“Time seems to be running out.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I have to admit that watching TV News is about as bad as I remember it when I was a kid, and watching body counts in Vietnam and little children my age being fire-hosed somewhere down south with a name that I’ve forgotten now. Between that and listening to my family history, I suppose it was inevitable that I would grow up with a strong sense of justice.
Watergate was a difficult time, but I always felt that the Supreme Court and Congress would properly deal with it. I was thrilled by the local desegregation efforts forced by the courts. It didn’t impact my school district, but it impacted me the few years I taught high school for the city public schools prior to finishing my master’s with an eye towards my doctorate. I headed to Oklahoma to fight for the passage of the ERA when I was pregnant with my oldest. I’ve never stopped fighting. Positive change was slow as a turtle, but it came, even though many things, but the ERA still rattles around out there waiting for the light of day. I have and will never quit the fight for true social justice.
I don’t know about you, but I dread what will show up in the news the next morning. Cruelty and ignorance are the flavors of the day. It was only a matter of time before we saw a headline like this one fromNewsweek. “Donald Trump Issues Order Defying Supreme Court Precedent.”
A new executive order signed by President Donald Trump Monday bans the burning of the American Flag, in direct opposition to a precedent set by the Supreme Court in the Texas v. Johnson case in 1989 deeming the action an act of “symbolic speech”
Trump recognized while signing the order that the action was protected by the court but said that burning the flag was an open door to violence.
“They burn the American flag,” he said, adding “They call it freedom of speech.”
“When you burn a flag is the area goes crazy. If you have hundreds of people, they go crazy. You can do other things. You can burn this piece of paper, you can and it’s but when you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before,” the Trump said.
The executive order would create a penalty of one year in jail, Trump said during the press conference in the Oval Office.
Evidently, burning the Constitution is acceptable. I can’t wait to see what the creepy, Christofascists that are the Republican Supreme Court Jurists have to say about that. I’m sure the Alitos and Thomases already have something disgusting in mind. Also, there is the sad news that Trump’s racism, xenophobia, ignorance, and cruelty have created an obsession with torturing Kilmar Ábrego Garcia and his family, once again. This is from The Guardian. It’s reported by Dharna Noor. “Kilmar Ábrego García detained after reporting to US immigration agents. Maryland man, back in the US after being wrongly deported to El Salvador, is threatened with deportation to Uganda.”
Kilmar Ábrego García – who has been thrust into the middle of an acrimonious deportation saga by the second Trump administration – has been detained after reporting to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Baltimore on Monday, just three days after his release from criminal custody in Tennessee.
“The only reason he was taken into detention was to punish him,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney representing Ábrego, told a crowd of supporters outside a Baltimore ICE field office on Monday. “To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”
The attorney also said his client filed a new lawsuit on Monday morning challenging his potential deportation to Uganda and his current confinement.
Ábrego faces deportation to Uganda after recently declining an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges, according to a Saturday court filing.
“The fact that they are holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty for a crime is such clear evidence that they are weaponizing the immigration system in a matter that is completely unconstitutional,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
The lawsuit Ábrego filed early on Monday asks for an order “that he is not allowed to be removed from the United States unless and until he has had full due process”, said Sandoval-Moshenberg.
“The main issue, aside from the actual conditions in that country is – is that country actually going to let him stay there?” the attorney said. “They can offer to send him to Madrid, Spain, and unless Madrid, Spain, is going to let him remain in that country, essentially what it is – is a very inconvenient layover on the way to El Salvador, which is the one country that it has already determined that he cannot be sent to.”
The Costa Rican government has agreed to offer Ábrego refugee status if he is sent there, court filings from Saturday show. A judge in 2019 ruled that Ábrego cannot be deported to El Salvador.
Before walking into his appointment at the Baltimore Ice field office, Ábrego addressed a crowd of faith leaders, activists, and his family and legal team organized by the immigrant rights non-profit Casa de Maryland.
“My name is Kilmar Ábrego García, and I want you to remember this – remember that I am free and I was able to be reunited with my family,” he said through a translator, NBC News reported. “This was a miracle … I want to thank each and every one of you who marched, lift your voices, never stop praying and continue to fight in my name.”
After Ábrego entered the building, faith leaders and activists rallied to demand Ábrego’s freedom, chanting “Sí, se puede” (roughly “yes, we can”) and “we are Kilmar” as well as singing the hymn We Shall Not Be Moved with an activist choir.
“Laws have to be rooted in love, because love does not harm us,” a senior priest at Maryland’s St Matthew Episcopal church identified as Padre Vidal said through a translator.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is Set for Deportation After ICE Arrests Him.”
Indeed, nearly all of the reforms surrounding Due Process and access to the legal system seem destined to be attacked by Orange Caligula. This is from Reuters. It is definitely created to hinder the poor and people of color. “Trump signs orders aimed at ending cashless bail policies.”
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that seeks to end cashless bail by threatening to revoke federal funding for jurisdictions that use it, part of a White House effort to push crime fighting to the top of the national agenda.
Trump signed a separate order that instructs police in Washington, D.C. to charge suspects with federal crimes and hold them in federal custody to avoid cashless bail, according to a fact sheet seen by Reuters.
“Cashless bail, we’re ending it. But we’re starting by ending it in D.C. and that we have the right to do through federalization,” Trump said during a signing ceremony in the White House.
Trump has seized control of the police force in Washington and is allowing National Guard troops to carry weapons while on patrol in the city. He is also threatening to expand the U.S. military presence to Democratically-controlled cities like Baltimore and Chicago.
Critics have slammed the administration’s actions as unnecessary overreach.
The focus on crime is seen as a preview of how Trump and his fellow Republicans plan to use the issue as they seek to retain control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections next year.
Yes, I’m not fond of Joe Scarborough, but I am glad that he focused on the topic of violent crime and the really dangerous places. New Orleans has not seen this low level of shooting and violent crime in some time. This is true of most cities, including the ones where National Guard, like ours, are being sent to Blue Cities to hype a false narrative and scare people into not leaving their houses to do things like vote. The only exception in New Orleans is domestic violence. The rest are lower than the small rural towns of Louisiana, where gun violence is rampant. New Orleans shootings are comparable to what happened in the 1960s. The same cannot be said of Mike Johnson’s part of Louisiana. “Joe Scarborough Hammers ‘Red States’ as ‘Most Violent’: ‘Send’ National Guard to ‘Mike Johnson’s District’.” This is from Mediaite.
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough hammered “red states” as the “most violent” in his takedown of President Donald Trump’s suggestion on Friday he may send National Guard troops to Chicago and New York City, as he has in Washington, D.C., as part of a crackdown on crime.
The tirade came on Monday morning’s show just days after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson openly pushed back on the president’s deployment threat, adding he was exploring legal options to block any such move.
As the Morning Joe crew reflected on Trump’s idea, Scarborough unloaded on the decision, defending New York City in particular as “one of the safest large cities” while comparing murder statistics there and in Chicago to “much higher” per capita figures for cities located in “red states.”
You know, the thing about this is, of course, we’ve talked about Washington, D.C., it’s the nation’s capital, a federal government, Congress could get involved, work with the president, and, together, as we’ve been talking about for a long time, figure out how to partner with the city. And that hasn’t happened. And now we’re talking about Chicago. We’re talking about New York City. Neither one of those cities are in the top ten for most violent cities in America.
Rounding on the numbers, the host then took aim at House Speaker Mike Johnson’s own district:
And if you want to look per capita, they need to do no more than look to Mike Johnson’s home state, the Speaker of the House, and look at violence per capita. You have a much higher chance of dying in Monroe, Louisiana, than you do Chicago, Illinois. A much higher chance of dying in Shreveport, Louisiana, than you do in Monroe. A much higher chance of dying in New Orleans, Louisiana, than you do in New York City.
I mean, New York, that’s fabulously crazy. New York City continues to rank as one of the safest large cities in America. And I don’t know that there’s a close second.
So, there are all of these cities and towns in red state America. You could look at Little Rock, Arkansas, you could look at Monroe, Louisiana, you could look at Shreveport, Louisiana. You could look at New Orleans, Louisiana. You could look at Memphis, Tennessee. You could look at one Nashville, Tennessee. You can look at one red state after another – Bessemer, Alabama – and you will see violent crime rates much, much, much higher per capita than Chicago, Illinois, San Francisco.
Throwing up a tweet of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s criticism of the move, Scarborough read it aloud and continued:
The chance of having violent acts committed upon you in Mike Johnson’s Louisiana, in red state Louisiana, red state that Donald Trump carried and every Republican has carried since Bill Clinton, the chances of being murdered in Louisiana 400 times higher than in California.
