trump administration from moving ahead.
Critics worry that proper approvals and legal battles have hardly handicapped the president before.
“There is really this ability to ignore regulatory guardrails, rules and protocols that have existed in the past. And we just see it again and again, and the golf course, sadly, is yet another example of that,” said Charles Birnbaum of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which has filed lawsuits against several other Trump projects.
Those historic trees plus others could be removed to make way for Trump’s plan to turn the public East Potomac Golf Links into a “championship” venue capable of hosting major tournaments such as the PGA Championship and Ryder Cup.
No one ever stops this pathetic, destructive, personality disorder-ridden man. The warnings were clear back on July 13th. He just won’t ever do the right thing, work through the process, or listen to anyone. This article is from back on July 13. It’s from a local Ohio paper, the Ohio Capital Journal,and somehow, none of this reached the establishment national media covering our sicko president. Now, it’s too late. Acres of beautiful, mature cherry trees gifted by Japan are gone.”President Taft descendant, former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, slams Trump plan to devastate D.C. cherry trees.” Alan Johnson reports the story.
A plan that threatens some historic Washington, D.C., cherry trees to make way for President Donald Trump’s planned golf course is “very unfortunate,” said the great-grandson of William Howard Taft who received the Japanese trees more than a century ago.
“I don’t understand the idea of a championship golf course near the nation’s capital. There are already world-class golf courses there,” said former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, who served from 1999 to 2007. He is the great-grandson of William Howard Taft, the 27th president.
“Now is not the time to devastate cherry trees that have an important role as part of the cultural alliance between the United States and Japan … It’s very concerning.”
Taft, a Republican as is Trump, is an avid outdoorsman and golfer. He said chopping down cherry trees is an afront to his family heritage and a threat to the beauty of Washington as an international tourist attraction.
“They are a United States institution,” Taft said. “People from all over the world come to the Cherry Blossom Festival.”
Cherry trees were given by the Japanese to former President Taft and his wife, Nellie, who had ambitions to beautify the nation’s capital. She admired the flowering trees when her husband was the presidentially appointed Governor General of the Philippines.
The plan would also eliminate a riverside bike trail and other public recreation areas. Trump toured the course June 28 with government officials and golf course planners. The project could begin as early as Sept. 1.
The Ohio connection to the threatened Japanese cherry trees goes back to 1912-1913 when 3,020 saplings from the banks of the Arakawa River in a Tokyo suburb were planted along the Tidal basin.
He’s willing to destroy everything and everyone to make it all about him. At the top of his list is making sure a lot of us can’t vote. This is from today’s New York Times. I’m no longer surprised but will be forever appalled. Adam Sella and Nick Corasaniti share the lede. “More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed. State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.” We’re a Banana Republic.
The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.
The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.
In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots. During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes.
The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period.
The rise in rejected ballots comes at a time of immense upheaval at the Postal Service, where a budget crisis has prompted widespread complaints about delivery delays. The increase also comes as President Trump and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to restrict mail voting and otherwise overhaul the nation’s elections.
I can feel this in my backyard, as there’s been a huge push to actually shut down my local post office. There are next to no Republicans in my ward and precinct. It’s basically a neighborhood with many black, GLBT, and single women like me. I can understand why they’d like my massive blue dot in a blue city to get as little ability to vote as possible.
Meanwhile, back in pathological liar land, The Independent had this headline that could only happen under Orange Caligula. “Trump’s fake AI video of Kharg Island ‘attack’ leaves US military scrambling to explain President’s very realistic AI slop video, posted to his official Truth Social account, forces Pentagon to step in with a denial.” Andrew Feinberg has the story.
But a U.S. official said no such attack had taken place, with Kharg Island not being among the locations targeted overnight in what has been the first exchange of fire between American and Iranian forces in weeks.
Additionally, the head of National Iranian Oil Co, Hamid Bovard, said on Monday that the president’s post was “laughable” and described conditions on Kharg Island as “calm and appropriate.”
Trump — whose White House has repeatedly stated that his Truth Social posts count as official statements from the commander in chief — also hit out at Iran again in a separate Truth Social post on Monday, writing that it was “officially a Failed Nation” and “DEAD.”
“They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country. The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead,” he said.
Iranian media outlets did report explosions near Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, where an American official said Tehran had been preparing to launch mine-laying rockets as part of the country’s bid to choke off the key waterway and hamstring the American economy in response to Trump’s war, which has now passed the half-year mark without end in sight.
Here’s an FYI.
In my state and others, small and large communities are fighting to prevent Data Centers from causing irreparable damage to water supplies, the environment, animals, and communities. Here’s Trump’s response to us all via Politico. “Trump: Communities that reject data centers will end up ‘backwards and poor’. It’s the president’s latest line of support for data centers despite growing bipartisan concerns over the cost of such projects.”
President Donald Trump on Monday again championed the spread of data centers despite growing bipartisan backlash ahead of the midterms in November.
In a post to Truth Social, the president insisted data centers will lead to richer, more successful Americans and criticized those who object to them.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump said. “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”
Data center expansion has become a critical component in the leadup to November’s midterms, with polls showing a majority of Americans oppose them being built in their communities. Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed concerns over data centers, with lawmakers and state leaders warning about overloaded power grids, strained water systems and the level of noise the projects create.
