“Overheard at the neighborhood karaoke bar.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’ve been tempted to reread a book I was assigned in high school, by the 20th-century author Sinclair Lewis. “His 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, centers around a flag-hugging, Bible-thumping politician named Berzelius (”Buzz”) Windrip.” This novel is likely the inspiration for this bit of wisdom from the same period that frequently gets attributed to Lewis because of the novel. “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” This essay is from last April’s Common Dreams and is written by Bill Durst. You may recall this isn’t the first time I’ve reflected longingly on Lewis.
Although no one’s actually sure that Sinclair Lewis ever wrote or said this, his 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, centers around a flag-hugging, Bible-thumping politician named Berzelius (”Buzz”) Windrip. Despite having no particular leadership skills other than the ability to mesmerize large audiences by appealing to their baser instincts (and to bully those people who aren’t so easily mesmerized), Windrip is elected President of the United States. Shortly after Windrip takes office, through a flurry of executive orders, appointments of unqualified cronies to key governmental positions, and then a declaration of martial law, Windrip quickly makes the transition from a democratically elected president to a brutal, fascist dictator. The novel’s title, It Can’t Happen Here, refers to the mindset of key characters in the novel who fail to recognize Windrip’s fascist agenda before it’s too late.
Written almost a century ago during the rise of fascism in Europe prior to World War II, It Can’t Happen Here is disturbingly prescient today. Buzz Windrip’s personal traits, his rhetoric, and the path through which he initially becomes the democratically elected U.S. president, and soon afterward, the country’s first full-fledged fascist dictator, bear an uncanny resemblance to the personality traits and rhetoric of Donald Trump and the path through which he has come thus far to be the 47th President of the United States, and through which he appears to be on course to become our country’s first full-fledged…. But no! It can’t happen here! Or can it?
I’m sure even Sinclair Lewis did not see Christofasicist billionaires stacking the Supreme Court with equally overreaching religious nuts. The reversal of Roe still has hand devastating and deadly impact on women in this country. This term of the Supreme Court has cursed us with religiosity of a specific source once more. I only took one Constitutional Law class at university, and it was part of the Political Science Department, but that book still resides in my hallway library. That’s back when I fancied myself to be prelaw and my political activities were focused on changing the Rape Laws and police institutions surrounding violence and rape against women and children. Back then, women could not be raped by their husbands and they had to have two eyewitnesses to the rape. Those laws changed in Nebraska, and fortunately, they still stand. However, spiritual rape and violence still stands and is “wrapped in the flagg and carrying a cross.” It exists in Congress, persists in the Executive Branch, and drags its knuckles through the Supreme Court. It does not take a lawyer to know a rape when they see one.
Sit down. The Surpeme Court’s decisions this term are nothing short of institutional rape of the U.S. Constitution. This is the same crew that took down Abortion Rights by citing a witch-burning jurist from 17th England.
The AP is full of headlines that make me want to open up my window and scream very loudly. The only solace is that it could’ve been worse. The only joy will be reading the objections and rebuttals of the sane women who sit on the court.
So, let’s dig deeper. This is from the Washington Post. “Supreme Court sides with religious parents seeking to opt out of LGBTQ storybooks. The case asked whether Montgomery County, Maryland, could require children to participate in lessons with books that clash with parents’ religious beliefs.” Love thy neighbor is lost on these people. Of course, guess who wrote for the majority in this one? Mister, I loved the Inquisition, Alito. This guy’s father came to America from Italy in 1914. That was a time when most of the white people here didn’t want Italians here. He’s evidently forgotten they were lynched in the United States at one point. But now, he’s just another oppressor.
The Supreme Court sided Friday with a group of parents seeking to withdraw their children from public school lessons featuring LGBTQ+-themed storybooks, a case that mixed parental rights and religious freedom.
The justices said school officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, may not require young children to participate in lessons with books that conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs.
The 6-3 decision could have implications for public schools nationwide and could give families the right to voice religious objections to a broad range of learning materials, expanding on the long-standing practice of allowing opt-outs for reproductive-health classes.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said government officials burden the religious rights of parents when they require them to “submit their children to instruction that poses ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill.”
While litigation continues, Alito wrote, Montgomery County must notify parents in advance whenever one of the books in question or any other similar book is to be used in any way and to allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor read a summary of her dissent from the bench on behalf of the three liberal justices. She said the court’s ruling “strikes at the core premise of public schools: that children may come together to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society.”
Leaders with Montgomery County Public Schools and its school board said in a joint statement Friday that the decision “is not the outcome we hoped for or worked toward.”
“It marks a significant challenge for public education nationwide,” school system officials said. The school system said it is working on determining its next steps.
Let’s rewrite that as Hate your neighbor unless he ascribes to his particular version of ‘yourself”. To continue on that topic, let’s move to the next decision. This is from MSNBC. “The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship reasoning reveals a startlingly myopic view. The conservative wing of the court overly relies on the emergency shadow docket and shouldn’t have entertained the administration’s birthright argument.” They continue to destroy one precedent after another. This analysis is by Shan Wu, a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor.
The so-called birthright citizenship case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on Fridayproved an irresistible shiny object to the court’s hubris, gleaming with the chance to address fringe conservative ideology and enhance the power and ego of the high court, all while it used its favorite new love: the emergency shadow docket. To put it plainly, the conservative wing of the court shouldn’t have even entertained the Trump administration’s arguments about birthright citizenship — and those justices have made it clear that they can and should diminish the role of lower courts through their prodigious use of the emergency shadow docket.
Consolidated from three cases in which lower courts stayed implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order revoking the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, the case involved only the question of whether lower court judges can issue nationwide injunctions. But at oral argument, the justices couldn’t help themselves, wading repeatedly into the question of birthright citizenship itself, thus lending legitimacy to a once-fringe conservative theory.
The Constitution couldn’t be clearer. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
It’s difficult to see how fans of “originalism” could read this to mean that children born in the United States somehow aren’t citizens — but that is exactly what Trump’s Justice Department argued.
Keep in mind that the 14th Amendment itself arose after a civil war was fought over the question of whether slaves possess the same rights as other people in the country — and was specifically meant to counter the backlash against Black people and recalcitrance in the Southern states to treating freed slaves as equals.
” Lending legitimacy to a once-fringe conservative theory” is their favorite activity. The Washington Monthly’sJack Rakove has a succinct view on this version of the Supremes. I weep for the country that my family fought so hard to found and continue and to improve. These folks are throwbacks to the European Dark Ages. “It’s Not Just a Constitutional Crisis in the Trump Era. It’s Constitutional Failure. The problem isn’t just the crisis of the administration defying the courts. It’s the failure of the legislative and judicial branches to check the president.”
The idea that the United States awaits some dread constitutional crisis has become commonplace. For lawyers, such a crisis would likely involve Donald Trump’s administration defying the Supreme Court on some critical ruling. But other crises are readily imaginable. Might President Trump invoke the Militia Act to manipulate the 2026 congressional elections, or order the Marines to take sites in Greenland without congressional approval, which seems ever more plausible after the June 22 bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities?
Such scenarios are not unfounded, but they do not diagnose our true malady. Our ongoing constitutional crisis began with the presidential election last November 5. Reelecting an individual culpable for January 6 who has twice made a mockery of the presidential oath of office is itself a constitutional crisis. Nothing in his past or current behavior suggests that Trump has ever felt fidelity to his constitutional duties.
Once a constitutional crisis becomes an endemic condition, the term no longer usefully describes our collapsing system. Instead, we live in an era of constitutional failure when the relevant institutions cannot fulfill their responsibilities.
Because constitutional failure is a term we have never needed to use, it merits a precise definition. First, it must identify the specific situations where the government institutions have manifestly not fulfilled their constitutional functions. Second, it should treat these omissions not as occasional lapses but systemic defects. Third, it must explain how the political and ethical norms of constitutional governance have evaporated.
To apply this framework to the second Trump administration is hardly difficult. The only problem is where to begin. Consider its authoritarian reliance on executive orders to vitiate legally established government activities, its attempt to intimidate institutions outside of government to do its bidding, and its insistence that servile loyalty to the president outweighs fidelity to constitutional norms. That some commentators describe this last practice as the Führerprinzip—the Nazi principle that the will of the leader transcends all legal norms—tells us everything.
Deciding whether the Constitution is failing requires asking if and why the other two branches of government have been remiss in checking a rogue executive.
Their most important failures involve the two clauses that would have disqualified Trump from reelection: the presidential impeachment clause and Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But starting in a more obscure location is better: the two Emoluments Clauses restricting the material benefits a president can receive from other governments. In his first administration, three suits sought to force Trump to comply with these two clauses. One, brought by members of Congress, was plausibly dismissed on standing grounds, because a minority faction in Congress cannot litigate to make the body implement a power it already possesses. Two other cases, however, progressed in the lower courts, but once they were appealed, the Supreme Court slow-walked them until Trump left office, leaving the issue moot.
The Court thus casually squandered an opportunity to clarify the meaning of a provision that badly needs enforcement. All previous presidents had scrupulously adhered to the Emoluments Clauses, which embody the fundamental principle that presidents should neither seek nor hold office for private gain. The honor of holding the highest office in the land should displace every other ambition. But this president and his family have more material, even sordid aims to pursue. With Trump, the imperial presidency and the presidential emporium have converged. This White House is for sale, whether through gifts from wealthy entrepreneurs, the manipulation of tariffs, and, perhaps worst of all, the family’s active involvement in crypto meme speculations.
But the two Emoluments Clauses occupy only obscure niches in the Constitution. The same cannot be said of the powers being abused to eliminate federal agencies and departments and purge civil servants. These agencies and officials derive their authority from congressional enactments and appropriations. All are covered by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, adopted to constrain the unilateral efforts of President Richard Nixon to reduce federal spending on his own authority. All involve the signature constitutional obligation of the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” not least because every statute requires either the assent of the chief executive or, in the case of a presidential veto, its reenactment by supermajorities in both houses of Congress.
The most fundamental purpose of constitutional government, as it evolved in 17th-century England and revolutionary America, was to make the executive power susceptible to legislative control. It did not matter whether the executive was monarchical, ministerial, or presidential. The key point established by the English Glorious Revolution of 1688 was that the Crown had to rule with parliamentary consent or supervision.
Please continue to the link to read this article in its entirety. This is a professor who knows his history. We’re in a period where we can reflect on how Nixon was stopped, and how Trump is being enabled. Here’s more on the overturning of the Trump injunctions. This is from the New York Times. It’s written by Abbie Van Sickle. “Supreme Court Live Updates: Trump Hails Ruling to Limit Nationwide Injunctions. In a major victory for President Trump, the court restricted the ability of federal judges to block his executive orders. The decision may reshape the way U.S. citizenship is granted, even temporarily.”
The Supreme Court on Friday limited the ability of federal judges to temporarily pause President Trump’s executive orders, a major victory for the administration. But the justices made no ruling on the constitutionality of his move to end birthright citizenship, and they stopped his order from taking effect for 30 days.
The 6-to-3 decision, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and split along ideological lines, may dramatically reshape how citizenship is granted in the United States, even temporarily. The ruling means that the practice of giving citizenship automatically to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and some temporary residents and visitors would end in the 28 states that have not challenged the order.
The court’s decision appeared to upend the ability of single federal judges to freeze policies across the country, a powerful tool that has been used to block policies from Democratic and Republican administrations. The majority offered a different path to challenging Mr. Trump’s orders on a nationwide basis: class action lawsuits.
Mr. Trump praised the ruling, calling it “giant,” in a news conference at the White House. “Our country should be very proud of the Supreme Court today,” he said.
