Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: December 21, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, just because, SCOTUS | Tags: AfD Germany, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, German terror, Joe Biden, news, politics, Social Security | 5 Comments

Happy Winter Solstice!!

Lesley Ivory, Dandelion, Snowdrop and the Devon Christmas Market

The House and Senate passed the bill to fund the government for 3 more months, thanks to Democratic votes. After unelected President Musk sabotaged the original bipartisan bill, it was touch and go, but the House and Senate both passed a compromise spending bill at the very last minute last night. The Hill: House passes bill to avert government shutdown after whirlwind funding fight.

The House approved legislation to avert a government shutdown hours before the deadline Friday, sending the bill to the Senate for consideration after a whirlwind week on Capitol Hill.

The chamber voted 366-34-1 in support of the legislation, clearing the two-thirds threshold needed for passage since GOP leadership brought the bill to the floor under the fast-track suspension of the rules process. All Democrats except one — Rep. Jasmine Crockett (Texas), who voted present — joined 170 Republicans in voting yes….

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), after the vote, lauded the legislation as “‘America First’ legislation because it allows us to be set up to deliver for the American people.”

“In January, we will make a sea change in Washington. President Trump will return to D.C. and to the White House, and we will have Republican control of the Senate and the House. Things are going to be very different around here. This was a necessary step to bridge the gap, to put us into that, that moment where we can put our fingerprints on the final decisions on spending for 2025,” he said.

The package — which Johnson rolled out shortly before the vote — would fund the government at current levels through March 14, extend the farm bill for one year and appropriate billions of dollars in disaster relief and assistance for farmers.

The legislation does not, however, include language to increase the debt limit, an eleventh-hour demand from President-elect Trump that hurled a curveball into the sensitive government funding negotiations.

By Jamie Morath

Late last night, the Senate also passed the bill, averting a Christmas government shutdown. The New York Times: Transition Updates: Senate Approves Stopgap Funding Bill Just After Shutdown Deadline.

The Senate approved legislation to avert a federal government shutdown just after a midnight deadline, capping a chaotic week in which President-elect Donald J. Trump blew up a bipartisan spending deal, only to see his own preferred plan collapse as Republicans defied him.

President Biden is expected to sign the measure, which would extend funding into mid-March and approve disaster relief for parts of the nation still recovering from storms. The White House said early Saturday that it was not instituting a government shutdown, even though funding to run the government technically ran out at midnight.

Thanks to Musk and his puppet Trump, funding for pediatric cancer research was cut out of the House bill, but the Senate passed the legislation in a separate bill last night. Bloomberg: Senate OKs Childhood Cancer Bill After Leaving Off Stopgap Deal.

The Senate passed legislation late Friday that would reauthorize pared-back funding for childhood cancer research after the bipartisan program briefly became a political flash point.

The Senate’s version of the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 was originally tacked on to a 1,547-page short-term stopgap government funding bill congressional leaders unveiled Tuesday. The program was dropped from the compromise measure after billionaire Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump claimed the deal contained unnecessary spending.

Democrats specifically highlighted the cut in cancer research to suggest the GOP favored tax cuts and the bottom line over sick children.

The Senate also passed a bill to broaden Social Security benefits. CBS News: Senate approves bill to expand Social Security to millions of Americans.

Legislation to expand Social Security benefits to millions of Americans passed the U.S. Senate early Saturday and is now headed to the desk of President Biden, who is expected to sign the measure into law.

Senators voted 76-20 for the Social Security Fairness Act, which would eliminate two federal policies that prevent nearly 3 million people, including police officers, firefighters, postal workers, teachers and others with a public pension, from collecting their full Social Security benefits. The legislation has been decades in the making, as the Senate held its first hearings into the policies in 2003.

“The Senate finally corrects a 50-year mistake,” proclaimed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, after senators approved the legislation at 12:15 a.m. Saturday.

The bill’s passage is “a monumental victory for millions of public service workers who have been denied the full benefits they’ve rightfully earned,” said Shannon Benton, executive director for the Senior Citizens League, which advocates for retirees and which has long pushed for the expansion of Social Security benefits. “This legislation finally restores fairness to the system and ensures the hard work of teachers, first responders and countless public employees is truly recognized.”

The vote came down to the wire, as the Senate looked to wrap up its current session. Senators rejected four amendments and a budgetary point of order late Friday night that would have derailed the measure, given the small window of time left to pass it.

Explanation of the Social Security Fairness Act:

The Social Security Fairness Act would repeal two federal policies — the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) — that reduce Social Security payments to nearly 3 million retirees.

That includes those who also collect pensions from state and federal jobs that aren’t covered by Social Security, including teachers, police officers and U.S. postal workers. The bill would also end a second provision that reduces Social Security benefits for those workers’ surviving spouses and family members. The WEP impacts about 2 million Social Security beneficiaries and the GPO nearly 800,000 retirees.

The measure, which passed the House in November, had 62 cosponsors when it was introduced in the Senate last year. Yet the bill’s bipartisan support eroded in recent days, with some Republican lawmakers voicing doubts due to its cost. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the proposed legislation would add a projected $195 billion to federal deficits over a decade.

Musk and his puppet learned that they aren’t in charge of legislating, not that that will stop President Musk from trying to boss everyone around. Eric Levitz at Vox: House Republicans just exposed the limits of Trump’s power. That bodes poorly for his agenda next year.

This week’s installment of the long-running saga, “House Republicans cannot govern,” will soon be forgotten. Elon Musk’s decision to blow up a bipartisan agreement to keep the government funded through the sheer power of posting (and the latent threat posed by his immense wealth), Donald Trump suddenly calling for the abolition of the debt limit, House Republican Chip Roy telling his colleagues that they lack “an ounce of self-respect” — all these dramas will surely give way to even more ridiculous ones in the new year.

But this week’s government funding fight also revealed something that could have profound implications for the next four years of governance: Trump’s power over the congressional GOP is quite limited.

This did not appear to be the case just days ago. On Wednesday, Trump joined Elon Musk in calling on House Republicans to scrap a bipartisan spending deal that would have kept the government funded through March, increased disaster relief, and funded pediatric cancer research, among many other things. Despite the fact that the GOP needs buy-in from the Senate’s Democratic majority in order to pass any legislation — and failure to pass a spending bill by Saturday would mean a government shutdown — House Republicans heeded Trump’s call to nix the carefully negotiated compromise.

If Trump had little difficulty persuading his co-partisans to block one spending bill, however, he proved less adept at getting them to support a different one.

On Thursday, in coordination with Trump, the House GOP unveiled a new funding bill, one shorn of all Democratic priorities. Over social media, the president-elect instructed his party to “vote ‘YES’ for this Bill, TONIGHT!” Then, 38 House Republicans voted against the legislation, which was more than enough to sink it amid nearly unified Democratic opposition.

House conservatives’ defiance of Trump is partly attributable to ideological differences. The president-elect’s objections to Wednesday’s bipartisan agreement were distinct from those of his donor Elon Musk or the House GOP’s hardliners. The latter disdained the spending bill’s page count and fiscal cost. Trump, by contrast, appeared more preoccupied with the legislation’s failure to increase — or eliminate — the debt limit.

Trump wanted the debt limit raised for his first two years so he could give more tax cuts to billionaires, but Republicans refused to go along with that. Read the rest at Vox.

The latest shock posting from President Musk was a tweet supporting a neo-Nazi party in Germany. Then last night a man who is a fan of both AfD and Musk perpetrated a deadly terror attack. Dakinikat wrote about this yesterday.

The Washington Post on the attack in Germany: German Christmas market attack toll rises to five dead, over 200 injured.

At least five people were killed and more than 200 wounded after a man plowed a car into a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg, German leaders said Saturday, hours after authorities identified the suspect as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who officials said had expressed anti-Islamic views.

Reiner Haseloff, the premier of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, confirmed the new toll during a visit to the scene of Friday’s incident. A child is among the dead.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who appeared alongside Haseloff, said almost 40 of the casualties “are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Getting Together, by Pat Scott

Scholz noted that the attack took place just days before Christmas, and that normally “there is no place more peaceful or cheerful than a Christmas market.”

“What a terrible act it is, to kill and injure so many people with such brutality,” Scholz said, adding that it is important that the country “stays together” and did “not allow those who wish to sow hate” to do so.

The suspect, Abdulmohsen, who arrived in Germany in 2006, had expressed anti-Islam views and described himself as a Saudi dissident, according to a German official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters Saturday the investigation was ongoing, and “we can only say with certainty that the perpetrator was obviously Islamophobic,” according to Zeit newspaper and Reuters news agency.

CNN has more details about the attack in live updates: Saudi man arrested following German market attack.