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott this month instituted new regulations on data centers despite expressing broad support for them over the last year on the campaign trail. Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers and Pennsylvania GOP nominee for governor Stacy Garrity have both urged for a temporary halt to some projects.
But Trump, who has met with some of the world’s leading tech giants on numerous occasions, is adamant that data centers are critical to staying ahead of China in the artificial intelligence race — a point he made in a recent interview with his former fixer Michael Cohen and which he reiterated on Monday.
“China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”
If only we were following China’s example. This is from Wired. “China Opens World’s First Wind-Powered Underwater Data Center. With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the innovative data center uses seawater as a natural cooling system.”
China has become the first country in the world to operate an underwater data center, or UDC, powered by wind. Located off the coast of Shanghai, the complex represents a significant advance in the country’s strategy to secure energy supplies in the face of the accelerated growth of artificial intelligence, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and reduce the environmental impact of its technology infrastructure.
The initiative is the result of a collaboration between private company HiCloud Technology and state-owned China Communications Construction, which involved an investment of 1.6 billion yuan, equivalent to about $236 million.
With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the facility is submerged at a depth of 10 meters in the Lin-gang Special Zone, within the China Pilot Free Trade Zone in Shanghai. This location allows seawater to be used as a natural cooling system, reducing the proportion of energy used to cool the infrastructure to less than 10 percent.
This feature solves one of the main energy consumption challenges of conventional data centers, where air conditioning systems typically account for 40 to 50 percent of the total electricity required to operate.
The thermal efficiency of the UDC is directly reflected in its power-usage effectiveness, or PUE. This metric is used by the industry to evaluate the energy performance of a data center; 1.0 represents the maximum theoretical efficiency. In its first phase, the Lin-gang facility is designed to achieve a PUE of no more than 1.15, a figure considered state-of-the-art within the industry.
Under this same cooling principle, HiCloud opened the world’s first commercial underwater data center in 2023 in Hainan, an island located in southern China. However, the Shanghai complex marks a milestone as the first to operate using offshore wind power.
Construction of the UDC was completed in mid-October last year. According to the Chinese government, “compared to traditional onshore data centers, the project is designed to use more than 95 percent green electricity, reducing energy consumption by 22.8 percent, and water and land use by 100 percent and more than 90 percent, respectively.”
The opening of the complex is an important step in China’s efforts to optimize energy supply through renewable sources and, at the same time, sustain its leadership in computing capacity linked to AI development.
The difference is that China isn’t trying to kill off its people and natural resources and it’s not relying on fossil fuels which are dirty, nasty, require fracking, and kill off living things. Trump also doesn’t want any regulation on the damn things. Here’s some information on that from The New Republic. “This Data Center Is Everything That Everyone Hates About AI. Utah’s Stratos Project is showing how everyone loses in the unregulated rush to build these Big Tech behemoths—even investors.” Luke Barnes has the analysis.
Big Tech firms are now keenly aware of the need for their data centers to have at least some environmental protections and community considerations built into development plans. Microsoft, for instance, announced its “Community-First” AI infrastructure plan in January 2026, shortly after it was forced to cancel a proposed data center in rural Wisconsin. The plan calls for covering the grid and electricity costs its data centers create, minimizing and replenishing local water use, and paying its full share of local property taxes rather than seeking the tax breaks data centers typically negotiate. OpenAI has called for significant investment in renewables to help modernize the U.S. electrical grid and make data center build-out more sustainable, while Anthropic has pledged to cover the grid infrastructure improvements and electricity cost increases that are generated from the data centers it uses.
These actions from both big business at one end and state actors at the other are a recognition of the problem. But they are the inverse of the kind of investment that the Stratos Project represents: rushed ad hoc investment on one side of the coin, and reactive ad hoc regulation on the flip side.
What’s more, both actors have fundamental limitations. Data centers are a footloose industry, meaning if one state is deemed to be overregulating, investors can easily shop for a friendlier jurisdiction. And while Big Tech firms might talk a good game, they are also subject to severe market pressures that could make them put their plans for equitable, environmentally friendly data centers on the back burner.
What’s needed is a concrete set of enforceable federal standards that can slow down the ad hoc gold rush in favor of equitable (and ultimately faster) long-term build-out. But here, the Trump administration is doing the exact opposite. In its July 2025 executive order, the White House moved to ease regulatory burdens on data centers costing at least $500 million, while compressing review windows and streamlining environmental evaluations meant to identify those burdens, and saying nothing about the water consumption or community frustration driving the backlash.
Lousyana is the perfect example of how not to let your crazy Republican Governor go wild on these things. We now not only have an AI center in process. We have a SpaceX project that will likely ruin the ecosystem and lives of people living on and near the Gulf of Mexico. We are so fucked it’s not even funny. One month ago, this showed up in the New York Times. (I’ve gifted the links, btw.) “How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal. A Times examination details how the Silicon Valley giant used private talks with local officials to start a project big enough to cover nearly six square miles.”
Mr. Turner had helped land the largest development in Louisiana’s history: a $50 billion data center for the Silicon Valley giant Meta that planners say could cover about six square miles and use seven times as much energy as New Orleans.
Meta wanted the rebate to build its data center in Richland Parish, an impoverished farming community in Louisiana’s northeast corner. The tech company also needed a secret deal done quickly, and state officials were eager to oblige.
