“Apparently, we are not better than this. An entire political party subservient to a crappy reality television personality. Trump’s Amerika. Shameful.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Happy Independence Day, Number 249, Sky Dancers!
What do we have? A democratic Republic, if we can keep it. I’m not sure it’s mostly gone. Convince me I’m wrong, please!
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday put on administrative leave 139 employees who signed a “declaration of dissent” with its policies, accusing them of “unlawfully undermining” the Trump administration’s agenda.
In a letter made public Monday, the employees wrote that the agency is no longer living up to its mission to protect human health and the environment. The letter represented rare public criticism from agency employees who knew they could face blowback for speaking out against a weakening of funding and federal support for climate, environmental and health science.
In a statement Thursday, the EPA said it has a “zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting” the Trump administration’s agenda.
Employees were notified that they had been placed in a “temporary, non-duty, paid status” for the next two weeks, pending an “administrative investigation,” according to a copy of the email obtained by The Associated Press. “It is important that you understand that this is not a disciplinary action,” the email read.
More than 170 EPA employees put their names to the document, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation, according to Jeremy Berg, a former editor-in-chief of Science magazine who is not an EPA employee but was among non-EPA scientists or academics to also sign.
Read more at the link. It’s hard to know what exactly to say about this bit of news from CNN. I guess we’ve known who he is since his “very fine people on both sides paraded past a Synagogue for a MAGA rally, shouting “Jews will not replace us” in the Charlottesville protests in 2017. His fascination with Hitler is one big, ugly clue. “Trump says he had ‘never heard’ Shylock as an anti-semitic term after using it at rally.”
President Donald Trump said early Friday that he wasn’t aware that some people view the word “Shylock” as antisemitic after using the term during a rally to decry amoral money lenders.
“I’ve never heard it that way. To me, Shylock is somebody that’s a money lender at high rates,” Trump told reporters after getting off Air Force One. “I’ve never heard it that way, you view it differently than me. I’ve never heard that.”
Trump was arriving back in Washington after an event in Iowa marking the kick-off to nationwide celebrations marking the country’s 250th anniversary next year.
In his speech, he used the word when touting aspects of the major domestic policy bill that had been approved by Congress a few hours earlier.
“Think of that: no death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowings from in some cases a fine banker. And in some cases, Shylocks and bad people,” he said during his event in Des Moines. “They took away a lot of, a lot of family. They destroyed a lot of families, but we did the opposite.”
The name “Shylock” derives from the name of the antagonist in William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” Shylock, a Jew, was a ruthless moneylender in the play, and he’s remembered for demanding a “pound of flesh” from the merchant Antonio if he failed to repay a loan.
The Anti-Defamation League condemned Trump’s use of the word Friday morning.
“The term ‘Shylock’ evokes a centuries-old antisemitic trope about Jews and greed that is extremely offensive and dangerous. President Trump’s use of the term is very troubling and irresponsible,” the organization wrote in a statement on X. “It underscores how lies and conspiracies about Jews remain deeply entrenched in our country. Words from our leaders matter and we expect more from the President of the United States.”
I learned this when we started studying Shakespeare in the 5th grade. I can’t imagine any person educated after World War 2 not knowing this. Trump’s maleducation is so obvious. Do you remember when we used to have these great Fourth of July celebrations to watch on PBS, like The Boston Pops orchestra playing in front of the giant fireworks display? Well, it’s a tacky Fourth of July for the MAGATs, with proceeds going to his friends. This is from AXIOS. “Trump to host UFC fight at White House as part of ‘America250’ celebrations.”
President Trump will host a UFC fight at the White House as part of celebrations marking 250 years since the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, he announced at a Thursday rally in Iowa.
The big picture: “Every one of our national park battlefields and historic sites are going to have special events in honor of ‘America250‘ and I even think we’re going to have a UFC fight,” Trump said on the eve of the July Fourth holiday during a speech at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines that kicked off yearlong 250th anniversary celebrations.
The president’s links to the Ultimate Fighting Championship date back to at least 2001, when the since-closed Trump Taj Mahal hosted the mixed martial arts enterprise.
Zoom in: Trump said White would organize the White House UFC event.
“It’s going to be a championship fight, full fight, like 20,000 to 25,000 people and we’re going to do that as part of ‘250’ also,” he said.
Other celebrations will include “the great American State Fair” that will “bring America250 programming for fairgrounds across the country, culminating in a giant patriotic festival next summer on the National Mall, featuring exhibits from all 50 states,” according to Trump.
What they’re saying: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump is “dead serious” about the UFC fight plans, per a White House pool report.
Temple and I started our own celebration of deposing Mad Kings this morning in the Bywater. Perhaps by our afternoon, we will have more than 2 people and 2 dogs.
If the dead part weren’t followed by the word serious, I might’ve planned a big celebration myself. Temple and I already had our parade this morning. The partner of Anti-Semitism was right there along Yam Tits at his rally in Iowa. This is from The Hill. “Trump goes after Mamdani at Iowa rally.” Islamaphobia is so on brand for him. Nothing says “Let Freedom Ring” like hating on religious minorities.
President Trump used Thursday remarks in Iowa ahead of Independence Day to take aim at Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor in New York City who has become a favorite target of criticism for Republicans.
“This guy is a communist at the highest level, and he wants to destroy New York. I love New York, and we’re not going to let him do that,” Trump said at an event in Des Moines.
“Generations of Americans before us did not shed their blood only so that we could surrender our country to Marxist lunatics on the eve of our 250th year,” Trump continued. “As president of the United States, I’m proclaiming here and now that America is never going to be communist in any way, shape or form, and that includes New York City.”
The comments marked the latest attack from Trump, a New York City native, against Mamdani, who earlier this week officially secured the Democratic nomination for November’s mayoral race and instantly became a lightning rod for GOP attacks.
Trump earlier this week threatened to investigate Mamdani’s immigration status and arrest him if he stood in the way of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s raids in the city.
Generations of Americans did not shed their blood only to surrender our county to another Mad King, Plantation Slaveholder, and NAZI either. Mine were around everywhere since the Revolution. I’m pretty sure my great-uncle John Parke Custis didn’t die being an aide-de-camp to his stepfather, George Washington, at the Siege of Yorktown from camp fever, just for us to have another Mad King. Also, sure that all my great-great-grandfathers who fought for the Union didn’t expect to see an American President try to strip the rights away from the African-Americans freed from slavery. Also, sure my Dad who bombed NAZIs and my uncles who served in the navy and in army intelligence didn’t expect to have a fascist as president too. Yet, here we are.
More indications of his madness and warped view of the country’s form of government and rule of law are on display in Politico today. Rachel Blade has this interview and analysis. “What Trump Told Me About His Complete Domination of Congress. Demanding a bill by Independence Day was a telling flourish for someone with zero tolerance for independence in the legislative branch.” It’s obvious he didn’t care or probably even read what was in it. He just cares about the control and the photo op, signing the deaths of millions of Americans, including the elderly and children.
When I reached President Donald Trump by phone Tuesday night, with his “big, beautiful” bill on a clear track for passage, he seemed to be in a buoyant mood. And no wonder.
In a span of two weeks, he greenlit an unprecedented U.S. strike on Iran, then brokered an almost immediate cease-fire. He watched NATO allies bow to his decade-old demand to pony up more defense spending, then saw the Supreme Court curtail judges’ power to block his policies.
And when he picked up the phone, the president realized he was on the precipice of a major legislative achievement — cementing his campaign-trail promises of “no tax on tips,” increased border enforcement and more.
“It’s been an incredible two weeks,” he said. “Really — it’s been a great six months.”
Particularly on Capitol Hill, things could have gone much different. In fact, they did in his first term. Even with a much larger House majority, he struggled to corral lawmakers who had their own conceptions of what a unified Republican government ought to be doing. Early dreams of tossing Obamacare into the dustbin evaporated; so, too, did the GOP’s House majority.
Much felt similar this time around. You have fiscal hard-liners like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas groaning about deficits and moderates like Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska balking at health care cuts — to say nothing of the various parochial factions pulling the bill back and forth.
But this time, with the Republican Party almost entirely remade at Trump’s bidding, hardly any corralling was necessary. Yes, there were a pair of overnight vote-a-ramas and last-ditch negotiating standoffs. But it all felt awfully fait accompli — as those on Capitol Hill fully realized.
“If anybody’s griping, I can tell you right now, it’s the same actors, the same movie,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said Wednesday as Freedom Caucus holdouts made their final stand. “It’s gonna be the same ending.”
True to form, Trump did it while exhibiting only the lightest interest in the policy details. He was very invested in delivering on his campaign tax promises and boosting immigration enforcement, but rarely much beyond that.
I’m still worried about our economy.
Gee, I wonder what happened in January of this year to make the dollar lose its value so precipitously . . .
Now, I worry for poor Rooster and his girlfriends in the house 3 doors down from me. Oh, and everyone around here since our trees are full of them and many keep chickens in their backyards here.
RFK's proposal to let bird flu spread through poultry could set us up for a pandemic, experts warn->Live Science | #BirdFlu #Pandemic | More info from EcoSearch
Still, it’s that damnable Big Ugly Bill that may yet take this country down. This is from G. Elliott Morris writing at Strength in Numbers. “One Big Unpopular Bill. The Republican budget bill, which now heads to Trump’s desk, will be the most unpopular major law in at least 30 years.”
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (yes, that is its official government name) is a huge package of different policies, including tax cuts for the wealthy and the largest ever yearly increase (hundreds of billions of dollars) in funding for the Pentagon, ICE, and CBP. Republicans have “paid for” those tax cuts and spending increases by making the largest ever cuts to Medicaid and government food benefits, among other programs.
I place “paid for” in quotes because despite the claims from Trump’s White House advisors, the reduction in spending on various social programs does not come close to covering the cost of the tax cuts. The Republican budget bill is a historic shifting of taxpayer money previously allocated to government assistance to the needy, to rich people, and immigration enforcement. This chart from The Economist lays out the math:
The OBBBA is also historic in another way: It is likely the most unpopular budget ever, is the second most unpopular piece of key legislation since the 1990s, and the most unpopular key law, period, over the same period.
I have been an economist for about 50 years now, and it takes a lot to turn me into a Deficit Hawk. This did it. It’s fiscal policy gone deadly. Drunk Secretary Hegseth has turned me into a fan of bombs overnight. This is from NBC News. “Hegseth halted weapons for Ukraine despite military analysis that the aid wouldn’t jeopardize U.S. readiness. The move blindsided the State Department, Ukraine, European allies, and members of Congress, who demanded an explanation from the Pentagon.”
The Defense Department held up a shipment of U.S. weapons for Ukraine this week over what officials said were concerns about its low stockpiles. But an analysis by senior military officers found that the aid package would not jeopardize the American military’s own ammunition supplies, according to three U.S. officials.
The move to halt the weapons shipment blindsided the State Department, members of Congress, officials in Kyiv and European allies, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.
Critics of the decision included Republicans and Democrats who support aiding Ukraine’s fight against Russia. A leading House Democrat, Adam Smith of Washington, said it was disingenuous of the Pentagon to use military readiness to justify halting aid when the real reason appears to be simply to pursue an agenda of cutting off American aid to Ukraine.
