Donald Trump is not happy. He’s not happy with Israel because they kept bombing Iran after Trump has announced a cease fire. He’s not happy because the U.S. intelligence community has found that his bombing raid on Iran didn’t destroy their nuclear capabilities. He’s not happy that he will likely never get the Nobel Peace Prize that he desperately wants.
Yesterday, Trump spoke to the press on the way to Marine One to travel to the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He appeared disheveled, wearing a rumpled suit with no tie. In angrily criticizing Israel and Iran for not abiding by his cease fire announcement, he broke another presidential norm by swearing in public.
President Trump on Tuesday emphatically dropped an f-bomb, on camera, expressing frustration that Israel and Iran appeared to be violating the ceasefire that he just celebrated going into effect.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing,” Trump said to reporters as he left the White House.
More than any other president, Trump has been known to use coarse language in speeches and other public appearances. But even for him, this on-camera utterance of the f-word was new. American presidents have typically refrained from using it publicly, even when angry or frustrated.
“Politics is sometimes a dirty and ugly business, and so people use language there that might be better preserved in the locker room — but in no instance do I recall a president openly using this term in a public forum,” said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.
Donald Trump’s f-bomb outburst Tuesday morning over the botched Iran-Israel ceasefire was due to the two embattled countries “ruining” the president’s “perfect war,” journalist Michael Wolff argued on The Daily Beast Podcast.
Trump drops the “F” bomb on the way to Marine One
Wolff also told host Joanna Coles that the context behind Trump’s comment—“You basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing!”—was that the president, unlike his predecessors, doesn’t intend on shepherding the conflict through to its end.
“The difference between all those other people getting sucked into these extended and incredibly damaging commitments is that they have the attention span to do that,“ Wolff said. ”He does not. So in a sense, that’s the weird silver lining. He’s not going to go forward with this.”
“And I don’t see him going down and becoming a wartime president and seeing this as something that he has to see to the end,” Wolff explained. “Trump’s whole impulse is exactly the opposite of that.” [….]
“Many wars are provoked by headlines, by propaganda, by people advocating for their position, trying to push people into wars. That’s certainly what the neocons did for so long,” he said. “But this is kind of the opposite; this is war to create a headline, and the headline is, ‘We won.’”
It’s all part of Trump’s childish personality. He bombed Iran and announced that their nuclear sites were “obliterated.” Right before he had to head to NATO meeting, it came out that that wasn’t true. He’s still publicly insisting that Iran’s nuclear program is dead, but he knows now that it’s a lie.
Trump’s Insane Claims about the Iran Strikes and His Wished-For Cease Fire
If the cease-fire holds, this episode would appear to mark a major foreign-policy victory for the president. But Trump may have made a crucial mistake that could bring about the very outcome that successive American presidents have sought to prevent: an Iranian nuclear weapon.
The problem is that the cease-fire is not linked to a diplomatic agreement with Iran on the future of its nuclear program. Trump apparently sees no need for further negotiation, because the military strikes were, to him, an unqualified success. But as the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Sunday morning, assessing the damage to the sites will take some time. A preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the strikes had failed to destroy some core components of the nuclear program, CNN reported today.
If parts of the program survived, or if Iran stockpiled and hid enriched uranium in advance of the strikes, then Tehran’s next steps seem clear. It will end cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Without eyes and ears on the ground, the international community will lose the ability to monitor Iran’s program. Iran could then choose to build a bomb covertly.
There is a worrisome parallel here to North Korea, which ended cooperation with the IAEA, pulled out of the NPT, and slowly resumed production of highly enriched uranium. A few years later, Pyongyang tested a nuclear device, much to everyone’s surprise.
The Iranian regime may conclude that withdrawing from the NPT is its most effective form of retaliation.
Our childish “president” doesn’t have the patience to deal with anything except instant gratification.
The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it.
The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.
Discouraged looking Trump arrives at NATO summit, still no tie.
The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “have been obliterated.”
Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.” Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes….
The White House acknowledged the existence of the assessment but said they disagreed with it.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
Trump, who’s in the Netherlands attending this week’s NATO summit, pushed back on CNN’s report in a Truth Social post. “One of the most successful military strikes in history,” Trump wrote in the all-caps post adding, “The nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed!”
Netanyahu must be trying to suck up to Trump, because Israel has released their evaluation of the U.S. strikes.
The Israeli government’s nuclear authority says US and Israeli strikes on Iran have rendered the Fordo underground enrichment site “inoperable”.
In a statement the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) says the “devastating” strike “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure”.
“We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years,” it says.
The IAEC adds that the “achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material”.
The statement was initially shared by the White House, which distributed it to reporters earlier. It was later released by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As he embarked on his attacks on Iran, President Donald Trump was clear that his initial bombing run would be followed by unbelievable destruction, if the government in Tehran angered him too much. But then after giving war a chance, he was clear that he wanted “peace” for all nations involved. Then, he toyed with the idea of a “regime change” war. And then he announced a supposed cease-fire. But then he got very mad on the internet that nobody was following his huffy cease-fire demands. Then, he got really mad online, again. And then… who the hell knows? Even senior members of his own administration sometimes don’t seem to know what to make of this Trumpian blitz of war and supposed peace.
One thing is for sure: Trump wants you to believe that he can shitpost, bully, and even bomb his way to lasting, durable peace.