Rewriting the bill was a critical part of a nine-month process that Meta used to cut deals behind the scenes, avoid local opposition and offload financial risk, according to interviews with more than 40 people and a review of corporate filings, tax records, property records and meeting transcripts.
The secrecy was agreed to by nearly everyone involved, from utility executives to the governor’s office to a local elected official who knew about the talks with Meta and sold 300 acres of his own property for the project.
The upshot was a deal that was nearly ironclad for Meta because everyone else took on most of the potential downside. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, also gave his company an escape hatch to get out of it years before its partners.
Those partners include Entergy Louisiana, the state’s largest power company, and Blue Owl, a Wall Street investment firm, according to public statements from the companies and investor documents. If Meta should pull out of the project because of a natural disaster, Blue Owl and its investors could be stuck with tens of billions of dollars in debt. Should Meta exit its lease early for other reasons and pay high penalties for doing so, Entergy and its customers could wind up saddled with higher costs.
Adding to their risk, insurance companies would not fully insure Meta’s facility because of its size and location in the Louisiana Delta flood plains.
The New York Times’s examination shows for the first time how Meta used secrecy and speed to pave the way for its giant project, which it calls Hyperion. At a pivotal moment for the A.I. boom, Hyperion could be a blueprint for other companies intent on avoiding local opposition in order to get massive data centers built fast.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others are expected to spend more than $1 trillion on data centers in coming years, but some communities are pushing back because they are worried about water use, higher electricity rates, disruption by construction and the endless hum of giant computing centers running throughout the night.
We’ll not be the Sportsman’s Paradise between that and the Musk project. All living thing are likely to perish in the parish at this rate. Landry is a mini Trump and very much a part of the brotherhood of sociopaths. This is from The Hill. “Louisiana governor ‘not concerned’ about environmental impact of Gulf Coast SpaceX facility.”
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) brushed aside fears Wednesday morning about possible negative environmental impacts from SpaceX’s planned $100 billion launch facility in the state.
He told CBS News on Wednesday that he was “not concerned about the environmental impact” of the new spaceport, which will be constructed along the Gulf Coast on a former Exxon property in Vermilion Parish, La.
“What I am concerned about is the lack of economic opportunity on the coast that continues to basically rob us of opportunities to rebuild our coast,” the governor said.
The spaceport will be the company’s fourth and largest launch site, and it will serve as the main facility for Starship, SpaceX’s in-development reusable rocket launch system.
SpaceX got into hot water over its operations at its first launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.
In 2024, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found that the company violated environmental regulations by repeatedly releasing pollutants into nearby bodies of water.
This followed an earlier warning by the Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 office, which oversees Texas, that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act with these actions.
Elon Musk’s company said in a statement that it was committed to working with federal and state agencies and conservation groups “to protect shoreline, restore wetlands, and support the wildlife and recreation that depend on them” in Louisiana.
And if any one believes Musk will do that I have several bridges over the Mississippi River I’d like to sell you.
So, I end with this thought. WE ARE SO FUCKED.
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“The new White House Press Secretary is a hoot!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m pretty sure this craziness with our neighbors to the north is more tap dancing to get our minds off the Epstein files, the failed Israeli/US war on Iran, and basic affordability. Look at dat! Look at dat! Look over there with jazz hands isn’t flying with most of us. Who the hell still believes all this? But it tends to distract the mainstream media, which is really bad. Very bad stuff is hiding behind all of this. Let me show you today.
If you’ve known me long enough, you know I have a serious love affair with our nation’s National Parks. I’ve camped and hiked around more than I can remember, but that’s only because some of the big ones are so amazing they took this little girl’s heart to the point she still reminds me what it means to see wild animals in the wild and breathtaking views. As I got older, my sketchbook filled with every place we camped and explored. They also remind you of our indigenous peoples and the glory of endless wilderness.
That’s why my blood pressure took off when I read this. “Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer. The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.” The article can be found atNOTUS and is written by Anna Kramer. Yosemite is one of the nations’ oldest and most glorious examples of American landscapes. He’s totally dedicated to the idea of selling stuff off to support his Trumpify every historical place in the District.
For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.
National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.
Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to a company that, through a web of limited-liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. Officials are proposing the Park Service give up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, and in return receive land of equal value somewhere in California that has yet to be decided.
The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves. Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests.
The property’s current access road is more than 10 miles from an entrance to the park, and much further from Yosemite’s most iconic sights. Without a new road, visitors to the property — whether it be developed into a hotel, resort or private residence — would need to drive an hour and a half in a circuitous route to reach the popular Yosemite Valley.
This is an unprecedented move and a dangerous one.
If the deal goes through, the Trump administration would be breaking with 150 years of American precedent at the birthplace of the national park system. The federal government has historically strived to expand the crown-jewel national parks, not give up land within them.
“The national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias,” said Cicely Muldoon, a 40-year veteran of the Park Service who served as Yosemite’s superintendent for about five years. Muldoon retired from Yosemite shortly after President Donald Trump took office in 2025.
“Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit,” she said Interior’s advocacy for the deal is a significant reversal of a pledge Secretary Doug Burgum made in his 2025 confirmation hearing: “The national parks, absolutely we need to support and protect every single inch of those,” he said.It also contravenes the presidential message Trump shared on Aug. 24 of this year, to announce the beginning of National Park Week: “My Administration is committed to protecting every acre of our lands and preserving the cleanest air and water in the world.”And it goes against the agency’s past position on this specific piece of land. The Park Service has received this privatization request before, and it has rejected it repeatedly for over two decades.
Don’t even get me started on Trump trying to rename Lake Ontario. But you don’t have to take my word on it try this at Business Insider. The internet has gone into full meme mode over Trump’s Lake Ontario name change. The story is reported by Joshua Nelken-Zitser.
President Donald Trump renamed Lake Ontario as Lake America, and it’s making waves on the internet.
After tense trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed and the US imposed new 50% tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, Trump turned to another tool in his arsenal: rebranding.
On Thursday, Trump issued an executive order to rename Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes that straddles the US-Canada border, as Lake America. As the Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney wrote on X, the name predates the Confederation of Canada and the US Declaration of Independence. “The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘”the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’,” he wrote.
The name change follows a similar move Trump made last year when he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, a change that Mexico and other countries, including the UK and China, have refused to adopt.
After Thursday’s executive order, it didn’t take long for the internet to respond with memes. Here are the 10 best.
Go check them out!
Trump tries over and over again to remove all the settled cases against him. Most courts remain firmly on the side of the settled case based on settled law. Here’s yet another Trump failure to ditch responsibility for all his crimes. This is from local TV station Spectrum News NY1. “Trump loses again in bid to erase his N.Y. hush money conviction.” You may remember that this is the payment to Stormy Daniels.
A federal judge on Friday once again spurned Donald Trump’s effort to erase his hush money conviction, rejecting the president’s bid to move the state court case to federal court and have it dismissed on presidential immunity grounds.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein reiterated his earlier finding against Trump, saying that the reasons Trump cited for renewing his request were “neither new nor legally sufficient.”
The judge added: “He has failed to show good cause and diligence.”
It is the third time Hellerstein has blocked Trump from having the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize control of the case from the New York court where he was tried and convicted.
And, like before, Trump will appeal, according to a spokesperson for his legal team who called Hellerstein’s ruling “baseless and lawless.”
“The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan DA be removed to federal court, and immediately overturned and dismissed,” a statement issued on behalf of the legal team said. “President Trump will be filing a powerful appeal, and will continue defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn.”
The guilty verdict, reached in May 2024 while Trump was between terms, made him the first former — and now current — U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. Trump is also challenging his conviction through the state court appellate process, which is pending.
Hellerstein’s decision came after a federal appeals court last year ordered him to reconsider his prior denial. The judge previewed his ruling during oral arguments in February, slamming Trump’s lawyers for legal maneuvers that amounted to taking “two bites at the apple.”
State prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Stormy and E. Jean are high on my list of tough and amazing women for see these cases through. We can only hope we get the Epstein files released and we see more women damaged by Trump receive justice and compensation. And speaking of the Stormy case, this headline yesterday from Raw Storyis an eye opener. There most be a line as wide as big as the country itself of co-criminals waiting for Trump Pardons. “Explosive motive unmasked by DOJ insiders as Michael Cohen crawls back to Trump: report.” Travis Gettys has the story.
The Department of Justice has discussed using former attorney Michael Cohen – who has seemingly come crawling back – as a witness to build new criminal cases against President Donald Trump’s legal adversaries, according to a new report.
Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng, who has a personal history with Cohen, the president’s longtime personal attorney and fixer, reported that Trump administration officials are hoping to leverage his testimony to bring criminal prosecutions against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – both of whom successfully battled Trump in court.
“Bragg’s case, of course, is the reason Trump became America’s first felon president, a label Trump bitterly resents,” Suebsaeng wrote.
That’s why the president wants revenge against them both, Suebsaeng said, and he’s apparently dangling a pardon to Cohen as leverage for his testimony.
“Cohen had previously posted on Substack that he felt ‘pressured and coerced’ to be those prosecutors’ star witness against Trump, though Cohen has been publicly very coy about claiming whether he was ‘coerced’ to give false testimony,” Suebsaeng wrote.
DOJ does have the authority to charge prosecutors with coercing false testimony, although that almost never happens, but Trump officials are considering it now.
The headlines from independent media sources never fail to amaze. Even local government officials have trouble with Trump’s ignorance of how things are done in American. He abuses his position and ignores well-settled law over and over.This is from the New York Times. “Wyoming Governor Objects to ‘Very Odd’ D.O.J. Election Monitoring. Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, said he was concerned by the behavior of election observers who visited a polling station in Cheyenne.” This story comes from the keyboard of Tim Balk.
Mr. Trump has often returned to such conspiracy theories in his second term, arguing that widespread fraud could affect this year’s elections. As president, he has deployed the resources of the federal government, notably the Justice Department’s, to investigate his unsubstantiated claims, sowing more doubt in the nation’s elections and raising alarm among state officials about whether he will try to intervene if Republicans lose their congressional majorities in November.
Governor Gordon, a low-key, term-limited Republican who leads one of the country’s most conservative states, said at a meeting with state election officials on Wednesday that he had been concerned by the behavior of the election observers.
“I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns — I don’t like that,” Mr. Gordon said at the meeting. “And I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either.”