“We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the 3½ years of the Ukraine conflict,” Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News.
Smith said that his staff has “seen the numbers” and, without going into detail, that there was no indication of a shortage that would justify suspending aid to Ukraine.
Suspending the shipment of military aid to Ukraine was a unilateral step by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to three congressional aides and a former U.S. official familiar with the matter. It was the third time Hegseth on his own has stopped shipments of aid to Ukraine, the sources said. In the two previous cases, in February and in May, his actions were reversed days later.
According to AXIOS,Trump might be providing more aid to Ukraine shortly. “Trump tells Zelensky he wants to help Ukraine with air defense, sources say.” Did Putin piss him off or is he that hell-bent on getting a Nobel Peace Prize?
Why it matters: Earlier this week the Pentagon paused a weapons shipment, including air defense interceptors and ammunition, to Ukraine’s army.
The decision caught Ukraine and many Trump administration officials surprise.
Behind the scenes: The two sources said the call between Trump and Zelensky lasted around 40 minutes, with a major focus on Ukraine’s air defense needs.
One source said Trump was aware of the recent Russia escalation, including both air strikes on Ukrainian cities and on the frontline.
“Trump said he wants to help with air defense and that he will check what was put on hold if anything,” the source said.
The Ukrainian official said Trump and Zelensky agreed that teams from the U.S. and Ukraine soon will meet to discuss air defense and other weapons supplies.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Okay, that’s enough. I’m going to play crazy cat lady and make sure my little feral girl is eating the food I put out today. Try to remember the sacrifice of all the people who worked hard to make this country a beacon of freedom. Then vow to do what you can to help keep it.
My friend in Miami called me in tears yesterday afternoon. She has been self-employed for over three years and is reliant on the Affordable Healthcare Act for her insurance. She has an incredible number of pre-existing conditions and is under the care of a neurologist for a motor neuron disease. She received a letter from Aetna yesterday that said she will lose her coverage on January 1 because they will no longer provide anything connected to the ACA that goes defunct after the next midterms. It seems businesses are not waiting until the last minute to bail from that and Medicaid. I can only imagine what this will do to Medicare.
But hey, one more billionaire can buy Venice for $25 million or even more for a wedding. Can you imagine how many starving children, or children with diseases, or children with special needs could benefit from that?
What’s on your Blogging and Reading list today?
I pulled Martina McBride’s Independence Day song and video off with the 8 men on the Diddy jury in mind. Women do not ask to be raped, assaulted, trafficked or slut slammed for what men do to them even when it may have started out as consensual. A lot of us in this country are still waiting for our independence.
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Today’s Republican Decision-makers seem hell-bent on killing people. Considering so many of them are hyper-Christian, I find this very strange. I’ve found instances of this in basically all three branches of government today. Steven Miller’s high deportment numbers sending everyday people to death zone countries can only be described as some kind of eugenics experience in trying to increase the percentage of wipipo in the country. The Big Bad Budget-Busting Bill, making its way to law in Congress, will definitely kill people. Then, there’s this SCOTUS ruling that almost made it past me. Imagine handing a lot more power to life-or-death situations to RFK, Jr? Well, that’s exactly what SCOTUS did with the drunk on the Court making the decision.
Aren’t these the same people who scream at women trying to get Health Care over fertilized eggs? This is from USA Today, as reported 2 days ago by Adrianna Rodriguez. “What the Supreme Court Obamacare decision means for RFK Jr.” As if I wasn’t worried enough about ICE killing people and sending them to death zones and the Big Budget-Busting bill removing Medicaid from the neediest people and children. I still haven’t figured out how a 90-year-old in dementia care is going to manage to find a job to access private insurance, but that’s just Kellyanne Conway’s alternative facts coming back to haunt us.
The justices reversed a lower court’s ruling that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which under the 2010 law has a major role in choosing what services will be covered, is composed of members who were not validly appointed.
“The Task Force members are removable at will by the Secretary of HHS, and their recommendations are reviewable by the Secretary before they take effect,” he wrote. “So Task Force members are supervised and directed by the Secretary, who in turn answers to the President preserving the chain of command.”
Chain of Command? Are we bombing Iran again? I’m going to have to call Sister Helen PreJean CSJ for another one-on-one conversation about what life means again. Conway, Kavanaugh, and Kennedy need another set of Sunday School lessons. So that article is good for basic information, like, evidently, a certain type of Christians feel they can murder people if they just claim a method that’s in line with whatever their cult made up as a religious exception. Handing people over to RFK Jr. just seems beyond cruel. Mark Joseph Stern has this analysis in Slate. Again, it’s from 2 days ago. “The Supreme Court Just Handed RFK Jr. a New, Extraordinarily Frightening Power.” It’s just another example of SCOTUS and its idea of concentrated power in the Executive branch.
The Supreme Court upheld a key plank of Obamacare against a constitutional attack on Friday by a 6–3 vote. But in the process, the majority wound up handing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. significantly more authority over American health care than Congress ever intended. Kennedy, the current secretary of health and human services, now has unquestioned power to hire and fire members of a key panel that mandates insurance coverage for preventive treatments, and to block its decisions about what insurers must cover. To save the panel, the court destroyed its independence.
Friday’s case Kennedy v. Braidwood Management involved a challenge to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, or PSTF. Congress designed this body to consist of medical experts who use their independent judgment to determine which preventive services provide a substantial benefit to patients. A provision of the Affordable Care Act made their decisions binding on insurers, meaning top-rated services must be covered at no cost to patients. Today, the PSTF has determined that more than 40 treatments qualify for mandatory coverage, including many cancer screenings, heart medication, and HIV prevention drugs.
The Supreme Court upheld a key plank of Obamacare against a constitutional attack on Friday by a 6–3 vote. But in the process, the majority wound up handing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. significantly more authority over American health care than Congress ever intended. Kennedy, the current secretary of health and human services, now has unquestioned power to hire and fire members of a key panel that mandates insurance coverage for preventive treatments, and to block its decisions about what insurers must cover. To save the panel, the court destroyed its independence.
Friday’s case Kennedy v. Braidwood Management involved a challenge to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, or PSTF. Congress designed this body to consist of medical experts who use their independent judgment to determine which preventive services provide a substantial benefit to patients. A provision of the Affordable Care Act made their decisions binding on insurers, meaning top-rated services must be covered at no cost to patients. Today, the PSTF has determined that more than 40 treatments qualify for mandatory coverage, including many cancer screenings, heart medication, and HIV prevention drugs
The problem with the PSTF is that its structure and operations are likely unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s current precedents. And indeed, in a 2020 decision, the court hinted that this kind of scheme is unconstitutional. There are two main issues: First, it is not entirely clear from the law who is supposed to appoint its members and who, if anyone, has authority to fire them. Second, the ACA states explicitly that the panel “shall be independent and, to the extent practicable, not subject to political pressure.” Congress seems to have intended it to operate as an independent body with open-ended power to regulate the multibillion-dollar insurance market, subject to little or no political oversight. That setup clashes with the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of executive authority. Specifically, it would make the PSTF’s members “principal officers” who must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. And because its officers are not currently appointed this way, Supreme Court precedent would render its decisions invalid and voluntary.
This is extremely important as HIV Denialism is just one in a long list of RFK Jr’s hobgoblins. Read about Justice Thomas’ complaints about the Beer Guy’s logic at the link. It actually is worth the read. As for the Big Budget-Busting Bill, it’s speeding along to passage today. This is from the Washington Postand Jeff Stein. “Senate GOP tax bill includes largest cut to U.S. safety net in decades. The legislation would enact historic, possibly unprecedented, reductions in Medicaid and food stamps spending.” What I can’t figure out is why they’re not concerned that the people who benefit the most live in Red States, concentrated in rural areas of the country, and are primarily white. Isn’t that their voter base? No wonder Bezos could afford to buy Venice for a day, and his wife could afford all those ugly clothes and that awful plastic-surgery ruined face. We live in a land of monsters.
The Senate Republican tax bill speeding to passage includes the biggest reduction of funding for the federal safety net since at least the 1990s, targeting more than $1 trillion in social spending.
Although the legislation is still estimated to cost more than $3 trillion over the next decade, the Senate GOP tax bill partially pays for its large price tag by slashing spending on Medicaid and food stamps, which congressional Republicans maintain are rife with fraud.
The tax bill centers on making permanent large tax cuts for individual taxpayers, extending the cuts that Republicans first enacted under President Donald Trump’s first term. The bill includes an increase to the standard deduction claimed by most taxpayers, rate reductions for most U.S. households, and a partial version of Trump’s plan to end taxes on tipped wages, among many other provisions.
But it offsets these expensive tax cuts in part through what several experts said may prove to be the most dramatic reductions in safety net spending in modern U.S. history. While last-minute changes to the bill text make precise estimates impossible, the legislation appears on track to cut Medicaid by about 18 percent and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by roughly 20 percent, according to estimates based on projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Previously, the biggest recent cut to food stamps was a roughly 14 percent cut approved by Congress during President Bill Clinton’s administration in the 1990s, according to Bobby Kogan, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank. (Food stamp benefits also sharply increased, and then fell, after the expiration of COVID benefits.) The biggest prior cut to Medicaid was during President Ronald Reagan’s term in the 1980s, when Congress and the White House approved a roughly 5 percent reduction to the federal health insurance program that primarily benefits low-income households during his first two years in office, Kogan said.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Senate tax bill will lead to roughly 12 million fewer people receiving Medicaid and more than 2 million fewer people receiving food stamps.
ThisNew York Timesarticle gets down to the nitty gritty if you’re interested (gifted). “A List of Nearly Everything in the Senate G.O.P. Bill, and How Much It Would Cost or Save.” I bet the bills for Presidential golfing and loafing around Mar-a-Lago are bigger than any money saved by kicking small children off their daily meals.
The tax and domestic policy bill nearing a vote by Senate Republicans includes hundreds of provisions, including extended and expanded tax cuts and significant cuts to Medicaid, food benefits and other programs. It would add more than $3 trillion to the national debt. To become law, it still needs to pass the Senate — where an extended “vote-a-rama” on amendments and rulings by the Senate’s parliamentarian could bring last-minute changes. Then it must gain a second passage through the House and be signed by the president to become law.
Below is a table that lists how nearly every provision would affect the federal budget over 10 years, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office in an analysis published Sunday. The budget office measured the legislation as it usually does, taking into account the cost of extending expiring tax cuts. This is a different approach than the one embraced by the Senate’s leaders. The C.B.O. evaluation does not include a handful of policy provisions that do not have direct effects on the federal deficit.
This is from Jennifer Ruben writing at The Contrarian. “The worst bill in modern history. Democrats must make it a career-ender for Republicans.” I can’t imagine Boudreaux and Thibodeaux getting up in their houseboat on the Atchafalaya Basin, not realizing they’ve just been had. But I may be wrong. I’m frankly suggesting that Senator Cassiday lose his license to practice medicine based on how much harm this does.