In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the majority’s decision “a travesty for the rule of law.” Progressive Democrats, legal advocates and civil and immigrant rights groups called it a major blow to long-settled constitutional law, and said it would create a dangerous patchwork of rights across the nation.
The majority stressed that it was not addressing the merits of Trump’s attempt to end automatic citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil. Challenges to the citizenship order are pending in appeals courts, and the administration has told the Supreme Court that it would seek review before the justices should it lose. But there is no pending case on the merits of Mr. Trump’s executive order at the Supreme Court.
It is likely but hardly certain, then, that the court will decide the issue in the term that starts in October, as Attorney General Pam Bondi repeatedly promised in Mr. Trump’s news conference.
Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon
Here’s one that directly impacts my family. My ex-husband and his oldest sister were born on a US base in Japan. They have State Department birth certificates, which are the fanciest things you’ve ever seen. His birth certificate has a big red ribbon and all kinds of gold seals. You may remember some folks went after Senator John McCain for the same issue. He was born on a base in the Panama Canal Zone. Well, this issue has raised its ugly head again. “Son of U.S. soldier born on Army base in Germany deported to Jamaica.”
A man born to an active-duty member of the United States military on an Army base in Germany in 1986 before coming to the states as a child was deported last week to Jamaica, a country he’s never been to, according to a report by The Austin Chronicle.
Jermaine Thomas, whose Jamaican-born dad became a U.S. citizen during his 18-year military career, spent much of his early life moving from base to base with his father and mother, the latter a citizen of Kenya at the time of his birth.
At 11 years old, after his parents’ divorce and his mother’s second marriage to another soldier, he went to live with his father, who had since retired, in Florida. Unfortunately, his father passed away in 2010 from kidney failure, shortly after Thomas had arrived.
Much of his life after that, The Chronicle reported, was spent in Texas, homeless and in and out of jail.
It’s unclear when exactly Thomas was first ordered to leave the country, but court records from 2015 show a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, in which the U.S. Department of Justice argued that he was not a citizen simply because he was born on a U.S. Army base in Germany.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the DOJ, upholding the U.S. Court of Appeals decision and denied Thomas’ petition for a review of the deportation order, saying in part that “his father did not meet the physical presence requirement of the statute in force at the time of Thomas’s birth.”
My father-in-law was hardly ever home, cheated on his first wife, and his second wife, who wound up living with us, and if he wasn’t in a wheelchair shortly thereafter, probably would have with the third wife he left the second for. He had several children that the family had found, so can I get this applied to my Ex sent back to Japan, or maybe Somalia? He was the first bona fide narcissist I’ve ever personally known. Having a rotten father can get you deported? Really? The Supreme Court has basically put all State Department Birth Certifications in jeopardy.
The only good news coming out of the court was that they upheld “ObamaCare,” but they did so with a few qualms. This is from HuffPo. “Supreme Court Upholds Preventive Health Care Access For Millions Of Americans. The scope of coverage in America still remains uncertain, however.”
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to a crucial component of the Affordable Care Act, affirming the oversight of a panel of medical experts who recommend preventive care for health insurance coverage is constitutional.
This means services like lung and colon cancer screenings, HIV prevention medication, statins for heart disease, and various pregnancy screenings, which have been recommended by the panel,could continue to be covered free of charge for the 150 million Americans who have private insurance.
In the ruling, the court held that members of the United States Preventive Services Task Force, agroup of independent medical experts, are considered“inferior officers” and “at will”under the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The case had challenged the structure of the panel, calling into question its authority to make recommendations for what types ofpreventive care insurers are required to cover and threatening access to the no-cost care it recommends.
The court reversed an appeals court decision and sent the case back down to lower courts for future proceedings. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the 6-3 majority opinion, with Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.
“The structure of the Task Force and the manner of appointing its officers preserve the chain of political accountability that was central to the Framers’ design of the Appointments Clause,” Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion.”
This still has several ramifications, and it landed right on another case. First, right now, that means RFK Jr. gets a lot of power on these decisions. Then there is this. This is from The Washington Post. “Supreme Court allows states to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Ruling says Medicaid patients cannot sue to get non-abortion health care from Planned Parenthood if states have cut off government funding for those clinics.” All roads lead back to state control of women and denying the poor and POC basic rights.
A divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against Planned Parenthood, saying Medicaid patients do not have a right to sue to obtain non-abortion health care from the organization’s medical providers.
The decision allows South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. It also has implications for patients in other states at a time when Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration are separately trying to defundeven non-abortion health care offered bythe nation’s largest abortion provider.
The 6-3 ruling, with all three liberal justices dissenting, reversed a lower-court decision that had allowed Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and a patient to seek to reinstate the group’s clinics as qualified health care providers after South Carolina cut off all Medicaid funding for the organization because it offers abortion services.
The decision means patients who rely on Medicaid will not be able to use the government insurance program for the poor to get services at the Planned Parenthood clinics in South Carolina.
The state already bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, and federal law prevents states from using Medicaid funds to cover abortions in most cases. But this case — Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic — involves other types of reproductive health care, such as birth control and cancer screenings.
So, this is long, and I’ve probably either bored you or depressed you. I’ve done a lot of both to myself, frankly. You expect the law not to promote specific religions, people, and social classes over others. You expect justice. But then, that was a long time ago now.
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Well, I know I’m not sleeping well at night. How about you?
JJ sent me the link to this horrifying story. It gave me my first share, but now I’m wondering if I’ll actually be able to eat lunch today. This is from the New York Times. “Inside Trump’s Decision. The Times pieced together the days and hours leading up to President Trump’s decision to strike Iran. It’s a story of diplomacy, deception, and a secret that almost got out.” We don’t have to worry about him being around to take that 3 am phone call. The Pentagon was worried about him putting the entire attack plan on Truth Social. I’ve gifted the link to you so you can read the entire thing. You know the Missouri Bombers he blathered about? One fleet was a ruse. Aaron Fritschner, Deputy Chief of Staff at Congressman Don Beyer, tweeted it out.
Inside the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command, military planners worried that Trump was giving Iran too much warning about an impending strike. So they worked up their own ruse: They had two fleets of B-2 bombers leave Missouri at the same time, one flying east and one flying west. Flight trackers spotted the westward planes, which offered some idea of the timing of a possible attack. But those planes were a decoy.
The eastbound planes crossed the Atlantic undetected, joined with fighter jets and flew into Iranian airspace. At 2:10 a.m. local time yesterday, the lead bomber dropped two of the bunker-busters on the Fordo site. By the end of the mission, 14 of the bombs had fallen.
You may read about the details of the attack at PBS if you aren’t overwhelmed already by the thought of Sex Pest and Drunk, Pet Hegseth being a part of this. This headline from The Hillwon’t make you feel any less queasy. I’m assuming you knew that #FARTUS was also posted that he would help Iran Make Iran Great Again. That was while Hegseth and Rubio were busily telling the press that our hijacked country had no plans for regime change. Remember, if his lips are moving, he’s telling a big ol’ story. “Israel attacking government sites in Iran as Trump floats regime change.” The reporting here is by Sarah Fortinsky.
Israel said it is carrying out attacks on Iranian government sites and “regime targets” — including the notorious Evin Prison — as President Trump muses publicly about a regime change in Tehran.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a social media post at noon local time on Monday that Israeli forces are “currently striking with unprecedented force regime targets and governmental oppression entities in the heart of Tehran,” according to an English translation of the Hebrew statement.
He said those targets include the headquarters of Basij, the paramilitary volunteer militia within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Evin Prison, used to incarcerate political prisoners and opponents of Iran’s leadership; and the “Destroy Israel” clock in Palestine Square.
Katz said the attacks are also striking “additional regime targets,” including internal security headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards and the ideology headquarters.
Throughout Monday morning, meanwhile, the Israeli military said sirens were sounding across the country as Iran continued to launch missiles targeting Israel.
That sure sounds like a war to me. Peter Nicholas, NBC News, reports that Democrats in the District are finally sounding some kind of alarm. “‘Biden didn’t start any wars’: Democrats sharpen their arguments against Trump’s foreign policy. In the wake of the U.S. airstrikes on Iran, Democrats are pointing to Trump’s own promises that he wouldn’t ensnare the country in foreign conflicts.”
Democrats are seizing on Donald Trump’s surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities to make the case that the world is becoming more dangerous on his watch, not less, and that he is reneging on a promise to avoid foreign military interventions.
The argument strikes at Trump’s contention that his blend of negotiating skills and toughness is enough to keep the United States safe.
In the space of a few days, Trump has made the United States a combatant in another Middle East war that exposes soldiers to potential deadly reprisals, Democrats contend.
In a statement, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin pointed to Trump’s inaugural address, in which he said he would measure his success by “the wars we never get into.”
Yet, Martin said, “against his own words, the president sent bombers into Iran. Americans overwhelmingly do not want to go to war. Americans do not want to risk the safety of our troops abroad.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Several lawmakers said Sunday that they will press the Trump administration for clarity about the attack on Iran and the endgame he envisions. But they are also using the moment to try to undercut Trump’s standing with those who voted for him in the hope he would not get entangled in foreign wars.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said Trump’s commitment was “to get us out of foreign wars.”
“Say what you want about Joe Biden, Joe Biden didn’t start any wars,” Smith said. “He got us out of the one war that we were in [in Afghanistan]. Trump has now started a war with Iran.”
The Guardianhas a headline today that’s spot on. George Bush got led on by his own advisors. Trump’s advisors said no to the mission. Evidently, Trump was taken by strongman Benjamin Netanyahoo! After all that speechifying about Hillary getting us into another World War and how he’d never drag us into something like Dubya did to Iraq and Afghanistan. Here we are. “Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie. The Iraq War was built on a lie. Now history is repeating itself.” Mohamad Bazzi has the analysis.
In May 2003, George W Bush landed on the deck of a US aircraft carrier to deliver a triumphant speech, declaring that major combat operations in Iraq had ended – six weeks after he had ordered US troops to invade the country. Bush spoke under a now-infamous banner on the carrier’s bridge that proclaimed: “Mission Accomplished”. It would turn into a case study of American hubris and one of the most mocked photo-ops in modern history.
As Bush made his speech off the coast of San Diego, I was in Baghdad covering the invasion’s aftermath as a correspondent for a US newspaper. It was clear then that the war was far from over, and the US was likely to face a grinding insurgency led by former members of the Iraqi security forces. It would also soon become clear that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was built on a lie: Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not intent on developing them. And Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, despite the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to connect Hussein’s regime to al-Qaida.
Today, Donald Trump has dragged the US into another war based on exaggerations and manipulated intelligence: the Israel-Iran conflict, which began on 13 June when Israel launched a surprise attack killing some of Iran’s top military officials and nuclear scientists, and bombing dozens of targets across the country.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that Israel had to attack because Tehran was working to weaponize its stockpile of enriched uranium and racing to build a nuclear bomb. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” Netanyahu said, as the first wave of Israeli bombs fell on Iran. “It could be a year. It could be within a few months.”
Before dawn on Sunday, US warplanes and submarines bombed three major nuclear facilities in Iran. In a speech from the White House, Trump declared the operation a “spectacular military success” and said the sites had been “totally obliterated”. Trump added that his goal was to stop “the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror”.
But does Iran pose the immediate threat that Netanyahu and Trump have claimed?
US intelligence officials, along with the UN’s nuclear watchdog and independent experts, say that while Iran has dramatically increased its supply of uranium enriched to nearly weapons grade, there is no evidence it has taken steps to produce a nuclear weapon. In March, the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that America’s intelligence agencies continued “to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. She added that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”.