For years, Trump has wanted to win a Nobel Peace Prize, and both in and out of office, he has routinely brought up the topic of this elusive honor, people close to him say. However, you do not need to take their word for it, largely because the president often complains in public and on the internet about not getting a Nobel Peace Prize that he can mount in his office.
One reason for that is, despite his anti-neocon rhetoric, Trump has developed a markedly pro-war track record during both of his administrations, and the body count to go with it. His warfare against Iran is just the latest exhibit in that long record.
To this day, Trump still gets visibly upset when the issue is brought up in private conversations, according to a source who’s discussed it with him recently in this presidency, and he will lament that he might have to “save the whole world” in order to win the prize this term — but even doing that, he believes, might not be enough to win over the Norwegian committee due to perceived anti-Trump bias.
Suebsaeng and Perez write that the bombing of Iran is not necessarily popular with members of his administration.
But even within Trump’s second administration — which he packed full of yes-men, yes-women, and venal MAGAheads — there is some degree of hurt feelings over Trump’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites over the weekend, even if no one expects this disappointment to lead to resignations or anything useful, rather than anonymous venting to reporters.
Vice President J.D. Vance, a former Trump critic, has said repeatedly that one of the things that drew him to his new boss was Trump’s professed commitment to “ending endless wars,” and bucking the GOP’s old guard on militarism overseas. Trump’s big talk on being the “candidate of peace” was, of course, always a gigantic fraud, and Vance is still assuming the role of committed Trump uber-loyalist, backing Trump’s war to the hilt.
One quietly frustrated Trump appointee told Rolling Stone that the president’s haphazard Iran bombing policy reflects the kind of “warmonger shit that we’re supposed to be against.” But as this week progressed, this source said that “at least he’s a lazy warmonger.”
Trump’s one accomplishment at the NATO summit is that NATO countries have agreed to spend 5% of their GDP on military preparedness.
Trump at the NATO Summit
Speaking at the NATO summit, Trump continued obsessing over the bombing and the intel assessment that it didn’t destroy Iran’s nuclear capability.
President Donald Trump lashed out at “scum” who revealed his much-championed strikes against Iran were likely far less effective than he claims.
Speaking at a NATO summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Trump also conceded that the report from his own intelligence community was “correct,” even while continuing to insist that his strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities caused “total obliteration” and having previously dismissed the report as fake news.
Trump speaks at the NATO summit.
“CNN is scum, MSDNC is scum, the New York Times is scum. They’re bad people, they’re sick,” Trump raged Wednesday.
“What they’ve done is they’ve tried to make this unbelievable victory into something less,” Trump went on. “The generals and all of the people who did a good job, they get demeaned by these idiots at CNN, who can’t get ratings. The place is dying, nobody even wants to waste their time going on any of their shows, so they form what [sic] The New York Times, which is dying also. Without Trump, you wouldn’t have a New York Times.”
It follows after both publications reported leaked findings from a classified military intelligence report that suggested Trump’s weekend strikes against three separate nuclear sites in Iran fell far short of an “obliteration,” as Trump claims, and had likely only set the country’s nuclear program back by a mere matter of months.
The coverage of the leaked documents had already prompted a flurry of typically bellicose Truth Social posts from Trump stretching into the small hours of the night.
“FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY,” he wrote, adding: “THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!
Immigration is also in the news today, because the corrupt Supreme Court has handed Trump permission to ship immigrants to third countries with no due process.
With one anodyne paragraph, the Court simultaneously cut the legs out from under lower court judges and consigned countless immigrants to be renditioned to a system of global gulags.
It’s a decision that will have long lasting corrosive effects on American civil society and respect for the courts.
“I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her impassioned dissent.
The case involves a challenge to third country removals — that is, immigrants who cannot be repatriated to their home countries and are instead being dumped in some other nation which will accept them.
Immigration protesters in front of Supreme Court
Like most of the people swept up in Trump’s deportation dragnet, the vast majority of affected immigrants were released into the community years ago and have been doing harm to no one — a reality the administration tries to hide by blasting out mugshots of the tiny minority of deportees with serious criminal records.
But The Intercept reports that, in its bloodthirsty quest to shove out as many people as fast as possible, the White House “explored, sought, or struck deals with at least 19 countries: Angola, Benin, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Kosovo, Libya, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Panama, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.”
On March 23, a group of detainees sued in the District Court of Massachusetts seeking an injunction barring the government from deporting them to third countries without notice and an opportunity to object under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Citing the Supreme Court’s rulings in the Alien Enemies Act cases, Judge Brian Murphy reasoned that telling people as they are being loaded onto planes that they’re about to be dropped in a country they’ve never seen clearly violates due process:
“This case presents a simple question: before the United States forcibly sends someone to a country other than their country of origin, must that person be told where they are going and be given a chance to tell the United States that they might be killed if sent there? Defendants argue that the United States may send a deportable alien to a country not of their origin, not where an immigration judge has ordered, where they may be immediately tortured and killed, without providing that person any opportunity to tell the deporting authorities that they face grave danger or death because of such a deportation. All nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Assistant Solicitor General of the United States, Congress, common sense, basic decency, and this Court all disagree.”
Judge Murphy ordered the government to provide detainees written notice “in a language the alien can understand,” with “meaningful opportunity for the alien to raise a fear of return for eligibility for CAT protections and … if the alien is not found to have demonstrated ‘reasonable fear,’ provide meaningful opportunity, and a minimum of 15 days, for that alien to seek to move to reopen immigration proceedings to challenge the potential third-country removal.”