Senate Republicans over the weekend decided to move forward on the big, ugly bill to rip healthcare coverage from 17 million people, deprive millions of food assistance, and use that money to pay (only partially!) for gigantic tax cuts for the super-rich. Their version is far worse than the House’s handiwork; Senate Republicans want to cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid. Apparently, they concluded the House’s $700 billion cut did not throw a sufficient number of people off their healthcare coverage. An estimated 17 million (including those priced out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges) would lose healthcare coverage
Even those who mouthed concerns about the draconian cuts, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) fell into line, voting to move the bill forward. They are daring voters not to hold them accountable for their monstrous hypocrisy.
Lawmakers are not in the dark. Their constituents, rural hospitals, state and local officials, the Congressional Budget Office, conservativethink tanks, the Wall Street Journal, and their Democratic colleagues have explained the bill’s horrid consequences. Republicans might parrot MAGA talking points, but when Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) distributes materials to fellow Republicans highlighting the devastation the bill will cause, only the truly deluded can imagine this is anything but horrid policy. (The Hill quoted a source familiar with the scene at Tuesday’s Senate Republican lunch: “Thom Tillis got up and he had a chart on what the Senate’s provider tax structure will cost different states, including his. His will lose almost $40 billion. He walked through that and said, ‘this will be devastating to my state.’”)
Senate Republicans have been hammered from all sides. On the right, the Committee for a Responsible budget found it would add $3.5-4.2 trillion to the debt and move the Medicare and Social Security trust funds a year closer to insolvency. Meanwhile, Republican senators with Democratic governors (e.g., Josh Stein in North Carolina, Laura Kelly in Kansas, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, and Janet Mills in Maine) got slammed daily on the consequences of Medicaid, SNAP, and other cuts back home.
Aside from the disastrous policy objections, Republicans should not delude themselves about the political quicksand they stepped in. The reverse-Robin-Hood scheme is deeply unpopular in every recent public poll. A Fox News poll shows only 38% support it, while 59% oppose it. (Among independents, it is a stunning 22-73%.) Quinnipiac’s poll is even worse for MAGA (27-53%; among independents 20-57%.) KFF (35-64%; only 27% of independents support); Pew (49-29%) and The Washington Post and Ipsos (23-42%) are miserable as well.
Perhaps the scariest poll for Republicans was one from Maine showing Collins sure has reason for “concern”: Her favorability is a miserable 14% with disapproval at 57%. Mills, the strongest potential 2026 challenger, has a 51-41% favorability rating. Come to think of it, maybe Collins should forget “concern” and zoom ahead to full-blown panic.
Phillip Bump has these thoughts at the Washington Post. “This is what ICE is doing with the tax dollars you already provide it. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stands to see a sharp increase in its funding under the Republican budget bill.” My understanding is that they have a bigger budget now than the Marines. Miller sure wants to deport him some POC.
But there is another group of people who would also benefit enormously from the bill: staff and officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency which stands to see tens of billions more in funding. An analysis of an earlier version of the bill indicated that “mass deportation would account for almost a quarter of the bill’s total price tag.” So it’s worth stepping back and considering what ICE is doing with the by-contrast modest (but still substantial) funding it currently gets.
We should start by acknowledging that ICE’s hyperactive targeting of immigrants in the U.S. since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January doesn’t exactly reflect current funding levels. Earlier this month, it was reported that ICE was already $1 billion over budget for the fiscal year, driven by the new administration’s focus on deploying the agency to arrest and deport as many immigrants as possible.
What that’s meant, in practice, is a surge in arrests and detentions of immigrants who have not been convicted or even accused of any crime. The number of criminals and accused criminals who have been arrested by ICE and remain detained by ICE is up 128 percent over a year ago. But the number of immigrants with no criminal record arrested and detained by ICE is up more than 1,400 percent — there are more than 15 times as many now as there were then.
In past years, it was generally Customs and Border Protection that arrested more noncriminals, since it was stopping and detaining people seeking to enter the U.S. without authorization. In mid-June 2024, for example, there were 30 times as many noncriminals in ICE detention who’d been arrested by CBP vs. ICE. Now, thanks in part to declining attempts to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, the ratio is almost 1 to 1.
The grifting in this administration is astounding. This is from ProPublica. “Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations.” This was investigated by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski.
In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.
In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.
Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.
Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, described the $80,000 as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I am silently screaming now. None of this is what should be happening in the United States of America.
What’s on your Reading and Blogging list today?
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Well, I know I’m not sleeping well at night. How about you?
JJ sent me the link to this horrifying story. It gave me my first share, but now I’m wondering if I’ll actually be able to eat lunch today. This is from the New York Times. “Inside Trump’s Decision. The Times pieced together the days and hours leading up to President Trump’s decision to strike Iran. It’s a story of diplomacy, deception, and a secret that almost got out.” We don’t have to worry about him being around to take that 3 am phone call. The Pentagon was worried about him putting the entire attack plan on Truth Social. I’ve gifted the link to you so you can read the entire thing. You know the Missouri Bombers he blathered about? One fleet was a ruse. Aaron Fritschner, Deputy Chief of Staff at Congressman Don Beyer, tweeted it out.
Inside the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command, military planners worried that Trump was giving Iran too much warning about an impending strike. So they worked up their own ruse: They had two fleets of B-2 bombers leave Missouri at the same time, one flying east and one flying west. Flight trackers spotted the westward planes, which offered some idea of the timing of a possible attack. But those planes were a decoy.
The eastbound planes crossed the Atlantic undetected, joined with fighter jets and flew into Iranian airspace. At 2:10 a.m. local time yesterday, the lead bomber dropped two of the bunker-busters on the Fordo site. By the end of the mission, 14 of the bombs had fallen.
You may read about the details of the attack at PBS if you aren’t overwhelmed already by the thought of Sex Pest and Drunk, Pet Hegseth being a part of this. This headline from The Hillwon’t make you feel any less queasy. I’m assuming you knew that #FARTUS was also posted that he would help Iran Make Iran Great Again. That was while Hegseth and Rubio were busily telling the press that our hijacked country had no plans for regime change. Remember, if his lips are moving, he’s telling a big ol’ story. “Israel attacking government sites in Iran as Trump floats regime change.” The reporting here is by Sarah Fortinsky.
Israel said it is carrying out attacks on Iranian government sites and “regime targets” — including the notorious Evin Prison — as President Trump muses publicly about a regime change in Tehran.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a social media post at noon local time on Monday that Israeli forces are “currently striking with unprecedented force regime targets and governmental oppression entities in the heart of Tehran,” according to an English translation of the Hebrew statement.
He said those targets include the headquarters of Basij, the paramilitary volunteer militia within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Evin Prison, used to incarcerate political prisoners and opponents of Iran’s leadership; and the “Destroy Israel” clock in Palestine Square.
Katz said the attacks are also striking “additional regime targets,” including internal security headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards and the ideology headquarters.
Throughout Monday morning, meanwhile, the Israeli military said sirens were sounding across the country as Iran continued to launch missiles targeting Israel.
That sure sounds like a war to me. Peter Nicholas, NBC News, reports that Democrats in the District are finally sounding some kind of alarm. “‘Biden didn’t start any wars’: Democrats sharpen their arguments against Trump’s foreign policy. In the wake of the U.S. airstrikes on Iran, Democrats are pointing to Trump’s own promises that he wouldn’t ensnare the country in foreign conflicts.”
Democrats are seizing on Donald Trump’s surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities to make the case that the world is becoming more dangerous on his watch, not less, and that he is reneging on a promise to avoid foreign military interventions.
The argument strikes at Trump’s contention that his blend of negotiating skills and toughness is enough to keep the United States safe.
In the space of a few days, Trump has made the United States a combatant in another Middle East war that exposes soldiers to potential deadly reprisals, Democrats contend.
In a statement, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin pointed to Trump’s inaugural address, in which he said he would measure his success by “the wars we never get into.”
Yet, Martin said, “against his own words, the president sent bombers into Iran. Americans overwhelmingly do not want to go to war. Americans do not want to risk the safety of our troops abroad.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Several lawmakers said Sunday that they will press the Trump administration for clarity about the attack on Iran and the endgame he envisions. But they are also using the moment to try to undercut Trump’s standing with those who voted for him in the hope he would not get entangled in foreign wars.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said Trump’s commitment was “to get us out of foreign wars.”
“Say what you want about Joe Biden, Joe Biden didn’t start any wars,” Smith said. “He got us out of the one war that we were in [in Afghanistan]. Trump has now started a war with Iran.”
The Guardianhas a headline today that’s spot on. George Bush got led on by his own advisors. Trump’s advisors said no to the mission. Evidently, Trump was taken by strongman Benjamin Netanyahoo! After all that speechifying about Hillary getting us into another World War and how he’d never drag us into something like Dubya did to Iraq and Afghanistan. Here we are. “Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie. The Iraq War was built on a lie. Now history is repeating itself.” Mohamad Bazzi has the analysis.
In May 2003, George W Bush landed on the deck of a US aircraft carrier to deliver a triumphant speech, declaring that major combat operations in Iraq had ended – six weeks after he had ordered US troops to invade the country. Bush spoke under a now-infamous banner on the carrier’s bridge that proclaimed: “Mission Accomplished”. It would turn into a case study of American hubris and one of the most mocked photo-ops in modern history.
As Bush made his speech off the coast of San Diego, I was in Baghdad covering the invasion’s aftermath as a correspondent for a US newspaper. It was clear then that the war was far from over, and the US was likely to face a grinding insurgency led by former members of the Iraqi security forces. It would also soon become clear that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was built on a lie: Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not intent on developing them. And Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, despite the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to connect Hussein’s regime to al-Qaida.
Today, Donald Trump has dragged the US into another war based on exaggerations and manipulated intelligence: the Israel-Iran conflict, which began on 13 June when Israel launched a surprise attack killing some of Iran’s top military officials and nuclear scientists, and bombing dozens of targets across the country.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that Israel had to attack because Tehran was working to weaponize its stockpile of enriched uranium and racing to build a nuclear bomb. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” Netanyahu said, as the first wave of Israeli bombs fell on Iran. “It could be a year. It could be within a few months.”
Before dawn on Sunday, US warplanes and submarines bombed three major nuclear facilities in Iran. In a speech from the White House, Trump declared the operation a “spectacular military success” and said the sites had been “totally obliterated”. Trump added that his goal was to stop “the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror”.
But does Iran pose the immediate threat that Netanyahu and Trump have claimed?
US intelligence officials, along with the UN’s nuclear watchdog and independent experts, say that while Iran has dramatically increased its supply of uranium enriched to nearly weapons grade, there is no evidence it has taken steps to produce a nuclear weapon. In March, the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that America’s intelligence agencies continued “to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. She added that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”.
I’m sure none of this is lost on us. Mark Landler writes this analysis for The New York Times. “Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow. Through revolution and upheaval, the program has become intertwined with the country’s security and national identity.” Let’s hope all of this sinks in before Trump’s Folly starts costing American lives.
By joining Israel’s military campaign against Iran, Mr. Trump has greatly raised the costs for Iran’s leaders in refusing to accept stringent curbs on their uranium enrichment program. Yet, however this conflict ends, he may have given them even more compelling reasons to seek a nuclear deterrent, experts say.