I’m sure none of this is lost on us. Mark Landler writes this analysis for The New York Times. “Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow. Through revolution and upheaval, the program has become intertwined with the country’s security and national identity.” Let’s hope all of this sinks in before Trump’s Folly starts costing American lives.
By joining Israel’s military campaign against Iran, Mr. Trump has greatly raised the costs for Iran’s leaders in refusing to accept stringent curbs on their uranium enrichment program. Yet, however this conflict ends, he may have given them even more compelling reasons to seek a nuclear deterrent, experts say.
“Any strategic thinker in Iran, present or future, realizes that Iran is located in the Middle East, that its neighbors are Netanyahu’s Israel, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and M.B.S. in Saudi Arabia,” said Professor Alvandi, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
To that list of threats, Iran can now add the United States.
The American bombardment likely inflicted serious damage on the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo, and the research complex at Isfahan. Earlier Israeli strikes killed several of Iran’s prominent nuclear scientists, as well as damaging installations. Taken together, that could set back Iran’s program by years.
But bombs alone cannot erase the knowledge that Iranians have accumulated over nearly seven decades, since 1957, when Iran first signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the Eisenhower administration. The United States was then encouraging countries to engage in the peaceful exploration of nuclear science through President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative.
In 1967, with American help, Iran built a small research reactor in Tehran that still exists. A year later, it signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a symbol of the shah’s desire to be accepted into the club of Western nations.
Flush with cash from 1973 oil shock, the shah then opted to rapidly expand Iran’s civil nuclear program, including developing a homegrown enriching capacity. He sent dozens of Iranian students to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study nuclear engineering.
The shah viewed it as a prestige project that would vault Iran into the front ranks of Middle Eastern countries. But that put him at odds with the United States, which worried that Iran would reprocess spent fuel into fissile material that could be used in a weapon.
“It was an icon of the country having arrived as a major power, with the side idea that if Iraq ever threatened Iran, it could be diverted to military uses,” said Professor Alvandi, who published “Nixon, Kissinger and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War.”
Everything old is new again. History repeats itself. Yup, another Republican steps on the detonator. Historian Heather Cox Richardson has a bigger perspective at her Substack, Letters from an American.
In last night’s speech to the nation, Trump appeared to reach out to the evangelical wing of MAGA that wanted the U.S. to intervene on Israel’s side in its fight against Iran. Trump said: “And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
But while the evangelicals in MAGA liked Trump’s bombing of Iran, the isolationist “America First” wing had staunchly opposed it and are adamant that they don’t want to see U.S. involvement in another foreign war. So today, administration officials were on the Sunday talk shows promising that Trump was interested only in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not in regime change. On ABC’s This Week, Vice President J.D. Vance said explicitly: “We don’t want to achieve regime change.” On X, poster after poster, using the same script, tried to bring America Firsters behind the attack on Iran by posting some version of “If you are upset that Trump took out Obama’s nuclear facilities in Iran, you were never MAGA.”
This afternoon, Trump posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
On ABC’s This Week, Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) said: “It’s way too early to tell what the actual effect on the nuclear program is, and of course, it’s way too early to tell how this plays out, right? I mean, we’ve seen this movie before. Every conflict in the Middle East has its Senator Tom Cottons who promise us mushroom clouds. In the Iraq war it was Condoleezza Rice promising us a mushroom cloud. And initially—and this is true of every one of these wars in Libya, in Iraq, and Afghanistan—initially, things looked pretty good. Saddam Hussein is gone. Muammar Qaddafi is gone. The Afghan Taliban are gone. And then, over time, we start to learn what the cost is. Four thousand, four hundred Americans dead in Iraq. The Taliban back in power. So bottom line, the president has taken a massive, massive gamble here.”
There are already questions about why Trump felt obliged to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites right now. In March, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who oversees all U.S. intelligence, told Congress that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. and Iran have been negotiating over Iran’s nuclear program since April, and when Israel attacked Iran on June 12, a sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to begin just two days later, in Oman.
White Christian Nationalists have been at the heart of the big problems in just living your American life, extending their warmongering, hateful, bigoted selves into a second century. Meanwhile, back in the USSR, the bear awakens. Has Trump changed his fealty? This is from the Washington Post. Will he give up his position as RasPutin Fangirl and such to Netanyahoo? “Russia condemns U.S. strikes on Iran but takes no concrete actions. Iran’s foreign minister is in Moscow seeking support, but other than condemning the attack, Putin has not taken any major moves to back Tehran.” I was last night years old when I read that a Russian official told the press there were lots of countries willing to send actual nukes to Iran. It was part of the reason I didn’t sleep last night without a hefty dose of Benadryl. I didn’t snore either, from my poor stuffed sinuses suffering from the humidity and pollen here.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday condemned the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran ahead of a meeting with Iran’s top diplomat, describing the strikes as “absolutely unprovoked,” but he has so far stopped short of any more concrete measures to assist Russia’s regional ally.
The U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have underscored Putin’s declining capacity to influence events in the Middle East — once a key plank of his foreign policy — with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria last year, Moscow’s cooler relations with Israel and Putin’s failed effort to convince President Donald Trump that he could be a mediator in the Iran crisis.
In comments Monday to military graduates, Putin said Washington’s involvement was dangerous and a sharp escalation. “Non-regional powers are also being drawn into the conflict,” he said, referring to the U.S. bombings. “All this is bringing the world to a very dangerous point.”
The conflict has demonstrated the limits so far to Russia’s willingness to assist Iran militarily — after both sides signed a strategic agreement in January without a mutual defense clause.
I’m going to start wrapping things up, but I wanted to share a few of the reporters outside the beltway. Jude Legum writes this for Popular Information. “A new war based on manipulated intelligence. More than two decades after the Iraq War commenced, history is repeating itself.” Even the weirdos he put in his cabinet saw the intelligence and just thumbed their noses at them. He “knew” better and used his instincts.
On March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush began the bombing campaign in Iraq, justifying the attack with manipulated and bogus intelligence. Twenty-two years later, history is repeating itself.
The clear judgment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not authorized a nuclear weapons program. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the nation’s top intelligence official, said so publicly on March 25, 2025. “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard asserted in her opening statement.
Last Tuesday, asked about Gabbard’s testimony on Iran, Trump said, “I don’t care what she said.” On Friday, as his rhetoric became more bellicose, Trump was reminded of that March assessment and asked: “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon?” Trump did not say that the intelligence community had gathered new information since March. Rather, Trump said that “my intelligence community is wrong.” He also publicly rebuked Gabbard again, adding, “She’s wrong.”
Now, to justify the bombing of several sites in Iran, top members of the Trump administration claim Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, Vice President JD Vance said that the administration believed “the Iranians were rushing toward a nuclear weapons program.” That directly contradicts the March assessment by the IC that no such program had been authorized, much less commenced.
Vance dodged questions on whether the intelligence has changed since March:
KRISTEN WELKER: Why launch this strike now? Has the intelligence changed Mr. Vice President?
VANCE: A couple things about that Kristen. What Tulsi said back in March is that Iran was producing highly-enriched Uranium that was only consistent with them wanting to build a nuclear weapon.
The transcript of Gabbard’s Congressional hearing reveals Vance’s characterization of Gabbard’s remarks is false and misleading. She did say that Iran was enriching Uranium, something that has been true for many years, and that its enriched uranium stockpile was higher than that of other nations without nuclear weapons. But she was clear that they had not taken steps to build a nuclear weapon, nor had such a program been authorized.
On Sunday, in an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the intelligence about whether Iran had decided to build a nuclear weapon “irrelevant.”
Margaret Brennan: Are you saying there that the United States did not see intelligence that the supreme leader had ordered weaponization?
Rubio: That’s irrelevant. I see that question being asked in the media all the time. That’s an irrelevant question. They have everything they need to build a weapon.
Brennan: No, but that is the key point in U.S. intelligence assessments. You know that.
Rubio: No, it’s not.
Brennan: Yes, it was.
Rubio: No, it’s not.
At a Pentagon press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also avoided answering whether the intelligence assessment had changed since March …
Jennifer Ruben, now writing at The Contrarian, has the term I’ve been using for at least two weeks. “Trump’s wags the dog. Risky military action disrupts the political dynamic. He’s been trying to get us off the topics of Doge, the Big Beautiful Budget-Busting bill, and the incredible cuts floating around the Senate.
Donald Trump, without authorization from Congress and without substantive consultation, took a fateful step in ordering the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites, based on the false pretext that Iran was on the verge of completing a nuclear weapon. The consequences of this move have yet to unfold, and the breathtaking array of outcomes—from another forever war to a failed state in Iran to a quickly negotiated nuclear deal—makes it impossible to predict how this will affect Trump’s agenda and his ongoing assault on democracy.
His failure to get authorization for a strike in a war in which the U.S. was acting offensively, despite there being no immediate threat (no one with sense believes Trump’s contradiction of our own intelligence that Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) raises grave constitutional and political consequences.
Despite Trump’s war-talk Saturday night, Vice President JD Vance insists we are not at war. That, as even this crew understands, would require congressional action. On one level, such an assertion is preposterous—as we have indeed become combatants in an extended, ongoing war.
Whatever fiction the administration advances, as Tom Nichols points out, “the enemy gets a vote.” The most likely scenario, he suggests, is not as tidy as Trump would have us believe:
The Iranian regime will be wounded but will likely survive; the nuclear program will be delayed but will likely continue; the region will become more unstable but is unlikely to erupt into a full-blown war involving the United States.
Should we get bogged down in an extended war or face retaliation, Trump’s unilateral action based on a lie (not even DNI Tulsi Gabbard thinks Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) will be viewed as a gross error and a constitutional overstep.
I’m ready for No Drama Obama to make a comeback. Trump is an exhausting and soul-snatching miscreant. I’m so tired but yet I cannot sleep. How are you doing? We shall live in Peace someday.
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Here comes the summer sun! We’ve got an extreme heat warning all day. This is getting to be our normal summer these days. The most interesting thing of the day is something I have always associated with the active volcano ring of fire in the Pacific Ocean. This was a new thing for me.
This is a weather phenomenon as explained by Accuweather. “‘Ring of fire’ thunderstorms to erupt on building heat dome in central, eastern US Rounds of thunderstorms will form a “ring of fire” around a massive dome of building heat in the central and eastern United States into next week.” Well, that sounds pretty hellish.
As a major heat wave builds and takes center stage in the weather from late this week to next week, groups of severe thunderstorms will erupt on the edge of the dome of hot air, AccuWeather meteorologists advise.
The storms will take on a “ring of fire” effect, erupting first over parts of the northern Plains and Midwest, followed by portions of the Northeast and finally the Southwest and central Plains.
The intense high pressure and sinking air within a heat dome make it difficult for thunderstorms to form in large numbers. However, thunderstorms tend to erupt on the edges of the heat dome, as the high pressure area is weakest in these areas, allowing columns of air to rise and form towering clouds and gusty downpours.
Everyone from Kansas City east to the Atlantic will be impacted. It’s huge! Yes, Boston is included! It goes as far south as Asheville and will go way up into Canada. Be prepared to stay home! Europe is getting directly involved in pushing both Iran and Israel to the negotiation table. This is from Reuters. “Iran says no nuclear talks under fire, UN atomic watchdog urges maximum restraint.” It’s reported by Parisa Hafezi, Crispian Balmer, and Jana Choukeir.
Iran said on Friday it would not discuss the future of its nuclear programme while under attack by Israel, as Europe tried to coax Tehran back into negotiations and the United States considers whether to get involved in the conflict.
A week into its campaign, Israel said it had struck dozens of military targets overnight, including missile production sites, a research body it said was involved in nuclear weapons development in Tehran and military facilities in western and central Iran. The Israel Defense Forces later said they had also struck surface-to-air missile batteries in southwestern Iran as part of efforts to achieve air superiority over the country.