Let me say that again. Let me underline that again: You have a 400% higher chance of being murdered in red state Louisiana, Mike Johnson’s home state, than you do on the left coast in Gavin Newsom’s California.
There is no emergency. There is no logic to Chicago, to San Francisco, if you’re looking at the numbers, if you’re looking at data, I don’t even think this Supreme Court can turn a blind eye to this. They just can’t because data is data. Numbers are numbers, and the numbers are clear. And the numbers don’t justify – no emergency!
The host began calling on Trump to send the troops “to red states where they need them” and listed out all the cities he’d flagged statistics for:
Send those troops to Shreveport, Louisiana. Send them to Mike Johnson’s district. Send them to Little Rock, Arkansas. Send them to Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee. Send them to red states where they need them.
We have a huge Environmental Accident in Tangipoha Parish requiring evacuation and shutting down rivers, high violent crime in rural districts, and a looming Hurricane Season. Our National Guard will be worn out with all that marching around to deal with the state’s crises that are real.
We’ve finally got the EPA in charge. I was actually thinking they were probably weakened to the point of uselessness. It’s also in a very red parish that needs help. But I suppose our Guard is getting to know these cities so they can block their inner city voting locations later. We have a governor with a need to appease Yam Tits and a bunch of Swampbillies that love him. He’s already expanding his control over the District and labelling it a place with a “crime emergency.”
The White House continues its plot to erase American History. Of course, his entire administration is filled with ignoramuses. “JD Vance flunks the basics on World War II as the White House targets history museums. If anyone would benefit from some quality time at a history museum, it’s White House officials. Take Vance’s line on the end of World War II, for example.” This is from MSNBC.
Donald Trump’s offensive against the Smithsonian reached a dramatic new level last week, with a presidential declaration that the institution and its museums are “OUT OF CONTROL.” To help bolster his point, the president added that Smithsonian history museums focus on “how bad Slavery was.”
The White House confirmed soon after that, as part of Trump’s broader efforts, administration officials want to target other museums, too. “He will start with the Smithsonian and then go from there,” a spokesperson told NBC News.
While the presidential campaign to control what Americans know and learn about history is clearly reflective of his authoritarian agenda, there’s also a degree of irony to the developments — because if anyone would benefit from some quality time at a history museum, it’s Trump and his team.
The president, for example, has talked about American forces having “manned the air” and taking over “the airports” during the Revolutionary War — despite the fact that airplanes didn’t exist at the time. He later said, “If you look at the end of the Civil War, the 1800s, it was a very turbulent time. You take the end day, was it 1869? Or whatever.”
Vice President JD Vance fumbled some very textbook facts of world history while talking foreign policy on Sunday’s ‘Meet the Press.’ During the interview, the Yale Law School alum defended President Donald Trump’s decision to entertain Russia’s terms for a peace deal with Ukraine by claiming all wars end in compromise.
NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked the Ohio Republican an important question, “If Russia is allowed to keep any of the territory that it illegally seized, what message does that send to China? Does it give China a green light to invade Taiwan? Does it give Russia a green light to invade other European countries, which is what your European allies are concerned about?”
Instead of answering the question directly, Vance took issue with the premise.
“Kristen, this is how wars ultimately get settled,” he said. “If you go back to World War II, if you go back to World War I, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation.”
No. If one actually goes back and assesses every major conflict in human history, they mostly ended with one force either conquering or repelling a rival force.
Meanwhile, a follow-up on the argument that Trump’s a Marxist and Maoist. Proper Industrial Policy is helping the industry thrive, not shaking it down for money and gifts!
Q: During the campaign, you called Kamala Harris a communist, but the Biden-Harris admin never called for nationalizing a private company like you're proposing with Intel. Is this the new way of doing industrial policy?TRUMP: Yeah. Sure it is. I want to try to get as much as I can.
We’re coming on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (Katrinaversary). This is my statement on it.
Whenever I think of all this, it still brings me to tears. I was lucky to drive out of there with my 2 labs and my munchkin cat. I sat on my friend’s sofa in Omaha, stunned, speechless, helplessly watching the suffering and death, with perpetual tears. What recovery we were granted was imperfect and incomplete. We will never forget. I was glad to come back home, but the sadness of knowing so many were lost just never leaves me.
With all the people we lost, who suffered, whose homes and businesses were gone, I offer up this news from the good people of FEMA. This is from the Washington Post. As if George W Bush didn’t kill a lot of us with Heckuva Job Brownie, and all those deadly Middle East quagmire wars, Trump’s management is upping the likely death count. “FEMA staff warn that Trump officials’ actions risk a Katrina-level disaster. About 180 FEMA employees, many of them anonymous, signed a letter to Congress arguing that the agency leadership has hindered the ability to effectively manage emergencies.” This is reported by Briana Sacks.
More than 180 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees sent a letter Monday to members of Congress and other officials, arguing that the agency’s direction and current leaders’ inexperience harms the agency’s mission and could result in a disaster on the level of Hurricane Katrina.
The letter, on which more than three dozen employees signed their full names, says that since January, staffers have been operating under leaders — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, acting FEMA administrator David Richardson and former leader Cameron Hamilton — who lack the legal qualifications and authority to manage FEMA’s operations. This has eroded and hindered the agency’s ability to effectively manage emergencies and other operations, including national security work, the letter says.
After Hurricane Katrina became one of the worst disasters in the nation’s history, in part because of failures of local, state, and federal governments, Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act to give FEMA more power and responsibility. That hurricane made landfall in southeast Louisiana in August 2005, leading to at least 1,800 deaths and $100 billion in damage. The resulting legislation allowed FEMA to better prepare communities for and help them recover from disasters.
But the letter warns that the Trump administration is sending the agency and country back to a pre-Katrina era, by not having a Senate-confirmed and qualified emergency manger at the helm; by slashing mitigation, disaster recovery, training and community programs; and by thwarting officials’ ability to make decisions because of a restrictive new expense policy.
The letter demands that federal lawmakers defend FEMA from the Homeland Security Department interference, protect the agency’s employees from “politically motivated firings,” conduct more oversight, and ultimately take FEMA out of DHS and establish it as an independent Cabinet-level agency in the executive branch.
“Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” the employees wrote, adding that they are sounding the alarm “so that we can continue to lawfully uphold our individual oaths of office and serve our country as our mission dictates.”
If you want to know what Retired General Russell Honore, our Katrina Hero, has to say about all this, please follow him on his Facebook. He’s outspoken and frequently gives interviews. Here are his thoughts on NPR. “A retired general recalls Hurricane Katrina’s chaos and lessons still unlearned.”
“It broke my heart when I saw a lady with a toddler and a shopping basket pushing the baby in the water,” Honoré said in an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin. “The water was up to the baby’s chest and she was trying to get into the Superdome to save [the] baby and herself. And I said, ‘We’ve got to get these people out of here.'”
The Superdome was a last refuge for many. And as supplies ran low, it became a symbol of misery.
Before Katrina hit, forecasters warned of catastrophe if people failed to evacuate. But New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin did not issue a mandatory order until Aug. 28, 2005.
Roughly 20% of the local population stayed behind, most of them being poor and elderly. “They want to stay because they know where the medicine is and many of them lived alone,”Honoré said. In some cases, the system failed them. “The city did send people to pick them up, but at that time, you couldn’t take an animal in an ambulance. And the elderly people said, ‘I’m not leaving if I can’t take my dog with me.'”
I would also like to remind you that, as we speak, the folks who helped us most to recover are the fearless and hard-working men who came here to work. They still work here, and we depend on them. My friend Anne Renee shared this with me. It’s from NOLA.COM. “They came to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina. Under Trump, ICE is trying to deport them. Advocates have identified numerous Katrina workers detained by ICE under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.”
“The cousins fled Guatemala’s rural highlands, seeking stability in the United States. They found it in a city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Arriving in New Orleans after the storm, Abner Uriel Gomez Velasquez and Ever Eliseo Velasquez Fuentes found jobs in the booming industry Spanish speakers came to call “reconstrucción” — the back-breaking work of ripping mold-infested flooring, sodden drywall and fried appliances from flooded homes, and then, eventually, rebuilding them.
“Many left,” said Giovanni Lopez, a U.S. citizen and 40-year New Orleanian, born in Guatemala, who attends church with one of the men at St. Anthony of Padua in Mid-City, a hub for local Hispanic families. “They were here. They entered those homes first.”
New Orleans remains their home nearly two decades later.
Now, both men are confined to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in north Louisiana, caught in President Donald Trump’s immigration dragnet.
Federal agents arrested the men, who have no criminal records, while they worked a construction job together near Lafayette on June 12 with two other St. Anthony parishioners, church leaders said. They are awaiting deportation at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center, accused of entering the country illegally on their way to New Orleans after Katrina.