The Trump administration is planning to dismiss asylum claims for potentially hundreds of thousands of migrants in the United States and then make them immediately deportable as part of the president’s sweeping immigration crackdown, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
It marks the latest in a series of moves by the administration to bar migrants from receiving protections in the US. As federal authorities come under pressure to deliver historic immigration arrest numbers, administration officials have quietly been working on efforts to make more people eligible for removal.
Masked ICE agents
The people being targeted in this case are those who entered the US unlawfully and later applied for asylum, the sources said. Their cases are expected to be closed, therefore leaving them at risk of deportation. It could affect hundreds of thousands of asylum applicants.
Over the last decade, the majority of applicants who applied for asylum with US Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, self-reported how they entered the US, with around 25 percent saying they entered the US unlawfully. That amounts to at least a quarter of a million people, according to a federal report analyzing asylees in 2023. The others entered legally via a port of entry through various visas.
Under US law, people who are seeking protection from violence or persecution in their home country can claim asylum to remain in the United States. Trump effectively sealed off access to claiming asylum at the US southern border upon taking office.
There are currently around 1.45 million people with pending affirmative asylum applications, federal data shows. People who are not in deportation proceedings can apply for affirmative asylum through USCIS.
USCIS — which falls under the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for managing federal immigration benefits — has also been delegated the authority by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to place those individuals in fast-track deportation proceedings as well as “take additional actions to enforce civil and criminal violations of the immigration laws,” according to a memo obtained by CNN. That marks an unprecedented departure from decades-long protocol for USCIS.
They have already been doing this by asking immigration judges to dismiss people’s cases and then having ICE grab them as they leave the courtroom. Read more CNN.
After six months of aggressive immigration enforcement and promises to focus on deporting violent criminals, the Trump administration has arrested and detained a small fraction of the undocumented immigrants already known to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as having been convicted of sexual assault and homicide, internal ICE data obtained by NBC News shows.
The data is a tally of every person booked by ICE from Oct. 1 through May 31, part of which was during the Biden administration. It shows a total of 185,042 people arrested and booked into ICE facilities during that time; 65,041 of them have been convicted of crimes. The most common categories of crimes they committed were immigration and traffic offenses.
Almost half of the people currently in ICE custody have neither been convicted of nor charged with any crime, other ICE data shows.
Last fall, ICE told Congress that 13,099 people convicted of homicide and 15,811 people convicted of sexual assault were on its non-detained docket, meaning it knew who they were but did not have them in custody. A spokesperson said at the time that ICE had some information about but did not know the exact whereabouts of all the immigrants on the non-detained docket and that some could have left the United States or could be in prison.
Running for president at the time, Donald Trump used those figures to criticize his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“These are hard, tough, vicious criminals that are free to roam in our country,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Michigan.
One more, from Sherrilyn Ifill at Sherrilyn’s Newsletter: Masked Terror.
At this point, we have all seen the videos. Men dressed in plaid shirts, jeans and boots descending on constructions sites, chasing migrants in fields, lurking in courthouse hallways at courthouses, knocking on doors of homes, and surrounding cars. We see them wrestling men and women to the ground. Beating them in some instances. Chasing them. Jumping out of cars and descending. Surrounding unarmed women. Pointing their guns and demanding that people exit their cars. They have shown up at elementary schools demanding to see children of migrants.[i] They purport to be working for the Department of Homeland Security. They are ICE agents, we surmise. But often we don’t know. Because these men, for the most part, display no badges or names.
Masked ICE agents in Seattle courthouse
And they are masked. Their masks are not “government issue” or of the N-95 variety with which we became familiar during COVID. Often these masks are just large, black or green pieces of cloth, or bandanas covering the entire face, save for the eyes. A hat pushed down low also appears to be part of the required uniform.
Despite strong opposition from ordinary Americans to the appearance of a force that many liken to “secret police” in totalitarian regimes, Republican senators have doubled down on ICE agent anonymity, introducing legislation that would make it a felony to release the names of ICE agents.[ii]
There is something particularly menacing about being attacked by faceless people. The mask not only terrorizes the victim of the attack, but it also uniquely empowers the perpetrator. We see this in many of the videos as those who claim to be federal officers, speak crudely and cruelly, and behave with unspeakable brutality against unarmed laborers and their families. The mask prevents their victims from identifying the “officers.” But perhaps the anonymity offered by the mask also encourages these agents to obscure their own humanity from each other and from themselves.
This country has a unique history with the particular terror of masked attackers. The Ku Klux Klan, the violent white supremacist organization terrorized Black people in the American South in the first years after the end of the Civil War and through much of the 20th century. So rampant was Klan violence in the years immediately after the Civil War, that it threatened to derail the promise of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 and was designed to ensure that Black people would equal citizens in post-Civil War America.
Read the rest at the link.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
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Earlier today we taped tomorrow’s show, and we discussed the potential for the U.S. to bomb Iran. Since taping, the U.S. has carried out several bombings. We’ll have more to say in the future, but for now our piece on Trump and the Iran Deal can help explain what got us here. youtu.be/5xnZ_CeTqyM
Iran hasn't unconditionally surrendered for some reason. Who could have predicted?They are threatening Americans in the region. I wonder if they're going to threaten the world oil supply by closing the straits of Hormuz? Or maybe some light terrorism? Anything can happen.