I wonder how long Trump is going to put up with Musk stealing his spotlight? The guy shows up wherever Trump is and whomever he’s meeting with. Check this out from Jacob Bryant at The Wrap (via Yahoo News): Elon Musk Crashing Trump’s Jeff Bezos Dinner at Mar-a-Lago Mocked as ‘Deranged.’

The jealousy bone might appeared to have bitten Elon Musk Wednesday, as he reportedly crashed the widely publicized dinner between President-elect Donald Trump and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago hosted the dinner dinner for the politician and billionaire, but the two didn’t have privacy for long before Musk appeared. According to the New York Times, the X CEO “was not initially expected to be part of the dinner but joined as it was underway.”

Reactions online to the apparent power move were swift and cutting, with late night hosts and social media commentators mocking Musk as “deranged” and “creepy,” among other unflattering conclusions. The tech mogul was dragged up and down, with many saying it seemed like he was worried about his ongoing “bromance” with the president-elect.

“This two-week bromance is going to fall apart more spectacularly than any in history,” journalist and author Seth Abramson wrote on Bluesky. “Elon Musk is so deranged and creepy — and such a clueless stalker — that he actually crashed a private dinner between Donald Trump and Musk rival Jeff Bezos. I can’t imagine how livid that made both Trump and Bezos.”

He continued his post: “What it also confirms is that Musk not only has no boundaries and believes himself Trump’s superior but has no intention of permitting any other plutocrat to squeeze more juice out of Trump than him. Showing up at that dinner uninvited is a power play intended to cow both other oligarchs and Trump.”

Musk’s choice to crash Trump and Bezos’ meal was a dinner bell to the various late night hosts out there, as well. Just about every single one of them had a joke or two to crack at Musk’s expense this week, with Seth Meyer’s warning Trump he got “‘Cable Guy’-ed” – a reference to the 1996 Jim Carrey stalker comedy.

“Oh my god, you let him do you a favor, and now you can’t get rid of him — you got ‘Cable Guy’-ed by Elon Musk,” Meyers said. “Every time you look out that little keyhole, he gonna be there.”

Jimmy Fallon pondered how these two rival billionaires could claim custody of the president-elect. The answer came from another ’90s classic: “Air Bud.”

“To settle who he loves more, Elon and Bezos are going to put Trump down in the middle of the room and see who he goes to first: ‘All right, here boy!’” Fallon joked.

Finally, Have you heard about the new information on Clarence Thomas’s corruption? The Guardian: New ethics inquiry details more trips by Clarence Thomas paid for by wealthy benefactors.

A nearly two-year investigation by Democratic senators of supreme court ethics details more luxury travel by Justice Clarence Thomas and urges Congress to establish a way to enforce a new code of conduct.

Any movement on the issue appears unlikely as Republicans prepare to take control of the Senate in January, underscoring the hurdles in imposing restrictions on a separate branch of government even as public confidence in the court has fallen to record lows.

The 93-page report released on Saturday by the Democratic majority of the Senate judiciary committee found additional travel taken in 2021 by Thomas but not reported on his annual financial disclosure form: a private jet flight to New York’s Adirondacks in July and a jet and yacht trip to New York City sponsored by billionaire Harlan Crow in October, one of more than two dozen times detailed in the report that Thomas took luxury travel and gifts from wealthy benefactors.

The court adopted its first code of ethics in 2023, but it leaves compliance to each of the nine justices.

“The highest court in the land can’t have the lowest ethical standards,” the committee’s chair, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, said in a statement. He has long called for an enforceable code of ethics.

Republicans have said the investigation is a way to undermine the conservative majority court, and all the Republicans on the committee protested against the subpoenas authorized for Crow and others as part of the investigation. No Republicans signed on to the final report, and no formal report from them was expected.

Thomas has said that he was not required to disclose the trips that he and his wife, Ginni, took with Crow because the big donor is a close friend of the family and disclosure of that type of travel was not previously required. The new ethics code does explicitly require it, and Thomas has since gone back and reported some travel. Crow has maintained that he has never spoken with his friend about pending matters before the court….

The investigation found that Thomas has accepted gifts and travel from wealthy benefactors worth more than $4.75m by some estimates since his 1991 confirmation and failed to disclose much of it. “The number, value and extravagance of the gifts accepted by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history,” according to the report.

Read the rest at The Guardian.

Charlie Savage at The New York Times: Justice Thomas Did Not Disclose Additional Trips, Democrats Say.

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two additional trips from a billionaire patron than have previously come to light, Senate Democrats revealed on Saturday after conducting a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court.

The findings were part of a 93-page report released by Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee along with about 800 pages of documents. It said the two trips, both of which had been previously unknown to the public, took place in 2021 and were provided by Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a frequent patron of Justice Thomas’s.

One trip took place that July by private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, N.Y., where Justice Thomas stayed at Mr. Crow’s upstate retreat for five days. The other came in October, when Mr. Crow hosted Justice Thomas overnight in New York on his yacht after flying him from the District of Columbia to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue.

The disclosures were one of the few new revelations in a report that otherwise largely summarized information about largess accepted by justices — and failures to disclose it — that had already become public. Justice Thomas had not disclosed the trips, even after refiling some of his past financial forms, and the committee learned about them through a subpoena to Mr. Crow, the report said.

Read more details about the investigation at the NYT link.

That’s all I have for you today; I’ll be back here on Wednesday, December 25, Christmas Day. Best wishes to all of you.

Wednesday Reads

Posted: December 18, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, just because, kakistocracy, Surreality | Tags: Donald Trump, Kash Patel enemies list, listless Democrats, Liz Cheney, politics | 9 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Max Ernst, The Triumph of Surrealism

Recently, Dakinikat has been writing about the notion of kakistocracy, government of the worst people. That is obviously where we are headed with Trump and his appointments of completely inappropriate and incompetent people to his cabinet, White House staff, and ambassadorships. The latest example is his nomination of Herschel Walker as Ambassador to the Bahamas.

Anyway, there’s a very interesting article on Kakistocracy at Lawfare by Alan Z. Rozenshtein: The Constitution of Kakistocracy.

The term “kakistocracy” (rule by the worst) emerged from obscurity during the first Trump administration. The word, which was previously used to describe troubled foreign governments, gained mainstream usage as critics pointed to controversial appointments such as Tom Price at the Department of Health and Human Services and Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency—officials whose qualifications and conduct drew widespread criticism.

With President-elect Donald Trump’s imminent return to power, “kakistocracy” is back in public conversation. As the Economist noted by making it “word of the year,” Google searches for the term spiked in November: first after Trump’s victory, then after he nominated controversial officials for cabinet positions, including Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of health and human services, and again when Gaetz withdrew his nomination amid criticism. And Trump’s recent nomination of Kash Patel to lead the FBI has only intensified concerns about an impending kakistocracy.

More than just a problem of policy or politics, kakistocracy undermines a core constitutional principle: Functioning democracies need qualified individuals to hold public trust. Trump’s nominees threaten key constitutional norms in unprecedented ways: through their flaws, their number, and Trump’s willingness to skirt the procedural safeguards that ensure the Senate’s role in the appointments process. And like with so many of Trump’s norm-busting actions in his first term, constraints will mostly have to come from the political process rather than the legal one….

The Constitution’s framers were obsessed with the quality of American public officials. Thomas Jefferson extolled “a natural aristocracy among men[,] the grounds of [which] are virtue [and] talents. … [T]he natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.” He argued, “[M]ay we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristo[crats] into the offices of government?” Similarly, in the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton recognized that personnel is policy, predicting that “judicious choice of men for filling the offices of the Union” would determine the “character of its administration,” while John Jay predicted that “when once an efficient national government is established, the best men in the country will not only consent to serve, but also will generally be appointed to manage it.”

The founders expected presidents to appoint competent and distinguished candidates for roles in their administrations.

Unsurprisingly, the Constitution carefully addresses the appointment of government officials. First, it makes the president primarily responsible for appointments. This decision—to have a single person, rather than a collective body, nominate officials—both strengthens the executive and, as Hamilton explained, increases the quality of the appointments, since having a single individual in charge increases their political accountability in case of bad appointees. In contrast, with a committee of appointments, “while an unbounded field for cabal and intrigue lies open, all idea of responsibility is lost.”

By Leonora Carrington

Second, the Constitution requires Senate consent to the appointment of high-level officers, subject to the limited exception of temporary appointments when the Senate is in recess. Hamilton argued that this limitation on the president’s appointment power would be an “excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity.”

Beyond the constitutional procedures of presidential nomination and Senate confirmation, the appointments process functions, as do so many parts of the Constitution, less as a matter of law than of norms. The expectation is that the president will nominate competent officials to run the executive branch and the Senate will exercise its confirmation power responsibly and block bad presidential nominees….