As the city girds for the landmark storm’s 20th anniversary this month, the arrests have highlighted immigrants’ foundational roles in rebuilding.
Demand for workers so outstripped supply after the storm that the Bush administration suspended rules requiring employers to verify workers’ immigration status. A 2006 survey of construction workers in the city found half were Hispanic, and half of those were here illegally. And New Orleans’ Latino population grew by 71%, to 103,000 residents, between 2000 and 2013, according to Census data.
A precise number of Katrina construction laborers who remain in New Orleans is difficult to tally. But under Trump, whose administration has often detained immigrants accused of no other wrongdoing, lawyers and advocates have identified numerous Katrina workers apprehended by ICE. They include a man deported to El Salvador following a May worksite raid at a marquee New Orleans anti-flooding project.
The White House’s immigration strategy has driven up deportations. Yet it has not been applied evenly: outcry from community members and Republican lawmakers has led some detainees to be released, while others remain in jail or face deportation. Supporters of Gomez Velasquez and Velasquez Fuentes have petitioned for a measure of that relief, citing their contributions to New Orleans in letters to their congressmen.
Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to multiple inquiries about Gomez Velasquez and Velasquez Fuentes’ cases.
The Trump administration has vigorously defended its agenda.
After the May New Orleans raid, an ICE spokesperson said the agency’s worksite enforcement aims to “deter employers who hire unauthorized workers,” and to “promote self-compliance in the business community.” The raids, they said, “protect employment opportunities for the nation’s workforce.”
A New Orleans story
The cousins each crossed the U.S. border with Mexico on their way north from homes in Guatemala’s verdant but impoverished San Marcos province. They entered “without inspection,” said Sue Weishar, a St. Anthony’s volunteer. Velasquez Fuentes came to New Orleans in 2006, and Gomez Velasquez followed in 2008.
They continued their construction careers — both became skilled caulkers — after the rebuild ended. They married. Gomez Velasquez met his wife Olivia in 2008 at a streetcar stop; Velasquez Fuentes met his wife Susana in 2016 in Metairie. They had children, all U.S. citizens.
And they deepened their faith. Gomez Velasquez leads a prayer group at St. Anthony, his home church. Velasquez Fuentes’ 16-year-old stepson was confirmed there.
Both men were unable to secure residency status because they did not qualify for many visa programs, such as those for relatives of adult citizens, people of certain professions and crime victims, church leaders said. They have not been accused of any other offenses.
“Our church recognizes that a country has the right to regulate its borders,” the Rev. Augustine J. DeArmond, St. Anthony’s pastor, wrote to the judge handling Gomez Velasquez’s case. “Our responsibility is also to act with justice and mercy.
On a recent Monday, about two dozen parishioners lined the church’s pews to pen letters calling for the men’s release. They asked the men’s families to describe how their detentions have upended their lives.
“I’ve never been separated from him for so long,” Axle, Gomez Velasquez’s 12-year-old son, said of his father as he fought back tears. “I miss him taking me to church and soccer. I want him to come home.”
I definitely have overdone it here. You may see so much American Spirit in so many. You may also assure yourself that we have the worst regime and the worst people ever in charge of it. Here are a few songs by us old, wrinkly hippies still protesting.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.
The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity. The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.
Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery. This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description. I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.
I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet. Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe. They governed during Watergate. Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits? Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder.
Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.
The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.
We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.
ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”
Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.
Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”
Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”
It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.
ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.
The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.
Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.
Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this.
However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother. (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”
The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.
Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.
“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”
How’s this for government efficiency? The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance. That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people. Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.” Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines? They fucked up folks! Let’s bury the lede!
Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.
Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.
Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.
Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found
The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson. “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.
A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.
The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.
Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.
In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”
It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.
Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.
But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.
CBSshows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.
President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.
The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.
As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.
Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.
In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.
Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up
Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery. Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.” Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf! What a surprise!
A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.
The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”
She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”
Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.
He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.
The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.
In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.
This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.
In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.
As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.
As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.
The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government. How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”
The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.
At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.
In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.
Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.
The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.
The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”
Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.
It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.
One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.
On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.
Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.
Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.
Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.
This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.
And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.
Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.
It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh, up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.
As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day. There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.” I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.
“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.
Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles. We have allies. At least at this moment. This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.
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Modern Day Moses has been busy selling the Big Beautiful Boner,” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m starting with something different today. Again, this is the direct byproduct of the Dark Times we find ourselves in. Never before has pay-for-play by an American President been so obvious. Never before have we seen a President who seriously believes that if the President does it, it isn’t illegal, no matter what it is. Even Richard Nixon backed off eventually because he had more respect for the country and its Constitution, and knew he’d been caught on tape. But not the Taconater. This is Chris Murphy’s report from the Senate floor last night. It’s here because he’s asked everyone to post it to their walls. I copied it from the public Facebook page, Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger Against Trump.
Last night in the Senate, something really important happened. Republicans forced us to debate their billionaire bailout budget framework. We started voting at 6 PM because they knew doing it in the dark of night would minimize media coverage. And they do not want the American people to see how blatant their handover of our government to the billionaire class is.
So I want to explain what happened last night and what we did to fight back. The apex of Republicans’ plan to turn over our government to their wealthy cronies is a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations. And they plan to pay for it with cuts to programs that working people rely on. Popular and necessary programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, are all being targeted. In order to pass the tax cut, Republicans have to go through a series of procedural steps. Last night, they took the first step which requires them to pass an outline of their plan, but with it, any senator can offer as many amendments as we want. So my Democratic colleagues and I did just that.
Now, we knew that Republicans would largely unanimously oppose them, but we had two objectives here. One, Republicans were forced to put their opinion on record — many for the first time — on the most corrupt parts of Trump and Musk’s agenda. Two, as I’ve been saying, I am going to make every process and procedure as slow and painful as possible for as long as my colleagues choose to ignore the constitutional crisis happening before our eyes.
So what did we propose? We proposed no tax cuts for anyone who makes a billion dollars a year. We made them vote on whether or not Elon Musk and DOGE should have limitless access to Americans’ personal data. We made them vote on whether to protect IVF and require insurers to cover it. Every single amendment Democrats proposed was shot down. On almost every single amendment, Republicans universally opposed it. Every Republican voted against our proposal to prevent more tax cuts for billionaires. The corruption and theft is happening in the open here.
The whole game for Republicans is taking your money and giving it to the wealthiest corporations and billionaires — even if it means kicking your parents out of a nursing home or turning off Medicaid for the poorest children. They know what they are doing is deeply unpopular. They are offering a tax cut to the most wealthy that is 850 times larger than what they are offering working people. Oh and by the way, any tax cuts for working people are going to be washed out by higher costs for basic necessities, like health care and food. It’s a fundamental injustice.
Thanks to your pressure and support, many of my Democratic colleagues have joined my effort to do everything we can to make sure they cannot destroy democracy and steal your money in the dark of the night. We are being loud about what is happening. I’m going to continue to grind the gears of Congress down as much as possible to make it that much harder and slower to get away with this corruption. That’s why the votes lasted until nearly 5 AM.
DO NOT PRESS SHARE. JUST COPY THE ENTIRE POST AND PASTE IT ON YOUR OWN WALL.
This is a five-alarm fire. I don’t think we have two years to plan and fight back. I think we have months. It’s still in our power to stop the destruction of our democracy with mass mobilization and effective opposition from elected officials. So we can’t miss any opportunity to take advantage of opportunities to put Republicans on the record and shine a light on what is happening.
Politicohas coverage on last night and the Big Budget Busting Bill that kills. “A surprising coalition of GOP senators holds all the megabill leverage. An ideologically diverse clutch of Republicans has found rare alignment — and significant power.” Let’s see how this goes. It would be amazing if Republicans actually took on the responsibility of governing instead of appeasing Trump and living in fear of MAGA terrorists.
The Senate’s deficit hawks might be raising the loudest hue and cry over the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill.” But another group of Republicans is poised to have a bigger impact on the final legislative product.
Call them the “Medicaid moderates.”
They’re actually an ideologically diverse bunch — ranging from conservative Josh Hawley of Missouri to centrist Susan Collins of Maine. Yet they have found rare alignment over concerns about what the House-passed version of the GOP domestic-policy megabill does to the national safety-net health program, and they have the leverage to force significant changes in the Senate.
“I would hope that we would elect not to do anything that would endanger Medicaid benefits as a conference,” Hawley said in an interview. “I’ve made that clear to my leadership. I think others share that perspective.”
Besides Hawley and Collins, other GOP senators including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Jim Justice of West Virginia have also drawn public red lines over health care — and they have some rhetorical backing from President Donald Trump, who has urged congressional Republicans to spare the program as much as possible.
Based on early estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, 10.3 million people would lose coverage under Medicaid if the House-passed bill were to become law — many, if not most, in red states. That could spell trouble for Majority Leader John Thune’s whip count: He can only lose three GOP senators on the expected party-line vote and still have Vice President JD Vance break a tie.