“Any strategic thinker in Iran, present or future, realizes that Iran is located in the Middle East, that its neighbors are Netanyahu’s Israel, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and M.B.S. in Saudi Arabia,” said Professor Alvandi, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
To that list of threats, Iran can now add the United States.
The American bombardment likely inflicted serious damage on the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo, and the research complex at Isfahan. Earlier Israeli strikes killed several of Iran’s prominent nuclear scientists, as well as damaging installations. Taken together, that could set back Iran’s program by years.
But bombs alone cannot erase the knowledge that Iranians have accumulated over nearly seven decades, since 1957, when Iran first signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the Eisenhower administration. The United States was then encouraging countries to engage in the peaceful exploration of nuclear science through President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative.
In 1967, with American help, Iran built a small research reactor in Tehran that still exists. A year later, it signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a symbol of the shah’s desire to be accepted into the club of Western nations.
Flush with cash from 1973 oil shock, the shah then opted to rapidly expand Iran’s civil nuclear program, including developing a homegrown enriching capacity. He sent dozens of Iranian students to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study nuclear engineering.
The shah viewed it as a prestige project that would vault Iran into the front ranks of Middle Eastern countries. But that put him at odds with the United States, which worried that Iran would reprocess spent fuel into fissile material that could be used in a weapon.
“It was an icon of the country having arrived as a major power, with the side idea that if Iraq ever threatened Iran, it could be diverted to military uses,” said Professor Alvandi, who published “Nixon, Kissinger and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War.”
Everything old is new again. History repeats itself. Yup, another Republican steps on the detonator. Historian Heather Cox Richardson has a bigger perspective at her Substack, Letters from an American.
In last night’s speech to the nation, Trump appeared to reach out to the evangelical wing of MAGA that wanted the U.S. to intervene on Israel’s side in its fight against Iran. Trump said: “And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
But while the evangelicals in MAGA liked Trump’s bombing of Iran, the isolationist “America First” wing had staunchly opposed it and are adamant that they don’t want to see U.S. involvement in another foreign war. So today, administration officials were on the Sunday talk shows promising that Trump was interested only in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not in regime change. On ABC’s This Week, Vice President J.D. Vance said explicitly: “We don’t want to achieve regime change.” On X, poster after poster, using the same script, tried to bring America Firsters behind the attack on Iran by posting some version of “If you are upset that Trump took out Obama’s nuclear facilities in Iran, you were never MAGA.”
This afternoon, Trump posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
On ABC’s This Week, Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) said: “It’s way too early to tell what the actual effect on the nuclear program is, and of course, it’s way too early to tell how this plays out, right? I mean, we’ve seen this movie before. Every conflict in the Middle East has its Senator Tom Cottons who promise us mushroom clouds. In the Iraq war it was Condoleezza Rice promising us a mushroom cloud. And initially—and this is true of every one of these wars in Libya, in Iraq, and Afghanistan—initially, things looked pretty good. Saddam Hussein is gone. Muammar Qaddafi is gone. The Afghan Taliban are gone. And then, over time, we start to learn what the cost is. Four thousand, four hundred Americans dead in Iraq. The Taliban back in power. So bottom line, the president has taken a massive, massive gamble here.”
There are already questions about why Trump felt obliged to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites right now. In March, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who oversees all U.S. intelligence, told Congress that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. and Iran have been negotiating over Iran’s nuclear program since April, and when Israel attacked Iran on June 12, a sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to begin just two days later, in Oman.
White Christian Nationalists have been at the heart of the big problems in just living your American life, extending their warmongering, hateful, bigoted selves into a second century. Meanwhile, back in the USSR, the bear awakens. Has Trump changed his fealty? This is from the Washington Post. Will he give up his position as RasPutin Fangirl and such to Netanyahoo? “Russia condemns U.S. strikes on Iran but takes no concrete actions. Iran’s foreign minister is in Moscow seeking support, but other than condemning the attack, Putin has not taken any major moves to back Tehran.” I was last night years old when I read that a Russian official told the press there were lots of countries willing to send actual nukes to Iran. It was part of the reason I didn’t sleep last night without a hefty dose of Benadryl. I didn’t snore either, from my poor stuffed sinuses suffering from the humidity and pollen here.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday condemned the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran ahead of a meeting with Iran’s top diplomat, describing the strikes as “absolutely unprovoked,” but he has so far stopped short of any more concrete measures to assist Russia’s regional ally.
The U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have underscored Putin’s declining capacity to influence events in the Middle East — once a key plank of his foreign policy — with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria last year, Moscow’s cooler relations with Israel and Putin’s failed effort to convince President Donald Trump that he could be a mediator in the Iran crisis.
In comments Monday to military graduates, Putin said Washington’s involvement was dangerous and a sharp escalation. “Non-regional powers are also being drawn into the conflict,” he said, referring to the U.S. bombings. “All this is bringing the world to a very dangerous point.”
The conflict has demonstrated the limits so far to Russia’s willingness to assist Iran militarily — after both sides signed a strategic agreement in January without a mutual defense clause.
I’m going to start wrapping things up, but I wanted to share a few of the reporters outside the beltway. Jude Legum writes this for Popular Information. “A new war based on manipulated intelligence. More than two decades after the Iraq War commenced, history is repeating itself.” Even the weirdos he put in his cabinet saw the intelligence and just thumbed their noses at them. He “knew” better and used his instincts.
On March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush began the bombing campaign in Iraq, justifying the attack with manipulated and bogus intelligence. Twenty-two years later, history is repeating itself.
The clear judgment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not authorized a nuclear weapons program. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the nation’s top intelligence official, said so publicly on March 25, 2025. “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard asserted in her opening statement.
Last Tuesday, asked about Gabbard’s testimony on Iran, Trump said, “I don’t care what she said.” On Friday, as his rhetoric became more bellicose, Trump was reminded of that March assessment and asked: “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon?” Trump did not say that the intelligence community had gathered new information since March. Rather, Trump said that “my intelligence community is wrong.” He also publicly rebuked Gabbard again, adding, “She’s wrong.”
Now, to justify the bombing of several sites in Iran, top members of the Trump administration claim Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, Vice President JD Vance said that the administration believed “the Iranians were rushing toward a nuclear weapons program.” That directly contradicts the March assessment by the IC that no such program had been authorized, much less commenced.
Vance dodged questions on whether the intelligence has changed since March:
KRISTEN WELKER: Why launch this strike now? Has the intelligence changed Mr. Vice President?
VANCE: A couple things about that Kristen. What Tulsi said back in March is that Iran was producing highly-enriched Uranium that was only consistent with them wanting to build a nuclear weapon.
The transcript of Gabbard’s Congressional hearing reveals Vance’s characterization of Gabbard’s remarks is false and misleading. She did say that Iran was enriching Uranium, something that has been true for many years, and that its enriched uranium stockpile was higher than that of other nations without nuclear weapons. But she was clear that they had not taken steps to build a nuclear weapon, nor had such a program been authorized.
On Sunday, in an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the intelligence about whether Iran had decided to build a nuclear weapon “irrelevant.”
Margaret Brennan: Are you saying there that the United States did not see intelligence that the supreme leader had ordered weaponization?
Rubio: That’s irrelevant. I see that question being asked in the media all the time. That’s an irrelevant question. They have everything they need to build a weapon.
Brennan: No, but that is the key point in U.S. intelligence assessments. You know that.
Rubio: No, it’s not.
Brennan: Yes, it was.
Rubio: No, it’s not.
At a Pentagon press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also avoided answering whether the intelligence assessment had changed since March …
Jennifer Ruben, now writing at The Contrarian, has the term I’ve been using for at least two weeks. “Trump’s wags the dog. Risky military action disrupts the political dynamic. He’s been trying to get us off the topics of Doge, the Big Beautiful Budget-Busting bill, and the incredible cuts floating around the Senate.
Donald Trump, without authorization from Congress and without substantive consultation, took a fateful step in ordering the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites, based on the false pretext that Iran was on the verge of completing a nuclear weapon. The consequences of this move have yet to unfold, and the breathtaking array of outcomes—from another forever war to a failed state in Iran to a quickly negotiated nuclear deal—makes it impossible to predict how this will affect Trump’s agenda and his ongoing assault on democracy.
His failure to get authorization for a strike in a war in which the U.S. was acting offensively, despite there being no immediate threat (no one with sense believes Trump’s contradiction of our own intelligence that Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) raises grave constitutional and political consequences.
Despite Trump’s war-talk Saturday night, Vice President JD Vance insists we are not at war. That, as even this crew understands, would require congressional action. On one level, such an assertion is preposterous—as we have indeed become combatants in an extended, ongoing war.
Whatever fiction the administration advances, as Tom Nichols points out, “the enemy gets a vote.” The most likely scenario, he suggests, is not as tidy as Trump would have us believe:
The Iranian regime will be wounded but will likely survive; the nuclear program will be delayed but will likely continue; the region will become more unstable but is unlikely to erupt into a full-blown war involving the United States.
Should we get bogged down in an extended war or face retaliation, Trump’s unilateral action based on a lie (not even DNI Tulsi Gabbard thinks Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) will be viewed as a gross error and a constitutional overstep.
I’m ready for No Drama Obama to make a comeback. Trump is an exhausting and soul-snatching miscreant. I’m so tired but yet I cannot sleep. How are you doing? We shall live in Peace someday.
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Here comes the summer sun! We’ve got an extreme heat warning all day. This is getting to be our normal summer these days. The most interesting thing of the day is something I have always associated with the active volcano ring of fire in the Pacific Ocean. This was a new thing for me.
This is a weather phenomenon as explained by Accuweather. “‘Ring of fire’ thunderstorms to erupt on building heat dome in central, eastern US Rounds of thunderstorms will form a “ring of fire” around a massive dome of building heat in the central and eastern United States into next week.” Well, that sounds pretty hellish.
As a major heat wave builds and takes center stage in the weather from late this week to next week, groups of severe thunderstorms will erupt on the edge of the dome of hot air, AccuWeather meteorologists advise.
The storms will take on a “ring of fire” effect, erupting first over parts of the northern Plains and Midwest, followed by portions of the Northeast and finally the Southwest and central Plains.
The intense high pressure and sinking air within a heat dome make it difficult for thunderstorms to form in large numbers. However, thunderstorms tend to erupt on the edges of the heat dome, as the high pressure area is weakest in these areas, allowing columns of air to rise and form towering clouds and gusty downpours.
Everyone from Kansas City east to the Atlantic will be impacted. It’s huge! Yes, Boston is included! It goes as far south as Asheville and will go way up into Canada. Be prepared to stay home! Europe is getting directly involved in pushing both Iran and Israel to the negotiation table. This is from Reuters. “Iran says no nuclear talks under fire, UN atomic watchdog urges maximum restraint.” It’s reported by Parisa Hafezi, Crispian Balmer, and Jana Choukeir.
Iran said on Friday it would not discuss the future of its nuclear programme while under attack by Israel, as Europe tried to coax Tehran back into negotiations and the United States considers whether to get involved in the conflict.
A week into its campaign, Israel said it had struck dozens of military targets overnight, including missile production sites, a research body it said was involved in nuclear weapons development in Tehran and military facilities in western and central Iran. The Israel Defense Forces later said they had also struck surface-to-air missile batteries in southwestern Iran as part of efforts to achieve air superiority over the country.
