I’ve been getting more sleep than usual lately, but my chronic insomnia kicked in last night. I got almost no sleep. I’m really not ready to face another day with Trump and his antics, but I’ll do the best I can.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday sharply weakened a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act, a ruling that limits the consideration of race in drawing voting maps and could usher in Republican gains in the House.
The decision could touch off a scramble by Republicans to redraw minority-majority districts, especially in the South. New districts could shiftthe balance of power in Congress by imperiling the reelection prospects of some Black Democrats, possibly as soon as November’s midterms in some instances.
Samuel Alito (with Neil Gorsuch in the background on the left.)
The ruling also carries significant symbolic weight, effectively scaling backthe last major pillar of a 60-year-old law long considered one of the marquee achievements of the civil rights era. The Voting Rights Act bans discriminatory voting practices such as literacy tests and poll taxes, and has helped greatly increase minority representation in state and federal offices.
The ruling also carries significant symbolic weight, effectively scaling backthe last major pillar of a 60-year-old law long considered one of the marquee achievements of the civil rights era. The Voting Rights Act bans discriminatory voting practices such as literacy tests and poll taxes, and has helped greatly increase minority representation in state and federal offices.
In an ideologically divided 6-3 ruling, the conservative justices created a higher bar for the law’s powerful provision that allows states to use race to draw maps that help minority communities elect candidates of their choice. Section 2, as it is known, is aimed at combating discriminatory gerrymandering that weakens the power of Black, Latino, Native American and Asian voters.
States must walk a careful line when drawing maps for voting districts. The Voting Rights Act directsstates to consider race to some degreewhen redistricting to ensure that racial minority groups have an opportunity to elect representatives who reflect their priorities. Maps explicitly drawn along racial lines, however, violate the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment’s ban on racial discrimination in voting practices.
Specifically:
The court’s conservative majority found Louisiana unlawfully discriminated by race when it created a second majority-Black congressional district to comply with the VRA. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the opinion for the majority.
“Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act … was designed to enforce the Constitution — not collide with it,” Alito wrote. “Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s [Section] 2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.”
The decision came over the sharp objections of the court’s three liberals. Justice Elena Kagan delivered the dissent from the bench, signaling strong disagreement.
“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote in the dissent.
The Roberts Court finally achieved its years-long goal of killing the Voting Rights Act Wednesday, publishing a ruling that, the liberal justices say, will make proving racial discrimination in redistricting virtually impossible.
“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan in her dissent.
“Of course, the majority does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic,” she continued. “The majority claims only to be “updat[ing]” our Section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks. But in fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law…”
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by all five other justices inthe bench’s right wing. Kagan was joined in her dissent by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Clarence Thomas also wrote a concurrence joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Alito defangs the law by unilaterally cancelling out congressional fixes to it — primarily, that plaintiffs bringing claims of racial vote dilution no longer have to prove that the legislators drawing the maps did so to purposefully discriminate. This bar had proved so difficult to overcome, especially as legislators became more adept at using facially neutral language, that Congress adopted amendments to the VRA asserting that if the maps have a discriminatory effect, that’s enough. Chief Justice John Roberts, then working in the Reagan administration, spearheaded the unsuccessful effort to doom the passage of those amendments.
Alito hand waves this history away, in part, by echoing Roberts’ reasoning in an earlier decision that eviscerated the VRA’s preclearance requirement, which required jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination in voting to submit changes in election laws to the federal government for clearance before they could take effect. Roberts, in Shelby County v. Holder, said that the country had made such great strides in racial equality that the preventative measure was no longer necessary — ushering in a flood of new voter restrictions, particularly in the states that comprised the old Confederacy.
Read the rest at TPM.
Trump has insomnia too, it seems. He posted an idiotic message to Iran at an ungodly hour:
President Donald Trump warned Iran “better get smart soon” Wednesday, as he weighed military options for the Strait of Hormuz with peace talks at an impasse.
Members of Trump’s national security team presented him with multiple options this week for how to handle the continuing bottleneck in the strait after negotiations failed to reopen the critical waterway, a U.S. official and a person familiar with the meeting told NBC News.
The standoff between Washington and Tehran, including the continued U.S. naval blockade, means the key trade route has been effectively blocked for two months.
The threat of prolonged disruption to the global economy has sent energy prices soaring — gas price averages in the U.S. reached $4.23 a gallon,the highest level in nearly four years, while the international benchmark price for oil, Brent crude, surged to $115 a barrel early Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Iran’s national rial currency hit a record low against the dollar, as Tehran’s economy also showed growing signs of strain.
The options discussed during Monday’s meeting in the Situation Room included whether the U.S. military presence in the strait should change — either increase or decrease — and whether the military should become more aggressive in conducting operations there, the U.S. official said.
Trump has not made any decisions about the way forward, the sources said, and it’s not clear when he might make a decision.
They don’t even note that the warning from Trump came in an idiotic Truth Social post until paragraph 11!
Trump and other top administration officials met with a group of energy industry executives on Tuesday, discussing possible next steps in continuing the blockade of Iran’s ports “for months if needed” and how to minimize impacts on American consumers, a White House official told NBC News.
The meeting was hosted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent included executives from Chevron, Trafi, Vitol and Mecuria, among other companies.
The U.S. showed little immediate enthusiasm for a new Iranian proposal that would end the war and reopen the strait without resolving the impasse over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program — a key stumbling block in the stalled peace talks.
President Donald Trump is quietly telling administration insiders to prepare for an “extended” blockade of Iran as negotiations to end the war with the regime drag on.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing “U.S. officials,” that Trump has told his aides that the blockade of Iran will continue, as the two sides remain far apart on Trump’s stated goal of getting the regime to give up its nuclear arms capabilities altogether. The report followed a meeting in the Situation Room on Monday, where Trump administration officials reviewed an offer to end the war from the Iranian regime that included reopening the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for delaying talks about nuclear weapons.