Republicans already have one all-but-guaranteed opponent in Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky so long as they stick to their plan to raise the debt limit as part of the bill. They also view Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson as increasingly likely to oppose the package after spending weeks blasting the bill on fiscal grounds.
Meeting either senator’s demands could be enormously difficult given the tight fiscal parameters through which House leaders have to squeeze the bill to advance it in their own chamber. That in turn is empowering the senators elsewhere in the GOP conference to make changes — and the Medicaid group is emerging as the key bloc to watch because of its size and its overlapping, relatively workable demands.
Heeding those asks won’t be easy. Republicans are counting on savings from Medicaid changes to offset hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, and rolling that back is likely to create political pain elsewhere for Thune & Co., who already want to cut more than the House to assuage a sizable group of spending hawks. At the same time, Speaker Mike Johnson is insisting the Senate make only minor changes to the bill so as to maintain the delicate balance in his own narrowly divided chamber.
Thune and Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) have already acknowledged that Medicaid, covering nearly 80 million low-income Americans, will be one of the biggest sticking points as they embark this month on a rewrite of the megabill. They are talking with key members in anticipation of difficult negotiations and being careful not to draw red lines publicly.
“We want to do things that are meaningful in terms of reforming programs, strengthening programs, without affecting beneficiaries,” Thune said, echoing language used by some of the concerned senators.
They’ve disappointed us before, so I’m holding back any enthusiasm and riding on the wings of hope right now. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is one of the most outspoken of the bunch, according to the New York Times. “Lisa Murkowski Isn’t Using ‘Nice Words’ About Life Under Trump. The Alaska Republican senator has no qualms about criticizing the president. She could play a make-or-break role in pushing back on the legislation carrying his agenda.”
Senator Lisa Murkowski was listing all the ways that President Trump’s efforts to slash the federal government had harmed Alaska, from the funding freezes on programs the state depends on to the layoffs of federal workers who live there, when she delivered something of an understatement.
“It’s a challenging time right now,” she recently told a crowd at a state infrastructure conference here in the state’s largest city. “I could use nice words about it — but I don’t.”
At a time when the Republican Congress has grown increasingly deferential to Mr. Trump, Ms. Murkowski has veered in the opposite direction from her party, using sharp words and her vote on the Senate floor to push back on him and his administration time and again.
She opposed the confirmations of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director. She has voted repeatedly to block Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners. She has publicly lamented Republicans’ obeisance to Mr. Trump as he tramples on legislative prerogatives, saying that it is “time for Congress to reassert itself.” She said Mr. Trump’s Oval Office dressing-down of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine left her “sick to my stomach,” and recently called his decision to end deportation protections for Afghan refugees “a historic betrayal.”
And she has been frank about the dilemma faced by Republicans like her who are dismayed about the president’s policies and pronouncements but worried that speaking out about them could bring death threats or worse.
“We are all afraid,” she told constituents in April, adding: “I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
Now, as Senate Republicans take up sprawling legislation carrying Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda, Ms. Murkowski is poised to become one of the most influential voices demanding changes to her party’s signature bill.
She has already indicated that there are at least two major provisions in the measure that she does not support: adding stringent new work requirements to Medicaid, and the termination of clean energy tax credits established under the Biden administration, a repeal that Speaker Mike Johnson accelerated to help win the support of conservatives to muscle the legislation through the House.
“There are provisions in there that are very, very, very challenging, if not impossible, for us to implement,” Ms. Murkowski said of the work requirements the day after the House passed its bill.
May 28, 2025: Trump Budget Bill
The Club For Growth (aka Less Taxes at any Cost) has targeted her in an ad campaign. That should be a badge of honor. Meanwhile, the attack on immigrants and generally, on people of color in this country is reaching the same low as the rights of women to have bodily autonomy. The treatment has turned the issue into a negative with #FARTUS, but he continues to get more and more sadistic and less and less lawful. This is from The New Republic. ” Trump Arrest of Immigrant Triggers Shock and Regret in Small MAGA Town. It’s part of the Daily Blast podcast by Greg Sargent. “An immigrant’s pending deportation has stunned Trump-supporting Missouri locals who have come to know and love her. Speaking to us on our podcast straight from jail, she makes a tearful, wrenching appeal.”
Ming Li Hui, who goes by the name of “Carol,” has lived for 20 years in the town of Kennett, Missouri, after coming here from Hong Kong. She has been raising a family there and works as a waitress—and as The New York Timesreports in a piece featuring quotes from Carol and many locals, she’s well-liked in the community. But Carol was recently arrested and now faces potential deportation. This has shocked and dismayed many of the town’s residents, even though the area went overwhelmingly for Trump. Carol talked to us on the podcast straight from jail, where she is awaiting her fate. At times the conversation was difficult: She broke down in tears about her ordeal, was emotionally overwhelmed at the support she’s received from the Trump-backing town, and offers wrenching thoughts about Trump’s effort to deport countless others just like her. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
Yes, it’s time for all good Brown Shirts wearing Red Trucker hats to narc on their neighbors. I think we should blast the hotline with the 5 names listed below.
Immigrants ICE should be notified of:Thiel. Musk. Melania. The parents of Usha. The Murdochs.
Everyone should be worried about Health Care in America. Walker Bragman tells this story on Important Content. “Out of His Depth,” “Sold His Soul,” “Clueless”: NIH Staffers Speak Out About Director Bhattacharya. Widespread dissatisfaction over the NIH’s “continuous free fall” has people speaking out.” What we need are fewer informants and more whistleblowers. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely law that protects whistleblowers will be enforced.
Jay Bhattacharya’s stint as director of the National Institutes of Health is off to a rocky start. At his first town hall last month, the former Stanford University health economist, who became known during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic for evangelizing mass infection as the path to herd immunity, was greeted by a largely stone-faced audience.
Things did not get much better from there. A joke in his opening remarks about the difficulty of the job turning his hair grayer did not land. Later, dozens walked out after he expressed support for the speculative lab leak explanation of COVID’s origins, which is disfavored by experts. During the Q&A session, he was heckled about cuts to research impacting minority communities.
”It’s good to have free speech,” Bhattacharya remarked during the walkout. “Welcome, you guys.”
But inside NIH, many are feeling unwelcome—and ready to be heard. Important Context spoke with a dozen people working at the agency in various roles and institutes, on both the intramural (internally funded) and extramural (grants) side. All painted a grim picture of an institution plagued by chaos, an unclear leadership structure, mismanagement, and widespread fear and demoralization due to capricious rule changes, restrictions, and research cuts.
One man they blamed? Jay Bhattacharya.
Due to clear personal and professional risks associated with whistleblowing and speaking out, we have kept the identities of these individuals anonymous, allowing each to decide how they are identified in this article. One staffer wished to be identified as a program officer and is quoted multiple times throughout this article. They are initially referred to as “a program officer” and subsequently as “the program officer.” A staffer who asked to be identified as extramural is also quoted in multiple places—first as “an extramural staffer,” then as “the extramural staffer.”
“It’s a total shit show,” one agency staffer told Important Context, explaining that Bhattacharya seemed unaware of how NIH operated when he arrived. They said he had been promising reforms that were already part of the agency’s work.
“His attitude coming in has just been so condescending, and so like, ‘Oh, we’re going to make NIH great’…and ‘we’re going to make…science transparent, and we’re going to introduce all of these programs’ that, mind you, already exist,” the staffer said. “Like, these are things we actively do…You fired people that do those things that you say you want to do.”
Others we spoke to questioned Bhattacharya’s intentions, suggesting he had a dubious personal agenda. An extramural staffer described the current NIH leadership as “people settling grudges.” A scientist inside the agency said, “It’s very clear he has a vendetta against the NIH.”
Another NIH scientist told Important Context that Bhattacharya was “basically just trying to create an environment where lies can be treated the same as scientific truth and he and his cronies can like, jam through bullshit studies and then he can try to scream academic freedom.” They said that the way things were going, it looked like the NIH was “going to collapse on itself at some point,” adding that the current administration was “trying to kill most of what we do.”
“It is catastrophic,” they said. “The public should understand that [President Donald] Trump wants to kill U.S. science. And is succeeding.”
Jenifer Rubin has a straightforward headline today in her piece at The Contrarian. “Trump and his crew are nuts. It’s time to stop rationalizing the craziness.”