Trump’s nominations represent an unprecedented triple assault on constitutional appointment norms: First, many are unqualified or hostile to their agencies’ missions. Second, rather than making a few controversial picks, Trump has flooded the zone, nominating an entire slate of problematic candidates that burdens the Senate’s capacity for proper vetting. And third, Trump has signaled willingness to circumvent the confirmation process through legally dubious tactics such as forced Senate adjournment. Together, these moves threaten to transform the appointments process from a constitutional safeguard into a vehicle for installing loyalists regardless of competence.

There’s much more to read at Lawfare.

One of Trump’s goals in appointing his loyalist cabinet is to carry out his revenge against anyone who criticized him in the past or present. Kash Patel, whom Trump nominated as FBI director, already has an enemies list. Here’s the list, as posted at The New Republic:

Michael Atkinson (former inspector general of the intelligence community)
Lloyd Austin (defense secretary under President Joe Biden)
Brian Auten (supervisory intelligence analyst, FBI)
James Baker (not the former secretary of state; this James Baker is former general counsel for the FBI and former deputy general counsel at Twitter)
Bill Barr (former attorney general under Trump)
John Bolton (former national security adviser under Trump)
Stephen Boyd (former chief of legislative affairs, FBI)
Joe Biden (president of the United States)
John Brennan (former CIA director under President Barack Obama)
John Carlin (acting deputy attorney general, previously ran DOJ’s national security division under Trump)
Eric Ciaramella (former National Security Council staffer, Obama and Trump administrations)
Pat Cippolone (former White House counsel under Trump)
James Clapper (Obama’s director of national intelligence)
Hillary Clinton (former secretary of state and presidential candidate)
James Comey (former FBI director)
Elizabeth Dibble (former deputy chief of mission, U.S. Embassy, London)
Mark Esper (former secretary of defense under Trump)
Alyssa Farah (former director of strategic communications under Trump)
Evelyn Farkas (former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia under Obama)
Sarah Isgur Flores (former DOJ head of communications under Trump)
Merrick Garland (attorney general under Biden)
Stephanie Grisham (former press secretary under Trump)
Kamala Harris (vice president under Biden; former presidential candidate)
Gina Haspel (CIA director under Trump)
Fiona Hill (former staffer on the National Security Council)
Curtis Heide (FBI agent)
Eric Holder (former FBI director under Obama)
Robert Hur (special counsel who investigated Biden over mishandling of classified documents)
Cassidy Hutchinson (aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows)
Nina Jankowicz (former executive director, Disinformation Governance Board, under Biden)
Lois Lerner (former IRS director under Obama)
Loretta Lynch (former attorney general under Obama)
Charles Kupperman (former deputy national security adviser under Trump)
Gen. Kenneth Mackenzie, retired (former commander of United States Central Command)
Andrew McCabe (former FBI deputy director under Trump)
Ryan McCarthy (former secretary of the Army under Trump)
Mary McCord (former acting assistant attorney general for national security under Obama)
Denis McDonough (former chief of staff for Obama, secretary of veterans affairs under Biden)
Gen. Mark Milley, retired (former chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff)
Lisa Monaco (deputy attorney general under Biden)
Sally Myer (former supervisory attorney, FBI)
Robert Mueller (former FBI director, special counsel for Russiagate)
Bruce Ohr (former associate deputy attorney general under Obama and Trump)
Nellie Ohr (wife of Bruce Ohr and former CIA employee)
Lisa Page (former legal counsel for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe at FBI under Obama and Trump; exchanged texts about Trump with Peter Strzok)
Pat Philbin (former deputy White House counsel under Trump)
John Podesta (former counselor to Obama; senior adviser to Biden on climate policy)
Samatha Power (former ambassador to the United Nations under Obama, administrator of AID under Biden)
Bill Priestap (former assistant director for counterintelligence, FBI, under Obama)
Susan Rice (former national security adviser under Obama, director of the Domestic Policy Council under Biden)
Rod Rosenstein (former deputy attorney general under Trump)
Peter Strzok (former deputy assistant director for counterintelligence, FBI, under Obama and Trump; exchanged texts about Trump with Lisa Page)
Jake Sullivan (national security adviser under President Joe Biden)
Michael Sussman (former legal representative, Democratic National Committee)
Miles Taylor (former DHS official under Trump; penned New York Times op-ed critical of Trump under the byline, “Anonymous”)
Timothy Thibault (former assistant special agent, FBI)
Andrew Weissman (Mueller’s deputy in Russiagate probe)
Alexander Vindman (former National Security Council director for European affairs)
Christopher Wray (FBI director under Trump and Biden; Trump nominated Patel to replace him even though Wray’s term doesn’t expire until August 2027)
Sally Yates (former deputy attorney general under Obama and, briefly, acting attorney general under Trump)

Andrew Egger writes at The Bulwark: House GOP to Kash Patel: Do Liz First.

Last week, I noted with alarm that House Republicans were shrugging off—or even approving of—Donald Trump wanting to jail some of their past and current colleagues who served on the January 6th Committee. As it turns out, I underestimated their bloodthirstiness.

Yesterday, a key House Republican released a report directly calling for a criminal investigation into former Rep. Liz Cheney for her committee work.

The report came from Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), whom House Republicans tapped two years ago to spearhead the House Administration Committee’s probe into the actions of the January 6th Committee itself. It was clear from the start that Loudermilk’s primary goal was to shift blame for the attempted insurrection away from Trump. His report works plenty hard at that.

False Profits by Mear One

What wasn’t expected was what Loudermilk would bring forward as his number-one “top finding”: “Former Representative Liz Cheney colluded with ‘star witness’ Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge. Former Representative Liz Cheney should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering based on the new information about her communication.”

Testimony from Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s one-time chief of staff Mark Meadows, featured prominently in the January 6th Committee’s work. Loudermilk focuses in on the fact that Hutchinson, who by her own account originally intended to keep her head down and clam up—even asking Team Trump for a lawyer to represent her through her interactions with the committee—had a change of heart midway through. Bracing to break with Trumpworld, Hutchinson reached out to Cheney for advice, and they had several conversations without Hutchinson’s Trump-issued lawyer present.

“Representative Cheney’s influence on Hutchinson is apparent from that point forward by her dramatic change in testimony and eventual claims against President Trump using second- and thirdhand accounts,” the report reads.

This is incredibly weak ~~milk~~tea on any level. Hutchinson clearly intended to open up to Cheney’s committee before Cheney ever spoke with her. That’s obvious from the fact that it was Hutchinson who initiated the contact, not Cheney. The idea that this amounted to witness-tampering on Cheney’s behalf would be too stupid to entertain if not for the fact that the country’s most powerful people are trying to pass it off with a straight face.

In a statement, Cheney denounced Loudermilk’s report as “a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.” “No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge,” she added, “would take this seriously.”

Andrew Howard at Politico: Trump: Liz Cheney ‘could be in a lot of trouble’ over Jan. 6 committee.

President-elect Donald Trump reignited his longstanding feud with former Rep. Liz Cheney, saying she “could be in a lot of trouble” following a House subcommittee report accusing her of wrongdoing while serving on the panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Trump’s post cites a 128-page report released Tuesday by the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee chaired by GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk that accuses Cheney of colluding with top witnesses and calls for her to be investigated for witness tampering. “Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee,” Trump wrote. “Which states that ‘numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be investigated by the FBI.’”

The report also accuses members of the Jan. 6 committee of withholding evidence and failing to preserve records from its investigation. It places blame for the attack on a “series of intelligence, security, and leadership failures at several levels and numerous entities” rather than Trump, who urged his supporters to march on the Capitol that day during an earlier rally near the White House.

Cheney responded:

In a statement, Cheney defended her work while taking a shot at Trump.

“January 6th showed Donald Trump for who he really is — a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave,” Cheney said in a statement.

“Now, Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘Interim Report’ intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did.”

This is frightening. Trump isn’t even waiting until he takes office to try to prosecute anyone who opposes him.

David Smith at The Guardian: Trump planning to target progressive non-profits, US watchdog warns.

Donald Trump and his Republican allies are planning to target progressive groups they perceive as political enemies in a sign of deepening “authoritarianism”, a US watchdog has warned.

The president-elect could potentially use the justice department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to target non-profits and researchers, launch politically motivated investigations and pass legislation to restrict their activities.

Playing God, Troy Jacobson

“Trump has made it clear that he plans to use his second term to attack the progressive ecosystem and his perceived enemies,” Adrienne Watson of the Congressional Integrity Project (CIP) told the Guardian. “This is a worrying progression of Trump’s authoritarianism that would undermine our democracy.”