At least five people were injured when Israel hit a five-storey building in Tehran housing a bakery and a hairdresser’s, Fars news agency reported.
Iran fired missiles at Beersheba in southern Israel early on Friday and Israeli media said initial reports pointed to missile impacts in Tel Aviv, the Negev and Haifa after further attacks hours later.
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog warned against attacks on nuclear facilities and called for maximum restraint.
You may ask yourself, Where is my beautiful country in these peace-seeking negotiations? Well, the answer is we’re trapped in the Trump Two Week Twist. You really have to watch this clip from Jen Psaki’s show last night. The explanation and the incredible number of times he’s used the Two Week Twist is surreal. It’s laughable even though it turns the United States of America into a feckless and shammy place run by a feckless and shammy nepobaby. The New York Times heading is trying to make Yam Tits look thoughtful. Why do they keep carrying his water? Or perhaps, better put, why is he carrying his colostomy bag? This is the headline. “Trump Buys Himself Time, and Opens Up Some New Options. While President Trump appears to be offering one more off ramp to the Iranians, he also is bolstering his own military options.” Here are the feckless reporters who executed the Trump Two-Week Twist: David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager. Sanger covers Iran’s nuclear programs. Pager is from the merry band of White House Reporters who don’t do their job. That’s a gift link if you want to read all about it.
President Trump’s sudden announcement that he could take up to two weeks to decide whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict is being advertised by the White House as giving diplomacy one more chance to work.
But it also opens a host of new military and covert options.
Assuming he makes full use of it, Mr. Trump will now have time to determine whether six days of relentless bombing and killing by Israeli forces — which has taken out one of Iran’s two biggest uranium enrichment centers, much of its missile fleet and its most senior officers and nuclear scientists — has changed minds in Tehran.
Look, it’s the Trump Two Week Twist! It’s a ploy, boys! It’s his fallback version of Homer Simpson’s d’oh.
Yam Tits is also using his basic staged reality show strategic moves as he tries to drag the minds of his knuckle dragging MAGA voters off his past promises of no new endless wars. This was likely predictable, too. ABC Newsreports that “Trump calls for special prosecutor for 2020 election, after again claiming fraud with no evidence.” We don’t need no stiking evidence! We’re the Reality Show Administration! Bondi will likely go along with it.
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social Friday morning to again make unverified claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. He called for a special prosecutor.
“The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING,” Trump claimed without giving more details. “A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America!”
There has been no evidence that the 2020 election was filled with fraud following numerous investigations, audits and other reviews over the last four and a half years.
An Associated Press investigation found fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud in six battleground states during the 2020 presidential election — a number far too little to have make any different in the outcome of that election.
Meanwhile, we now have to report the news about ongoing attempts at political assassinations. In sad news, MSNBC reports that “Minnesota lawmaker shot 9 times at his home in ‘targeted’ attack is in a critical condition. Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were both shot multiple times and are continuing their recovery, according to a statement from the couple.”
The Minnesota lawmaker who survived an attack by a gunman on his doorstep is still in a critical condition and has revealed details of the terrifying moment he and his wife were shot multiple times.
Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, released a statement Thursday, obtained by NBC affiliate KARE of Minneapolis, outlining the events in the early hours of June 14.
The Hoffmans continue their recovery in the hospital — Sen. Hoffman is in a critical but stable condition, while his wife is in a stable condition, the statement said.
We also have a new possible attempt in Ohio as reported by CNN. “Man arrested after Ohio GOP congressman says he was run off the road and threatened.” We’re not sure atm if this was politically motivated or what, but it’s being investigated.
A man in Ohio has been arrested and charged after allegedly threatening Rep. Max Miller during an incident in which the Republican US congressman says he was driven off the road, according to documents provided to CNN.
Feras S. Hamdan, 36, was arrested after Miller filed and signed a complaint with police for aggravated menacing, as well as requested a protective order against him, according to the Rocky River Police Department in Ohio.
Hamdan, accompanied by legal counsel, voluntarily turned himself in and is awaiting a court appearance, according to police.
CNN is attempting to reach Hamdan’s attorney.
Miller on Thursday called the Rocky River Police Department via 911 to report that an individual on the highway was threatening him and his family.
“I’m on the freeway. I have somebody who has cut me off, who is flipping me off, who is showing me a Palestinian flag and is yelling to kill me,” Miller said, according to a recording of the call obtained by CNN.
He told the 911 operator at one point: “I’m a little shaken at the moment because I got death threats.”
Miller called police on his way to work and read the license plate of the alleged perpetrator. At one point, he held out his phone for the 911 dispatcher to hear the honking and yelling, though the sounds were largely unintelligible. His call was transferred to a different police department based on the location of the incident.
Well, have to wait to learn more about this one. Meanwhile, the big bad budget-busting bill is hung up in the Senate. This is from The Hill. “Trump’s megabill hits more trouble as Senate conservatives demand changes.”
The Senate version of legislation to enact President Trump’s agenda is hitting new turbulence as conservatives led by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are demanding deeper spending cuts to address the nation’s $2.2 trillion annual deficit.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has focused this week on addressing the concerns of Senate GOP colleagues such as Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who raised alarms about cuts to federal Medicaid spending.
But Thune has to worry about his right flank as Johnson and his allies are threatening to hold up the bill unless GOP leaders agree to deeper cuts to federal Medicaid spending and a faster rollback of the renewable energy tax credits enacted under former President Biden.
Johnson, Lee and Scott are threatening to vote as a bloc against the bill next week unless it undergoes significant changes.
Thune plans to bring the bill to the floor Wednesday or Thursday next week, but he may not have enough votes to proceed on the legislation, Republican senators say.
Additionally, the Senate Parlimentarian has deleted some of the bill. This is reported in Politico. “Parliamentarian nixes key pieces of Tim Scott’s megabill proposal. Senate Banking Republicans will be forced to go back to the drawing board on the core components of their proposal for the GOP’s “big beautiful bill.”
The Senate parliamentarian ruled Thursday that several key provisions in Banking Chair Tim Scott’s proposed contribution to the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” violate the upper chamber’s rules for the budget reconciliation process, according to Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley’s office.
Scott’s proposals to zero out funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, slash some Federal Reserve employees’ pay, cut Treasury’s Office of Financial Research and dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board are all ineligible to be included in a simple-majority budget reconciliation bill.
The ruling from Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough is a major blow to Scott and Banking Committee Republicans, who will be forced to go back to the drawing board on the core pieces of their proposal for the GOP megabill. The panel is required to find $1 billion in cuts over the next 10 years under a budget resolution adopted by both chambers of Congress — a narrow fraction of the overall bill.
Scott said in a statement that he remains “committed to advancing legislation that cuts waste and duplication in our federal government and saves taxpayer dollars.”
Only measures that are aimed at changing spending or revenues are allowed under the strict rules governing the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process. MacDonough is responsible for determining which proposals comply with the body’s rules. Banking Committee staffers from both parties met with the parliamentarian’s office earlier this week to discuss Scott’s plan.
Here’s a sad headline from the New York Times. I’ve gifted this one too, so you may read the entire thing. “Appeals Court Lets Trump Keep Control of California National Guard in L.A.A panel rejected a lower court’s finding that it was likely illegal for President Trump to use state troops to protect immigration agents from protests.”
A federal appeals court on Thursday cleared the way for President Trump to keep using the National Guard to respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles, declaring that a judge in San Francisco erred last week when he ordered Mr. Trump to return control of the troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
In a unanimous, 38-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the conditions in Los Angeles were sufficient for Mr. Trump to decide that he needed to take federal control of California’s National Guard and deploy it to ensure that federal immigration laws would be enforced.
A lower-court judge had concluded that the protests were not severe enough for Mr. Trump to use a rarely-triggered law to federalize the National Guard over Mr. Newsom’s objections. But the panel, which included two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., disagreed with the lower court.
Mr. Trump praised the decision, saying in a Truth Social post late Thursday that it supported his argument for using the National Guard “all over the United States” if local law enforcement can’t “get the job done.”
Mr. Newsom, in a response on Thursday, focused on how the appeals court had rejected the Trump administration’s argument that a president’s decision to federalize the National Guard could not be reviewed by a judge.
“The president is not a king and is not above the law,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of U.S. military soldiers against citizens.”
This bill is on a long path. Be sure to stay on top of it. I’m pretty sure a lot of the reality show attractions are still to keep us out of the loop. Also, do not forget the importance of this Supreme Court decision, which basically says state Religionists have more control over your children and your body than you do. This is from Chris Geidner writing on his blog Law Dork. “Where is the outrage over Skrmetti? On the far right’s campaign to create uncertainty over gender-affirming medical care for minors — and the powerful institutions that helped along the way.” We’re living under a situation where there are safe states under attack from the Trump administration, and states are trying to get their kids out of living under the same kinds of craziness of States’ Rights we fought a long time to get rid of. It’s nuts!
The response to Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Tennessee’s law barring transgender minors from obtaining gender-affirming medical care has been muted at best.
In its U.S. v. Skrmetti ruling, the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees shaved off the edges — if not more central parts — of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause in order to uphold laws that bar an exceptionally small number of teens from receiving a type of medical care that only one group of teens need.
Addressing this formal attack on transgender people by the government — de jure discrimination, one might even call it — is, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor made clear in her dissent on Wednesday, the work that the Equal Protection Clause is supposed to do.
One would expect more outrage.
But Wednesday was the result of a long-term campaign that ultimately succeeded. As same-sex couples succeeded in obtaining marriage equality in 2015, the far-right organizations who had used their opposition to those couples’ marriage rights to fund their work needed a new cause.
The far right moved on to attacking transgender people. The animosity from the right — and others — toward trans people wasn’t new, but as the marriage outcome became clear, the shift of focus began.
They went after trans people’s use of bathrooms. North Carolina’s 2016 “bathroom bill“ backfired. Gov. Pat McCrory lost re-election, and the swing state has been led by Democratic governors since. But, bathrooms have always been targets for moral panic, so the issue eventually returned.
Starting in Idaho in 2020, they went after trans people’s participation in sports. That got some traction, particularly as the campaign moved on.
Then, starting in Arkansas the next year, they went after trans kids’ medical care.
They were just going to keep going until they got something that pushed them into the spotlight.
Even when lawmakers started passing bans on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, however, judges of all stripes started blocking them as likely unconstitutional.
This was not, Trump appointees even agreed, a close question.
“At bottom, sex-based classifications are not just present in [Indiana]’s prohibitions; they’re determinative,” U.S. District Judge Patrick Hanlon, a Trump appointee, wrote in blocking Indiana’s law back in June 2023.
As another Trump appointee, U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, wrote later that month in blocking Tennessee’s ban, “Though the Court would not hesitate to be an outlier if it found such an outcome to be required, the Court finds it noteworthy that its resolution of the present Motion brings it into the ranks of courts that have (unanimously) come to the same conclusion when considering very similar laws.“
Read more at the link.
Anyway, we’ve made it through another year, oops season, oops week with Yam Tit’s ongoing decline and falls. I can’t imagine going through any more of this, but it will get worse here, I’m sure. The idiot who’s now our Governor has already volunteered to help federal troops and ICE. State Law enforcement will definitely be there aiding and abetting. I’m hoping we can do better here in New Orleans, but who knows? This is what he signed last month, as reported by the Shreveport Times.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry issued an executive order, Operation GEAUX, directing state law enforcement to assist federal immigration operations.
Landry emphasized the program’s focus on deporting individuals in the country illegally who engage in criminal activity.