While Musk was the most unstable, wacked-out member of the Trump team, we should consider the full array of misfits, cranks, neo-Nazi sympathizers, demagogues, anti-constitutionalists, and habitual liars who populate the Trump team. In a single administration, there have never been so many intellectually shortchanged figures, ethically compromised lawyers, and emotionally unhinged conspiratorialists (from Kash Patel to Ed Martin to Paul Ingrassia to Emil Bove to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to Pete Hegseth to Stephen Miller). Given all that, the coverage of the Trump crew has been bizarrely inexact and feeble. Continuing to treat them as simply “conservatives” or “right-wing” figures rather than unwell and part of a cabal of nuttery serves to normalize a dangerous, bizarre regime, unlike anything we have seen in modern American history.
It is no coincidence that Trump chose them. “Authoritarianism is the conversion of rule of law into rule by the lawless. He needs the people with those skill sets on his side,” historian Ruth Ben Ghiat explained. If a narcissistic, amoral, unhinged, and vengeful criminal (convicted of 34 counts) wants his wishes executed, he is going to surround himself with people as bonkers as he is. It’s the other side of the coin of Trump’s disdain for experts—those who grasp and adhere to evidence and would object to his moral and intellectual deconstructionism. Put differently, Trump insists that those around him be as demented (or willing to pretend they are) as their boss.
Without fully exploring the mental, moral, and emotional condition of Trump and his coterie of kooks, corporate and billionaire media outlets treat each new revelation (e.g., a fraudulent MAHA report, the State Department’s embrace of the Nazified term “remigration,” attacks on judges, threats to prosecute political enemies, defiance of court orders, appointment of unfit officials, etc.) as a discrete episode rather than part of a pattern of crackpottery symptomatic of late-stage authoritarianism. The failure to convey the enormity of the problem has serious ramifications.
First, Republican senators who have rubber-stamped many of these figures are not held accountable for abdication of their constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent and (along with the House) to perform oversight. If their manifestness was a given, the fecklessness of the Republican House and Senate members in confirming them would be more scandalous. The deference lawmakers normally extend to presidents might evaporate, and Republicans might face demands to examine every nominee with a fine-toothed comb. (When someone like Ed Martin’s record finally broke through the media noise, Republicans eventually relented and refused to confirm him. Imagine if they felt the same heat about every nominee.)
Second, refusal to acknowledge Trump and his minions’ irrationality leads to constant rationalization of unhinged behavior as part of some grandiose, ingenious strategy. Ed Kilgore wrote last month: “This rationalization of the 47th president’s worst impulses is especially dangerous since it reinforces his own belief that he is never wrong.” Kilgore argued that if Trump “is encouraged to behave more erratically than ever, he will continue to reward destructive nihilism in his subordinates, and we’ll all go a bit mad just trying to keep up.”
The corporate and billionaire-owned media serve up jokey TACO memes, but deliver little comprehensive analysis of Trump’s underlying instability, contradictory impulses, and reversals on policy matters ranging from tariffs to Ukraine, all aided and abetted by hand-picked stooges.
In sum, pretending this crew is stable only puts our democracy and national security at greater risk. It may be too scary to contemplate (and too daring for captive, timorous corporate media to recognize) that Trump is nuts and that his advisers prove that the fish rots from the head. But the evidence is all around us. The Trump regime’s endemic nuttery should provoke fearless, aggressive reporting to convey the enormity of the problem. It should lend urgency to the task of consolidating a forceful, uncompromising coalition of sane, decent, and normal Americans to combat MAGA’s reign of crazy.
Today, we have the NACHO Queen (Noem Always Chickens the Hell OUT). This is from the Daily Beast. It’s one thing to chase criminals. It’s another to run a high-priced kidnapping ring to chase down children and their hard-working parents. “ICE Barbie’s List of ‘Sanctuary’ Cities Yanked After Furious Backlash. The pro-Trump National Sheriffs’ Association had called the list “arbitrary” and a betrayal.”
Janna Brancolini has the story,
Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security has taken down a list of dozens of “sanctuary” cities and counties accused of hampering the administration’s mass-deportation efforts after even a pro-Trump law enforcement group denounced the list.
Homeland Security Secretary Noem announced the list last week in a blustering statement accusing the cities of obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
“These sanctuary cities are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,” Noem said.
The jurisdictions listed would be receiving “formal notice of non-compliance and all potential violations of federal criminal statutes,” DHS warned in the statement.
In sanctuary cities, local law enforcement officers don’t routinely collect information about people’s immigration status, though they do turn undocumented people over to federal immigration agents if a federal arrest warrant has been issued, or if the person has been convicted of a serious crime.
Supporters say the policies reduce crime by fostering trust between police and the community.
In an April executive order, though, President Donald Trump called the practice “a lawless insurrection” against the federal government and ordered the Department of Justice and DHS to publish a list of sanctuary jurisdictions.
The published list included cities like Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Denver, whose mayors have defended the policy during congressional hearings, Reuters reported. But it also included a number of jurisdictions that had never adopted a sanctuary policy.
In a statement Saturday, the National Sheriffs’ Association—whose leadership has typically supported Trump—called the list “arbitrary,” while doing its best to distance Trump from his own policy.
“DHS has done a terrible disservice to President Trump and the Sheriffs of this country. The President’s goals to reduce crime, secure the Borders, and make America safer have taken a step backward,” said the group’s president, Sheriff Kieran Donahue of Canyon County, Idaho. “The sheriffs of this country feel betrayed.”
The statement said the list was “created without any input, criteria for compliance, or mechanism for how to object to the designation,” meaning sheriffs had no way of knowing what they needed to do to avoid being tagged with the “arbitrary” label.
“When you owe almost a billion dollars in legal judgments, not to mention lawyer fees, and you’re a convicted felon, the whole No Tax On Tips thingy makes sense as he dances around the country.” John Buss, @repeat 1968
We’re all just refugees in MAGAland.
Hope you have a good week. I’ve taken on more hours in order to avoid any reality beyond my lovely neighborhood and cast of characters. As usual, I walked Temple and made sure I fed the Rooster, checked on the feral cats and gave them food and water, and noticed the spare loaf of bread that mistakenly came with my grocery order disappeared from the railing of my porch as was intended. Why can’t we live together?
I would like to end here with the deep sadness I feel about the firebombing of peaceful protesters on the streets of Boulder who simply wanted action on bringing the Hamas hostages back to their families. The marchers were primarily Jewish, and this was an act of Anti-Semitism. Acts of Violence are never a way to bring good to any cause. More killing is never the solution.
In light of that tragic event, I have two suggested reads.
Eight people marching in support of Israeli hostages held in Gaza were burned Sunday by a man wielding what authorities called a “makeshift flamethrower” and an incendiary device.
The attack happened at 1:26 p.m. on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall, during a weekly walk organized by the city’s chapter of Run for Their Lives, which calls for the release of hostages held by the terrorist group Hamas.
Mark Michalek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver field office, characterized the incident as a “targeted act of violence” and said in a Sunday evening news briefing that it’s under investigation as terrorism, echoing a statement from FBI Director Kash Patel earlier in the day.
Police arrested Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, of El Paso County, after bystanders pointed him out to police officers outside the Boulder County Courthouse, Michalek said.
Soliman used a makeshift flamethrower and threw an incendiary device into the crowd gathered outside the courthouse to harm them, Michalek said, adding that the suspect yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack.
Videos showed people rushing to pour water on one victim while others lay collapsed nearby.
“It’s almost like it was a gun of fire,” said Lynn Segal, who witnessed the attack. “It’s like a line of fire.”
Violence begets more Violence. It is never the solution to a problem. These were not soldiers. These were Americans. These were not the problem or the solution to the Israeli-Hamas War.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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“No one knows immoral more.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today is the day that the Nation pays tribute to many Americans who gave their lives in wars to support our Country. That is, everyone but #FARTUS. He’s ranting about how much our country sucks. This is from Alternet. “‘This is a disgrace’: Trump ripped for ‘outrageous’ and ‘divisive’ Memorial Day diatribe.” This comes on the back of one of the most bizarre and uninspiring graduation speeches ever given to the graduating cadets at West Point. I cannot believe this deranged monster was elected President. It’s beyond embarrassing.
Trump, writing in all caps, posted, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THE BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTAO INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDERERS, AND RAPE AGAIN, PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL.”
But Trump, according to Mediaite, later deleted that post and replaced it with a much shorter post that read simply, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from Reuters. “Kremlin on Trump’s remark about Putin being ‘crazy’: there is some emotional overload.” Trump must be still pissed Obama got that Nobel Peace Prize when all he can get is a wink, wink, nod, nod of respect from Putin.
The Kremlin on Monday said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Vladimir Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” might be due to emotional overload, but thanked the U.S. leader for his assistance in launching Ukraine peace negotiations.
Trump said Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” by unleashing the largest aerial attack of the war on Ukraine and said he was weighing new sanctions on Moscow, though he also scolded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organising and launching this negotiation process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the Trump remarks about Putin.
“Of course, at the same time, this is a very crucial moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reactions.”