The CIP announced on Wednesday that it will aim to counter such abuses of power with a new initiative to defend progressive groups and individuals. The Civic Defense Project will be led by Watson, a former White House and Democratic National Committee spokesperson.

Fears have been raised by the Trump second term agenda’s considerable overlap with Project 2025, a policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation think tank that includes plans to attack non-profits, researchers and civil society groups that have challenged election denial narratives.

Activists say the threat extends beyond political investigations and includes leveraging government agencies such as the justice department and IRS to investigate, prosecute and shut down organisations that oppose the administration’s policies.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: December 14, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, just because | Tags: Chris Wray, Democrats, Donald Trump, FBI, Kash Patel, media, news, politics, Robert Kennedy Jr., Tech Bros | 6 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

‘Louisa Cat Sleeps Late (1929) from the’ The Fairy Caravan, Beatrix Potter

We have just 37 days until Trump takes over the presidency. How bad will it get? Probably much worse than we can begin to imagine right now.

Lots of rich and powerful people are obviously scared to death, because they are obeying in advance. Chris Wray is quitting as FBI director, paving the way for Trump sycophant Kash Patel, who wants to completely shut down the FBI’s intelligence division. Tech bros are donating to the Inauguration fund.

Even some Democrats are indicating openness to some of Trump’s insane appointments. Are any Democrats planning to fight back? I hope so, but it’s not clear right now.

Here’s the latest:

The New York Times: In Display of Fealty, Tech Industry Curries Favor With Trump.

The $1 million donations came gradually — and then all at once.

Meta. Amazon. OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Each of these Silicon Valley companies or their leaders promised to support President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural committee with seven-figure checks over the past week, often accompanied by a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee.

The procession of tech leaders who traveled to hobnob with Mr. Trump face-to-face included Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Sergey Brin, a Google founder, who together dined with Mr. Trump on Thursday. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, shared a meal with Mr. Trump on Friday. And Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, planned to meet with Mr. Trump in the next few days.

This was the week when many tech companies and their top executives, as reluctant as they may have been, acknowledged the reality of getting business done in Mr. Trump’s Washington. With their donations, visits and comments, they joined a party that has already raged for a month, as a cohort of influential Silicon Valley billionaires, led by Elon Musk, began running parts of Mr. Trump’s transition after endorsing him in the campaign.

While businesses frequently try to get on an incoming president’s good side, the frenzy of tech activity stood out from other industries. Until President Obama’s administration, the tech industry had largely stayed aloof from politics. Some wrote just small checks for Mr. Trump’s first inauguration.

Now the bread-breaking with Mr. Trump has become highly public. Meta and Amazon, whose founders had previously been criticized by Mr. Trump, said they would donate $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund this week. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, the high-profile artificial intelligence start-up, said on Friday that a $1 million donation to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund would come from him personally.

“President Trump will lead our country into the age of A.I., and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” Mr. Altman said in a statement.

Nonprofit contributions to inaugural committees, which host patriotic-themed events around Jan. 20, are low-stakes, timeworn ways for companies to seek favor under the guise of patriotism without being pegged as overly partisan actors.

Other tech leaders have also praised Mr. Trump. Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce and the owner of Time Magazine, posted on X on Thursday that it was “a time of great promise for our nation,” after Time awarded Mr. Trump its coveted “Person of the Year” designation.

Now Apple has joined the crowd of suck-ups. Only Microsoft is holding out.

The Hill: Apple CEO visits Mar-a-Lago, joining list of tech execs seemingly courting Trump.

Apple CEO Tim Cook visited Mar-a-Lago on Friday, joining a growing list of tech executives that are seemingly courting President-elect Trump ahead of his return to the White House.

The president-elect and Cook had dinner at Trump’s Florida resort in West Palm Beach, multiple outlets reported. The meeting marked their first interaction since their call two months ago….

Mother Cat and Kittens, Beatrix Potter

The president-elect said in mid-October during his appearance on Patrick Bet-David’s podcast that the Apple executive talked to him about fines the European Union imposed on the company.

“Then two hours ago, three hours ago, he called me,” Trump said. “He said, ‘I’d like to talk to you about something.’ ‘What?’ He said, ‘The European Union has just fined us $15 billion.’ That’s a lot.” [….]

Cook was one of the many tech leaders to congratulate Trump on his win over Vice President Harris in last month’s contest.

“We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to help make sure the United States continues to lead with and be fueled by ingenuity, innovation, and creativity,” he wrote in a post on social platform X.

I imagine a hefty donation will be forthcoming.

Media owners are also caving to Trump in advance. Jeff Bezos ordered the Washington Post not to publish a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong did the same thing. Now Soon-Shiong has gone further.

The Independent: LA Times billionaire owner killed op-ed that was critical of Trump’s cabinet picks, report says.

Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong killed an opinion column that was critical of President-elect Donald Trump’s recent Cabinet picks, telling his paper’s editorial board that it could only publish the piece if it also ran an editorial with an opposing view, according to The New York Times.

The spiked column was set to be published in the outlet’s Sunday newspaper and website on November 24. Soon-Shiong intervened just hours before the op-ed was scheduled to be sent to the printer, prompting the editors to pull the piece as the deadline approached.

According to the NY Times, the column was headlined: “Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should be.” The editorial board decided that after the incoming president had announced a slew of controversial picks, many of which the board members were concerned about, it would have one of its writers pen a piece calling on the Senate to take its job of confirming nominees seriously.

“In addition to saying that the Senate should follow its traditional process, the editorial criticized several of Mr. Trump’s picks as being unfit for their proposed roles, including former Fox News host Pete Hegseth and former presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” The New York Times noted.

After Soon-Shiong’s intervention led to the editorial being pulled, the paper’s editors scrambled to find another column to fill the suddenly open slot. Ultimately, they decided on an already written piece by outgoing editorial board member Karin Klein that took a more sympathetic stance on Trump. That column was headlined, “Trump has a chance to be a true education president.”

CNN’s Reliable Sources reported on Friday morning that besides Soon-Shiong spiking the editorial, several recent opinion section headlines were also “softened” or “made more bland” by editors concerned that “anything too harsh would get rejected” by the billionaire owner. “For the most part, we’re now just writing about state and local issues,” a source told CNN.

What about the Democrats? I could find only one story about Democrats pushing back slightly. Axios: Inside Democrats’ emerging Trump inauguration boycott.

More than a dozen congressional Democrats plan to sit out President-elect Trump’s inauguration, and many more are anxiously grappling with whether to attend, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Not every Democrat skipping the ceremony will do so to protest Trump — but a formal boycott is materializing as a first act of resistance against the incoming president.

Tabitha Twichit, Beatrix Potter

For many Democrats, the scars of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol remain fresh in the mind, marking Trump as a threat to democracy.
“For somebody who he said he’s going to lock me up, I don’t see the excitement in going to see his inauguration,” former Jan. 6 committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told Axios.

State of play: Martin Luther King Jr. Day coinciding with the Jan. 20 inaugural ceremony gives many Democrats an easy out, though others planning to stay away cited a distaste for inaugurations, a loathing of Trump — and even fears for their safety.

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said that as a Latina, she doesn’t “feel safe coming” with Trump’s supporters pouring in for the ceremony. “I’m not going to physically be in D.C. on that day,” she told Axios.

Similarly, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said that attending MLK Day events instead “makes sense, because why risk any chaos that might be up here?”

For other members, the reasoning is more mundane: Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) “almost never attends inaugurations” and has only been to two during his 28 years in office, his spokesperson told Axios.

The latest on Trump appointments:

Last week, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Kash Patel began visiting Senators to push for their nominations to be approved.

On Kennedy, after yesterday, Senators will need to think carefully about how they feel about vaccines to prevent childhood diseases. Yesterday, Dakinikat posted about a top adviser to Kennedy who wants to get reverse approval for the polio vaccine.

Philip Bump at The Washington Post: When depicting the government as bad is more important than stopping polio.

When debates over the efficacy of vaccines emerge, as they increasingly do, there is a go-to example offered: the response to polio in the mid-20th century.

From 1910 to 1950, more than 376,000 Americans were afflicted with polio, with nearly 49,000 dying from the paralyzing disease. Then, in 1955, the polio vaccine was announced and approved. From 1956 to 1970, there were about 41,200 infections and about 2,000 deaths. From 1971 to 2000, 287 cases and 102 deaths. Since then? Essentially nothing at all.

This is why polio is such a good example. There was a lot of polio, with 1 out of every 2,700 Americans infected in 1952. Then there was a vaccine, and now there’s hardly any polio at all. So little, in fact, that one case that was identified in New York in 2022 earned national news headlines.