We’ve bombed Iran. And dismantled our joint terrorism task force. And sent a third of the FBI to help ICE. And gutted the National Security Council. And a drunk guy is in charge at the pentagon. And our intelligence allies probably won’t share intel with us. Because people couldn’t vote for a woman.
During a nationwide address from the White House on Saturday, Trump warned Iran that it would face future attacks from the United States if it did not make peace with Israel. Read the U.S. president’s full remarks here: foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/21/t…
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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Trump is reportedly considering joining Israel in bombing Iran’s nuclear sites. He’s once again ignoring the findings of the U.S. intelligence community, which has assessed that Iran is not actively developing a nuclear weapon. In fact he’s angry at his DNI Tulsi Gabbard for reporting that finding.
Shouldn’t Congress be involved in a decision to go to war? Back in 2002, George W. Bush went to Congress for authorization to attack Iraq, and obtained two AUMF’s (Authorization for Military Force against Iraq) before beginning the bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq. After Trump’s bizarre behavior at the G7 meeting in Canada this week, I for one do not feel comfortable having this insane person making a decision that could start World War III.
As President Trump considers pulling American forces into a risky and unpredictable new war in the Middle East, it’s time for the legislative branch to step up. U.S. lawmakers should insist the president obtain a new war authorization from Congress before U.S. forces take any military action against Iran.
While Mr. Trump has so far refrained from committing U.S. military support to Israel’s air campaign, he also hasn’t ruled it out. On Tuesday he called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” and mentioned the open possibility of killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a statement posted to his social media site.
Smoke plumes billow following an overnight Israeli strike on Tehran on June 17. Atta KenareAFP via Getty Images
The Pentagon has already been moving military hardware, including ships and aircraft, toward the Middle East to give Mr. Trump a wider range of options should he decide to join the war. The United States is supporting Israel through other means as well, including defending against Iran’s drone and missile attacks.
But it is Congress’ constitutional right to declare war — not the president’s — despite the wide latitude given to the White House in recent decades to use military force during the war on terror. As Mr. Trump seriously considers joining Israel in this war, it is essential for elected lawmakers to reclaim their responsibility and put their names on record with a vote as to whether they’re willing to send American troops in harm’s way in yet another war in the Middle East.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, presidents have depended on open-ended legal authorizations from Congress to use military force against a wide array of militant groups in at least 22 countries. Days after the attacks on the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and elsewhere, Congress passed a law known as an Authorization for Use of Military Force, or A.U.M.F., that President George W. Bush used to invade Afghanistan; a second A.U.M.F. was passed by Congress in 2002 to invade Iraq. President Barack Obama used those authorizations to expand the drone wars to places like Syria, Yemen and Somalia. President Joe Biden later used them to attack Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria nearly a quarter-century later.
Hennigan argues that it is past time for Congress to take back it’s power to declare war.
“The founders expected the United States to comply with international law and for Congress to check a president’s lawless rush to war,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a University of Notre Dame law professor and an expert on international law. “Without a discussion and vote in Congress, this restraining mechanism is lost.”
Mr. Trump has already spent days publicly contemplating whether or not to join Israel in the conflict. Dr. O’Connell compared the situation to the past decisions to go to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and against Iraq in 2003. In both cases, Congress passed a war authorization law.
Those laws granted the commander in chief sweeping powers to send troops into combat and launch military operations with few restrictions, putting the United States on an open-ended war footing ever since. It’s unclear what legal rationale the Trump White House would use if it does decide to take military action against Iran, but legal scholars are skeptical that current legislation is sufficient.
“He absolutely needs congressional authorization if he intends to use military force against Iran,” said Oona Hathaway, a former Pentagon lawyer and professor at Yale Law School. “That clearly would not fall within either of the existing A.U.M.F.s.”
I’m not holding my breath waiting for Trump to respect the limits of his power under the Constitution.
Iran has prepared missiles and other military equipment for strikes on U.S. bases in the Middle East should the United States join Israel’s war against the country, according to American officials who have reviewed intelligence reports.
The United States has sent about three dozen refueling aircraft to Europe that could be used to assist fighter jets protecting American bases or that would be used to extend the range of bombers involved in any possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Black smoke billows from the headquarters of Iranian state television in Tehran following an Israeli attack on June 16, 2025. Kyodo AP
Fears of a wider war are growing among American officials as Israel presses the White House to intervene in its conflict with Iran. If the United States joins the Israeli campaign and strikes Fordo, a key Iranian nuclear facility, the Iranian-backed Houthi militia will almost certainly resume striking ships in the Red Sea, the officials said. They added that pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria would probably try to attack U.S. bases there.
Other officials said that in the event of an attack, Iran could begin to mine the Strait of Hormuz, a tactic meant to pin American warships in the Persian Gulf.
Commanders put American troops on high alert at military bases throughout the region, including in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The United States has more than 40,000 troops deployed in the Middle East.
Two Iranian officials have acknowledged that the country would attack U.S. bases in the Middle East, starting with those in Iraq, if the United States joined Israel’s war.
Iran would also target any American bases that are in Arab countries and take part in an attack, the two officials said.
• Trump considers his options: US President Donald Trump said his patience with Iran has “already run out,” but he declined to say whether he has made a decision on US military intervention as the Israel-Iran conflict escalates. CNN previously reported that Trump is growing increasingly warm to using US military assets to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.