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
The Federal Reserve just bought $43.6 billion in US treasuries in the span of a week, sparking concerns that a quiet quantitative easing operation is underway.
New documents show the Fed purchased $8.8 billion in 30-year bonds on May 8th via its System Open Market Account (SOMA) – a move that followed a $34.8 billion purchase earlier that same week.
The move has triggered allegations that “stealth QE” has arrived, with a MarketWatch op-ed by Charlie Garcia calling the move “monetary policy on tiptoes.”
The Fed has long stated such purchases are routine reinvestments of maturing securities to adjust the money supply and influence interest rates to meet its targets.
The Fed’s buying spree follows a major Treasury sell-off from China.
New numbers from the Treasury Department show China sold $18.9 billion in US bonds in March, while most other countries increased their holdings.
China now holds $765.4 billion in US Treasuries and is in third place behind the UK and Japan, which hold $779 billion and $1.13 trillion, respectively.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from CNN. “Trump delays 50% EU tariffs until July 9.” I guess he thinks blowing up the markets over the Independence Holiday may cause a silversmith to jump a horse and ride into the countryside. Looks better to do it after.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has agreed to delay a 50% tariff on European Union imports until July 9, the latest instance of Trump declaring an impending tariff and throwing markets into confusion only to later walk back the threatened levies.
Trump said he and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had a “very nice call” that led to the delay.
“(Von der Leyen) said she wants to get down to serious negotiation,” Trump told reporters at Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey. “July 9 would be the day, that was the date she requested. Could we move it from June 1 to July 9? I agreed to do that.”
“She said we will rapidly get together and see if we can work something out,” he added.
As recently as Friday, Trump said he was “not looking for a deal” with the EU, and that their tariff rate was set at 50% and would go into effect on June 1. That rate would have come after he had imposed a 20% reciprocal tariff on the EU in April — which itself was also delayed, as were other so-called reciprocal tariffs.
Minutes after speaking with reporters, Trump posted on Truth Social that “talks will begin rapidly.”
Earlier in the day, von der Leyen had posted on X that there was a “good call” with Trump.
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at Public Notice.
Last Thursday evening, the Supreme Court all but demolished the legal basis for the independent agencies that are part of the modern administrative state.
In a brisk four paragraphs, only two of which contained any attempt at legal reasoning, the Court’s six Republican justices allowed the president to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) in violation of federal law. The decision highlights the lawlessness of the Court and is likely to further embolden a president who is very keen to place himself above the law.
The Court’s order in Trump v. Wilcox allows the president to violate the federal laws that prohibited him from removing NLRB and MSPB members without cause for doing so. Laws that insulate the heads of multimember commissions such as the NLRB are a common feature of the administrative state. The Supreme Court upheld one such law almost a century ago in Humphrey’s Executor v. Federal Trade Commission, the case that now undergirds modern independent agencies.
It was therefore a little surprising to read the Supreme Court’s order in Wilcox, which permits the president’s statutorily prohibited removal of officers on multi-member commissions, and see no mention of Humphrey’s Executor, the decision upholding statutes that prohibited such removals. Humphrey’s didn’t appear until the dissent.
But this dismissal of important precedents structuring modern society and government has become a hallmark of the Roberts Court. In a decision few years ago, the Court confidently declared that an earlier precedent on the Establishment Clause had been “abandoned.” Did that mean overruled? Unclear, but it at least meant the Court didn’t have to follow it!
Last term, the Court formally overruled the Chevron doctrine that had allows agencies to interpret ambiguous statutes they administer, as the Republican Justices turned tail on a a precedent they had previously embraced. The year before that, the Court announced that the time had come to end affirmative action programs in higher education, as if it was just closing up shop on the precedents upholding such programs.
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is still hobbling its way through the Senate. Politico has this story on the man with the smallest gavel in the world. “Mike Johnson urges Senate not to make major changes to megabill. “We’ve got to deal within the realm of what’s possible,” the House speaker said Sunday.” After all, once you’ve blown up democracy, the Constitution, and the economy, what’s left but to hand the remainders over to the Kleptocracy?
House Speaker Mike Johnson is urging GOP senators to exercise caution in making changes to the sweeping megabill passed through the House last week.
“I encourage them to do their work, of course, as we all anticipate,” Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday on “State of the Union.” “But to make as few modifications to this package as possible, because remembering that we’ve got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House. And I have a very delicate balance here, very delicate equilibrium that we’ve reached over a long period of time. And it’s best not to meddle with it too much.”
But key senators are already looking to make modifications, with different factions holding that the bill goes too far in its approach to Medicaid and clean-energy tax credit cuts. Others, such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), say it doesn’t move the ball far enough. Johnson wants to cut spending by roughly $6 trillion.
“This is our only chance to reset that to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending,” Ron Johnson told Tapper, also on Sunday. “And again, I think you can do it in the spending that we would eliminate, people wouldn’t even notice. But you have to do the work, which takes time.”
“The problem is the math doesn’t add up,” Paul told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “They’re going to explode the debt by the House says $4 trillion, the Senate’s actually been talking about exploding the debt $5 trillion.”
The speaker pointed to Republicans’ tiny majority in the House, with margins that may make sweeping changes unrealistic.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
So, I will close with that horrid West Point graduation speech. It’s really time for someone to question Trump’s mental health and send him to Walter Reed for a real test or 10. This is from US Today. James Powel has the analysis. “Trump tells West Point grads to avoid ‘trophy wives’ in commencement speech.” I’m not sure you’ve ever seen the average salary of a soldier, but I’m certain trophy wives and yachts are not likely to be in their future.
President Donald Trump told graduates to avoid “trophy wives” during his commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 24.
“He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife,” Trump said, referring to real estate developer Bill Levitt. “But that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t it work.”
“The job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures (and) spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun,” he said. “The military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime and any place.”
The military academy shut down a slew of on-campus organizations, including the Corbin Forum, a leadership club for female cadets, and Spectrum, a gay-straight alliance, in February following an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government, according to Military.com.
“We’ve liberated our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings,” Trump said. “There will be no more critical race theory or transgender for everybody forced onto our brave men and women in uniform — or on anybody else for that matter, in this country.”
Trump, wearing his campaign’s red MAGA hat, also pulled a common campaign reference in the speech, saying, “I went through a very tough time with some very radicalized sick, people. I say I was investigated more than the great, late Alphonse Capone.”
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at Rolling Stone.
Following Donald Trump‘s bizarre speech to West Point graduates, where the president opined on topics ranging from yachts and trophy wives to drag shows and golf, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is calling on Republicans to “start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally.”
“I don’t think that those who have gone through West Point expected to have their commander in chief address them and start talking about trophy wives or start talking how he has so many investigations,” she said. “What a great reminder that you are not qualified to be the person that potentially will command troops to go into war. That is not instilling confidence whatsoever.”
“It is time for Republicans to start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally,” Crockett added. “We know when it comes down to his criminality, he is not qualified to serve, but this is just absolutely deplorable.”
Okay, so I know you have better things to do today than worry about the sanity of the President and the state of our democracy and economy. Please remember the people who died fighting for our democracy instead of the ones fighting to destroy it in your activities today.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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“A modern-day interpretation of a 1871 Thomas Nast work seems fitting to commemorate Trump’s secret crypto dinner.” John Buss, repeat@1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
As the old Buddhist and Hobbit saying goes: “We live in Dark Times.” “Kali Yuga” is the Hindu expression. Darkness has always been an expression of decline in European History, hence the label “Dark Ages” for the period from the 5th to about the 8th century. Usually, these periods experience a decline in economic, intellectual, and cultural life. One of the most prevalent things about these times is that there is a paucity of written records. So, it’s difficult to capture the decline until a renaissance occurs. The breakdown of institutions occurred in these past times as well as the present. At the moment, we still have the ability to document the decline in the US. Many relate to it as a rebirth of fascist movements of the 20th century. It is a global feature at the moment, but no matter if it’s the Decline of the Roman Empire or the American Empire, there are signs.
The invention of the printing press is seen as one of the most powerful examples of an invention that can change the course of history. Access to information directly, for personal consideration, tends to create a citizenry with low tolerance of being shut off from thinking for themselves. Perhaps it’s why today’s dark leaders tend to go for education and the press, and why they attract “low information” and angry denizens. They also attract a cadre of greedy followers willing to help attack and grab the wealth of those who are powerless.
These are indeed Dark Times.
The fight for the light in the newly filed Harvard case against the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students is a prime cause of denying the citizenry access to anything that might cause them to question the goings-on here. But it also breaks into the tradition of the United States being the shining light of discovery, science, and reason. It’s why those of us who have had academic careers cherish and enjoy academic freedom. The free exchange of ideas and opinions is essential.