At least five people were injured when Israel hit a five-storey building in Tehran housing a bakery and a hairdresser’s, Fars news agency reported.
Iran fired missiles at Beersheba in southern Israel early on Friday and Israeli media said initial reports pointed to missile impacts in Tel Aviv, the Negev and Haifa after further attacks hours later.
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog warned against attacks on nuclear facilities and called for maximum restraint.
You may ask yourself, Where is my beautiful country in these peace-seeking negotiations? Well, the answer is we’re trapped in the Trump Two Week Twist. You really have to watch this clip from Jen Psaki’s show last night. The explanation and the incredible number of times he’s used the Two Week Twist is surreal. It’s laughable even though it turns the United States of America into a feckless and shammy place run by a feckless and shammy nepobaby. The New York Times heading is trying to make Yam Tits look thoughtful. Why do they keep carrying his water? Or perhaps, better put, why is he carrying his colostomy bag? This is the headline. “Trump Buys Himself Time, and Opens Up Some New Options. While President Trump appears to be offering one more off ramp to the Iranians, he also is bolstering his own military options.” Here are the feckless reporters who executed the Trump Two-Week Twist: David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager. Sanger covers Iran’s nuclear programs. Pager is from the merry band of White House Reporters who don’t do their job. That’s a gift link if you want to read all about it.
President Trump’s sudden announcement that he could take up to two weeks to decide whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict is being advertised by the White House as giving diplomacy one more chance to work.
But it also opens a host of new military and covert options.
Assuming he makes full use of it, Mr. Trump will now have time to determine whether six days of relentless bombing and killing by Israeli forces — which has taken out one of Iran’s two biggest uranium enrichment centers, much of its missile fleet and its most senior officers and nuclear scientists — has changed minds in Tehran.
Look, it’s the Trump Two Week Twist! It’s a ploy, boys! It’s his fallback version of Homer Simpson’s d’oh.
Yam Tits is also using his basic staged reality show strategic moves as he tries to drag the minds of his knuckle dragging MAGA voters off his past promises of no new endless wars. This was likely predictable, too. ABC Newsreports that “Trump calls for special prosecutor for 2020 election, after again claiming fraud with no evidence.” We don’t need no stiking evidence! We’re the Reality Show Administration! Bondi will likely go along with it.
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social Friday morning to again make unverified claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. He called for a special prosecutor.
“The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING,” Trump claimed without giving more details. “A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America!”
There has been no evidence that the 2020 election was filled with fraud following numerous investigations, audits and other reviews over the last four and a half years.
An Associated Press investigation found fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud in six battleground states during the 2020 presidential election — a number far too little to have make any different in the outcome of that election.
Meanwhile, we now have to report the news about ongoing attempts at political assassinations. In sad news, MSNBC reports that “Minnesota lawmaker shot 9 times at his home in ‘targeted’ attack is in a critical condition. Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were both shot multiple times and are continuing their recovery, according to a statement from the couple.”
The Minnesota lawmaker who survived an attack by a gunman on his doorstep is still in a critical condition and has revealed details of the terrifying moment he and his wife were shot multiple times.
Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, released a statement Thursday, obtained by NBC affiliate KARE of Minneapolis, outlining the events in the early hours of June 14.
The Hoffmans continue their recovery in the hospital — Sen. Hoffman is in a critical but stable condition, while his wife is in a stable condition, the statement said.
We also have a new possible attempt in Ohio as reported by CNN. “Man arrested after Ohio GOP congressman says he was run off the road and threatened.” We’re not sure atm if this was politically motivated or what, but it’s being investigated.
A man in Ohio has been arrested and charged after allegedly threatening Rep. Max Miller during an incident in which the Republican US congressman says he was driven off the road, according to documents provided to CNN.
Feras S. Hamdan, 36, was arrested after Miller filed and signed a complaint with police for aggravated menacing, as well as requested a protective order against him, according to the Rocky River Police Department in Ohio.
Hamdan, accompanied by legal counsel, voluntarily turned himself in and is awaiting a court appearance, according to police.
CNN is attempting to reach Hamdan’s attorney.
Miller on Thursday called the Rocky River Police Department via 911 to report that an individual on the highway was threatening him and his family.
“I’m on the freeway. I have somebody who has cut me off, who is flipping me off, who is showing me a Palestinian flag and is yelling to kill me,” Miller said, according to a recording of the call obtained by CNN.
He told the 911 operator at one point: “I’m a little shaken at the moment because I got death threats.”
Miller called police on his way to work and read the license plate of the alleged perpetrator. At one point, he held out his phone for the 911 dispatcher to hear the honking and yelling, though the sounds were largely unintelligible. His call was transferred to a different police department based on the location of the incident.
Well, have to wait to learn more about this one. Meanwhile, the big bad budget-busting bill is hung up in the Senate. This is from The Hill. “Trump’s megabill hits more trouble as Senate conservatives demand changes.”
The Senate version of legislation to enact President Trump’s agenda is hitting new turbulence as conservatives led by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are demanding deeper spending cuts to address the nation’s $2.2 trillion annual deficit.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has focused this week on addressing the concerns of Senate GOP colleagues such as Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who raised alarms about cuts to federal Medicaid spending.
But Thune has to worry about his right flank as Johnson and his allies are threatening to hold up the bill unless GOP leaders agree to deeper cuts to federal Medicaid spending and a faster rollback of the renewable energy tax credits enacted under former President Biden.
Johnson, Lee and Scott are threatening to vote as a bloc against the bill next week unless it undergoes significant changes.
Thune plans to bring the bill to the floor Wednesday or Thursday next week, but he may not have enough votes to proceed on the legislation, Republican senators say.
Additionally, the Senate Parlimentarian has deleted some of the bill. This is reported in Politico. “Parliamentarian nixes key pieces of Tim Scott’s megabill proposal. Senate Banking Republicans will be forced to go back to the drawing board on the core components of their proposal for the GOP’s “big beautiful bill.”
The Senate parliamentarian ruled Thursday that several key provisions in Banking Chair Tim Scott’s proposed contribution to the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” violate the upper chamber’s rules for the budget reconciliation process, according to Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley’s office.
Scott’s proposals to zero out funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, slash some Federal Reserve employees’ pay, cut Treasury’s Office of Financial Research and dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board are all ineligible to be included in a simple-majority budget reconciliation bill.
The ruling from Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough is a major blow to Scott and Banking Committee Republicans, who will be forced to go back to the drawing board on the core pieces of their proposal for the GOP megabill. The panel is required to find $1 billion in cuts over the next 10 years under a budget resolution adopted by both chambers of Congress — a narrow fraction of the overall bill.
Scott said in a statement that he remains “committed to advancing legislation that cuts waste and duplication in our federal government and saves taxpayer dollars.”
Only measures that are aimed at changing spending or revenues are allowed under the strict rules governing the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process. MacDonough is responsible for determining which proposals comply with the body’s rules. Banking Committee staffers from both parties met with the parliamentarian’s office earlier this week to discuss Scott’s plan.
Here’s a sad headline from the New York Times. I’ve gifted this one too, so you may read the entire thing. “Appeals Court Lets Trump Keep Control of California National Guard in L.A.A panel rejected a lower court’s finding that it was likely illegal for President Trump to use state troops to protect immigration agents from protests.”
A federal appeals court on Thursday cleared the way for President Trump to keep using the National Guard to respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles, declaring that a judge in San Francisco erred last week when he ordered Mr. Trump to return control of the troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
In a unanimous, 38-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the conditions in Los Angeles were sufficient for Mr. Trump to decide that he needed to take federal control of California’s National Guard and deploy it to ensure that federal immigration laws would be enforced.
A lower-court judge had concluded that the protests were not severe enough for Mr. Trump to use a rarely-triggered law to federalize the National Guard over Mr. Newsom’s objections. But the panel, which included two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., disagreed with the lower court.
Mr. Trump praised the decision, saying in a Truth Social post late Thursday that it supported his argument for using the National Guard “all over the United States” if local law enforcement can’t “get the job done.”
Mr. Newsom, in a response on Thursday, focused on how the appeals court had rejected the Trump administration’s argument that a president’s decision to federalize the National Guard could not be reviewed by a judge.
“The president is not a king and is not above the law,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of U.S. military soldiers against citizens.”
This bill is on a long path. Be sure to stay on top of it. I’m pretty sure a lot of the reality show attractions are still to keep us out of the loop. Also, do not forget the importance of this Supreme Court decision, which basically says state Religionists have more control over your children and your body than you do. This is from Chris Geidner writing on his blog Law Dork. “Where is the outrage over Skrmetti? On the far right’s campaign to create uncertainty over gender-affirming medical care for minors — and the powerful institutions that helped along the way.” We’re living under a situation where there are safe states under attack from the Trump administration, and states are trying to get their kids out of living under the same kinds of craziness of States’ Rights we fought a long time to get rid of. It’s nuts!
The response to Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Tennessee’s law barring transgender minors from obtaining gender-affirming medical care has been muted at best.
In its U.S. v. Skrmetti ruling, the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees shaved off the edges — if not more central parts — of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause in order to uphold laws that bar an exceptionally small number of teens from receiving a type of medical care that only one group of teens need.
Addressing this formal attack on transgender people by the government — de jure discrimination, one might even call it — is, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor made clear in her dissent on Wednesday, the work that the Equal Protection Clause is supposed to do.
One would expect more outrage.
But Wednesday was the result of a long-term campaign that ultimately succeeded. As same-sex couples succeeded in obtaining marriage equality in 2015, the far-right organizations who had used their opposition to those couples’ marriage rights to fund their work needed a new cause.
The far right moved on to attacking transgender people. The animosity from the right — and others — toward trans people wasn’t new, but as the marriage outcome became clear, the shift of focus began.
They went after trans people’s use of bathrooms. North Carolina’s 2016 “bathroom bill“ backfired. Gov. Pat McCrory lost re-election, and the swing state has been led by Democratic governors since. But, bathrooms have always been targets for moral panic, so the issue eventually returned.
Starting in Idaho in 2020, they went after trans people’s participation in sports. That got some traction, particularly as the campaign moved on.
Then, starting in Arkansas the next year, they went after trans kids’ medical care.
They were just going to keep going until they got something that pushed them into the spotlight.
Even when lawmakers started passing bans on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, however, judges of all stripes started blocking them as likely unconstitutional.
This was not, Trump appointees even agreed, a close question.
“At bottom, sex-based classifications are not just present in [Indiana]’s prohibitions; they’re determinative,” U.S. District Judge Patrick Hanlon, a Trump appointee, wrote in blocking Indiana’s law back in June 2023.
As another Trump appointee, U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, wrote later that month in blocking Tennessee’s ban, “Though the Court would not hesitate to be an outlier if it found such an outcome to be required, the Court finds it noteworthy that its resolution of the present Motion brings it into the ranks of courts that have (unanimously) come to the same conclusion when considering very similar laws.“
Read more at the link.