• Iran issues warning: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a national address that Iran will not surrender and warned that any US military intervention would result in “irreparable damage.” He also criticized Israel for launching its military campaign while Iran was engaged in nuclear talks with the United States.
• On the ground: Israel said its air force is striking military targets in Tehran. One strike occurred near a Red Crescent facility in the capital, according to Iranian state media. Meanwhile, Iran is experiencing a near-complete internet blackout, according to a watchdog organization.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given an unusual level of authority to a single general in the latest Middle East crisis — an Iran hawk who is pushing for a strong military response against the country.
U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Erik Kurilla has played an outsized role in the escalating clashes between Tehran and Israel, with officials noting nearly all his requests have been approved, from more aircraft carriers to fighter planes in the region.
General Erik Kurilla
The pugnacious general, who is known as “The Gorilla,” is overruling other top Pentagon officials and playing a quiet but decisive role in the country’s next steps on Iran, according to a former and current defense official, a diplomat, and a person familiar with the dynamic.
Hegseth’s apparent deference to Kurilla undermines the image the Pentagon chief has sought to project of a tough-talking leader who has vowed to reduce the influence of four-star generals and reassert civilian control.
“If the senior military guys come across as tough and warfighters, Hegseth is easily persuaded to their point of view,” said the former official. Kurilla “has been very good at getting what he wants.” [….]
Kurilla’s arguments to send more U.S. weapons to the region, including air defenses, have gone against Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, who have urged caution in overcommitting to the Middle East, according to the four people.
Read more at Politico.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has the temerity to disagree with Trump on whether Iran is actively developing a nuclear weapon, and Trump not happy with her.
Tulsi Gabbard left no doubt when she testified to Congress about Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year.
The country was not building a nuclear weapon, the national intelligence director told lawmakers, and its supreme leader had not reauthorized the dormant program even though it had enriched uranium to higher levels.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters. In his view, Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear bomb.
Trump’s statement aligned him more closely with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has described a nuclear-armed Iran as an imminent threat, than with his own top intelligence adviser. Trump met with national security officials, including Gabbard, in the Situation Room on Tuesday as he plans next steps.
As he weighs joining Israel’s war against Iran, President Donald Trump reportedly finds himself at odds with his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, with one White House official saying that he has “just been kind of down on her in general” of late.
Tulsi Gabbard
The president was recently incensed, according to Politico, by Gabbard’s decision to post a three-minute video on X in the early hours of June 10 in which she warned that “political elite and warmongers” are “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” placing the world “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.”
Trump is said to have been angered by the video, accusing Gabbard of going “off-message” and rebuking her for it in person.
One of the senior administration officials, quoted anonymously by Politico, said there is a growing perception within the West Wing that the former Hawaii Democratic congresswoman, who once ran for that party’s presidential nomination, “doesn’t add anything to any conversation.”
“I don’t think [Trump] dislikes Tulsi as a person,” said another. “But certainly the video made him not super hot on her… and he doesn’t like it when people are off message.” They added that “many took that video as trying to correct the administration’s position.”
More News and Opinion:
You undoubtedly heard that Kristi Noem has been hospitalized for an “allergic reaction.” People on social media have suggested this had something today with Botox or fillers, but that’s just mean.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was transported by ambulance on Tuesday to a hospital in Washington, DC, after an allergic reaction, the Department of Homeland Security said.
“Secretary Noem had an allergic reaction today. She was transported to the hospital out of an abundance of caution. She is alert and recovering,” said DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.
CNN observed several Secret Service agents posted at several entrances outside the emergency room at the hospital where the secretary was admitted.
Noem, 53, who previously served as the governor of South Dakota and represented the state in Congress, was tapped to serve as President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security secretary just days after he was elected for a second term, positioning her as a critical member of his cabinet after he made immigration a major part of his campaign. She was confirmed for the role by the Senate in late January.
Since returning to office, Trump has pushed for an aggressive crackdown on immigration — ranging from deploying troops to the border to evoking wartime authority to deport undocumented migrants — and Noem has carried out the president’s agenda.
Kristi Noem was hospitalized for an allergic reaction one day after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shared a photo of them both visiting a biosafety lab that was temporarily shut down due to safety concerns.
Kristy Noem at the Biohazard lab at Ft. Detrick
“With @Sec_Noem and @SenRandPaul inspecting the biological hazard labs at Fort Detrick,” the Health and Human Services Secretary posted, sharing an image of himself with Noem and GOP Sen. Rand Paul at the Integrated Research Facility in Frederick, Maryland.
On Tuesday, Noem was taken to the hospital by ambulance for an “allergic reaction,” DHS’ Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told the Daily Beast in a statement.
“She was transported to the hospital out of an abundance of caution. She is alert and recovering,” McLaughlin said.
It’s not clear what prompted the allergic reaction, and there’s nothing to suggest the incident was anything more than a bizarre coincidence.
In 13 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Fiona Havers crafted guidance for contending with Zika virus, helped China respond to outbreaks of bird flu and guided safe burial practices for Ebola deaths in Liberia.
More recently, she was a senior adviser on vaccine policy, leading a team that produced data on hospitalizations related to Covid-19 and respiratory syncytial virus. To the select group of scientists, federal officials and advocates who study who should get immunizations and when, Dr. Havers is well known, an embodiment of the C.D.C.’s intensive data-gathering operations.