Despite the data, even the polio vaccine has not escaped the ire of the anti-vaccine movement. In 2022, a lawyer named Aaron Siri filed a citizen petition with the U.S. government seeking to block distribution of the polio vaccine for children until “a properly controlled and properly powered double-blind trial of sufficient duration is conducted to assess the safety of this product,” the New York Times reported Friday. It was one of more than a dozen vaccines Siri sought to block.

Siri, as you probably guessed, is also a longtime adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s selection to run the Department of Health and Human Services. In fact, the Times reports, Siri has been aiding Kennedy as he vets potential administration staffers.

Kennedy himself has been similarly critical of vaccines, making debunked claims about vaccine safety and pushing for restrictions on their use. He has been a prominent member of the anti-vaccine community for years but generally offered his views from the political sidelines.

Kennedy’s views are a mishmash of they’re-wrong-and-I’m-right assertions that span the gamut of credibility offered under the appealing banner of “making America healthy.” But the mishmash means that a lot of obviously dubious stuff gets mixed in with the valid stuff. The valid stuff includes Americans’ eating habits, which are obviously not great. The dubious stuff includes his embrace of the idea that airplane condensation trails are something worthy of concern. And vaccines, thanks to the pandemic and thanks to the long-standing anti-vaccine movement, are a valid element of public health that he presents as dubious.

Samuel Whiskers, Betrix Potter

In the early 1950’s, I was in elementary school in Lawrence, Kansas. My school was included in the pilot program for the Salk (polio) vaccine. One of my friends in the first grade had gotten polio and had to wear leg braces. This disease in no joke. I’m very grateful to have gotten that vaccine in early childhood. I had other childhood diseases–mumps, measles, German measles–before vaccines were available. I never had chicken pox. I think it’s possible that my hearing problem–which was first diagnosed in my early 30s–developed because of mumps or measles.

Apoorva Mandavilli at The New York Times: Are Childhood Vaccines ‘Overloading’ the Immune System? No.

It’s an idea as popular as it is incorrect: American babies now receive too many vaccines, which overwhelm their immune systems and lead to conditions like autism.

This theory has been repeated so often that it has permeated the mainstream, echoed by President-elect Donald J. Trump and his pick to be the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is, like, 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s been for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Kennedy on a call in July. “And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically — I’ve seen it too many times.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump returned to the theme, saying Mr. Kennedy would investigate whether childhood vaccines caused autism, even though dozens of rigorous studies have already explored and dismissed that theory.

“I think somebody has to find out,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But the idea that today’s vaccines are overtaxing children’s immune systems is fundamentally flawed, experts said. Vaccines today are cleaner and more efficient, and they contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system — by orders of magnitude — than they did decades ago.

What’s more, the immune reactions produced by vaccines are “minuscule” compared with those that children experience on a daily basis, said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford University who advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines.

Sorry to be judgmental, but Trump is a complete idiot, and so are the people who elected him.

Children harbor trillions of bacteria, more than the number of their own cells, and encounter pathogens everywhere — from caregivers and playmates; in kitchens, bathrooms and playgrounds; on toys, towels and sponges.

“That’s just the normal course of growing up, is to have fevers and develop immunity to all of the organisms that are in the environment around you,” Dr. Maldonado said. “We are built to withstand that.”

By Beatrix Potter

A vaccine’s power comes from the so-called antigens it contains — bits of a pathogen, often proteins, that elicit an immune reaction in the body.

Children harbor trillions of bacteria, more than the number of their own cells, and encounter pathogens everywhere — from caregivers and playmates; in kitchens, bathrooms and playgrounds; on toys, towels and sponges.

“That’s just the normal course of growing up, is to have fevers and develop immunity to all of the organisms that are in the environment around you,” Dr. Maldonado said. “We are built to withstand that.”

A vaccine’s power comes from the so-called antigens it contains — bits of a pathogen, often proteins, that elicit an immune reaction in the body.

For once, Mitch McConnell is the good guy in this fight, because he is a polio survivor. The New York Times: McConnell Defends Polio Vaccine, an Apparent Warning to Kennedy.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader and a survivor of polio, issued a pointed statement in support of the polio vaccine on Friday, hours after The New York Times reported that the lawyer for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has petitioned federal regulators to withdraw the vaccine from the market.

Without naming Mr. Kennedy, Mr. McConnell suggested that the petition could jeopardize his confirmation to be health secretary in the incoming Trump administration.

“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” said Mr. McConnell, who is stepping down as his party’s Senate leader next month but could remain a pivotal vote in Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

Mr. Kennedy has said he does not want to take away anyone’s vaccines. His lawyer, Aaron Siri, filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit run by Mr. Kennedy’s former communications director. Mr. Siri is advising Mr. Kennedy as he vets candidates for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Mr. McConnell, 82, of Kentucky, contracted polio as a child, more than a decade before the vaccine became widely available. When his left leg was paralyzed, his mother took him for treatment in Warm Springs, Ga., at the same treatment center frequented by another famous polio survivor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On Kash Patel’s nomination for FBI director:

The New York Times: Patel Distorts Justice Dept. Benghazi Inquiry, Inflating His Role.

Kash Patel, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be F.B.I. director, often burnishes his credentials as a former prosecutor even as he portrays law enforcement agencies as an inept and politicized “deep state.” A critical piece of that narrative is the investigation into the 2012 attack on a diplomatic compound and a C.I.A. annex in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.

Mr. Patel, who worked at the Justice Department from early 2014 to 2017, was involved in that inquiry. He described it in his 2023 memoir, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” and in a conversation on a September podcast of “The Shawn Ryan Show.”

Three Little Kittens, Beatrix Potter

But he has both exaggerated his own importance and misleadingly distorted the department’s broader effort, according to public documents and interviews with several current and former law enforcement officials familiar with the matter. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

“By the time the D.O.J. was moving in full force to compile evidence and bring prosecutions against the Benghazi terrorists, I was leading the prosecution’s efforts at Main Justice in Washington, D.C.”
— “Government Gangsters”

“I was the main Justice lead prosecutor for Benghazi for awhile.”
— “The Shawn Ryan Show”

Mr. Patel has repeatedly made it sound as if he led the government’s overall effort to investigate and prosecute militants involved in the 2012 attack.

As Mr. Patel himself acknowledges, he worked at the department’s Washington headquarters, or “Main Justice,” and he did not remain for the duration of the investigation.

In fact, Mr. Patel, a former public defender, was a prosecutor in the department’s counterterrorism section, where his assignments included work on the Benghazi investigation. But the section only supported the investigation, which was run by a team of prosecutors at the office of the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, along with agents and analysts at the F.B.I.

Mr. Patel took a junior position in the counterterrorism section in late January 2014 — well after the Benghazi investigation started. He left the department in April 2017, about six months before the first Benghazi case went to trial.

A spokesman for the Trump transition did not say for how much of that period he was working on the Benghazi investigation. But Mr. Patel was responsible for handling the section’s contribution to the interagency effort for only part of his time there, the officials familiar with the matter said.

Haley Fuchs at Politico: Assessing Patel’s confirmation chances.

Trump loyalist Kash Patel’s chances to become the head of the FBI are looking better and better.

This week, Patel held meetings with 17 Republican senators, including Utah Sen.-elect John Curtis, around Capitol Hill, many of whom publicly indicated their support for his nomination. The resignation of his would-be predecessor Christopher Wray also smoothed the path for the president-elect’s pick to helm the agency after his confirmation, and Trump world is confident in the road forward.

Asked in the Capitol Hill hallways about Wray’s decision, Patel promised he would “be ready to go on Day One.”

But the Trump transition was prepared for more pushback, as the initial outlook on the nomination was murky. Patel has been known to spout conspiracies about the 2020 election, pushed supplements that he claimed could reverse the Covid-19 vaccine, and suggested he may prosecute journalists. Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr reportedly once said Patel would become deputy FBI director “over my dead body.” Patel has suggested he would shut down the FBI headquarters to create a “museum of the deep state” and promised to target political opponents.

The incoming Trump team was “braced for impact,” said one transition official granted anonymity to speak candidly, adding, “We were ready for this to be more of a fight. … It hasn’t turned out that way.”

Reacting to the news of Wray’s resignation, Republican senators said that Patel would have been confirmed regardless of whether Wray left on his own volition. And if he had stayed, Wray was inevitably going to be fired on Day 1, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) added.

Greg Sargent at The New Republic: How GOP Senators Are Secretly Getting Ready to Surrender to Trump.

It’s largely passing unnoticed, but Republicans are quietly laying the groundwork to give their full blessing to one of Donald Trump’s more corrupt schemes: Unleashing law enforcement on his political enemies without cause once he’s sworn in again next year. That capitulation is already underway, with an argument they’re beginning to put forward to smooth the path for Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel.