The initiative includes enhanced screening, identification, and a public awareness campaign.
The only crimes related to immigration we’ve had are business owners grabbing immigrants’ passports and papers while not giving them back, and essentially enslaving them. I’m not sure the state would file charges even if this happened again.
Have a very restful and good weekend. Stay Cool!
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“A good time was had by all.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The contrast between weekend events could not have been more glaring. All over the country, in cities big and small, as well as rural areas, people turned out for the No Kings event. Then, there was a very boring, sparsely attended military parade in Washington, D.C. Another contrast was the protest, which was peaceful except for a few Police officers who couldn’t seem to control themselves. Then, there were the political assassinations in Minnesota, where the suspect has all the components of today’s Republican Party and MAGA Domestic Terrorism. Minnesota Law Enforcement caught up to him last night, and his resume is replete with activities you’d expect of a lone wolf shooter’s wet dreams.
This is from the AP this morning. “Friends say Minnesota shooting suspect was deeply religious and conservative.” I think those two words don’t mean what they’re supposed to imply. The Pope is deeply religious without the need to kill and hate people who disagree with him. I’m not even sure how to define conservatism anymore, but it seems to be ever-evolving as we march backward to fascism. This man was a monster and could’ve been profiled as such if anyone was paying attention. I guess it’s easier for Republicans to demonize folks by color, ethnic background, religions not of their choosing, and women who won’t be enslaved. His actions and words should have caught attention much earlier.
The man accused of assassinating the top Democrat in the Minnesota House held deeply religious and politically conservative views, telling a congregation in Africa two years ago that the U.S. was in a “bad place” where most churches didn’t oppose abortion.
Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was captured late Sunday following a two-day manhunt authorities described as the largest in the state’s history. Boelter is accused of impersonating a police officer and gunning down former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home outside Minneapolis. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz described the shooting as “a politically motivated assassination.”
Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, were shot earlier by the same gunman at their home nearby but survived.
Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota where voters don’t list party affiliation.
Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon
Lisa Leur, writing in this Morning’s New York Times, also states the sad facts. “Like School Shootings, Political Violence Is Becoming Almost Routine. Threats and violent acts have become part of the political landscape, still shocking but somehow not so surprising.” All of this has sent me back to 1992 when my toddler and I were stalked by them and continually harassed. They’ve been bombing clinics and horse barns and murdering health care workers. Timothy McVeigh would thrive in this environment. His type of people are just out in the open now. (“Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was spotted Saturday at a No Kings protest near the Torch of Friendship in downtown Miami.“) The continual escalation of this has not been difficult to predict. The FBI, prior to Yam Tits, continually warned Congress of the issue. The Republicans charged them with being politically motivated. They have evolved a completely useless definition of law and order these days.
“Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America,” the president said.
And yet the expanding club of survivors of political violence seemed to stand as evidence to the contrary.
In the past three months alone, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence while Mr. Shapiro and his family were asleep inside; another man gunned down a pair of workers from the Israeli Embassy outside an event in Washington; protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colo., were set on fire; and the Republican Party headquarters in New Mexico and a Tesla dealership near Albuquerque were firebombed.
And those were just the incidents that resulted in death or destruction.
Against that backdrop, it might have been shocking, but it was not really so surprising, when on Saturday morning, a Democratic state representative in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home, and a Democratic state senator, John A. Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, were shot and wounded.
Slowly but surely, political violence has moved from the fringes to an inescapable reality. Violent threats and even assassinations, attempted or successful, have become part of the political landscape — a steady undercurrent of American life.
For months now, Representative Greg Landsman, Democrat of Ohio, has been haunted by the thought that he could be shot and killed. Every time he campaigns at a crowded event, he said, he imagines himself bleeding on the ground.
“It’s still in my head. I don’t think it will go away,” he said of the nightmarish vision. “It’s just me on the ground.”
The image underscores a duality of political violence in America today. Like school shootings, it is both sickening and becoming almost routine, another fact of living in an anxious and dangerously polarized country.
President Donald Trump on Sunday directed federal immigration officials to prioritize deportations from Democratic-run cities, a move that comes after large protests erupted in Los Angeles and other major cities against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Trump in a social media posting called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
He added that to reach the goal officials ”must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”
Trump’s declaration comes after weeks of increased enforcement, and after Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said ICE officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.
At the same time, the Trump administration has directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels, after Trump expressed alarm about the impact aggressive enforcement is having on those industries, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who spoke only on condition of anonymity.
This seems to verify that Yam Tits’ policy depends on who he talks to last. Also, the police in most large cities are bad enough. Why up the stakes with military with no crowd control training?
Opponents of Trump’s immigration policies took to the streets as part of the “no kings” demonstrations Saturday that came as Trump held a massive parade in Washington for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.
Saturday’s protests were mostly peaceful.
But police in Los Angeles used tear gas and crowd-control munitions to clear out protesters after the event ended.
Officers in Portland, Oregon, also fired tear gas and projectiles to disperse a crowd that protested in front of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building well into the evening.
President Trump‘s immigration crackdown is burning through cash so quickly that the agency charged with arresting, detaining and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out of money next month.
Why it matters: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is already $1 billionover budget by one estimate, with more than three months left in the fiscal year. That’s alarmed lawmakers in both parties — and raised the possibility of Trump clawing funds from agencies to feed ICE.
Lawmakers say ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is at risk of violating U.S. law if it continues to spend at its current pace.
That’s added urgency to calls for Congress to pass Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which could direct an extra $75 billion or so to ICE over the next five years.
It’s also led some lawmakers to accuse DHS and ICE of wasting money. “Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the DHS appropriations subcommittee.
Zoom in: ICE’s funding crisis is being fueled by Trump’s team demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day — an unprecedented pace ICE is still trying to reach.
Its detention facilities — about 41,000 beds — are far past capacity as DHS continues to seek more detention space in the U.S. and abroad.
The intrigue: If Trump’s big bill isn’t passed soon, he could use his authority to declare a national emergency to redirect money to ICE from elsewhere in the government — similar to what he did in 2020 to divert nearly $4 billion in Pentagon funds to his border wall project.
“I have a feeling they’re going to grant themselves an exception apportionment, use the life and safety exception, and just keep burning money,” a former federal budget official told Axios.
“You could imagine a new emergency declaration that pertains to interior enforcement that would trigger the same kind of emergency personnel mobilization statutes,” said Chris Marisola, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and a former lawyer for the Defense Department.
“These statutory authorities authorizing the president to declare emergencies” … unlock “a whole host of other authorities for these departments and agencies [that] are often written incredibly broadly and invest a lot of discretion in the president,” Marisola added.
Everything he wants is a national emergency to this guy. He’s a toddler. Give him a blankie and a Nuk! I suppose we’re going to the courts some more for lessons in the U.S. Constitution.
One of the big stories that’s never in the mainstream news is that researchers are looking for other places to carry on their work, and Europe is happily recruiting them. France is making a big effort to attract the kinds of minds that used to flee to the U.S. for freedom, knowledge, and research funding. This is turning into something more than just a brain drain. It’s blowing up our entire Brain Trust, which is the number one thing we’ve excelled at in the world. We fund innovation and encourage it. Well, not anymore.
Nature, one of the two premier science research publishers in this country, has an intriguing article about the search to move researchers out of the United States. “Some US researchers want to leave the country. Can Europe take them? As the Trump administration steps up attacks on US universities and scientific institutions, the European Union is campaigning hard to attract scientists from the United States. But how many can the bloc take?”
In early May, European politicians and university leaders gathered in Paris at Sorbonne University to deliver a message to US researchers affected by cuts made by the administration of US President Donald Trump: move here instead.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and French President Emmanuel Macron announced a 2-year funding package worth €500 million (US$571 million) to support researchers who want to move to the continent, as part of a scheme named Choose Europe.
Although von der Leyen didn’t name the United States or its president explicitly at the 5 May gathering, she said that parts of the world were questioning “free and open research”, describing that attitude as a “gigantic miscalculation”.
In April, the French government announced that money from the country’s €54-billion France 2030 strategic investment initiative had been set aside to fund international researchers who would like to work in France. Macron confirmed at the Sorbonne meeting that the separate €100-million cash boost would fund half of the costs of scientific projects involving international researchers moving to France.
We’ve already discussed how many US professors have left for Canada. Here’s an interview from the pair we featured earlier. This is especially true of those who specialize in research around democratic backsliding and fascist takeovers in formerly democratic countries. This new Interview from The Guardian. It’s authored by Jonathan Freedland. “Why a professor of fascism left the US: ‘The lesson of 1933 is – you get out’.” If only I could. I’ve even searched for universities in France.
She finds the whole idea absurd. To Prof Marci Shore, the notion that the Guardian, or anyone else, should want to interview her about the future of the US is ridiculous. She’s an academic specialising in the history and culture of eastern Europe and describes herself as a “Slavicist”, yet here she is, suddenly besieged by international journalists keen to ask about the country in which she insists she has no expertise: her own. “It’s kind of baffling,” she says.
In fact, the explanation is simple enough. Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.
Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald Trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
Since Shore, Snyder and Stanley announced their plans, the empirical evidence has rather moved in their favour. Whether it was the sight of tanks transported into Washington DC ahead of the military parade that marked Trump’s birthday last Saturday or the deployment of the national guard to crush protests in Los Angeles, alongside marines readied for the same task,recent days have brought the kind of developments that could serve as a dramatist’s shorthand for the slide towards fascism.
“It’s all almost too stereotypical,” Shore reflects. “A 1930s-style military parade as a performative assertion of the Führerprinzip,” she says, referring to the doctrine established by Adolf Hitler, locating all power in the dictator. “As for Los Angeles, my historian’s intuition is that sending in the national guard is a provocation that will be used to foment violence and justify martial law. The Russian word of the day here could be provokatsiia.”
Let’s read about a different angle.
In the 1940 movie The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin gave a speech against fascism that is just as relevant today as it was back then.Right-wing Americans don't recognize fascism, even when it's right in front of their face, because they have been brainwashed by fascists their entire lives.
The introduction to Chaplin’s speech is written on the SubStack of Oliver Marcus Malloy. Since many Holocaust survivors compare Trump’s pogroms to Hitler, it’s a good chance to see this classic movie again.
The Great Dictator (1940), directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, is a satirical comedy that mocks Adolf Hitler and fascism.
Chaplin plays dual roles: a ruthless dictator named Adenoid Hynkel and a kind-hearted Jewish barber, who looks just like the dictator.
As Hynkel plots world domination, the barber, mistaken for the dictator, delivers a powerful speech advocating peace and unity.
The film blends slapstick humor with poignant political commentary, offering a timeless critique of tyranny and intolerance.
Meanwhile, Trump’s foreign policy continues to threaten world stability as everyone considers him and the United States as useless fools these days.
Russian Tass state media has just published the following on its Telegram channel:"The parliament of Iran has approved a strategic partnership agreement with Russia. This was reported by the Embassy of the Islamic Republic in Russia."Very curious timing.
Russia said on Monday that the United States had cancelled the next round of talks between the two countries, an apparent setback in a process launched by presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to improve bilateral ties.
In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova did not say if Washington had given any reason for the break in the talks, which began after Trump returned to the White House in January.
We cannot afford a bimbo for President who drifts from one policy approach to another. It’s fucking dangerous to the country and to our allies. I usually have a strict no video of Yam Tits and defintely not with him speaking rule, but I’m putting this up. It’s short, at least. Trump is in Canada today for the G7 meetings. You can see the enthusiasm in the Canadian PM’s face as Trump announces he’s a “tariff guy.” He thinks the PM’s ideas on the economy are complete,x so they’re going to look at both. The PM of Canada is a fucking economist you moron!