The monitors ultimately visited six polling places, showing their credentials only when asked for them, Mr. Gordon said in the interview, describing their behavior as “very odd.” He said he had asked the state attorney general, Keith Kautz, to investigate the matter.
The observers had cited statutes related to the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act, Mr. Gordon said.
This year, the Justice Department’s observers have visited polling places in other states, including politically tense regions such as the Minneapolis area. The agency said on Tuesday that it had sent 80 monitors to seven states during primary season.
But the requests to interview voters and gain access to machines in Wyoming were unusual. And they come at a moment when the Justice Department has been locked in an intense legal battle with roughly 30 states, demanding their private, unredacted voter rolls in a hunt for evidence of noncitizen voting.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump is still convinced that noncitizens vote. Most allegations turn out to be baseless. There has to be something sketchier in Trump’s election interference. It’s more likely he’s trying to ‘monitor’ polls to intimidate certain classes of voters not known to vote Republican. He is hot for voter suppression.
This is my favorite headline for the day. It comes via from Public Notice. “Are voters finally realizing GOP presidents are disasters? Michael Tomasky makes the case that they are.” I could make the case easily for their economic policy. I’m pretty certain that others in other areas could do that as well. Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson share the lede.
“Trusting the Republicans more on the economy at this point is like trusting Sean Combs to be your babysitter,” writes Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, in his recent piece headlined, “At Long Last, Americans Are Starting to See the Truth About the GOP.”
“For decades now, the Republican Party has built its electoral success on myths and lies,” Tomasky adds. “Ronald Reagan was the last Republican president who your average person would say left the country better off than he found it.”
One could quibble about the legacy of George H.W. Bush, but it’s hard to dispute that the last two Republican presidents easily rank among the worst in American history. Their successors have each been handed a flaming bag of economic and cultural ruin and did commendable jobs putting out the fire, only to hand the reins to the man who will unequivocally go down as our worst president of all time (so far!), Donald J. Trump — whose second term is shaping up to be even more disastrous than the one that ended with mass death amid a pandemic he badly mismanaged.
Tomasky argues Democrats are missing a golden opportunity by not campaigning more aggressively on the obvious truth that from the presidency on down, the Republican Party has a cataclysmic record when it has power, especially in the 21st century. But messaging aside, he says he’s heartened by recent polling showing voters may finally be seeing the light.
“Jobs are just one factor. The performance of the stock market under Democrats is much, much stronger than under Republicans. The increases in median household income and amount by which they’ve reduced the deficit are much greater,” Tomasky told Public Notice. “The comparisons aren’t close, but you never hear any Democrats talk about it.”
“Why this is changing now is really simple and straightforward: The economy is bad, and there’s a Republican president,” he added.
Trump has basically wrecked the idea that Republicans are better at foreign policy and wars. There’s no way any of his health policies via the nuts he put in Health and Human Services can be seen as anything but charlatans. And, the DOJ is a laugh. So much for law and order. Since the Republic party continues to enable all of this mess, I can’t understand that anyone other that a member of the Orange Caligula Cult could tolerate what’s going on these days.
Okay, this is my last suggested read for the day. It comes from Balls and Strikes and is written by Jay Willis. “The Trump DOJ Is Running Out of Ways to Humiliate Itself In Public. Another week, another argument from your federal government that would be kind of embarrassing if a high school sophomore tried to make it.” Sounds about right.
For some time now, I have been tracking the Justice Department’s alarminglyrapidtransformation from one of the legal profession’s most prestigious employers into a clubhouse for semiliterate dunces whose primary qualification for the job is a willingness to sign their names to legal filings that resemble lightly edited Truth Social posts. This week’s addition to the canon comes in the course of President Donald Trump’s relentless pursuit of what is somehow among the highest-priority items on his second-term policy agenda: slapping his name on the Kennedy Center before his time in office runs out.
The legal fight began back in December 2025, when the Kennedy Center’s Trump-aligned board of trustees first tried to shoehorn the words “THE DONALD J. TRUMP AND” above existing Kennedy Center signage. A federal court ordered the removal of Trump’s name in June, but the board remains committed to fulfilling the president’s wishes. Its latest proposal would append a “RENOVATED AND RESTORED BY PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP” inscription to the side of the building, beneath the Kennedy Center signage this time around. The board also wants to name the grounds on which the Kennedy Center sits the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” like an enterprising NFL team selling a secondary set of stadium naming rights to whichever corporate behemoth is desperate enough to pay for it.
In a new court filing, the Trump Justice Department is warning about what might happen if its client does not get his way: According to Brantley T. Mayers, a lawyer in the Civil Division, prospective donors will not open their wallets unless the renovation plans include “prominent recognition” of Trump’s involvement. And without those renovations, Brantley says, the “dilapidated” and “crumbling” Kennedy Center will “deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure,” and may even have to be “taken down” in order to avoid “collapse or calamity.” In other words, the Justice Department’s official position is that without the addition of an (apparently load-bearing) “RENOVATED AND RESTORED” inscription, the Kennedy Center will be at risk of falling down and killing everyone inside.
“The Board recognizes that President Trump’s efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal,” Brantley writes. “The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.” (All weird comma placements in original.)