Anyway, we’ve made it through another year, oops season, oops week with Yam Tit’s ongoing decline and falls. I can’t imagine going through any more of this, but it will get worse here, I’m sure. The idiot who’s now our Governor has already volunteered to help federal troops and ICE. State Law enforcement will definitely be there aiding and abetting. I’m hoping we can do better here in New Orleans, but who knows? This is what he signed last month, as reported by the Shreveport Times.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry issued an executive order, Operation GEAUX, directing state law enforcement to assist federal immigration operations.
Landry emphasized the program’s focus on deporting individuals in the country illegally who engage in criminal activity.
The initiative includes enhanced screening, identification, and a public awareness campaign.
The only crimes related to immigration we’ve had are business owners grabbing immigrants’ passports and papers while not giving them back, and essentially enslaving them. I’m not sure the state would file charges even if this happened again.
Have a very restful and good weekend. Stay Cool!
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Last week was a tough one for those of us committed to keeping a working democracy in this country and with those who have been long-standing allies. We’ve watched the USA, countries aligned with NATO, and even Israel, where fascist-leaning leaders have won elections with less than a majority.
A lot of these countries have parliamentary democracies, so they may get a composite of parties choosing the leader. There’s been a tendency for the right wing to join up with factions that can include those with strict religious beliefs hoping for theocracy, people looking to nationalism and clinging to xenophobia to overcome their fear and hatred of others, and of course, those just around for the spoils of corruption. The militia movement is a significant part of the Trump coalition. I love my country and all its people. I was excited to put money in my friend’s boxes to grow trees in Israel as a kid. Israelis deserve better than Netanyahu. Poland and Hungary are in play now, too. WTF is going on?
This piece was written by a UK blogger, Carolyn Gallaher is an excellent read. It was written back in February about the pardons of all the J6 criminals and others associated with the militia movement. “Trump’s pardons suggest he will run a far-right government with paramilitary backing.”
Trump’s pardons suggest he has adopted a personalistic approach to law. While he isn’t likely to meddle with the legal code, he is likely to intervene when his high-profile supporters are charged with breaking the law. Intervention will be at a distance, but effective. Indeed, all he will need to do is post negative commentary about the charges on social media, and at least some officers of the court will respond. Prosecutors, for example, may refuse to indict Trump’s cronies, or judges may may dismiss legally solid cases, as US District Judge Aileen Cannon did with the government’s classified documents case in the summer of 2024. Trump can also use the bully pulpit to change how a prosecution is seen. Trump adopted this approach with January 6 cases, spending the last four years priming the wider public to see the government’s prosecutions as “politically motivated” and the defendants “hostages” and “political prisoners.”
The most particularly alarming event this week was Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg, where the soldiers attending the event were filtered for Trump enablers and cheered to a clearly political and self-serving rally. Military News has this analysis.
It was supposed to be a routine appearance, a visit from the commander in chief to rally the troops, boost morale and celebrate the Army‘s 250th-birthday week, which culminates with a Washington, D.C., parade slated for Saturday.
Instead, what unfolded Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, bore little resemblance to the customary visit from a president and defense secretary. There, President Donald Trump unleashed a speech laced with partisan invective, goading jeers from a crowd of soldiers positioned behind his podium — blurring the long-standing and sacrosanct line between the military and partisan politics.
As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom — amid the president’s controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles — as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump’s diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship.
As I have been politically active for over 50 years, I really have seen it coming–especially the White Christian Nationalist movement–but always felt that our institutions would be strong enough to head it off. These folks do play the long game, and little by little, they’ve worked to put their followers into the military, police, school boards, judges, and all levels of elected officials. They’ve embedded themselves in the institutions with the intention of twisting them to their personal views. One of the best sources of information on the movement in our country comes from people who grew up, then left. This interview from the PBS News Hour with former evangelical minister within this movement, Brad Onishi, is worth a look or listen.
Brad Onishi, Co-Host, “Straight White American Jesus”: Christian nationalism is an ideology that is based around the idea that this is a Christian nation, that this was founded as a Christian nation, and, therefore, it should be a Christian nation today and should be so in the future.
According to survey data, Christian nationalists agree with statements like the federal government should declare the United States of America a Christian nation. Our laws should be based on Christian values. being a Christian is important if you want to be a real American.
The unprecedented move by Trump of sending Marines and the National Guard to hype the L.A. immigration protests for a reality show production and excite the xenophobes is really beyond anything we’ve ever seen. The birth of our country really wasn’t the Boston Tea Party. It was the Boston Massacre that happened on March 5, 1770.
I know, my history major roots are showing, but this really is the seminal event and situation that started our country. You may read more about it at the History Channel. Basically, British soldiers were occupying the city. You may not know that there was a black man among those protesting the soldiers and the enforcement of what was essentially tariffs among the five American dead. His name was Crispus Attucks,
The British soldiers were put on trial, and patriots John Adams and Josiah Quincy agreed to defend the soldiers in a show of support of the colonial justice system. When the trial ended in December 1770, two British soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and had their thumbs branded with an “M” for murder as punishment.
The Sons of Liberty, a Patriot group formed in 1765 to oppose the Stamp Act, advertised the “Boston Massacre” as a battle for American liberty and just cause for the removal of British troops from Boston. Patriot Paul Revere made a provocative engraving of the incident, depicting the British soldiers lining up like an organized army to suppress an idealized representation of the colonist uprising. Copies of the engraving were distributed throughout the colonies and helped reinforce negative American sentiments about British rule.
April 1775 is usually where most of us start our first American History lesson. The seminal events here were the Battles of Lexington and Concord. All of this is good to know as we watch our Army celebrate its 250th anniversary.
Unfortunately, Trump has turned this into an event worthy of the Dear Leader of North Korea. There is a massive, nationwide protest planned called “No Kings. that day.” It also appears likely that there will be heavy rains in the District. I pity the soldiers with this assignment. They’re already sleeping on the floors of federal buildings with mixed feelings, I’m sure.
This is the one thing that I thought I’d recommend. It’s from The Bulwark. It’s written by Jill Lawrence. “The Patriotic Rich. Not all of them are like Trump, willing to see the poor get poorer so the rich can get richer.”
DONALD TRUMP HAS HUGGED A FLAG more than once, and he’s now adding flagpoles on the north and south White House lawns. He addressed uniformed troops at Fort Bragg (at least the fit ones who love him and don’t look fat) and he’s ordered up a $45 million military parade on June 14 that could wreck D.C. streets to the tune of $16 million.
He probably thinks of himself as a patriotic billionaire.
Imagine, if you would, a different kind of wealthy role model for our nation’s youth—and its grownups, too, for that matter. A millionaire or billionaire who does not waste taxpayer money, destroy government services, attack science, undermine public health, pave the Rose Garden, and decorate the Oval Office with so much gilt that you halfway expect Marie Antoinette to show up anytime.
How about a millionaire or billionaire who obeys the law and isn’t constantly, voraciously on the hunt for more power and more money? Who would prefer a more equitable society and would pay more taxes to make it so?
These people do exist. Some are philanthropists. Some put money into political activism. And some create policy advocacy groups, like the nonpartisan Patriotic Millionaires. The group’s members are self-described “proud traitors to their class,” offering a platform of foundational economic changes to coincide with the nation’s 250th birthday next year: AMERICA 250: The Money Agenda.
“Over the long term, the unfair tax system is a cause of the oligarchy being able to do what it does. The proposals that even the progressives are making are not sufficient to actually change the course of history,” Patriotic Millionaires Chair Morris Pearl, former managing director at BlackRock, told me in an interview.
The group’s four-part proposal, released in April, aims to do just that. It starts with exempting people below a certain income from federal taxes and making up the revenue by imposing a 3 percent surtax on income above $1 million, rising to 8 percent above $10 million. Other elements include raising the minimum wage to the cost of living for a single adult, and indexing it; equalizing the tax rate for capital gains and ordinary income over $1 million; and significantly taxing the intergenerational transfer of wealth.
Forget false modesty. “The solutions to the problem are not complicated, and the Patriotic Millionaires have them all,” the group says on its home page. Their plan, they say, would “ensure prosperity and stability for America’s next 250 years.”
I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry about that. The interesting thing today is that the headlines are all about the real events in the world, like Israel Bombing Iran and Iran attacking back. L.A. is still on the front pages, and Kristi Noem, the psycho puppy killer. The only place you’ll find the parade is in the political cartoons.
The other thing is that Trump’s Budget Busting Bill is now buried by the distraction and the truly awful Noem event, where a U.S. Senator was manhandled into the hallway, put in cuffs, and treated quite the way you’d expect an SS Storm Trooper. We will now call the Storm Trumpers. This is from Paul Krugman’s Substack. “Reverse Robin Hood and Trumpian Totalitarianism. Trump’s big beautiful bill is a sadistic monstrosity.”
House Republicans have passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. After having spent decades covering Republican domestic policies, I have a pretty jaundiced view of their intentions. But this bill is so cruelly regressive that it shocked even me. This bill is truly unprecedented in the extent to which it takes away from the have-nots and gives to the ultra-haves. It slashes Medicaid, taking health care away from millions. It slashes food stamps, ensuring that many will go hungry. At the same time, it gives huge tax cuts to the wealthy.
Those of us who followed the legislation knew that it would be highly regressive. New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan agency of economic technocrats, confirm in detail just how bad the OBBBA is.
C.B.O.’s numbers, released yesterday, are startling. Here’s the percentage change in households’ purchasing power by decile of the income distribution caused by the OBBBA:
That 4 percent income decline for the poorest 10 percent of Americans is the scale of economic damage you’d expect from a severe recession. But here it is being deliberately inflicted on the poorest Americans.
In the OBBBA, pain on the least well-off Americans is not a price that is being paid in order to reduce the U.S. budget deficit. Remember,the benefit cuts for those in the bottom decile of the income distribution are being paired with tax cuts at the top of the income distribution. So the net effect will be a large increase in the U.S. budget deficit.
Wait, it gets worse. The CBO’s analysis doesn’t consider the effect of the Trump tariffs on household incomes. This is important because tariffs are taxes — regressive taxes, that fall more heavily on lower-income than higher-income families. I’ll be writing about the distributional impact of tariffs in the future.
I have just one more article to recommend on this topic by HuffPo by Jennifer Bendary. “Senate GOP Strips Contempt Provision From Tax Bill — But Still Lets Trump Be King. They took language out of the House GOP’s “big, beautiful bill” that limited courts’ powers, but now want to price people out of being able to sue the government at all.”
Senate Republicans have removed a disturbing provision from the House GOP’s massive tax-and-spending bill that would have allowed President Donald Trump to circumvent the courts and essentially serve as a king.
But they have swapped in new language that would still let Trump ignore the courts amid his lawlessness: Their provision would make it nearly impossible for people to sue the federal government by forcing them to cough up millions, if not billions, of dollars to do so.
Late Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released the panel’s proposed text for the GOP’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. The House passed its version of the bill last month, so now the Senate is making its changes. Each committee is tasked with putting together language for its relevant section in the legislation.
The text that Grassley released for the bill’s judicial section doesn’t include this jarring, one-sentence provision that House Republicans buried in their 1,116-page bill:
Translated, this provision would restrict the ability of any court, including the Supreme Court, to enforce compliance with its orders by holding people in contempt. Contempt citations are an essential tool for the courts; they allow judges to threaten fines, sanctions or even jail if people disobey their orders.