We have traditionally had a small number of women in my field of economics. It was between 4 to 10 percent in the late 70s and early 80s. It once rose to above 30%, but recently has settled on 27%. The STEM fields still reflect the struggle for inclusion. It’s even lower for Black Americans. However, my career has led me to have colleagues from a variety of countries, which is wonderful. In my early career, most of my women colleagues came from the Middle East or China. I was lucky enough to have a professor from Finland. She was brilliant. Believe me. During my academic studies and life, the joy of having colleagues from all over the world who could share things was a blessing in my life. A colleague from the Punjab who now teaches in Canada helped me improve my math chops to get me through some of the most complex models that you could imagine. He stayed with me after Katrina until the campus got its FEMA trailers. I also had a student from Taiwan staying with me. My last biggest joy, however, was writing 2 letters of recommendation for two Black New Orleans students to Rice. The US cannot afford to fall behind in a vast world of research. And, yet, here we are with a professional moron taking down the biggest academic center of research in the World. America’s first University, Harvard. If we do not train the world’s best minds, we will fall deeply behind in everything.
Today, we got the news of the Case Harvard filed against Trump. “Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Admin From Revoking Harvard’s Ability To Enroll International Students.” This is from The Harvard Crimson. Harvard turned out one of my favorite journalists, Joy Reid, and you can read this article knowing there are more good journalists headed to jobs.
A federal judge granted Harvard a temporary restraining order in its suit to block the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke its authorization to enroll international students.
The order was issued less than two hours after the University requested a halt to the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to end its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification. Harvard had described the move as “unprecedented and retaliatory.”
United States District Judge Allison D. Burroughs agreed that if the DHS’ move goes forward, Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”
The TRO will go into effect immediately and will likely last until a hearing in the case. Burroughs has scheduled a May 27 status hearing and a May 29 hearing on whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Harvard would need to file for a preliminary injunction to prevent the DHS’ directive from going into effect after the TRO expires.
Under the terms of the order, the DHS is barred from enforcing the Thursday move to strip Harvard of its SEVP status — and Harvard is no longer legally obligated to turn over the requested documents by Sunday.
Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, has adjudicated several cases relating to Harvard in the past. She oversaw a case brought by Harvard and MIT in 2021 against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s effort to force all international students who were enrolled online in the U.S. to leave the country. ICE ultimately rolled back the policy without a ruling from Burroughs.
Burroughs is also overseeing Harvard’s first lawsuit, filed in April, against the Trump administration over its nearly $3 billion funding cut.
I admit: The daily drumbeat of stupidity is exhausting. I wish it were enough for me to simply document the dangerous ignorance of Trump and his sycophants, confident that we’ll soon be free of this regime and its power to spread their poison and cancerous hostility across the land and around the world. But the midterm elections will not arrive for another 17 months. It’s hard to overstate how much damage Trump, his cabinet and his kowtowing Republican Congress can cause between now and then.
That’s why most days I ask myself: Could today be the day Americans decide they’ve had enough and demand change? I have thought that there might be a single event that triggers millions of Americans taking to the streets or committing to a national strike in a public, unavoidable show of solidarity. But I have come to see that the daily drumbeat is numbing too many people, causing them to adapt to the cruelty, the racism, the hostility to democracy, the arrogant rejection of the Constitution and the rule of law. The metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water is apt; by the time the frog’s figured out he needs to get out, it’s too late.
We’re not there yet. You can see that dedicated lawyers are filing suit against the corruption and criminality, judges are pushing back, outraged Americans are engaging in protests, some elected Democrats and other awake leaders are ringing alarm bells, a growing number of colleges and universities have refused to buckle under, some independent media are addressing the reality of authoritarianism in no uncertain terms. Americans have not surrendered their sanity or capacity to know what’s right and wrong, what’s true and false. The pot may be beginning to boil, but we can still see and feel what’s happening. We are still able to take action.
But I want to spotlight a series of events in a single 24-hour period that individually outrage me and, taken together, express a level of stupidity and sickness that should motivate more than a shrug of the head or an angry social media post. You may have already focused on—been outraged by—one or even all of these. But it’s important to not look at them as discrete events, but part and parcel of a single plot to convince us that we should accept a fascist regime bent on elevating white nationalism, oppressing people of color, silencing dissent and making the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer and sicker. This effort is led by a malignant racist and sociopath who’s convinced the people around him to do what he says, no matter how ugly, cruel, blatantly false—or just plain stupid.
Two of the four events were in the Oval Office Wednesday—our Oval Office, the place where real presidents have made some of the most momentous decisions that improved the lives of Americans, created a safety net to overcome the ravages of the Great Depression and soften cap italism’s turbulence, helped defeat the Nazis and fascism, built global alliances that made the world safer, more stable and prosperous, and demonstrated a commitment to bend the arc of history toward justice.
Into this historical place of honor came South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a calm and skilled diplomat who decades earlier had served alongside Nelson Mandela as his chief negotiator to end apartheid in South Africa. But just like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, he arrived for an ambush by a spiteful, narrow-minded man who spreads lies like Ukraine not Russia started the still-raging war. On this day he insisted with false information from fringe groups that South Africa, whose leaders are mostly Black, are committing genocide against white farmers, a false narrative that his top donor and South African-born Elon Musk has propagated.
At Trump’s urging, Ramaphosa answered a reporter’s question about what it would take to convince Trump there is no such white genocide. “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here,” he calmly said, referencing South African golfer Ernie Els who was in the room. “When we have talks between us around a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them.”
But South Africa’s president was being set up. Trump interrupted him to play a video pushing the lies, then he showed photos meant to “prove” how much death there was, even leading Trump to mutter, “Death, death, death, horrible death, death.”
Except the video clip showing a long line of white wooden crosses were not actual burial sites for white farmers, as Trump insisted, but were from a 2020 protest against farm murders over the years. Except the photo Trump showed of people lifting body bags, insisting they “are all white farmers that are being buried,” was actually of humanitarian workers burying bodies in Congo. Except for all the claims of genocide among white farmers, meant to justify bringing white Afrikaners as preferred refugees to America now, there were a total of 44 murders in farming communities last year, Reuters reports, with over 26,000 in the country overall.
President Ramaphosa came to discuss trade and economic partnership. Yet Trump brought him into the Oval Office to ambush and abuse him, push his white nationalist agenda, spread more widely his egregious lies and showcase that—while illegally deporting people of color—only whites deserve America’s protection from presumed persecution. “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around a table and talk about them,” Ramaphosa noted, but Trump was not listening.
There is a daily drumbeat of stupidity, airing of white grievances, and cruelty. While discriminating harshly against everyone who is not white and Christian, this administration harbors supporters who carry torches and shout “Jews will not replace us,” and has bubble-headed Congress Critters who scream about “Jewish Space Lasers”. Anti-semitism has become transactional. It has become a useful tool in the attack on Academia and the Democratic Party. It assumes that you can’t understand the history of the Jewish people without turning a blind eye to the punishing attacks on Palestinian women, children, and innocents in the Gaza Strip. I do not think there is a bigger way of showing disrespect for a group of people than using their historical struggles as a tool to encourage the murder of innocents. But then, our #FARTUS is planning a Trump Tower, hotel, and golf course in GAZA. The Trump Boyz–in between murdering endangered animals for sport–have been travelling the globe using the Tariff stick as a way to expand their Crime Syndicate. All, at the expense of the United States and its economy. This is from QUARTZ: “8 countries where Trump has been making new business deals, from Pakistan to Vietnam, Residential towers, golf courses, crypto — the deals didn’t stop on Inauguration Day.” This is the art of the steal in full display. All we need to see is Eric and Don Jr. flying in the palace in the sky and sitting at Trump’s Crypto Fundraiser now.
Businesses spearheaded by President Donald Trump have struck numerous deals since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Leading the way is the Trump Organization, a conglomerate privately owned by the president. With more than 250 subsidiaries, it serves as a holding company for Trump’s various hotels, residential real estate, towers, resorts, and golf courses across the world.
World Liberty Financial, a decentralized protocol that merges financial services and cryptocurrency, has also brokered deals. A Trump business entity owns 60% of World Liberty and is entitled to 75% of all revenue from coin sales. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. manage the company.
Here are the countries where the Trump empire has been dealmaking. The slide show that follows lists Vietnam. It’s in Hanoi, which reminds me of the Hanoi Hilton and the late Senator John McCain.
The project consists of a golf course, hotels, and luxury residences, and is slated for completion by 2029. In addition, Eric Trump is scheduled to meet with officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday to discuss a possible Trump Tower in the city, Reuters reports.