The New York Times has a big piece reporting that Senate Republicans are growing “warm” to Patel, who has explicitly declared that in Trump’s second term, a range of enemies of Trump should be prosecuted for no discernible legal reason whatsoever.

Why are they warming to Patel despite the obvious threat he poses? The Times reports that Republicans now harbor a “deep distrust” of the FBI, that they see it as “rotted by corruption and partisanship,” and that all this has become a new “Republican orthodoxy”:

It is the culmination of a remarkable turnabout that has been years in the making for a party that traditionally had given unyielding support for the nation’s law enforcement agencies.

Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma claims that Patel will “clean out the FBI.” And Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina insists he’lll restore the bureau’s “integrity.” In short, we’re meant to believe GOP senators back Patel because he will reform a badly corrupted agency in a way that will better serve our country.

Here’s the thing: All of that is nonsense. Most Republicans don’t actually think those things about the FBI, and they don’t actually believe Trump picked Patel to reform the bureau to address those alleged problems. Nor is there any reason to treat this as any kind of sincere, momentous ideological shift.

We should treat that very idea—that Republicans have in some principled sense begun to deeply question the FBI’s institutional role—as itself being spin. If anything, the GOP embrace of Patel carries echoes of the corrupted, secretive, intrusive FBI of the pre-Watergate days, and the new reformist pose is being hatched as fake cover to support Patel later despite what Republicans all know to be true—that Trump has selected him to transform the agency into a weapon against his enemies.

Wednesday Reads

Posted: December 11, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: "presidential immunity", Donald Trump | Tags: Alvin Bragg, Bettina Anderson, Brian Thompson, chronic back paint, Donald Trump Jr., gossip, health insurance, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Luigi Mangione, separation of powers, United Health Care | 3 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

There’s not a lot of exciting politics news today; and that is probably a good thing, considering how bad things are looking for the country in the long run. We only have a little more than a month until Trump moves into the White House and tries to become president for life.

Have you heard the latest gossip? Donald Trump, Jr., who is still engaged to Kimberly Guilfoyle, has a new girlfriend.

Olivia Craighead at The Cut: Don Jr. Keeps Stepping Out With a Woman Who’s Not Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Is there trouble in paradise for one of America’s most unsettling couples? Sure seems like it. Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle may be on the rocks, if the Daily Mail is to be believed. While the fiancés were spotted together about a week after the election, the tabloid has been all over what looks like Don Jr.’s new relationship with Bettina Anderson, a Republican socialite who lives in Florida. So what’s going on here?

Let’s back up a few months. In September, the Daily Mail reported that Don Jr. and Anderson had been “spotted canoodling” during a brunch date the month prior. According to their sources, this new fling was “the talk of Palm Beach.” One source said that Anderson reached over “to plant a sexy kiss” on Don Jr. three times during their meal at the Honor Bar.

“She seemed totally smitten with Don — and he with her,” the source told the Daily Mail.

Bettina Anderson

Guilfoyle was probably shocked to learn this information, right? Well, not so fast. The day after the first Daily Mail reports, friends of the former Fox News host told the tabloid that she might have had an idea of what was going on.

“Kimberly either didn’t know about Bettina — or didn’t want to know. Did she hear whispers that Don Jr. was fooling around with someone else? Probably,” one of Guilfoyle’s so-called friends said. “She’s no fool but it’s easy to deceive yourself when you’re so committed to someone and believe he’s committed to you.”

Guilfoyle and Trump have been together since 2018, and got engaged on New Year’s Eve 2020 (his birthday). During their time together, she became a mainstay in the MAGA world, often seen at Trump events, delivering speeches at Republican National Conventions, and sharing almost nothing but pro-Trump content on Instagram. By Election Night this year, it seemed like she and Trump Jr. had worked things out, as she stood by his side at his father’s victory speech.

But all was reportedly not well. The Daily Mail is back on the Trumpfoyle beat, and on Tuesday, they reported that the purportedly engaged couple has not been spotted together since November 12. Meanwhile, on Monday, Don Jr. and Bettina were photographed holding hands while out to dinner to celebrate her 38th birthday. The tabloid also reported that he has been living with his new girlfriend at her West Palm Beach townhouse instead of in the $15.5 million mansion he and Guilfoyle bought in 2021.

Gross. Who would want to hang around with Don Jr., much less live with him? I guess it takes all kinds.

According to US Magazine, via Yahoo News, Anderson is “a model and an influencer” with “more than 38,000 followers on” Instagram.

Anyway, Trump Sr. is giving Guilfoyle a consolation prize–He plans to appoint her Ambassador to Greece.

The Daily Beast, via Yahoo News: Trump Sends Don Jr.’s Fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle Abroad After Split Rumors.

Donald Trump has appointed former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle as his ambassador to Greece—just hours after pictures published by the Daily Mail showed her fiancé, Donald Trump Jr., hand-in-hand with another woman.

“For many years, Kimberly has been a close friend and ally,” the president-elect said in his announcement, which he posted to Truth Social.

Kimberly Guilfoyle and Don Jr

“Her extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics along with her sharp intellect make her supremely qualified to represent the United States, and safeguard its interests abroad. Kimberly is perfectly suited to foster strong bilateral relations with Greece, advancing our interests on issues ranging from defense cooperation to trade and economic innovation.”

Guilfoyle’s nomination requires Senate confirmation and would see her handling foreign affairs.

The announcement hit conspicuously soon after Trump Jr., 46, was pictured cozying up with Palm Beach socialite Bettina Anderson, 38.

Trump Jr. made no comment on the rumors on social media when he congratulated Guilfoyle in a brief statement to X Tuesday night: “I am so proud of Kimberly. She loves America and she always has wanted to serve the country as an Ambassador. She will be an amazing leader for America First.”

There’s more information coming out on Luigi Mangione, the man who has been arrested and charged with murdering of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson in NYC. Here’s the latest:

The mainstream media has refused to publish Mangione’s “manifesto,” but Ken Klippenstein has posted it on his website:

I’ve obtained a copy of suspected killer Luigi Mangione’s manifesto — the real one, not the forgery circulating online. Major media outlets are also in possession of the document but have refused to publish it and not even articulated a reason why. My queries to The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and NBC to explain their rationale for withholding the manifesto, while gladly quoting from it selectively, have not been answered.

I’ll have more to say on this later — on how unhealthy the media’s drift away from public disclosure is — but for now, here’s the manifesto:

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

John Herrmann at New York Magazine: Luigi Mangione’s Full Story Isn’t Online.

When the identity of Luigi Mangione, the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter, was revealed on Monday, the online search — a reporting process that’s become a collective online ritual — began. It turns out he left a lot of information online: an active account on X, an Instagram, a Facebook, a Goodreads, a Reddit account, and maybe even a Tinder profile. The dossier came together fast.

Luigi Mangione

Reporters and social-media users noted possible red flags, strange and eerie fragments of information, and small ironies. On Goodreads, he had posted a contrarian riff on Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto. Was it evidence of violent tendencies? He also reviewed a couple of books about back pain. On X, he posted about AI superintelligence and followed some anti-woke pundits. Had he tumbled down a slippery slope? Was he blackpilled? Some sort of accelerationist? On Reddit, he posted about backpacks and spinal injuries. Had he been hiding in plain sight all along?

In isolation, with the hindsight that they were posted by someone who went on to allegedly assassinate a health-care CEO, these accounts, and some of these posts, assumed new meaning, which is reasonable and understandable: It’s a crazy story that people want to understand, and the way social media has been processing it more broadly is unprecedented in about six different ways. But what’s most striking about Mangione’s extensive online dossier is that, had it been studied before the shooting took place, it wouldn’t have raised much alarm. You can spend hours reading these posts, sifting through his follows, and looking for clues about what Type of Guy he is, but the supportable theories are pretty thin: Mangione had an online profile consonant with his identity and context. He shared and posted and followed like a 20-something striver with a foot in the tech industry, listened to Rogan, and considered himself a rationalist or at least unusually rational….

His media consumption — wellness podcasts, a dash of “heterodox” punditry, tech personalities on X — might have placed him near some worrying ideological tendencies, but no more so than millions of other young men in his social milieu; on digital paper, he’s a bit like one of those young male swing voters that dominated post-election recriminations, albeit with an Ivy on his LinkedIn. If a dating profile led you to these accounts, you might wonder if he was going to talk at you about AI or if he might be sort of socially awkward. You might wonder if he’s a bit of a pod bro, or an RFK guy, but you’d also see a lot of stuff that looks — again, without future context — if not normal, then demographically typical. You wouldn’t have wondered if he was planning an assassination. You’d probably have assumed he was friendly! Now, everyone’s looking for the online trail that leads directly the sidewalk in front of the Midtown Hilton, but they haven’t quite found it. Nor, in 2024, should they expect to.