Q: What is holding up a deal with Canada?TRUMP: I'm a tariff person
I guess we’re not the only ones who desperately want to get rid of him for good. I can only imagine what the footage will look like during the news this evening.
So, it’s continually raining here. There was a crack of lightning last night that made the sky white, and the sound was so loud that Temple, while scrambling to hide under my desk, fell out of bed. I’ve had to lift her back up to the bed several times now. We’re going to the vet this afternoon for her annual. I think she’s just a little store. She’s walking around the house.
The Rooster has a girlfriend in a house 3 doors down from me. She’s caged him in the backyard and fenced in with a thick horizontal wood fence, but he sits at the same spot every morning just to be close to her.
The outdoor kitty still comes for breakfast. I’m not sure if she’s bringing friends, but an entire cup of food disappears pretty quickly.
I’m still here in New Orleans. I didn’t make it to the protest yesterday, but here’s the one in the Marigny neighborhood, which is next to mine. Have a good week!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Last week was a tough one for those of us committed to keeping a working democracy in this country and with those who have been long-standing allies. We’ve watched the USA, countries aligned with NATO, and even Israel, where fascist-leaning leaders have won elections with less than a majority.
A lot of these countries have parliamentary democracies, so they may get a composite of parties choosing the leader. There’s been a tendency for the right wing to join up with factions that can include those with strict religious beliefs hoping for theocracy, people looking to nationalism and clinging to xenophobia to overcome their fear and hatred of others, and of course, those just around for the spoils of corruption. The militia movement is a significant part of the Trump coalition. I love my country and all its people. I was excited to put money in my friend’s boxes to grow trees in Israel as a kid. Israelis deserve better than Netanyahu. Poland and Hungary are in play now, too. WTF is going on?
This piece was written by a UK blogger, Carolyn Gallaher is an excellent read. It was written back in February about the pardons of all the J6 criminals and others associated with the militia movement. “Trump’s pardons suggest he will run a far-right government with paramilitary backing.”
Trump’s pardons suggest he has adopted a personalistic approach to law. While he isn’t likely to meddle with the legal code, he is likely to intervene when his high-profile supporters are charged with breaking the law. Intervention will be at a distance, but effective. Indeed, all he will need to do is post negative commentary about the charges on social media, and at least some officers of the court will respond. Prosecutors, for example, may refuse to indict Trump’s cronies, or judges may may dismiss legally solid cases, as US District Judge Aileen Cannon did with the government’s classified documents case in the summer of 2024. Trump can also use the bully pulpit to change how a prosecution is seen. Trump adopted this approach with January 6 cases, spending the last four years priming the wider public to see the government’s prosecutions as “politically motivated” and the defendants “hostages” and “political prisoners.”
The most particularly alarming event this week was Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg, where the soldiers attending the event were filtered for Trump enablers and cheered to a clearly political and self-serving rally. Military News has this analysis.
It was supposed to be a routine appearance, a visit from the commander in chief to rally the troops, boost morale and celebrate the Army‘s 250th-birthday week, which culminates with a Washington, D.C., parade slated for Saturday.
Instead, what unfolded Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, bore little resemblance to the customary visit from a president and defense secretary. There, President Donald Trump unleashed a speech laced with partisan invective, goading jeers from a crowd of soldiers positioned behind his podium — blurring the long-standing and sacrosanct line between the military and partisan politics.
As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom — amid the president’s controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles — as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump’s diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship.
As I have been politically active for over 50 years, I really have seen it coming–especially the White Christian Nationalist movement–but always felt that our institutions would be strong enough to head it off. These folks do play the long game, and little by little, they’ve worked to put their followers into the military, police, school boards, judges, and all levels of elected officials. They’ve embedded themselves in the institutions with the intention of twisting them to their personal views. One of the best sources of information on the movement in our country comes from people who grew up, then left. This interview from the PBS News Hour with former evangelical minister within this movement, Brad Onishi, is worth a look or listen.
Brad Onishi, Co-Host, “Straight White American Jesus”: Christian nationalism is an ideology that is based around the idea that this is a Christian nation, that this was founded as a Christian nation, and, therefore, it should be a Christian nation today and should be so in the future.
According to survey data, Christian nationalists agree with statements like the federal government should declare the United States of America a Christian nation. Our laws should be based on Christian values. being a Christian is important if you want to be a real American.
The unprecedented move by Trump of sending Marines and the National Guard to hype the L.A. immigration protests for a reality show production and excite the xenophobes is really beyond anything we’ve ever seen. The birth of our country really wasn’t the Boston Tea Party. It was the Boston Massacre that happened on March 5, 1770.
I know, my history major roots are showing, but this really is the seminal event and situation that started our country. You may read more about it at the History Channel. Basically, British soldiers were occupying the city. You may not know that there was a black man among those protesting the soldiers and the enforcement of what was essentially tariffs among the five American dead. His name was Crispus Attucks,
The British soldiers were put on trial, and patriots John Adams and Josiah Quincy agreed to defend the soldiers in a show of support of the colonial justice system. When the trial ended in December 1770, two British soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and had their thumbs branded with an “M” for murder as punishment.
The Sons of Liberty, a Patriot group formed in 1765 to oppose the Stamp Act, advertised the “Boston Massacre” as a battle for American liberty and just cause for the removal of British troops from Boston. Patriot Paul Revere made a provocative engraving of the incident, depicting the British soldiers lining up like an organized army to suppress an idealized representation of the colonist uprising. Copies of the engraving were distributed throughout the colonies and helped reinforce negative American sentiments about British rule.
April 1775 is usually where most of us start our first American History lesson. The seminal events here were the Battles of Lexington and Concord. All of this is good to know as we watch our Army celebrate its 250th anniversary.
Unfortunately, Trump has turned this into an event worthy of the Dear Leader of North Korea. There is a massive, nationwide protest planned called “No Kings. that day.” It also appears likely that there will be heavy rains in the District. I pity the soldiers with this assignment. They’re already sleeping on the floors of federal buildings with mixed feelings, I’m sure.
This is the one thing that I thought I’d recommend. It’s from The Bulwark. It’s written by Jill Lawrence. “The Patriotic Rich. Not all of them are like Trump, willing to see the poor get poorer so the rich can get richer.”
DONALD TRUMP HAS HUGGED A FLAG more than once, and he’s now adding flagpoles on the north and south White House lawns. He addressed uniformed troops at Fort Bragg (at least the fit ones who love him and don’t look fat) and he’s ordered up a $45 million military parade on June 14 that could wreck D.C. streets to the tune of $16 million.
He probably thinks of himself as a patriotic billionaire.
Imagine, if you would, a different kind of wealthy role model for our nation’s youth—and its grownups, too, for that matter. A millionaire or billionaire who does not waste taxpayer money, destroy government services, attack science, undermine public health, pave the Rose Garden, and decorate the Oval Office with so much gilt that you halfway expect Marie Antoinette to show up anytime.
How about a millionaire or billionaire who obeys the law and isn’t constantly, voraciously on the hunt for more power and more money? Who would prefer a more equitable society and would pay more taxes to make it so?
These people do exist. Some are philanthropists. Some put money into political activism. And some create policy advocacy groups, like the nonpartisan Patriotic Millionaires. The group’s members are self-described “proud traitors to their class,” offering a platform of foundational economic changes to coincide with the nation’s 250th birthday next year: AMERICA 250: The Money Agenda.
“Over the long term, the unfair tax system is a cause of the oligarchy being able to do what it does. The proposals that even the progressives are making are not sufficient to actually change the course of history,” Patriotic Millionaires Chair Morris Pearl, former managing director at BlackRock, told me in an interview.
The group’s four-part proposal, released in April, aims to do just that. It starts with exempting people below a certain income from federal taxes and making up the revenue by imposing a 3 percent surtax on income above $1 million, rising to 8 percent above $10 million. Other elements include raising the minimum wage to the cost of living for a single adult, and indexing it; equalizing the tax rate for capital gains and ordinary income over $1 million; and significantly taxing the intergenerational transfer of wealth.
Forget false modesty. “The solutions to the problem are not complicated, and the Patriotic Millionaires have them all,” the group says on its home page. Their plan, they say, would “ensure prosperity and stability for America’s next 250 years.”
I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry about that. The interesting thing today is that the headlines are all about the real events in the world, like Israel Bombing Iran and Iran attacking back. L.A. is still on the front pages, and Kristi Noem, the psycho puppy killer. The only place you’ll find the parade is in the political cartoons.
The other thing is that Trump’s Budget Busting Bill is now buried by the distraction and the truly awful Noem event, where a U.S. Senator was manhandled into the hallway, put in cuffs, and treated quite the way you’d expect an SS Storm Trooper. We will now call the Storm Trumpers. This is from Paul Krugman’s Substack. “Reverse Robin Hood and Trumpian Totalitarianism. Trump’s big beautiful bill is a sadistic monstrosity.”
House Republicans have passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. After having spent decades covering Republican domestic policies, I have a pretty jaundiced view of their intentions. But this bill is so cruelly regressive that it shocked even me. This bill is truly unprecedented in the extent to which it takes away from the have-nots and gives to the ultra-haves. It slashes Medicaid, taking health care away from millions. It slashes food stamps, ensuring that many will go hungry. At the same time, it gives huge tax cuts to the wealthy.
Those of us who followed the legislation knew that it would be highly regressive. New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan agency of economic technocrats, confirm in detail just how bad the OBBBA is.
C.B.O.’s numbers, released yesterday, are startling. Here’s the percentage change in households’ purchasing power by decile of the income distribution caused by the OBBBA:
That 4 percent income decline for the poorest 10 percent of Americans is the scale of economic damage you’d expect from a severe recession. But here it is being deliberately inflicted on the poorest Americans.
In the OBBBA, pain on the least well-off Americans is not a price that is being paid in order to reduce the U.S. budget deficit. Remember,the benefit cuts for those in the bottom decile of the income distribution are being paired with tax cuts at the top of the income distribution. So the net effect will be a large increase in the U.S. budget deficit.
Wait, it gets worse. The CBO’s analysis doesn’t consider the effect of the Trump tariffs on household incomes. This is important because tariffs are taxes — regressive taxes, that fall more heavily on lower-income than higher-income families. I’ll be writing about the distributional impact of tariffs in the future.
I have just one more article to recommend on this topic by HuffPo by Jennifer Bendary. “Senate GOP Strips Contempt Provision From Tax Bill — But Still Lets Trump Be King. They took language out of the House GOP’s “big, beautiful bill” that limited courts’ powers, but now want to price people out of being able to sue the government at all.”
Senate Republicans have removed a disturbing provision from the House GOP’s massive tax-and-spending bill that would have allowed President Donald Trump to circumvent the courts and essentially serve as a king.
But they have swapped in new language that would still let Trump ignore the courts amid his lawlessness: Their provision would make it nearly impossible for people to sue the federal government by forcing them to cough up millions, if not billions, of dollars to do so.
Late Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released the panel’s proposed text for the GOP’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. The House passed its version of the bill last month, so now the Senate is making its changes. Each committee is tasked with putting together language for its relevant section in the legislation.
The text that Grassley released for the bill’s judicial section doesn’t include this jarring, one-sentence provision that House Republicans buried in their 1,116-page bill:
Translated, this provision would restrict the ability of any court, including the Supreme Court, to enforce compliance with its orders by holding people in contempt. Contempt citations are an essential tool for the courts; they allow judges to threaten fines, sanctions or even jail if people disobey their orders.
The provision in the House GOP’s bill also would apply retroactively to all temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, leaving courts with no real way of enforcing orders they’ve already handed down.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) told MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff that he was “escorted” to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference by FBI agents, where he was then manhandled by agents under the claim they didn’t know who he was.