On Monday, Dr. Havers resigned, saying she could no longer continue while the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dismantled the careful processes that help formulate vaccination standards in the United States.
“If it isn’t stopped, and some of this isn’t reversed, like, immediately, a lot of Americans are going to die as a result of vaccine-preventable diseases,” she said in an interview with The New York Times, the first since her resignation.
Dr. Havers, 49, cited an escalating series of attacks on federal vaccine policy by Mr. Kennedy. Three weeks ago, the health secretary announced in a minute-long video on X that the agency would no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women.
Last week, he fired all 17 members of the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, saying without evidence that the group was beset with conflicts of interest and that a clean sweep was needed to restore public trust.
Mr. Kennedy went on to name eight new members, at least half of whom appear to share his antipathy to vaccines. Two have testified against vaccine makers in trials.
Trump appears to be winning his case against California over the National Guard.
A federal appeals court appeared inclined on Tuesday to allow President Trump, against the wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom, to keep using California’s National Guard for now to protect immigration enforcement agents and quell protesters in Los Angeles.
Throughout a 65-minute hearing, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit signaled skepticism of the idea that the judiciary should second-guess Mr. Trump’s determination that deploying the state militia to Los Angeles is necessary to protect federal agents and buildings.
The hearing came at a time when local organizers have vowed to continue protesting against immigration raids, though demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles have quieted since the weekend.
A district court judge, Charles Breyer, determined last week that Mr. Trump’s use of the National Guard was illegal and temporarily ordered the president to return control of the forces to Mr. Newsom.
But the Trump administration immediately appealed the ruling, and the Ninth Circuit panel stayed the lower court decision while it considered the matter. It seemed likely on Tuesday that the panel, which consists of two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., would keep that stay in place.
The two Trump appointees, Judges Mark J. Bennett and Eric D. Miller, did the bulk of the talking. Both appeared skeptical of the Justice Department’s argument that courts have no ability to review Mr. Trump’s decision to invoke a statute allowing him to call up the Guard. But they also seemed inclined to find that the sometimes violent protests in Los Angeles were enough to defer to Mr. Trump’s decision.
Another Democratic politician was violently arrested by ICE yesterday.
Last Thursday, California Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security news conference, pushed to the ground, and handcuffed by authorities. If you thought the ensuing backlash might make federal agents more cautious about manhandling opposition politicians, you thought wrong.
Brad Lander being arrested by ICE goons
Yesterday, federal agents in New York City handcuffed another Democratic official: Brad Lander, the city comptroller and a current candidate for mayor. Video taken inside a New York immigration court showed Lander standing next to someone who ICE agents—some in plainclothes, some masked—were trying to take into custody. Lander repeatedly demanded to see a warrant, and kept an arm locked with the man as agents tried to take him away, walking in a scrum with them down the hallway. Moments later, agents placed Lander under arrest as well.
In a statement released after the encounter, the Department of Homeland Security preposterously claimed that Lander had been arrested “for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.” The latter claim was true; the former laughably false.
“No one is above the law,” the DHS statement went on, “and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences.” The U.S. attorney’s office in New York seemingly disagreed. Lander—like Padilla last week—was released without being charged.
…the White House’s immigration enforcement mooks1plainly haven’t been instructed to avoid further high-profile clashes with Democratic officials. Lander—who, as we noted, is currently running for mayor—might well have been angling for a photo-op. But ICE agents were also all too happy to give him one, and DHS leadership was all too happy to lean into the story….on a similar note, the story continues the pattern of Trump’s federal law enforcement agencies publicly accusing people of criminal conduct that goes beyond what they’re willing to actually charge in court….
…put yourself in Lander’s shoes. Masked agents show up to whisk a migrant away. Maybe he’ll get to tell his family where he is, maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll have the opportunity to speak to a lawyer or plead his case to a judge, maybe he won’t. And you think to yourself: Will there be a legal process? Or am I the very last person who has a chance to intervene on this person’s behalf?
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
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“Every single time he opens his mouth…” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
If you got to look into the sky last night, you got to see the Hunter’s supermoon. There certainly was a lot of Lunacy yesterday. That causation or even correlation doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, but it has a literary tradition covering nearly all periods of history. DonOld’s Yesterday fits the adage neatly.
“It is the very error of the moon.She comes more near the earth than she was wont. And makes men mad.”
—William Shakespeare, Othello
North Korea has dispatched special forces to support Russia in its war against Ukraine, with the first batch already having arrived in Russia and a second group of North Korean troops expected to follow soon, South Korea’s intelligence agency claimed on Friday.
The National Intelligence Service said it “confirmed that North Korea began its participation in the war by transporting special forces to Russia via Russian Navy transport ships from Oct. 8 to 13.”
However, the NIS provided no substantial evidence to support this claim, other than satellite imagery showing Russian vessels docked at the port of Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province.
Four amphibious ships and three escort ships from the Russian Pacific Fleet transported around 1,500 North Korean special forces to Vladivostok during this period, departing from areas near Chongjin and Musudan-ri in North Hamgyong Province, as well as Hamhung in South Hamgyong Province, according to the NIS.
The NIS further stated that a second operation to transport North Korean troops to Russia is “expected to take place soon.”
The North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia have been stationed at military bases in the Far East, spread across cities such as Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk.
“They are expected to be sent to the battlefield once they complete their adaptation training,” the intelligence agency added.