How is this even a legal issue? Anyway, this country is so fucked-up under Trump that it’s hard to recognize. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
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“Come on, Natalie Harp is a perfectly normal young republican woman with lofty aspirations.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s hard to know where to start writing these posts these days. Everything is so surreal that I feel like I should be sharing paintings by Dalí or Ernst rather than political cartoons. However, the political cartoons are more spot on than most of the press coverage. BB did some great coverage on the bizarre role of Natalie Harp, the human printer, this week. The more folks dig, the weirder she gets and the more pathetic Orange Caligula looks.
Tom Schaller of Public Notice had this interesting analysis today under the heading “Travel with Natalie. How three words from Jon Ossoff prompted an epic MAGA crashout”.
Donald Trump is easily triggered. That’s hardly news.
He’s temperamental and emotional in a way that supposedly disqualifies women from serving in powerful political or corporate roles. He lashes out at critics, opponents, the media, even his own staff. Were it not so frightening, it would be Veep-level hysterical that the man atop the world’s most powerful government and military lacks the impulse control of a high schooler.
But the questions now swirling around Trump’s personal assistant Natalie Harp — and especially the way Sen. Jon Ossoff unleashed a media firestorm this week by invoking her name — offer a long overdue lesson for Democrats on how to successfully bait Trump and his MAGA cohorts for maximum effect.
Let’s start by unpacking what Ossoff actually said last Sunday, which was not nearly as salacious as the ensuing MAGA meltdown would have you believe.
“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks,” said Ossoff, of Trump. “See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”doesn’t””
Ossoff says that Trump doesn’t want to do his job but wants to “travel with Natalie”
In just four sentences, Ossoff’s carefully crafted language shattered Trump’s curated image as a tough, tireless, troop-loving, America First warrior. The Georgia senator indicted Trump’s military misadventures and octogenarian stamina. He highlighted Trump’s sloth and greed. Ossoff depicted Trump as a detached, spoiled, soft, and vainglorious brat who could make Charli XCX blush.
But the kicker was these three words: “travel with Natalie.”
Ossoff’s statement would have delivered the same critique of Trump as an entitled, lazy lout had he omitted any mention of Harp. But he dropped her name — and only her first name, plus the first-person plural “their” for emphasis — to pair them and suggest a degree of interpersonal intimacy.
Ossoff’s gambit worked perfectly. Americans immediately wanted to learn who Natalie Harp is. Answer: a “platinum blonde geyser of positivity, there to buck him up when the going gets rough,” as the New York Times described the young aide who serves as Trump’s personal, 24/7 “security blanket.”
Ossoff has some very thick skin. The entire Trump cult got outraged quite quickly, with its leader being the most hysterical on the subject. It takes a lot of talent to yank Trump’s chain enough to be the week’s media darling. The New Republic‘s Greene piled on today. “Natalie Harp Should Concern Everyone—I Should Know, I Once Had Her Job, When I ran President Obama’s socials, I treated that work as needing checks and restraint at every point of the process. Its absence in the Trump White House is scary.”
Handling a U.S. president’s social media voice is a magisterial job. The work involved ranges far and wide—from figuring out how to handle the president’s receipt of a Nobel Peace Prize to huddling with colleagues to pull just the right clip from a speech. Or, if you’re President Donald Trump’s aide and traveling companion, Natalie Harp, you might use AI to portray the president as a fighter pilot dropping payloads of poop on No Kings demonstrators.
I know something about this particular job. I managed President Barack Obama’s partisan social media accounts over much of the first year of his presidency. It’s fair to say this was a more innocent age. The watchwords I took to the work were ones like safeguards and restraint, instead of poop jet and What if we depicted the president as Jesus Christ. A president’s statements, I knew, could move markets even if ventriloquized by twenty- and thirtysomethings working to channel the top guy’s voice. At every point, my colleagues and I took intentional steps to guard against loose words.
It hardly takes a genius to spot how the standards around Trump’s social media accounts have slipped, even against the low baseline of his first term. With The New York Timescalling Harp, Trump’s omnipresent aide, the “sylphlike woman” who “supplies him with content she fishes out of the social media gutter (like the video he posted depicting the Obamas as apes),” we have a good idea of why those standards have tumbled—and strong reason to wonder what else the woman who “texts with world leaders on the president’s behalf” and operates “entirely outside the usual chain of command” is doing with her prized, rare access.
I keep wondering if there’s more to her than a “unhealthy obsession with Trump” as her brother said in an interview a few days ago in a CNN interview. She’s been groomed by the likes of Liberty University and has had a lifelong brainwashing by her mother.
“My mom raised us that the idea of American exceptionalism was the correct way of looking at things, that the United States is the boss of the world,” Preston Harp said in the interview. “That, like, slavery was back then. That was normal. People weren’t bad because they had slaves.”
Has the Radical Xtian Right got some other plans for her or bimbo whispering him into doing things for them or Israel? (BTW, I yanked that description from cartoonist Steve Stack as well as the cartoon I shared with you today that’s his.) Those folks are all wrapped up in the idea that they get a quick flight on Sky God if Israel tears down the mosque on Temple Mount to rebuild a Temple, and they’re serious about it. Maybe there’s some deep-state intrigue there, or maybe the weirdness of the times is getting to me.