The provision in the House GOP’s bill also would apply retroactively to all temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, leaving courts with no real way of enforcing orders they’ve already handed down.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) told MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff that he was “escorted” to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference by FBI agents, where he was then manhandled by agents under the claim they didn’t know who he was.
Sen. Padilla found himself at the center of a maelstrom when he tried to ask a question Thursday at Noem’s briefing on ICE protests in Los Angeles and was brought to the ground and handcuffed by Secret Service and FBI agents. Noem and her agents falsely claimed Padilla didn’t identify himself as a U.S. senator and accused him of “lunging” in a threatening manner.
On Thursday night’s edition of MSNBC’sThe Beat with Ari Melber, Padilla gave his first sit-down after his release, and called out several inaccuracies. He told Soboroff he didn’t “barge” into the presser, he was signed in and escorted, and was listening in the room for 10 minutes before he tried to ask a question:
SOBOROFF: We heard from you briefly at the press conference after you came outside of the federal building in Westwood. We’ve heard more extensively from Secretary Noem and the Department of Homeland Security. And I want to just tell you a little bit, because I’m sure this has been a whirlwind, about what they’ve been saying.
Secretary Noem said that you, quote, “lunged” towards her at this press conference. The Department of Homeland Security said the Secret Service believed that you were an attacker. And the Department of Homeland Security called this political theater. What’s your response and what’s your version of what happened?
PADILLA: Well, first of all, that’s ridiculous. It’s a lie, but par for the course for this administration, right? So here’s the stage. Look, I was in the federal building here in Los Angeles for a scheduled briefing, just as when my colleagues and I had to go all the way to Guantanamo Bay to begin to get information about that facility being used as a detention facility. They’ve been non-responsive to requests for information. And so I had scheduled. They approved a briefing with representatives of the Northern Command in that federal building.
We were there prior to the 10:30 original appointment date when we caught wind that secretary of Homeland Security was going to be down the hall at a press conference. And — and our briefing was now delayed because of that press conference. So since the secretary has been non-responsive, I figured, let me go over and listen to what she has to say. Maybe we can glean some information here.
SOBOROFF: So let me make sure I understand the…
PADILLA: But so the…
SOBOROFF: Go ahead.
PADILLA: So the … whole time, right, we’re, the whole time, being escorted in this federal building by somebody from the National Guard, somebody from the FBI. I’ve gone through screening. This is a federal building. And so tell them, let’s go listen to the press conference. They escort me over to that room. And I’m sitting in the back of the room, behind the cameras, behind the reporters, listening, listening. And at one point, it was just too much to take. Not the first, but the second attack on the political leadership of California and this notion that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem have to come in and rescue the people of Los Angeles from Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass? It was too much. And so I spoke up. I introduced myself and said I had a question.
Look, they said I wasn’t wearing my pin, my polo says “United States Senate.” There was no threat. There was no lunging. I raised my voice to ask a question. And it took, what, maybe half a second before multiple agents were on me.
SOBOROFF: The video clearly shows, and you can hear on the audio, that you identify yourself as Senator Padilla. Did you — she said you barged into the room or you — you basically broke into the room. I’m paraphrasing here. Just set the record straight on that.
PADILLA: I didn’t barge into the room. As I mentioned, I was in a different conference room a couple doors down the hall. I let it be known, I’d like to go listen to the press conference. The folks that were escorting me in the building walked me over. I didn’t even open the door. The door was opened for me. And I spent a few minutes in the back of the room just listening in until the rhetoric, the political rhetoric got to be too much to take. So I spoke up.
And now for the Congresswoman’s story. This is from Liz Die at Public Notice. “We’ve reached the indicting the opposition stage of fascism. There’s no sane world in which Rep. McIver committed felonies during her altercation with ICE. ” If this entire event was not staged, I’ll eat my favorite summer hat.
On Tuesday, June 10, Alina Habba, the interim US attorney for New Jersey, indicted sitting Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver. The Newark Democrat is charged with two felony counts and one misdemeanor for assaulting, resisting, and impeding a federal officer in the performance of his official duties.
Habba has zero prosecutorial background and came to the job after her spectacular performance as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, where she got him half a billion dollars in civil fraud penalties in New York, $83 million in damages in the E. Jean Carroll assault and defamation cases, and a million dollars in sanctions for filing a RICO trollsuit against Hillary Clinton, James Comey, the Perkins Coie law farm, and half the Democrats in DC. (Spoiler alert: It’s never RICO.)
The indictment of Rep. McIver arises from an incident outside Delaney Hall, an ICE facility in Newark. In February, the GEO Group, the private prison company which runs the facility, was awarded a 15-year, $1 billion contract to run the 1,000-bed facility. It became an immediate flashpoint for protesters, as well as city officials, who said that they’d been blocked from inspecting for health and safety.
…
But Habba wasn’t hired for her legal chops — she was hired to advance political agendas. So even as she’s facing a civil suit for malicious prosecution and defamation by Baraka, she filed a criminal complaint against Rep. McIver, and then followed it up with an actual indictment.
The charges are thin, to say the least. Footage shows McIver, in the red jacket, attempting to shield the mayor with her body. She is jostled in the crowd and swipes at an agent who grabs her. No body slam was recorded.
It’s often said that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. The joke here is that the standard for an indictment is so low and the scales so tilted toward the prosecution at the grand jury stage, that an indictment is virtually guaranteed. The target is not entitled to be present or to introduce competing evidence. A grand jury need only find that there is probable cause to believe that the crime occurred, and need not be unanimous. And an indictment can be secured if a mere 12 jurors out of 16-23 assembled vote in favor of it.
Convincing a jury of 12 Garden State citizens, most likely the congresswoman’s own constituents, that she assaulted an ICE officer and made him fear for his safety beyond a reasonable doubt, is another matter. Rep. McIver will also have a powerful defense in the Speech or Debate Clause, which protects members of Congress from prosecution when they are carrying out official business.
I especially liked Die’s conclusion.
If Habba does not slink off again, the case will be heard by Judge Jamel Semper, a veteran of the US attorney’s office Habba now leads, who was appointed to the bench by President Biden. Arraignment is set for next Monday.
McIver, who declined a plea agreement Habba tried to foist on her earlier, called the indictment “a brazen attempt at political intimidation.”
Noem’s appearance on Fox following all that drama was definitely right out of a right-wing reality wet dream. This is from Talking Points Memo. Nicole Lafond has the story. “Noem Says National Guard Occupation Is Meant To ‘Liberate’ LA From Its Mayor And Governor.” Psychopaths have no shame.
Just before Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security press briefing, forced to the ground and then handcuffed for asking a question, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was in the middle of making a bizarre but crucial point.
“We are not going away,” she said, referring to the National Guard and DHS presence in Los Angeles this week amid protests against Trump’s sweeping and drastic deportation mission in the city. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
The statement said the quiet part out loud: the military was there to “liberate” a city from its democratically elected governor and mayor. (It was also not entirely clear what “burdensome” actions she was referring to.)
Leading up to this moment in the press briefing, Noem spent several minutes thanking the National Guard, FBI, local law enforcement and the IRS (??) for their efforts on the ground in LA. (Apparently, per Noem, IRS agents have been there in person working to determine what groups are organizing the protests in the city! Normal stuff!) She then said that the National Guard and DHS were working to “make every single community great again and safe again” before lamenting that the people of LA were “suffering” “under the policies of Governor Newsom and under the policies of Mayor Bass.”
Those remarks combined with the liberation speak amount to a pretty pellucid admission of the Trump administration’s ultimate vision here. As I noted earlier this week, much of the effort to deploy troops to LA to clamp down on mostly peaceful protesters in the city can be seen through the lens of the president’s months-long effort to punish blue cities and states. While he is hiding behind the guise of targeting Democratic-led states and cities that function as sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, Trump’s barely disguised his bloodlust for using his second term to punish all of his perceived political enemies. Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass most certainly fall into this category.
TENSIONS REACH NEW HEIGHTS: Israel launched strikes on Iran early Friday local time, a dramatic escalation of long-running tensions between the two countries.
NUCLEAR PROGRAM TARGETED: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the operation targeted Iran’s nuclear program and “will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.” Explosions continue to rock Tehran and other sites in Iran.
IRAN RETALIATES: In a televised address, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian promised a “powerful response.” The IDF have reported attacks from Iran throughout the day, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israelis to brace for retaliation.
POWERFUL LEADERS KILLED: In a significant blow to Iran’s army, it’s top military official, Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, was killed along with Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
CASUALTIES IN TEHRAN: The strikes killed nearly 80 people and injured more than 300 in Iran’s capital, Tehran, according to semiofficial Fars news agency. Iranian authorities have not confirmed these numbers.
U.S. POSITION: Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially said the U.S. was “not involved in the strikes against Iran.” However, President Donald Trump later said “we knew everything,” about the strikes and that Israel had used American weapons.
STATUS OF U.S.-IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL: In a phone call with NBC News, Trump said Iran had missed an opportunity to make a deal. “Now, they may have another opportunity. We’ll see.” Iranian State TV reported that Iran had pulled out from the next round of talks.
“Give me your rich, screw the huddled masses.” John Buss, @repeat1968
All of the chaos comes back to the fact that we have a weak president. He doesn’t know a damn thing about economics. He couldn’t care less about the military or foreign policy. He’s only interested in what he can get out of this country. Where is the money coming from for this parade and all the damage it will do to the streets of Washington, DC? Here’s what the Google AI entity has to say about spending at Homeland Security. I just asked it if they were spending more than their budget.
Yes, spending on Homeland Security is at risk of exceeding its allocated budget, particularly for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Reports indicate that ICE has already begun spending beyond its appropriated level, leading to concerns about violating the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from spending funds before Congress authorizes them. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is likely to shift funds between accounts to sustain current operations, potentially impacting other agencies and their priorities.
It makes no sense to give the rich tax breaks, pay for all this nonsense that is nothing but a political display of faux strength, then expect the rest of the country to give up public education, Medicaid, and likely Medicare? Are we going to have another infrastructure week? What about the inflation and expected negative impacts on the economy? What about our long-standing allies? Are we just buddies now with the world’s bullies?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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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.
Read more at the link. It’s hard to know what exactly to say about this bit of news from CNN. I guess we’ve known who he is since his “very fine people on both sides paraded past a Synagogue for a MAGA rally, shouting “Jews will not replace us” in the Charlottesville protests in 2017. His fascination with Hitler is one big, ugly clue. “Trump says he had ‘never heard’ Shylock as an anti-semitic term after using it at rally.”
More indications of his madness and warped view of the country’s form of government and rule of law are on display in Politico today. Rachel Blade has this interview and analysis. “What Trump Told Me About His Complete Domination of Congress. Demanding a bill by Independence Day was a telling flourish for someone with zero tolerance for independence in the legislative branch.” It’s obvious he didn’t care or probably even read what was in it. He just cares about the control and the photo op, signing the deaths of millions of Americans, including the elderly and children.