According to the NIS, the North Korean soldiers were provided with Russian military uniforms and Russian-made weapons. They were also issued fake identification documents resembling residents of Siberian regions such as Yakutia and Buryatia, whose appearance is similar to North Koreans.
“This appears to be an attempt to disguise them as Russian soldiers and conceal their involvement in the war,” the NIS stated.
The NIS also reported that Kim Jong-sik, the first vice director of North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department and a key figure in the country’s missile development, was observed visiting a North Korean KN-23 missile launch site near the Russia-Ukraine front. He was accompanied by dozens of North Korean military officers to provide on-site guidance.
“It’s incomprehensible,” John Buss. @repeat1968. “More Full moon Madness!!!” me
American Madman DonOld is showing his age; finally, the legacy media have noticed and are reporting it. It only took 39 minutes of swaying to his playlist at a rally for them to start asking the real questions. He’s evidently tuckered out. “Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election.” This is reported in AXIOS by Ivana Saric
Former President Trump’s planned appearance at a National Rifle Association event next week was cancelled Thursday, the latest in a slew of scuttled public appearances and interviews by the former president in recent weeks.
Why it matters: With only 17 days to go until Election Day, the spate of cancellations gives voters fewer chances to hear from Trump before heading to the polls in a coin toss race.
Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has been on a media blitz after enduring criticism from Republicans about a perceived lack of interviews.
And while Harris has ventured into the unfriendly territory of a Fox News interview, Trump has stuck to the safe spaces of conservative outlets.
In the appearances he has made, Trump’s rhetoric has grown more violent and nativist. In recent weeks, he has decried his critics as the “enemy from within” and fanned the flames of false conspiracy theories about migrants.
Driving the news: The NRA said Thursday it had cancelled its “Defend the 2nd” event with Trump in Savannah, Georgia, next week due to “campaign scheduling changes.”
Trump also pulled out of two mainstream media interviews this week, with NBC News and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Earlier this month he backed out of a scheduled appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” while Harris appeared on the program.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.
Between the lines: Several of the events and interviews Trump has appeared at in recent weeks have raised eyebrows.
Trump cut short a Pennsylvania town hall this week to listen and sway to music for more than half an hour. “Let’s make it into a music fest,” Trump said. “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
Trump later claimed he was “hoodwinked” into the interview.
During an all-women Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday, Trump declared himself the “father of IVF,” a decades-old fertility treatment that has come under threat since overturning Roe v. Wade — which Trump has repeatedly bragged about ending.
DonOld is asking for a sitdown with Rupert Murdoch. This is from MEDIAITE’s Isaac Schorr. “Donald Trump Outlines His Demands For Rupert Murdoch Live On Fox News Ahead of Private Meeting: ‘I Don’t Know If He’s Thrilled.’”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outlined his demands for conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch live on Fox News Friday morning, musing that Murdoch should stop airing negative ads and allowing Democratic guests on the network in the run up to Election Day.
After Fox & Friends’ Lawrence Jones thanked Trump for appearing on the show Friday, the former president jumped back in to ask Jones and his co-hosts, “You know what the event I have now?”
“No,” said Brian Kilmeade.
“A very big event,” continued the former president. “I’m going to see Rupert Murdoch.”
A pensive Kilmeade replied, “Alright,” and Steve Doocy exclaimed, “Okay!” before Trump pressed on.
“That’s a big event. I don’t know if he’s thrilled that I say it. And I’m going to tell him, I’m gonna tell him something very simple because I can’t talk to anybody else about it: Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days, don’t put them. And don’t put on the air their horrible people. They come and lie. I’m going to say, ‘Rupert, please do it this way.’”
“Right,” interjected Kilmeade.
“And then we’re going to have a victory, because I think everyone wants that,” concluded Trump.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier is apologizing for playing a misleadingly edited clip in an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris sat down with Baier on Wednesday for a tense interview, in which the “Special Report” host repeatedly cut off and chastised the Democratic candidate. One exchange in particular gave the game away.
When Harris admonished former President Trump over suggestions that he’d sic the military on his political opponents, Baier aired a portion of a Trump interview that omitted his comments against “the enemy from within.”
“I’m not threatening anybody,” Trump said in the clip Baier played. “They’re the ones doing the threatening.”
In a Thursday night episode of “Report,” Baier owned up his misdirection.
“I wanna say that I did make a mistake,” Baier admitted. “When I called for a soundbite, I was expecting a piece of the ‘enemy from within’ from Maria Bartiromo’s interview, to be tied to the piece from [Harris Faulkner’s ]town hall.”
Baier went on to play the intended clip for his audience, though Harris was still able to get her point across the previous night despite the misleading edit.
“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people,” the vice president said on Wednesday. “In a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”
Even the New York Times is noticing DonOld’s crazy demeanor and speech these days. “Trump’s Meandering Speeches Motivate His Critics and Worry His Allies. Some advisers and allies of former President Donald J. Trump are concerned about his scattershot style on the campaign trail as he continues to veer off script.” This is reported by Michael C. Bender.
Now, some Trump advisers and allies say privately they are concerned that the dynamic may be repeating itself four years later. They worry that Mr. Trump’s impetuousness and scattershot style on the campaign trail needlessly risk victory in battleground states where the margin for error is increasingly narrow.
At a time when his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has stepped up her attacks on him as “unstable,” Mr. Trump has struggled to publicly hone his message by veering off script and ramping up personal attacks on Ms. Harris that allies have urged him to rein in.