Okay, so let me go down this rabbit hole just one more time today with an exclusive from The Daily Beast. (Seriously, I’m not forgetting any of the shit he’s doing for this soap opera moment.) David Gardner has this headline. “Natalie Harp’s Intimate Letters to Trump Revealed in Full. Trump’s biographer Michael Wolff is revealing two bombshell letters Harp wrote to Trump, calling him her “Guardian and Protector.”
The extraordinary letters were written in 2023, either during or after Harp accompanied Trump on a trip to Scotland and Ireland. She was 31 and Trump was 76. They reveal Harp’s utter devotion to Trump. She even tells him she is envious of women “whose only job seems to be to talk with you and look pretty.”
“I want that job!!” she writes in the letter, saying she missed the days when he would call “and we’d talk about everything and nothing.”
“We shouldn’t have to talk about work all the time!!” she tells Trump.
Harp also refers to herself by the nickname Trump’s staff reportedly gave her: the “Human Printer,” because she printed out positive stories and reports for the president.
The two letters were handed to author and Inside Trump’s Head host Michael Wolff while he was writing his best-selling book, All or Nothing, which chronicled Trump’s 2024 campaign. It included extracts of the letters, and The New York Times later published shorter extracts from the same letters.
Asked to comment on behalf of Harp, White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded, “Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump’s team. The Fake News’s continued attacks on President Trump and his Administration prove exactly why trust in media is at historic lows. The media should get back to reporting real news and stop regurgitating Trump-Deranged liberal talking points.”
There’s a copy of that letter at the link. I’m sure Melania is happy to be relieved of the spotlight. Although the trotted her out as damage control. People Magazine has this lede yesterday. “Melania Trump Says ‘I Heard You Missed Me’ at First Public Appearance in a Month. The first lady was last seen at the FIFA World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19.” Does she really believe that?
Melania Trump acknowledged her heavily discussed absence in a recent speech.
The first lady, 56, spoke from the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, Aug. 20, highlighting her Fostering the Future initiative and plans to expand its national network, according to a White House press release. The expansion is facilitated by a $2 million donation from IndyCar and Fox Corporation, which will fund scholarships at Indiana University and Purdue University.
I really try not to be a slut slammer but sheesh, some women just ask for it. This last read is from Catherine Rampell who is now writing at The Bulwark. Since Trump loves dehumanizing women reporters, I’m waiting for him to go apeshit of this analysis. “Trump’s War on Reality Comes for the Census. One of America’s most trusted institutions just put its name on a totally bogus voter-fraud report.”
SOMEONE ASKS ME AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK whether they should still trust the federal government’s data releases. When we hear official announcements about things like unemployment or inflation, can we rely on those figures to accurately reflect reality, and to be based on proven models? Up until now, I have always said yes.
Sure, the numbers coming out of the White House may be bull.1 But the numbers from independent statistical agencies (the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, etc.) have remained solid and trustworthy, I usually explain.
After all, these stats agencies employ armies of dedicated, fastidious civil servants who collect the underlying data and conduct careful statistical analysis. Their work is firewalled from political interference. I’ve been covering these data releases long enough 2 to know that if Trump were cooking the books, it would be obvious—not least because those career civil servants would be screaming bloody murder and quitting en masse.
Unfortunately, I can no longer vouch for any of that. Now my answer is: No, you should not default to trusting the government data. There’s clear evidence the Trump administration is cooking at least some of the books.
The rest is behind a firewall but believe me, this is not good news for any one in my business. Most of my analysis in my papers come at least partially from government data. This basically means all of us are using spurious information if something is not done quickly about this. I can only ask for who knows how many times, where is Congress when we need them. I hope the courts can do a few things but seriously, this is a Congressional thing.
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If you want some shock and awe for your Monday afternoon, read this. Or, read The Great Gatsby.
So, does anybody think there was any kind of strategy to that move or was it just his usual blather linked to something in the past he’s garbled up. The true winner of the Ireland Visit was its President Catherine Connolly. The picture of Orange Caligula over there having to sign something on a desk so small it would cramp a 4th grader was the cheekiest move I’ve seen in probably forever. This is from The US Sun. “Catherine Connolly takes thinly-veiled swipe at Donald Trump with 3 gifts containing pointed message on global issues”. I still laugh every time I read this. As obvious as it all was, including a firm speech, it probably went right over his awful hairdo. This was visit was labelled a brief courtesy call even though Dementia Don wouldn’t know what a courtesy is let alone perform one.
I have to say, that was a classy way of calling the bugger out for what he really is. As always, I’m proud of my Scotch/Irish roots and both the Scotch and the Irish took to the streets and give him a what for. Meanwhile, there are signs the U.S. economy is becoming more troubled. As for me, with my doctorate in economics, my proof in the pudding is the price of gas and groceries. But, I’ll sure this one with you because long-term Treasury bonds are are the proverbial canary in the coalmine to the financial sector and the FED where both my Grandfather and me spent some time making sure the auctions happened come the hell of two world wars or Mardi Gras, in my case. This headline is from CNBC. 10-year Treasury yield hits 5% before reversing as traders await Fed meeting. I bet trading desks all over the world are working overtime today.
Yes. We’re being bribed to vote Republican, again. This is from The New York Times‘ James Poniewozik.
Oh, but it gets better. This is from HuffPo. Jennifer Bendery has the story. “Trump’s Weird Convention Just Tied Every GOP Candidate To His Sagging Popularity. Good luck in November!”