Herrmann argues that a criminal’s “on-line footprint” doesn’t really reveal who a person is anymore, if it ever did.

Faith in the existence of meaning in the “online trail” started waning when social media achieved full ubiquity. By the mid-2010s, the sorts of evidence you’d find in the aftermath of a shocking news event tended to be either hidden in places like 4chan — intentionally inscrutable communities within a fully mainstream internet — or left behind intentionally to be found and shared in the form of a manifesto, an archived Discord channel, or a recording of the act itself. These revelations could still be illuminating or at least shocking — the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter left a trail of posts on the right-wing social-media site Gab, for example — but in recent years, the post-news deep-dive, which has become a messy and fraught spectacle unto itself, wasn’t producing much in the way of understanding. Mostly, if you were planning a dramatic crime, you knew better than to post about it. If you wanted nobody to see you, or suspect you of anything, you simply didn’t post about it.

Mangione’s stubbornly normal online footprint, and the way the media and public have feasted upon it, marks the closing of this circle. Online, he was a guy with unremarkable niche interests and a serious appetite for boring productivity books. The reflexive assumption that his digital trail must contain essential, decodable truths about his motives has produced less in the way of insight than of fandom, which is constructed online through a similar process of breathless driven data aggregation.

Ashley Southall and Maria Cramer at The New York Times: Police Say Suspect’s Notebook Described Rationale for C.E.O. Killing.

Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with killing the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare at a company investors’ day, was arrested with a notebook that detailed plans for the shooting, according to two law enforcement officials.

The notebook described going to a conference and killing an executive, the officials said.

Luigi Mangione

“What do you do? You wack the C.E.O. at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” was one passage written in the notebook, the officials said….

When Mr. Mangione was arrested, the authorities also found a 262-word handwritten note with him, which begins by appearing to take responsibility for the murder. The note, which officials described as a manifesto, also mentioned the existence of a notebook. The recovery of the notebook was first reported by CNN.

The suspect saw the killing as a “symbolic takedown,” according to a New York Police Department internal report that detailed parts of a three-page manifesto found with him at the time of his arrest. The report added that the suspect “likely views himself as a hero of sorts who has finally decided to act upon such injustices” and expressed concern that others might see him as a “martyr and an example to follow.” [….]

On his way into court on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Mangione shouted about “an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience.”

It was not exactly clear what he was referring to as deputies worked to push him into the courthouse. On Wednesday, the sheriff of Blair County, James E. Ott, said that otherwise Mr. Mangione had not given deputies any problems.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: December 7, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday | Tags: Brian Thompson, Donald Trump, iran, israel, Middle East, news, Syria, United Health Care | 4 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

By Katrina Pallon

The assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson has set off a spirited public discussion of the U.S. health insurance system. That is the top news story today.

The shooter wrote the words “Delay,” “Deny,” and “Depose” on bullets left at the scene, suggesting that his action was triggered by denial of coverage by the health insurance giant. That has set off angry discussions on social media and probably in homes and workplaces around the country.

People are also wondering how the shooter managed to evade police, disappear in Central Park and escape New York City for an unknown destination. Police are examining security footage to try to find out where he went. They have also found images of the shooter’s face, which should help the effort to locate him.

Here’s what’s happening:

Holly Yan at CNN: Why finding the suspected CEO killer is harder than you might think.

He killed a high-profile CEO on a sidewalk in America’s largest city, where thousands of surveillance cameras monitor millions of people every day.

But the man who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a busy hotel keeps evading capture. Now, authorities say he might have slipped out of New York – meaning the elusive gunman could be anywhere….

Police believe the suspect arrived in New York City 10 days before the killing – on November 24, a law enforcement official told CNN. Throughout his stay, the suspect appeared on camera numerous times – but always kept his hood over his head and wore a mask in public places.

“He knows he’s on camera – it’s New York,” said John Miller, CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst.

Police are searching for and scouring countless hours of video footage in hopes of finding more clues, such as whether the suspect met with anyone while in the city.

“It will take them weeks. … They will build out every step of his trip that’s on video,” Miller said. “They will create a movie of his every move.”

While the gunman meticulously planned many parts of his crime and getaway, he might be surprised by “how far the NYPD is going to go in collecting video,” said former NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.

“And they’re not just going to take it from the crime scene to his escape route,” Corey said. “They’re actually going to rewind now, and they’re going to try to account for all 10 days that he spent in New York City. And I don’t think that he anticipates that.”

Read the answers to other questions at the link.

Maria Cramer at The New York Times: The Police Offer a Detailed Timeline of the Gunman’s Movements.

The police on Friday offered a nearly minute-by-minute timeline of a gunman’s movements before and after he fatally shot Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, in Midtown Manhattan two days earlier.

The police have made no arrests in the shooting, and do not have a name for a suspect, but investigators have begun to piece together the movements of a man they believe killed Mr. Thompson on a city sidewalk early Wednesday morning.

Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives, said at a news briefing on Friday that the suspect arrived in the city at 10:11 p.m. on Nov. 24 on a bus that originated out of Atlanta. Detectives have looked at the route the bus took and plan to reach out to the police department of each of the six or seven towns the bus stopped in, he said.

Upon arrival in New York, the man took a cab to the New York Hilton Midtown — where he would later fatally shoot Mr. Thompson — and spent about half an hour walking in the area of the hotel before checking in to a hostel on the Upper West Side, the chief said.

By Katrina Pallon

At the hostel, he stayed under fake identification, always using cash, avoiding conversation and hiding his face with his mask even during meals, the chief said. He never spoke with anyone and lowered his mask once to speak, smiling, to the hostel clerk when he first checked in, the chief said.

On Wednesday, the day of the shooting, the gunman left the hostel at 5:30 a.m. and likely rode a bicycle toward Midtown, Chief Kenny said. Though investigators do not have video of him taking the bike to the scene of the shooting, they are speculating that he did because it took him only 10 minutes to get from the hostel on 103rd Street to West 54th Street. The police are “still looking into” the possibility that he could have stolen the bike, he said.

At 5:41 a.m., he arrived at the Hilton and began wandering the area near the hotel, walking back and forth on West 54th Street, before entering a Starbucks, where he bought a bottle of water and a snack bar.

He fatally shot Mr. Thompson at 6:44 a.m. He then got back on the bike and made it into Central Park four minutes later. He left the park at 6:56 a.m., still on the bicycle.

Surveillance cameras captured footage of him, still on the bicycle, two minutes later at 86th Street and Columbus Avenue. By 7 a.m. he was still on 86th street, but no longer on the bicycle. He then took a cab northbound, to a bus station near the George Washington Bridge that is used by interstate buses.

By 7:30 a.m. he had made it to the station, where video surveillance showed him going in but not coming out, Chief Kenny said.

Op-Ed by Zeynep Tufekci at The New York Times: The Rage and Glee That Followed a C.E.O.’s Killing Should Ring All Alarms.

It started barely minutes after the horrifying news broke that the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, had been fatally shot in Midtown Manhattan. Even before any details were available, the internet was awash in speculation that the company had refused to cover the alleged killer’s medical bills — and in debates about whether murder would be a reasonable response.

Soon there was a video of a man in a hoodie, face not visible, walking up behind Thompson and shooting him multiple times, ignoring a woman standing nearby before walking away. Could he be a hit man?

Then came the reports that bullet casings bearing the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose”were found at the scene. “Delay” and “deny” clearly echo tactics insurers use to avoid paying claims. “Depose”? Well, that’s the sudden, forceful removal from a high position. Ah.

After that, it was an avalanche.

The shooter was compared to John Q, the desperate fictional father who takes an entire emergency room hostage after a health insurance company refuses to cover his son’s lifesaving transplant in a 2002 film of the same name. Some posted “prior authorization needed before thoughts and prayers.” Others wryly pointed out that the reward for information connected to the murder, $10,000, was less than their annual deductibles. One observer recommended that Thompson be scheduled to see a specialist in a few months, maybe.

Many others went further. They urged people with information about the killing not to share it with the authorities. Names and photos of other health insurance executives floated around. Some of the posts that went most viral, racking up millions of views by celebrating the killing, I can’t repeat here….

The rage that people felt at the health insurance industry, and the elation that they expressed at seeing it injured, was widespread and organic. It was shocking to many, but it crossed communities all along the political spectrum and took hold in countless divergent cultural clusters.