I have been an economist for about 50 years now, and it takes a lot to turn me into a Deficit Hawk. This did it. It’s fiscal policy gone deadly. Drunk Secretary Hegseth has turned me into a fan of bombs overnight. This is from NBC News. “Hegseth halted weapons for Ukraine despite military analysis that the aid wouldn’t jeopardize U.S. readiness. The move blindsided the State Department, Ukraine, European allies, and members of Congress, who demanded an explanation from the Pentagon.”
According to AXIOS, Trump might be providing more aid to Ukraine shortly. “Trump tells Zelensky he wants to help Ukraine with air defense, sources say.” Did Putin piss him off or is he that hell-bent on getting a Nobel Peace Prize?
Chain of Command? Are we bombing Iran again? I’m going to have to call Sister Helen PreJean CSJ for another one-on-one conversation about what life means again. Conway, Kavanaugh, and Kennedy need another set of Sunday School lessons. So that article is good for basic information, like, evidently, a certain type of Christians feel they can murder people if they just claim a method that’s in line with whatever their cult made up as a religious exception. Handing people over to RFK Jr. just seems beyond cruel. Mark Joseph Stern has this analysis in Slate. Again, it’s from 2 days ago. “The Supreme Court Just Handed RFK Jr. a New, Extraordinarily Frightening Power.” It’s just another example of SCOTUS and its idea of concentrated power in the Executive branch.
This is extremely important as HIV Denialism is just one in a long list of RFK Jr’s hobgoblins. Read about Justice Thomas’ complaints about the Beer Guy’s logic at the link. It actually is worth the read. As for the Big Budget-Busting Bill, it’s speeding along to passage today. This is from the Washington Post and Jeff Stein. “Senate GOP tax bill includes largest cut to U.S. safety net in decades. The legislation would enact historic, possibly unprecedented, reductions in Medicaid and food stamps spending.” What I can’t figure out is why they’re not concerned that the people who benefit the most live in Red States, concentrated in rural areas of the country, and are primarily white. Isn’t that their voter base? No wonder Bezos could afford to buy Venice for a day, and his wife could afford all those ugly clothes and that awful plastic-surgery ruined face. We live in a land of monsters.
This New York Times article gets down to the nitty gritty if you’re interested (gifted). “A List of Nearly Everything in the Senate G.O.P. Bill, and How Much It Would Cost or Save.” I bet the bills for Presidential golfing and loafing around Mar-a-Lago are bigger than any money saved by kicking small children off their daily meals.
Phillip Bump has these thoughts at the Washington Post. “This is what ICE is doing with the tax dollars you already provide it. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stands to see a sharp increase in its funding under the Republican budget bill.” My understanding is that they have a bigger budget now than the Marines. Miller sure wants to deport him some POC.
The grifting in this administration is astounding. This is from ProPublica. “Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations.” This was investigated by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski.
You may read about the details of the attack at PBS if you aren’t overwhelmed already by the thought of Sex Pest and Drunk, Pet Hegseth being a part of this. This headline from The Hill won’t make you feel any less queasy. I’m assuming you knew that #FARTUS was also posted that he would help Iran Make Iran Great Again. That was while Hegseth and Rubio were busily telling the press that our hijacked country had no plans for regime change. Remember, if his lips are moving, he’s telling a big ol’ story. “Israel attacking government sites in Iran as Trump floats regime change.” The reporting here is by Sarah Fortinsky.
That sure sounds like a war to me. Peter Nicholas, NBC News, reports that Democrats in the District are finally sounding some kind of alarm. “‘Biden didn’t start any wars’: Democrats sharpen their arguments against Trump’s foreign policy. In the wake of the U.S. airstrikes on Iran, Democrats are pointing to Trump’s own promises that he wouldn’t ensnare the country in foreign conflicts.”
The Guardian has a headline today that’s spot on. George Bush got led on by his own advisors. Trump’s advisors said no to the mission. Evidently, Trump was taken by strongman Benjamin Netanyahoo! After all that speechifying about Hillary getting us into another World War and how he’d never drag us into something like Dubya did to Iraq and Afghanistan. Here we are. “Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie. The Iraq War was built on a lie. Now history is repeating itself.” Mohamad Bazzi has the analysis.
I’m sure none of this is lost on us. Mark Landler writes this analysis for The New York Times. “Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow. Through revolution and upheaval, the program has become intertwined with the country’s security and national identity.” Let’s hope all of this sinks in before Trump’s Folly starts costing American lives.
Everything old is new again. History repeats itself. Yup, another Republican steps on the detonator. Historian Heather Cox Richardson has a bigger perspective at her Substack, Letters from an American.
White Christian Nationalists have been at the heart of the big problems in just living your American life, extending their warmongering, hateful, bigoted selves into a second century. Meanwhile, back in the USSR, the bear awakens. Has Trump changed his fealty? This is from the Washington Post. Will he give up his position as RasPutin Fangirl and such to Netanyahoo? “Russia condemns U.S. strikes on Iran but takes no concrete actions. Iran’s foreign minister is in Moscow seeking support, but other than condemning the attack, Putin has not taken any major moves to back Tehran.” I was last night years old when I read that a Russian official told the press there were lots of countries willing to send actual nukes to Iran. It was part of the reason I didn’t sleep last night without a hefty dose of Benadryl. I didn’t snore either, from my poor stuffed sinuses suffering from the humidity and pollen here.
I’m going to start wrapping things up, but I wanted to share a few of the reporters outside the beltway. Jude Legum writes this for Popular Information. “A new war based on manipulated intelligence. More than two decades after the Iraq War commenced, history is repeating itself.” Even the weirdos he put in his cabinet saw the intelligence and just thumbed their noses at them. He “knew” better and used his instincts.
Jennifer Ruben, now writing at The Contrarian, has the term I’ve been using for at least two weeks. “Trump’s wags the dog. Risky military action disrupts the political dynamic. He’s been trying to get us off the topics of Doge, the Big Beautiful Budget-Busting bill, and the incredible cuts floating around the Senate.
Everyone from Kansas City east to the Atlantic will be impacted. It’s huge! Yes, Boston is included! It goes as far south as Asheville and will go way up into Canada. Be prepared to stay home! Europe is getting directly involved in pushing both Iran and Israel to the negotiation table. This is from Reuters. “Iran says no nuclear talks under fire, UN atomic watchdog urges maximum restraint.” It’s reported by Parisa Hafezi, Crispian Balmer, and Jana Choukeir.
You may ask yourself, Where is my beautiful country in these peace-seeking negotiations? Well, the answer is we’re trapped in the Trump Two Week Twist. You really have to watch this clip from Jen Psaki’s show last night. The explanation and the incredible number of times he’s used the Two Week Twist is surreal. It’s laughable even though it turns the United States of America into a feckless and shammy place run by a feckless and shammy nepobaby. The New York Times heading is trying to make Yam Tits look thoughtful. Why do they keep carrying his water? Or perhaps, better put, why is he carrying his colostomy bag? This is the headline. “Trump Buys Himself Time, and Opens Up Some New Options. While President Trump appears to be offering one more off ramp to the Iranians, he also is bolstering his own military options.” Here are the feckless reporters who executed the Trump Two-Week Twist: David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager. Sanger covers Iran’s nuclear programs. Pager is from the merry band of White House Reporters who don’t do their job. That’s a gift link if you want to read all about it.
Meanwhile, we now have to report the news about ongoing attempts at political assassinations. In sad news, MSNBC reports that “Minnesota lawmaker shot 9 times at his home in ‘targeted’ attack is in a critical condition. Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were both shot multiple times and are continuing their recovery, according to a statement from the couple.”
Well, have to wait to learn more about this one. Meanwhile, the big bad budget-busting bill is hung up in the Senate. This is from The Hill. “Trump’s megabill hits more trouble as Senate conservatives demand changes.”
Here’s a sad headline from the New York Times. I’ve gifted this one too, so you may read the entire thing. “Appeals Court Lets Trump Keep Control of California National Guard in L.A.A panel rejected a lower court’s finding that it was likely illegal for President Trump to use state troops to protect immigration agents from protests.”
This bill is on a long path. Be sure to stay on top of it. I’m pretty sure a lot of the reality show attractions are still to keep us out of the loop. Also, do not forget the importance of this Supreme Court decision, which basically says state Religionists have more control over your children and your body than you do. This is from Chris Geidner writing on his blog Law Dork. “Where is the outrage over Skrmetti? On the far right’s campaign to create uncertainty over gender-affirming medical care for minors — and the powerful institutions that helped along the way.” We’re living under a situation where there are safe states under attack from the Trump administration, and states are trying to get their kids out of living under the same kinds of craziness of States’ Rights we fought a long time to get rid of. It’s nuts!
The most particularly alarming event this week was Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg, where the soldiers attending the event were filtered for Trump enablers and cheered to a clearly political and self-serving rally. Military News has this analysis.
The unprecedented move by Trump of sending Marines and the National Guard to hype the L.A. immigration protests for a reality show production and excite the xenophobes is really beyond anything we’ve ever seen. The birth of our country really wasn’t the Boston Tea Party. It was the Boston Massacre that happened on March 5, 1770.
April 1775 is usually where most of us start our first American History lesson. The seminal events here were the Battles of Lexington and Concord. All of this is good to know as we watch our Army celebrate its 250th anniversary.
I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry about that. The interesting thing today is that the headlines are all about the real events in the world, like Israel Bombing Iran and Iran attacking back. L.A. is still on the front pages, and Kristi Noem, the psycho puppy killer. The only place you’ll find the parade is in the political cartoons.
Yam Tits has definitely put the dismal into the dismal science. There’s more. Okay, here are the two big stories. This is from Tommy Christopher writing for Mediaite. “Sen. Alex Padilla Tells MSNBC FBI ‘Escorted’ Him To Trump DHS Presser They Claim He Crashed.” Both Patel and Noem have some explaining to do. Don’t forget, we also have a New Jersey Congresswoman waiting for her trial for something that the facts really don’t support, either. “U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver was charged in a three-count indictment today for forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers, U.S. Attorney Alina Habba announced.” Back to the Senator’s story.
And now for the Congresswoman’s story. This is from Liz Die at Public Notice. “We’ve reached the indicting the opposition stage of fascism. There’s no sane world in which Rep. McIver committed felonies during her altercation with ICE. ” If this entire event was not staged, I’ll eat my favorite summer hat.
I especially liked Die’s conclusion.
Noem’s appearance on Fox following all that drama was definitely right out of a right-wing reality wet dream. This is from Talking Points Memo. Nicole Lafond has the story. “Noem Says National Guard Occupation Is Meant To ‘Liberate’ LA From Its Mayor And Governor.” Psychopaths have no shame.
So, I’m going to put a few links up about the attacks by Israel on Iran. They’re supposedly trying to knock back the nuclear capabilities of Iran. It seems strange, though, that Trump had already scheduled the Middle East envoy to Iran and that the US was heavily involved with the preplanning, according to Israel. This is the latest from NBC News. Netanyahu is like Trump to me. Love the country and the people. The leaders need to be sent to the World Court for Justice. “Live updates: Israel strikes Iranian nuclear facilities as fears of war mount. Iran’s top military official, Mohammad Hossein Bagheri and Hossein Salami, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, were killed, according to state media.”
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