Sen. Padilla found himself at the center of a maelstrom when he tried to ask a question Thursday at Noem’s briefing on ICE protests in Los Angeles and was brought to the ground and handcuffed by Secret Service and FBI agents. Noem and her agents falsely claimed Padilla didn’t identify himself as a U.S. senator and accused him of “lunging” in a threatening manner.
On Thursday night’s edition of MSNBC’sThe Beat with Ari Melber, Padilla gave his first sit-down after his release, and called out several inaccuracies. He told Soboroff he didn’t “barge” into the presser, he was signed in and escorted, and was listening in the room for 10 minutes before he tried to ask a question:
SOBOROFF: We heard from you briefly at the press conference after you came outside of the federal building in Westwood. We’ve heard more extensively from Secretary Noem and the Department of Homeland Security. And I want to just tell you a little bit, because I’m sure this has been a whirlwind, about what they’ve been saying.
Secretary Noem said that you, quote, “lunged” towards her at this press conference. The Department of Homeland Security said the Secret Service believed that you were an attacker. And the Department of Homeland Security called this political theater. What’s your response and what’s your version of what happened?
PADILLA: Well, first of all, that’s ridiculous. It’s a lie, but par for the course for this administration, right? So here’s the stage. Look, I was in the federal building here in Los Angeles for a scheduled briefing, just as when my colleagues and I had to go all the way to Guantanamo Bay to begin to get information about that facility being used as a detention facility. They’ve been non-responsive to requests for information. And so I had scheduled. They approved a briefing with representatives of the Northern Command in that federal building.
We were there prior to the 10:30 original appointment date when we caught wind that secretary of Homeland Security was going to be down the hall at a press conference. And — and our briefing was now delayed because of that press conference. So since the secretary has been non-responsive, I figured, let me go over and listen to what she has to say. Maybe we can glean some information here.
SOBOROFF: So let me make sure I understand the…
PADILLA: But so the…
SOBOROFF: Go ahead.
PADILLA: So the … whole time, right, we’re, the whole time, being escorted in this federal building by somebody from the National Guard, somebody from the FBI. I’ve gone through screening. This is a federal building. And so tell them, let’s go listen to the press conference. They escort me over to that room. And I’m sitting in the back of the room, behind the cameras, behind the reporters, listening, listening. And at one point, it was just too much to take. Not the first, but the second attack on the political leadership of California and this notion that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem have to come in and rescue the people of Los Angeles from Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass? It was too much. And so I spoke up. I introduced myself and said I had a question.
Look, they said I wasn’t wearing my pin, my polo says “United States Senate.” There was no threat. There was no lunging. I raised my voice to ask a question. And it took, what, maybe half a second before multiple agents were on me.
SOBOROFF: The video clearly shows, and you can hear on the audio, that you identify yourself as Senator Padilla. Did you — she said you barged into the room or you — you basically broke into the room. I’m paraphrasing here. Just set the record straight on that.
PADILLA: I didn’t barge into the room. As I mentioned, I was in a different conference room a couple doors down the hall. I let it be known, I’d like to go listen to the press conference. The folks that were escorting me in the building walked me over. I didn’t even open the door. The door was opened for me. And I spent a few minutes in the back of the room just listening in until the rhetoric, the political rhetoric got to be too much to take. So I spoke up.
And now for the Congresswoman’s story. This is from Liz Die at Public Notice. “We’ve reached the indicting the opposition stage of fascism. There’s no sane world in which Rep. McIver committed felonies during her altercation with ICE. ” If this entire event was not staged, I’ll eat my favorite summer hat.
On Tuesday, June 10, Alina Habba, the interim US attorney for New Jersey, indicted sitting Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver. The Newark Democrat is charged with two felony counts and one misdemeanor for assaulting, resisting, and impeding a federal officer in the performance of his official duties.
Habba has zero prosecutorial background and came to the job after her spectacular performance as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, where she got him half a billion dollars in civil fraud penalties in New York, $83 million in damages in the E. Jean Carroll assault and defamation cases, and a million dollars in sanctions for filing a RICO trollsuit against Hillary Clinton, James Comey, the Perkins Coie law farm, and half the Democrats in DC. (Spoiler alert: It’s never RICO.)
The indictment of Rep. McIver arises from an incident outside Delaney Hall, an ICE facility in Newark. In February, the GEO Group, the private prison company which runs the facility, was awarded a 15-year, $1 billion contract to run the 1,000-bed facility. It became an immediate flashpoint for protesters, as well as city officials, who said that they’d been blocked from inspecting for health and safety.
…
But Habba wasn’t hired for her legal chops — she was hired to advance political agendas. So even as she’s facing a civil suit for malicious prosecution and defamation by Baraka, she filed a criminal complaint against Rep. McIver, and then followed it up with an actual indictment.
The charges are thin, to say the least. Footage shows McIver, in the red jacket, attempting to shield the mayor with her body. She is jostled in the crowd and swipes at an agent who grabs her. No body slam was recorded.
It’s often said that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. The joke here is that the standard for an indictment is so low and the scales so tilted toward the prosecution at the grand jury stage, that an indictment is virtually guaranteed. The target is not entitled to be present or to introduce competing evidence. A grand jury need only find that there is probable cause to believe that the crime occurred, and need not be unanimous. And an indictment can be secured if a mere 12 jurors out of 16-23 assembled vote in favor of it.
Convincing a jury of 12 Garden State citizens, most likely the congresswoman’s own constituents, that she assaulted an ICE officer and made him fear for his safety beyond a reasonable doubt, is another matter. Rep. McIver will also have a powerful defense in the Speech or Debate Clause, which protects members of Congress from prosecution when they are carrying out official business.
I especially liked Die’s conclusion.
If Habba does not slink off again, the case will be heard by Judge Jamel Semper, a veteran of the US attorney’s office Habba now leads, who was appointed to the bench by President Biden. Arraignment is set for next Monday.
McIver, who declined a plea agreement Habba tried to foist on her earlier, called the indictment “a brazen attempt at political intimidation.”
Noem’s appearance on Fox following all that drama was definitely right out of a right-wing reality wet dream. This is from Talking Points Memo. Nicole Lafond has the story. “Noem Says National Guard Occupation Is Meant To ‘Liberate’ LA From Its Mayor And Governor.” Psychopaths have no shame.
Just before Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security press briefing, forced to the ground and then handcuffed for asking a question, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was in the middle of making a bizarre but crucial point.
“We are not going away,” she said, referring to the National Guard and DHS presence in Los Angeles this week amid protests against Trump’s sweeping and drastic deportation mission in the city. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
The statement said the quiet part out loud: the military was there to “liberate” a city from its democratically elected governor and mayor. (It was also not entirely clear what “burdensome” actions she was referring to.)
Leading up to this moment in the press briefing, Noem spent several minutes thanking the National Guard, FBI, local law enforcement and the IRS (??) for their efforts on the ground in LA. (Apparently, per Noem, IRS agents have been there in person working to determine what groups are organizing the protests in the city! Normal stuff!) She then said that the National Guard and DHS were working to “make every single community great again and safe again” before lamenting that the people of LA were “suffering” “under the policies of Governor Newsom and under the policies of Mayor Bass.”
Those remarks combined with the liberation speak amount to a pretty pellucid admission of the Trump administration’s ultimate vision here. As I noted earlier this week, much of the effort to deploy troops to LA to clamp down on mostly peaceful protesters in the city can be seen through the lens of the president’s months-long effort to punish blue cities and states. While he is hiding behind the guise of targeting Democratic-led states and cities that function as sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, Trump’s barely disguised his bloodlust for using his second term to punish all of his perceived political enemies. Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass most certainly fall into this category.
TENSIONS REACH NEW HEIGHTS: Israel launched strikes on Iran early Friday local time, a dramatic escalation of long-running tensions between the two countries.
NUCLEAR PROGRAM TARGETED: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the operation targeted Iran’s nuclear program and “will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.” Explosions continue to rock Tehran and other sites in Iran.
IRAN RETALIATES: In a televised address, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian promised a “powerful response.” The IDF have reported attacks from Iran throughout the day, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israelis to brace for retaliation.
POWERFUL LEADERS KILLED: In a significant blow to Iran’s army, it’s top military official, Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, was killed along with Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
CASUALTIES IN TEHRAN: The strikes killed nearly 80 people and injured more than 300 in Iran’s capital, Tehran, according to semiofficial Fars news agency. Iranian authorities have not confirmed these numbers.
U.S. POSITION: Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially said the U.S. was “not involved in the strikes against Iran.” However, President Donald Trump later said “we knew everything,” about the strikes and that Israel had used American weapons.
STATUS OF U.S.-IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL: In a phone call with NBC News, Trump said Iran had missed an opportunity to make a deal. “Now, they may have another opportunity. We’ll see.” Iranian State TV reported that Iran had pulled out from the next round of talks.
“Give me your rich, screw the huddled masses.” John Buss, @repeat1968
All of the chaos comes back to the fact that we have a weak president. He doesn’t know a damn thing about economics. He couldn’t care less about the military or foreign policy. He’s only interested in what he can get out of this country. Where is the money coming from for this parade and all the damage it will do to the streets of Washington, DC? Here’s what the Google AI entity has to say about spending at Homeland Security. I just asked it if they were spending more than their budget.
Yes, spending on Homeland Security is at risk of exceeding its allocated budget, particularly for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Reports indicate that ICE has already begun spending beyond its appropriated level, leading to concerns about violating the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from spending funds before Congress authorizes them. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is likely to shift funds between accounts to sustain current operations, potentially impacting other agencies and their priorities.
It makes no sense to give the rich tax breaks, pay for all this nonsense that is nothing but a political display of faux strength, then expect the rest of the country to give up public education, Medicaid, and likely Medicare? Are we going to have another infrastructure week? What about the inflation and expected negative impacts on the economy? What about our long-standing allies? Are we just buddies now with the world’s bullies?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
I’m sure even Sinclair Lewis did not see Christofasicist billionaires stacking the Supreme Court with equally overreaching religious nuts. The reversal of Roe still has hand devastating and deadly impact on women in this country. This term of the Supreme Court has cursed us with religiosity of a specific source once more. I only took one Constitutional Law class at university, and it was part of the Political Science Department, but that book still resides in my hallway library. That’s back when I fancied myself to be prelaw and my political activities were focused on changing the Rape Laws and police institutions surrounding violence and rape against women and children. Back then, women could not be raped by their husbands and they had to have two eyewitnesses to the rape. Those laws changed in Nebraska, and fortunately, they still stand. However, spiritual rape and violence still stands and is “wrapped in the flagg and carrying a cross.” It exists in Congress, persists in the Executive Branch, and drags its knuckles through the Supreme Court. It does not take a lawyer to know a rape when they see one.
So, let’s dig deeper. This is from the Washington Post. “Supreme Court sides with religious parents seeking to opt out of LGBTQ storybooks. The case asked whether Montgomery County, Maryland, could require children to participate in lessons with books that clash with parents’ religious beliefs.” Love thy neighbor is lost on these people. Of course, guess who wrote for the majority in this one? Mister, I loved the Inquisition, Alito. This guy’s father came to America from Italy in 1914. That was a time when most of the white people here didn’t want Italians here. He’s evidently forgotten they were lynched in the United States at one point. But now, he’s just another oppressor.
Let’s rewrite that as Hate your neighbor unless he ascribes to his particular version of ‘yourself”. To continue on that topic, let’s move to the next decision. This is from MSNBC. “The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship reasoning reveals a startlingly myopic view. The conservative wing of the court overly relies on the emergency shadow docket and shouldn’t have entertained the administration’s birthright argument.” They continue to destroy one precedent after another. This analysis is by Shan Wu, a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor.