Even on Facebook, a platform where people do not commonly hide behind pseudonyms, the somber announcement by UnitedHealth Group that it was “deeply saddened and shocked at the passing of our dear friend and colleague” was met with, as of this writing, 80,000 reactions; 75,000 of them were the “haha” emoji.

It’s worth reading the whole thing. Here’s a gift link.

The Washington Post: Slain UnitedHealth CEO faced ongoing court battles, threats.

Before UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in Midtown Manhattan this week, he was steering his company through court battles and legislative threats at a time of public frustration over health insurance industry tactics.

UnitedHealthcare’s parent company — which generates $400 billion in annual revenue — has been under increasing scrutiny by lawmakers and federal officials for allegedlyhurting consumers with monopolistic practices. Some Democratic lawmakers have accused UnitedHealthcare of intentionally denying claims to boost profits. And Thompson himself has been accused of insider trading.

By Katrina Pallon

Thompson, 50, was well liked internally at UnitedHealth, where he had risen in the ranks over 17 years before being named CEO of the insurance giant in 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile and company statements. He had previously run the Medicare business within UnitedHealthcare.

Legal scrutiny around UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare business regarding potentially overbilling the government affected Thompson personally during that time, said a former colleague, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of Thompson’s death.

“He called me and said, ‘I’m from Iowa, my parents have difficulty explaining what I do, let alone being sued for a billion dollars,’” he said.

Colleagues described him as smart and affable, with an Iowa farm background that allowed him to explain complexities of health care in relatable terms. Known affectionately as “BT,” with the build of a former high school athlete, Thompson had the presence to give major speeches and lead corporate events — and a self-effacing manner that drew staff to him in more intimate settings, remembering personal details about hundreds of UnitedHealth employees, colleagues said.Thompson was known within the company for his focus on keeping premiums low, said one UnitedHealthcare staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their job.

More information on Thompson at the WaPo link.

In other news, Trump is in Paris today acting as if he is already president as Macron sucks up to him.

ABC News: Trump meets with Macron in first international trip since reelection: ‘World is going a little crazy right now.’

President-elect Donald Trump kicked off his first foreign trip since his reelection with a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.

Ahead of the meeting, Macron welcomed Trump, saying, “It’s a great honor for the French people to welcome you five years later.”

Macron thanked Trump for his “solidarity” and “immediate action” during his first presidency: “You were at the time the president, the first time, and I remember the solidarity and your immediate action. Welcome back again. Thank you. We are very happy to have you here.”

Trump in return celebrated the “great success” the United States and France had together on “defense and offense” during his first term and said they will talk about how the world is “going a little crazy right now.” [….]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined Macron and Trump at about 11:34 a.m. Eastern time. However, he did not offer remarks ahead of the meeting.

Trump is in France to partake in the reopening ceremonies for Notre Dame more than five years after a fire severely damaged the cathedral. First lady Jill Biden is also among the representatives from around the world attending the ceremonies.

The meeting comes at a time when Macron’s government is undergoing a political crisis after his prime minister, Michel Barnier, resigned after facing a no-confidence vote. Macron, who became president in 2017, has vowed he will serve until the end of his term in 2027 despite facing calls from some to resign.

AP via NPR: Trump receives a Paris welcome full of presidential pomp from France’s Macron.

French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Donald Trump to Paris on Saturday with a full a dose of presidential pomp as the two men resumed the relationship they established during Trump’s first term after a four-year hiatus….

By Katrina Pallon

As Trump arrived at the Elysee Palace, the official residence of the French president, Macron went out of his way to project an image of close ties, posing for multiple handshakes interspersed with plenty of back-patting. Trump said it was “a great honor” and talked about the “great relationship” they have had.

Trump said the two would be discussing a world that’s gone “a little crazy” as they met one-on-one ahead of a celebration of the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral five years after a devastating fire.

At the palace, a grand red carpet was rolled in the same way the French welcome sitting American presidents….

Macron, who has had an up-and-down relationship with Trump, has made a point of cultivating a relationship since the Republican defeated Democrat Kamala Harris last month. But Macron’s office nonetheless played down the significance of the invitation, saying other politicians not now in office had been invited as well.

Trump was invited as president-elect of a “friendly nation,” Macron’s office said, adding, “This is in no way exceptional, we’ve done it before.”

The red carpet treatment was yet another sign of how eager both Macron and other European leaders are to win Trump’s favor and placate him even before he takes office.

Macron is hoping to convince Trump to continue supporting Ukraine’s fight to remain and independent democracy.

Trump’s visit to France comes as Macron and other European leaders are trying to win Trump’s favor and persuade him to maintain support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. Macron’s office said Macron and Trump would discuss that as well as wars in the Middle East.

That meeting will take place before the Notre Dame event, as will the get-together with Prince William, who’s also scheduled to meet with Jill Biden, according to the British royal palace.

Macron also planned to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It’s not clear whether Trump will meet Zelenskyy, too. Trump has pledged to end the war in Ukraine swiftly but has not specified how, raising concerns in Kyiv about what terms may be laid out for any future negotiations.

In an effort to build trust with the incoming U.S. administration, Zelenskyy’s top aide Andriy Yermak met key members of Trump’s team on a two-day trip earlier this week. A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly, described the meetings as productive, but declined to disclose details.

Meanwhile, Syrian insurgents continue to threaten Bashar al-Assad’s control of the Syrian government.

AP: Syrian insurgents reach the capital’s suburbs. Worried residents flee and stock up on supplies.

Insurgents’ stunning march across Syria gained speed on Saturday with news that they had reached the suburbs of the capital and with the government forced to deny rumors that President Bashar Assad had fled the country.

The rebels’ moves around Damascus, reported by an opposition war monitor and a rebel commander, came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern part of the country, leaving more areas, including two provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters.

The advances in the past week were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. As they have advanced, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little resistance from the Syrian army.

The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, on Saturday called for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.” Speaking to reporters at the annual Doha Forum in Qatar, he said the situation in Syria was changing by the minute.

In Damascus, people rushed to stock up on supplies. Thousands rushed the Syria border with Lebanon, trying to leave the country.

Many shops in the capital were shuttered, a resident told The Associated Press, and those that remained open ran out of staples such as sugar. Some shops were selling items at three times the normal price.

Once again, the government is denying that al-Assad has fled the country.

Amid the developments, Syria’s state media denied rumors flooding social media that Assad has left the country, saying he is performing his duties in Damascus.

By Katrina Pallon

Assad’s chief international backer, Russia, is busy with its war in Ukraine, and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up his forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran, meanwhile, has seen its proxies across the region degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes.

Pedersen said a date for the talks in Geneva on the implementation of U.N. Resolution 2254 would be announced later. The resolution, adopted in 2015, called for a Syrian-led political process, starting with the establishment of a transitional governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and ending with U.N.-supervised elections.

I wonder how Tulsi Gabbard is taking this news?

The New York Times: Iran Begins to Evacuate Military Officials and Personnel From Syria.

Iran began to evacuate its military commanders and personnel from Syria on Friday, according to regional officials and three Iranian officials, in a sign of Iran’s inability to help keep President Bashar al-Assad in power as he faces a resurgent rebel offensive.

Among those evacuated to neighboring Iraq and Lebanon were top commanders of Iran’s powerful Quds Forces, the external branch of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the officials said.

The move signaled a remarkable turn for Mr. al-Assad, whose government Iran has backed throughout Syria’s 13-year civil war, and for Iran, which has used Syria as a key route to supply weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Guards personnel, some Iranian diplomatic staff, their families, and Iranian civilians were also being evacuated, according to the Iranian officials, two of them members of the Guards, and regional officials. Iranians began to leave Syria on Friday morning, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

Evacuations were ordered at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, and at bases of the Revolutionary Guards, the Iranian and regional officials said. At least some of the embassy staff has departed.

Some are leaving by plane to Tehran, while others are leaving via land routes to Lebanon, Iraq and the Syrian port of Latakia, the officials said.

“Iran is starting to evacuate its forces and military personnel because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight,” Mehdi Rahmati, a prominent Iranian analyst who advises officials on regional strategy, said in a telephone interview.

for more on the Syrian conflict, check out this article at The New York Times (gift link) How to Understand Syria’s Rapidly Changing Civil War.

The latest stories on Trump’s crazy personnel decisions:

The Washington Post: Trump hesitates to personally lobby for endangered Cabinet picks.

NBC News: Donald Trump says he thinks Pete Hegseth can get confirmed in NBC News interview.

Marc Caputo at The Bulwark: Hegseth Brings His Nomination Back from the Brink.

Politico: Pam Bondi will face an ethics quagmire as attorney general.

NBC News: Democrats and Republicans in Congress worried that Gabbard might leak information to Syria.

Those are my offerings for today. Have a relaxing weekend, everyone!

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