As you can see, he’s only getting worse and more intense with his attacks and bad temper. It’s begging to take it’s toll. This is from ABC News. “Joe diGenova, loyalist tapped by Trump to oversee controversial DOJ probe targeting his foes, resigns: Sources. DiGenova had been probing officials involved in past investigations of Trump.”
He’s willing to destroy everything and everyone to make it all about him. At the top of his list is making sure a lot of us can’t vote. This is from today’s New York Times. I’m no longer surprised but will be forever appalled. More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed. State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.” We’re a Banana Republic.
I can feel this in my backyard, as there’s been a huge push to actually shut down my local post office. There are next to no Republicans in my ward and precinct. It’s basically a neighborhood with many black, GLBT, and single women like me. I can understand why they’d like my massive blue dot in a blue city to get as little ability to vote as possible.
If only we were following China’s example. This is from Wired. “China Opens World’s First Wind-Powered Underwater Data Center. With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the innovative data center uses seawater as a natural cooling system.”
The difference is that China isn’t trying to kill off its people and natural resources and it’s not relying on fossil fuels which are dirty, nasty, require fracking, and kill off living things. Trump also doesn’t want any regulation on the damn things. Here’s some information on that from The New Republic. “This Data Center Is Everything That Everyone Hates About AI. Utah’s Stratos Project is showing how everyone loses in the unregulated rush to build these Big Tech behemoths—even investors.” Luke Barnes has the analysis.
Lousyana is the perfect example of how not to let your crazy Republican Governor go wild on these things. We now not only have an AI center in process. We have a SpaceX project that will likely ruin the ecosystem and lives of people living on and near the Gulf of Mexico. We are so fucked it’s not even funny. One month ago, this showed up in the New York Times. (I’ve gifted the links, btw.) “How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal. A Times examination details how the Silicon Valley giant used private talks with local officials to start a project big enough to cover nearly six square miles.”
We’ll not be the Sportsman’s Paradise between that and the Musk project. All living thing are likely to perish in the parish at this rate. Landry is a mini Trump and very much a part of the brotherhood of sociopaths. This is from The Hill. “Louisiana governor ‘not concerned’ about environmental impact of Gulf Coast SpaceX facility.”
That’s why my blood pressure took off when I read this. “Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer. The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.” The article can be found at NOTUS and is written by Anna Kramer. Yosemite is one of the nations’ oldest and most glorious examples of American landscapes. He’s totally dedicated to the idea of selling stuff off to support his Trumpify every historical place in the District.
This is an unprecedented move and a dangerous one.
Don’t even get me started on Trump trying to rename Lake Ontario. But you don’t have to take my word on it try this at Business Insider. The internet has gone into full meme mode over Trump’s Lake Ontario name change. The story is reported by Joshua Nelken-Zitser.
Stormy and E. Jean are high on my list of tough and amazing women for see these cases through. We can only hope we get the Epstein files released and we see more women damaged by Trump receive justice and compensation. And speaking of the Stormy case, this headline yesterday from Raw Story is an eye opener. There most be a line as wide as big as the country itself of co-criminals waiting for Trump Pardons. “Explosive motive unmasked by DOJ insiders as Michael Cohen crawls back to Trump: report.” Travis Gettys has the story.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump is still convinced that noncitizens vote. Most allegations turn out to be baseless. There has to be something sketchier in Trump’s election interference. It’s more likely he’s trying to ‘monitor’ polls to intimidate certain classes of voters not known to vote Republican. He is hot for voter suppression.
Trump has basically wrecked the idea that Republicans are better at foreign policy and wars. There’s no way any of his health policies via the nuts he put in Health and Human Services can be seen as anything but charlatans. And, the DOJ is a laugh. So much for law and order. Since the Republic party continues to enable all of this mess, I can’t understand that anyone other that a member of the Orange Caligula Cult could tolerate what’s going on these days.
Ossoff has some very thick skin. The entire Trump cult got outraged quite quickly, with its leader being the most hysterical on the subject. It takes a lot of talent to yank Trump’s chain enough to be the week’s media darling. The New Republic‘s Greene piled on today. “Natalie Harp Should Concern Everyone—I Should Know, I Once Had Her Job, When I ran President Obama’s socials, I treated that work as needing checks and restraint at every point of the process. Its absence in the Trump White House is scary.”
I keep wondering if there’s more to her than a “unhealthy obsession with Trump” as her brother said in an interview a few days ago in a CNN interview. She’s been groomed by the likes of Liberty University and has had a lifelong brainwashing by her mother.
Okay, so let me go down this rabbit hole just one more time today with an exclusive from The Daily Beast. (Seriously, I’m not forgetting any of the shit he’s doing for this soap opera moment.) David Gardner has this headline. “Natalie Harp’s Intimate Letters to Trump Revealed in Full. Trump’s biographer Michael Wolff is revealing two bombshell letters Harp wrote to Trump, calling him her “Guardian and Protector.”
There’s a copy of that letter at the link. I’m sure Melania is happy to be relieved of the spotlight. Although the trotted her out as damage control. People Magazine has this lede yesterday. “Melania Trump Says ‘I Heard You Missed Me’ at First Public Appearance in a Month. The first lady was last seen at the FIFA World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19.” Does she really believe that?
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