” Lending legitimacy to a once-fringe conservative theory” is their favorite activity. The Washington Monthly’s It’s Not Just a Constitutional Crisis in the Trump Era. It’s Constitutional Failure. The problem isn’t just the crisis of the administration defying the courts. It’s the failure of the legislative and judicial branches to check the president.”
Please continue to the link to read this article in its entirety. This is a professor who knows his history. We’re in a period where we can reflect on how Nixon was stopped, and how Trump is being enabled. Here’s more on the overturning of the Trump injunctions. This is from the New York Times. It’s written by Abbie Van Sickle. “Supreme Court Live Updates: Trump Hails Ruling to Limit Nationwide Injunctions. In a major victory for President Trump, the court restricted the ability of federal judges to block his executive orders. The decision may reshape the way U.S. citizenship is granted, even temporarily.”
My father-in-law was hardly ever home, cheated on his first wife, and his second wife, who wound up living with us, and if he wasn’t in a wheelchair shortly thereafter, probably would have with the third wife he left the second for. He had several children that the family had found, so can I get this applied to my Ex sent back to Japan, or maybe Somalia? He was the first bona fide narcissist I’ve ever personally known. Having a rotten father can get you deported? Really? The Supreme Court has basically put all State Department Birth Certifications in jeopardy.
This still has several ramifications, and it landed right on another case. First, right now, that means RFK Jr. gets a lot of power on these decisions. Then there is this. This is from The Washington Post. “Supreme Court allows states to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Ruling says Medicaid patients cannot sue to get non-abortion health care from Planned Parenthood if states have cut off government funding for those clinics.” All roads lead back to state control of women and denying the poor and POC basic rights.
You may read about the details of the attack at PBS if you aren’t overwhelmed already by the thought of Sex Pest and Drunk, Pet Hegseth being a part of this. This headline from The Hill won’t make you feel any less queasy. I’m assuming you knew that #FARTUS was also posted that he would help Iran Make Iran Great Again. That was while Hegseth and Rubio were busily telling the press that our hijacked country had no plans for regime change. Remember, if his lips are moving, he’s telling a big ol’ story. “Israel attacking government sites in Iran as Trump floats regime change.” The reporting here is by Sarah Fortinsky.
That sure sounds like a war to me. Peter Nicholas, NBC News, reports that Democrats in the District are finally sounding some kind of alarm. “‘Biden didn’t start any wars’: Democrats sharpen their arguments against Trump’s foreign policy. In the wake of the U.S. airstrikes on Iran, Democrats are pointing to Trump’s own promises that he wouldn’t ensnare the country in foreign conflicts.”
The Guardian has a headline today that’s spot on. George Bush got led on by his own advisors. Trump’s advisors said no to the mission. Evidently, Trump was taken by strongman Benjamin Netanyahoo! After all that speechifying about Hillary getting us into another World War and how he’d never drag us into something like Dubya did to Iraq and Afghanistan. Here we are. “Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie. The Iraq War was built on a lie. Now history is repeating itself.” Mohamad Bazzi has the analysis.
I’m sure none of this is lost on us. Mark Landler writes this analysis for The New York Times. “Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow. Through revolution and upheaval, the program has become intertwined with the country’s security and national identity.” Let’s hope all of this sinks in before Trump’s Folly starts costing American lives.
Everything old is new again. History repeats itself. Yup, another Republican steps on the detonator. Historian Heather Cox Richardson has a bigger perspective at her Substack, Letters from an American.
White Christian Nationalists have been at the heart of the big problems in just living your American life, extending their warmongering, hateful, bigoted selves into a second century. Meanwhile, back in the USSR, the bear awakens. Has Trump changed his fealty? This is from the Washington Post. Will he give up his position as RasPutin Fangirl and such to Netanyahoo? “Russia condemns U.S. strikes on Iran but takes no concrete actions. Iran’s foreign minister is in Moscow seeking support, but other than condemning the attack, Putin has not taken any major moves to back Tehran.” I was last night years old when I read that a Russian official told the press there were lots of countries willing to send actual nukes to Iran. It was part of the reason I didn’t sleep last night without a hefty dose of Benadryl. I didn’t snore either, from my poor stuffed sinuses suffering from the humidity and pollen here.
I’m going to start wrapping things up, but I wanted to share a few of the reporters outside the beltway. Jude Legum writes this for Popular Information. “A new war based on manipulated intelligence. More than two decades after the Iraq War commenced, history is repeating itself.” Even the weirdos he put in his cabinet saw the intelligence and just thumbed their noses at them. He “knew” better and used his instincts.
Jennifer Ruben, now writing at The Contrarian, has the term I’ve been using for at least two weeks. “Trump’s wags the dog. Risky military action disrupts the political dynamic. He’s been trying to get us off the topics of Doge, the Big Beautiful Budget-Busting bill, and the incredible cuts floating around the Senate.
Everyone from Kansas City east to the Atlantic will be impacted. It’s huge! Yes, Boston is included! It goes as far south as Asheville and will go way up into Canada. Be prepared to stay home! Europe is getting directly involved in pushing both Iran and Israel to the negotiation table. This is from Reuters. “Iran says no nuclear talks under fire, UN atomic watchdog urges maximum restraint.” It’s reported by Parisa Hafezi, Crispian Balmer, and Jana Choukeir.
You may ask yourself, Where is my beautiful country in these peace-seeking negotiations? Well, the answer is we’re trapped in the Trump Two Week Twist. You really have to watch this clip from Jen Psaki’s show last night. The explanation and the incredible number of times he’s used the Two Week Twist is surreal. It’s laughable even though it turns the United States of America into a feckless and shammy place run by a feckless and shammy nepobaby. The New York Times heading is trying to make Yam Tits look thoughtful. Why do they keep carrying his water? Or perhaps, better put, why is he carrying his colostomy bag? This is the headline. “Trump Buys Himself Time, and Opens Up Some New Options. While President Trump appears to be offering one more off ramp to the Iranians, he also is bolstering his own military options.” Here are the feckless reporters who executed the Trump Two-Week Twist: David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager. Sanger covers Iran’s nuclear programs. Pager is from the merry band of White House Reporters who don’t do their job. That’s a gift link if you want to read all about it.
Meanwhile, we now have to report the news about ongoing attempts at political assassinations. In sad news, MSNBC reports that “Minnesota lawmaker shot 9 times at his home in ‘targeted’ attack is in a critical condition. Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were both shot multiple times and are continuing their recovery, according to a statement from the couple.”
Well, have to wait to learn more about this one. Meanwhile, the big bad budget-busting bill is hung up in the Senate. This is from The Hill. “Trump’s megabill hits more trouble as Senate conservatives demand changes.”
Here’s a sad headline from the New York Times. I’ve gifted this one too, so you may read the entire thing. “Appeals Court Lets Trump Keep Control of California National Guard in L.A.A panel rejected a lower court’s finding that it was likely illegal for President Trump to use state troops to protect immigration agents from protests.”
This bill is on a long path. Be sure to stay on top of it. I’m pretty sure a lot of the reality show attractions are still to keep us out of the loop. Also, do not forget the importance of this Supreme Court decision, which basically says state Religionists have more control over your children and your body than you do. This is from Chris Geidner writing on his blog Law Dork. “Where is the outrage over Skrmetti? On the far right’s campaign to create uncertainty over gender-affirming medical care for minors — and the powerful institutions that helped along the way.” We’re living under a situation where there are safe states under attack from the Trump administration, and states are trying to get their kids out of living under the same kinds of craziness of States’ Rights we fought a long time to get rid of. It’s nuts!
Catching actual criminals is not on the radar with this administration. In fact, they’re doubling down on their anti-immigrant antics despite recent polls showing it highly unpopular. “New poll: Trump and deportations unpopular with voters, Dems up 8 in House vote. More: 60% see ethics/corruption problems in Trump administration, and the “Abundance Agenda” is popular (except zoning reform).” This is from the substack of G. Elliot Morris. However, the White House is not watching those polls. The AP has this report today. “Trump directs ICE to expand deportations in Democratic-run cities, undeterred by protests.” My guess is that he was pissed by the lack of interest in his parade and wants more cities to experience the chaos that he brought L.A. with marines and National Guard interference. This is reported by Aamer Madhani.
This seems to verify that Yam Tits’ policy depends on who he talks to last. Also, the police in most large cities are bad enough. Why up the stakes with military with no crowd control training?
Everything he wants is a national emergency to this guy. He’s a toddler. Give him a blankie and a Nuk! I suppose we’re going to the courts some more for lessons in the U.S. Constitution.
We’ve already discussed how many US professors have left for Canada. Here’s an interview from the pair we featured earlier. This is especially true of those who specialize in research around democratic backsliding and fascist takeovers in formerly democratic countries. This new Interview from The Guardian. It’s authored by Jonathan Freedland. “Why a professor of fascism left the US: ‘The lesson of 1933 is – you get out’.” If only I could. I’ve even searched for universities in France.
Here are some links to follow the G7 summit.
The most particularly alarming event this week was Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg, where the soldiers attending the event were filtered for Trump enablers and cheered to a clearly political and self-serving rally. Military News has this analysis.
The unprecedented move by Trump of sending Marines and the National Guard to hype the L.A. immigration protests for a reality show production and excite the xenophobes is really beyond anything we’ve ever seen. The birth of our country really wasn’t the Boston Tea Party. It was the Boston Massacre that happened on March 5, 1770.
April 1775 is usually where most of us start our first American History lesson. The seminal events here were the Battles of Lexington and Concord. All of this is good to know as we watch our Army celebrate its 250th anniversary.
I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry about that. The interesting thing today is that the headlines are all about the real events in the world, like Israel Bombing Iran and Iran attacking back. L.A. is still on the front pages, and Kristi Noem, the psycho puppy killer. The only place you’ll find the parade is in the political cartoons.
Yam Tits has definitely put the dismal into the dismal science. There’s more. Okay, here are the two big stories. This is from Tommy Christopher writing for Mediaite. “Sen. Alex Padilla Tells MSNBC FBI ‘Escorted’ Him To Trump DHS Presser They Claim He Crashed.” Both Patel and Noem have some explaining to do. Don’t forget, we also have a New Jersey Congresswoman waiting for her trial for something that the facts really don’t support, either. “U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver was charged in a three-count indictment today for forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers, U.S. Attorney Alina Habba announced.” Back to the Senator’s story.
And now for the Congresswoman’s story. This is from Liz Die at Public Notice. “We’ve reached the indicting the opposition stage of fascism. There’s no sane world in which Rep. McIver committed felonies during her altercation with ICE. ” If this entire event was not staged, I’ll eat my favorite summer hat.
I especially liked Die’s conclusion.
Noem’s appearance on Fox following all that drama was definitely right out of a right-wing reality wet dream. This is from Talking Points Memo. Nicole Lafond has the story. “Noem Says National Guard Occupation Is Meant To ‘Liberate’ LA From Its Mayor And Governor.” Psychopaths have no shame.
So, I’m going to put a few links up about the attacks by Israel on Iran. They’re supposedly trying to knock back the nuclear capabilities of Iran. It seems strange, though, that Trump had already scheduled the Middle East envoy to Iran and that the US was heavily involved with the preplanning, according to Israel. This is the latest from NBC News. Netanyahu is like Trump to me. Love the country and the people. The leaders need to be sent to the World Court for Justice. “Live updates: Israel strikes Iranian nuclear facilities as fears of war mount. Iran’s top military official, Mohammad Hossein Bagheri and Hossein Salami, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, were killed, according to state media.”
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