“When he’s good, he’s great, and when he’s off message, he’s not so great,” said David Urban, a Trump adviser. “I don’t think anyone is really changing their mind at this point, but when he distracts from his biggest, broadest messaging, it’s counterproductive because the Harris campaign uses it to turn out their voters.”
During a speech on Saturday in California, he described mail-in ballots as “so corrupt,” reviving one of his false attacks on the 2020 election results, and did a play-by-play of his internal thoughts when he watched SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, fly a rocket back onto its launch site.
On Sunday, in response to a question on Fox News about the possibility of foreign adversaries’ meddling in the election, he reverted to autocratic language by saying “the bigger problem is the enemy from within.” On Monday, he halted a town-hall event in suburban Philadelphia after five questions when two people in the crowd needed medical attention. He spent roughly the next half-hour playing D.J., swaying and grooving in front of his crowd to a playlist he curated from the stage. “Let’s just listen to music,” he said.
Last week, he canceled a CBS interview on “60 Minutes,” in which he and Ms. Harris were both scheduled to appear — and has not stopped talking about it. He complained about it during events in Detroit and Reno, Nev., and again on Monday in a social media post at 1:12 a.m.
Special counsel Jack Smith on Friday released a massive trove of heavily redacted documents in his 2020 election subversion criminal case against former President Donald Trump.
There are nearly 2,000 pages in a massive trove of documents released Friday, but nearly all of the pages appear to be completely redacted.
The redacted appendices filed on the public docket in the case are related to Smith’s expansive filing from earlier this month that laid out his fullest picture yet of the case against Trump and Smith’s belief that his actions around the 2020 election should not be shielded by presidential immunity.
One volume is filled with sealed pages as well as tweets and other social media posts from Trump, his campaign and allies, including some posted during the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
One of the tweets include Trump’s post that day that Vice President Mike Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” that day in supporting his effort to change the election results.
Others include a myriad of claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.
Prosecutors have argued that these tweets from Trump should be allowed to be used in the trial because they were personal in nature or part of his campaigning efforts and not his official duties as president.
The documents were released a day after Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected a bid by Trump to pause the release. Trump argued that posting the documents now could be seen as election inference and had asked them to remain under seal until after Election Day.
“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute – or appear to be – election interference,” Chutkan wrote in a decision late Thursday.
Another volume contains memos from lawyer John Eastman with a plan for Pence to reject the congressional certification of the 2020 election. The volume also includes a public statement Trump released the night before January 6 claiming he and Pence were on the same page about the congressional certification, Trump’s prepared remarks for his speech on January 6, and fundraising emails sent out by his 2020 campaign in the days before January 6.
Pence’s letter to Congress on January 6 explaining why he could not reject certifying the election and a transcript of Trump’s 2023 CNN town hall are also included in the documents.
The redacted files were expected to include an array of materials, including grand jury transcripts and notes from FBI interviews conducted during the yearslong investigation.
This was a big news dump week. Hopefully, the death of Yahya Sinwar will lead to a peaceful conclusion to this latest Mid-Eastern War. I’m not sure that’s what Bibi wants, but I’m sure the return of the hostages and a ceasefire would be a good start to ending hostilities. This is from Reuters. “Yahya Sinwar threw stick at drone just before death, according to Israel video. “
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza and filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday.
As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it, in an apparent act of desperation or defiance. Not long afterwards, the military said, a tank shell was fired into the building.
After an intensive manhunt that had lasted for more than a year, the Israeli troops that killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy after a gun battle on Wednesday, Israeli officials said.
Dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death for Israel and on Friday, Hamas confirmed their leader had been killed.
Intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area where Sinwar could operate, the military said. But unlike other militant leaders tracked down by Israel, including Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, the encounter which finally killed Sinwar was not a planned and targeted strike, or an operation carried out by elite commandos.
The seven days of Sukkot started last night. The Jewish Harvest Holiday lasts 7 days, and I’m sure there will be much celebration that there will be one less terrorist plotting another atrocity like October 7th. May all who observe find it in their hearts to search for peace and reconciliation with Israel’s innocent Palestinian neighbors. You would think eventually, we would all be way over all those who try to turn neighbors against each other. I know I’m hopeful we can get a better outcome here if we all just get out and vote for Kamala and Tim.
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.
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 
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. 
Meanwhile, we now have to report the news about ongoing attempts at political assassinations. In sad news, 
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 
Here’s a sad headline from the
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 
DonOld is asking for a sitdown with Rupert Murdoch. This is from 
Salon Fellow Griffin Eckstein reports that Faux News Reader Brett Baier is very sorry about his behavior during his interview with Vice President Harris. 
Even the 
All of this makes me wonder if he doesn’t care about winning or if he’s just relying on a country-wide repeat J6 event and his cronies planted in positions to disrupt the voting process in many states. It might be he has other things on his rapidly disintegrating mind. Just a few hours ago, Judge Tanya Chutkin, keeper of the American Way and the U.S. Constitution, allowed the Special Counsel to open up the floodgates of evidence. 
This was a big news dump week. Hopefully, the death of Yahya Sinwar will lead to a peaceful conclusion to this latest Mid-Eastern War. I’m not sure that’s what Bibi wants, but I’m sure the return of the hostages and a ceasefire would be a good start to ending hostilities. This is from Reuters.
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