In April, the president imposed a “reciprocal” tariff rate of 46% on Vietnamese goods. While that policy is currently on a 90-day pause, it would deal a major blow to the Southeast Asian country if resumed. Goods exported to the U.S. account for 30% of Vietnam’s economy, according to IMF estimates, the largest of all U.S. trading partners. As the specter of these crippling levies looms, Hanoi has pledged to buy more American goods, including Boeing (BA) aircraft and agricultural products.
Other countries include Serbia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, and Singapore. Most of these discussions haven’t been covered by the Media other than Qatar, which came with the gift that “Palace in the sky” that will cause millions of dollars to refit before it’s handed over to Trump and his “library.” If there’s a bigger oxymoron than Trump Library, I’m waiting to hear it. Let’s just call it the warehouse facility for all the bribes and emoluments. We have to discuss that big ol’ party Trump threw for his richest customers. This is from the New York Times. “Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes in Mind. The guests were the biggest investors in President Trump’s memecoin, and they were greeted with chants of “shame” as they arrived at Trump National Golf Course.”
President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.
The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.
At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”
It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations.
“The past administration made your lives miserable,” Mr. Trump told the dinner guests, referring to the Biden administration’s enforcement actions against crypto companies.
The gala attendees made whooping noises while Mr. Trump spoke, and applauded as the president declared: “They were going after everybody. It was a disgrace frankly,” according to a video provided to The Times by a dinner guest.
Mr. Trump promised to change that approach. “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto,” he said. “And we’re honored to be working on helping everybody here.”
Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.
The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.
But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.
“We can hear a constant buzzing,” says another Dresden resident, Lori Fishline. “It’s a constant, loud humming noise that you just can’t ignore. It was never present before and has definitely affected the peaceful atmosphere of our bay.”
Such is Ms Campbell’s annoyance with Trump’s Bitcoin backing, her political allegiance to the Republicans is being tested. “Right now I’m not real happy about that party,” she says.
So, build the nastiest factory in the backyard of the people least able to deal with it. That’s the sound of these Robber Barons that should be familiar to anyone who knows US history from its early 20th-century business escapades. The most interesting thing that’s popped up today is that Apple has got Trump in a lather, and the Equity Markets hate it. This is from Yahoo Finance: “Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq trim losses as Trump threatens Apple, EU with new tariffs.”
US stocks fell on Friday, on pace for weekly losses as investors assessed President Trump’s latest tariff threats and what his giant tax bill means for the deficit and the economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) sank 0.4%. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) also fell roughly 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) backed off about 0.6%.
All three indexes trimmed steeper losses after Trump said on Friday that Apple (AAPL) must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones sold but not made in the US. The tech giant has begun shifting some manufacturing to India, with China, home to its key suppliers, locked in a trade war with the US. Apple shares fell 3% after Trump’s post on Truth Social.
At the same time, Trump threatened to hike the tariff on EU imports to “a straight 50%” beginning June 1 as trade talks between the two have stalled.
The president’s warnings shattered a more muted mood on Wall Street as investors wound down to the Memorial Day trading break on Monday.
It adds another supply chain complication for companies already worried about the potential hit to the economy from Trump’s tariff blitz. Earnings season has seen several companies hold off from providing full annual guidance thanks to uncertainty around tariffs.
All three major gauges are on track for a losing week. Stocks have suffered as deficit worries pushed up Treasury yields, intensified as Trump’s giant tax bill forged ahead. Wall Street is still weighing the economic impact of Trump’s revised bill, which cleared a key hurdle in the House vote for approval.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $108,000 early Friday after President Donald Trump called for steep tariffs on EU imports and threatened Apple with similar measures. The digital asset briefly touched $107,300 on Binance, pulling back from session highs above $111,000 as traders responded to fresh geopolitical tensions.
The US president on Friday proposed a 50% tariff on all EU imports starting June 1, 2025, in a post on Truth Social. He cited trade imbalances and regulatory frictions as rationale for the move, declaring current EU-US trade dynamics “totally unacceptable.”
Apple is being threatened with 25% tariffs. Wow, how free market is this? Sounds a lot more like the old Soviet Command and Control model. Is he channeling Putin and Orban or just pissed about something Apple did at his party? This is from CNBC. “Trump says Apple must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the U.S.” Does he not realize how long it would take to even set up a factory, let alone train everyone? Doesn’t he know what this huge project would take to even break even?
President Donald Trump said in a social media post Friday that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the United States.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Shares of Apple fell about 2% on Friday after the post.
Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has been shifting manufacturing to India in part because that country has a friendlier trade relationship with the U.S.
Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that moving iPhone production to the U.S. would raise the price of the Apple smartphone by at least 25%. Wedbush’s Dan Ives put the estimated cost of a U.S. iPhone at $3,500. The iPhone 16 Pro currently retails for about $1,000.
This is the latest jab at Apple from Trump, who over the past couple of weeks has ramped up pressure on the company and Cook to increase domestic manufacturing. Trump and Cook met at the White House on Tuesday, according to Politico.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that he was not part of the meeting at the White House but that the Apple situation could be part of the Trump administration’s push to bring “precision manufacturing” back to the U.S.
“A large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure,” Bessent said.
Cook gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the inauguration in January. Apple has announced a $500 billion spend on U.S. development, including AI server production in Houston.
Apple declined to comment for this story.
So, I’m over 4200 words and probably have put you to sleep. You know how I am about Rabbit Holes. How much longer before the economy collapses? I’m actually beginning to wonder that. I know every time I see or hear him act so insane, I just collapse on the couch.
You have a very nice Memorial Day weekend. Please spend your time appreciating the many folks who gave their life for this country and its democracy. Don’t let the ones trying to destroy it get to you. There’s always the June 14th Flag Day “No Kings” protests and actions to look forward to and participate in. Just don’t watch that damn parade. The least we old folks can do is tank the ratings.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
How about a little Warren Zevon and Prince?
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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.
Evidently, burning the Constitution is acceptable. I can’t wait to see what the creepy, Christofascists that are the Republican Supreme Court Jurists have to say about that. I’m sure the Alitos and Thomases already have something disgusting in mind. Also, there is the sad news that Trump’s racism, xenophobia, ignorance, and cruelty have created an obsession with torturing Kilmar Ábrego Garcia and his family, once again. This is from 
Indeed, nearly all of the reforms surrounding Due Process and access to the legal system seem destined to be attacked by Orange Caligula. This is from 
We have a huge Environmental Accident in Tangipoha Parish requiring evacuation and shutting down rivers, high violent crime in rural districts, and a looming Hurricane Season. Our National Guard will be worn out with all that marching around to deal with the state’s crises that are real.
We’re coming on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (Katrinaversary). This is my statement on it.
If you want to know what Retired General Russell Honore, our Katrina Hero, has to say about all this, please follow him on his
I would also like to remind you that, as we speak, the folks who helped us most to recover are the fearless and hard-working men who came here to work. They still work here, and we depend on them. My friend Anne Renee shared this with me. It’s from 
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder. 
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at 
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the 
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from 
CBS 
They’ve disappointed us before, so I’m holding back any enthusiasm and riding on the wings of hope right now. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is one of the most outspoken of the bunch, according to the 
Everyone should be worried about Health Care in America. Walker Bragman tells this story on 
Jenifer Rubin has a straightforward headline today in her piece at
Today, we have the NACHO Queen (Noem Always Chickens the Hell OUT). This is from the
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from 
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at 
Today, we got the news of the Case Harvard filed against Trump. “Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Admin From Revoking Harvard’s Ability To Enroll International Students.” This is from 
There is a daily drumbeat of stupidity, airing of white grievances, and cruelty. While discriminating harshly against everyone who is not white and Christian, this administration harbors supporters who carry torches and shout “Jews will not replace us,” and has bubble-headed Congress Critters who scream about “Jewish Space Lasers”. Anti-semitism has become transactional. It has become a useful tool in the attack on Academia and the Democratic Party. It assumes that you can’t understand the history of the Jewish people without turning a blind eye to the punishing attacks on Palestinian women, children, and innocents in the Gaza Strip. I do not think there is a bigger way of showing disrespect for a group of people than using their historical struggles as a tool to encourage the murder of innocents. But then, our 
That sure is different than the 2021 
So, build the nastiest factory in the backyard of the people least able to deal with it. That’s the sound of these Robber Barons that should be familiar to anyone who knows US history from its early 20th-century business escapades. The most interesting thing that’s popped up today is that Apple has got Trump in a lather, and the Equity Markets hate it. This is from 
Apple is being threatened with 25% tariffs. Wow, how free market is this? Sounds a lot more like the old Soviet Command and Control model. Is he channeling Putin and Orban or just pissed about something Apple did at his party? This is from CNBC. “Trump says Apple must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the U.S.” Does he not realize how long it would take to even set up a factory, let alone train everyone? Doesn’t he know what this huge project would take to even break even?
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