The report also suggests that Trump appears to be digging in and trying to tighten the screws on Iran’s economy.
“In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports,” according to the report. “He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade, officials said.”
“Yet continuing the blockade also prolongs a conflict that has driven up gas prices, hurt Trump’s poll numbers and further darkened Republicans’ prospects in the midterm elections,” it continued. “It has also caused the lowest number of transits through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began.”
The decision by the United Arab Emirates to leave the OPEC oil cartel shook up the 65-year-old alliance that produces some 40% of the world’s crude oil and exerts major influence over the price of energy around the globe.
OPEC countries
The UAE said in the announcement Tuesday that when it leaves OPEC this Friday, it plans to carry on with its long-held goal of increasing crude production “in a gradual and measured manner, aligned with demand and market conditions.”
Right now, that’s academic as far as oil prices go, since Iran is still blocking the Strait of Hormuz, which means much of the oil from Persian Gulf producers such as the UAE cannot be exported. But the departure could have long-term effects on oil prices….
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was formed in Baghdad in September 1960 by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. It has 12 members — counting the UAE — that hold more than 80% of the world’s proven oil reserves. Other members are Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria and the Republic of the Congo….
The group, headquartered in Vienna, aims to regulate oil prices by coordinating increases or decreases in production.
The goal has been to keep prices high enough so member governments can balance their budgets and reap the benefits of their natural resources — but not so high as to cause a recession in consuming countries or to halt energy-consuming activity, a phenomenon known as demand destruction.
Donald Trump is learning first-hand about the perils of mission creep.
The US-Israel war in Iran has just passed its eighth week – twice as long as the president predicted it would take when US warplanes launched their joint attack with Israeli forces to decapitate the Iranian leadership and paralyse its military. The military attacks were successful. The predictions about the political cause-and-effect to follow were not.
Iran has survived the initial strikes and remains defiant, closing the strait of Hormuz in a move that has blocked off a fifth of the global oil trade. The US has responded with its own blockade to lock in Iranian oil, inflicting losses of an estimated $500m daily on Tehran and threatening the country’s long-term energy production – but negotiations have stalled and it is not clear if the White House is willing to withstand the pain of a sustained economic war or the risk of a military operation to open the strait.
“This has gone from being a war of choice to a war of necessity,” said Aaron David Miller, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment and a former US diplomat and Middle East negotiator.
The war had transformed from a conflict involving Iran, the US and Israel to a “global economic crisis which shows no signs of abating”. Just this week, petrol prices in the US approached a four-year high, and they are expected to continue to rise before a crucial midterm election that could allow the Democrats to retake congress.
“The status quo is not tolerable … there has to be a fix to it,” Miller said. “It strikes me that the administration is in a very tough spot.”
But the solution remains elusive. One option would be to negotiate a temporary reopening of the strait of Hormuz but to delay nuclear talks on the fate of the more than 400kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) – as well as the country’s right to enrich uranium in the future.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Yesterday the “Justice” Department indicted James Comey for the second time. The indictment is unbelievably stupid. He is accused of threatening to assassinate Trump because he posted on social media a photo of some seashells spelling “86 47.”
On April 28, 2026, the United States Department of Justice indicted former FBI Director James Comey over a mildly sassy arrangement of seashells. The charge is preposterous and no competent or honest prosecutor would bring it. It represents a betrayal of the professional and ethical obligations of every U.S. Department of Justice attorney involved, and reflects the complete collapse of the Department’s credibility and independence in favor of a cultish and cretinous devotion to Donald Trump.
The indictment concerns James Comey’s May 25, 2025 post to his Instagram account remarking “Cool shell formation on my beach walk” and showing shells arranged to spell out “86 47.” [….]
Based on this, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina — the venue of the sassy beach stroll — secured an indictment against Comey for two federal felonies: threatening the President of the United States in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 871 and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce in violation of Title 18, United States Code, 875(c). In both counts, the government asserts that “a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of intent to do harm.” That is, of course, a preposterous lie….
Let’s look at what the government would have to prove to convict Comey of these offenses, using cases from the Fourth Circuit, which governs this district. To prove a threat against the President in violation of Section 871, the prosecution must offer “(1) the proof of “a true threat” and (2) that the threat is made “knowingly and willfully.”“ United States v. Lockhart, 382 F.3d 447, 449-450 (4th Cir. 2004). To prove a threat in interstate commerce in violation of Section 875(c), the government must prove that “(1) that the defendant knowingly transmitted a communication in interstate or foreign commerce; (2) that the defendant subjectively intended the communication as a threat; and (3) that the content of the communication contained a “true threat” to kidnap or injure.” United States v. White, 810 F.3d 212, 220-21 (4th Cir. 2016). For purposes of both statutes, a “true threat” is a statement which an “ordinary, reasonable recipient who is familiar with the context in which the statement is made would interpret it as a serious expression of an intent to do harm.” White, 810 F.3d at 221.
Prosecutions for threats against the President played a substantial role in developing the First Amendment doctrine of “true threats,” which separates bluster and rhetoric from actual threats to do harm. In Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705 (1969), the United States Supreme Court took up the conviction of an 18-year-old man who said this during an anti-draft protest during Vietnam: “They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J. . . . . They are not going to make me kill my black brothers.” The Court articulated the core of the “true threat” doctrine, noting that political rhetoric, hyperbole, and robust debate that does not convey an intent to do harm is protected by the First Amendment:
“But whatever the “willfullness” requirement implies, the statute initially requires the Government to prove a true threat. We do not believe that the kind of political hyperbole indulged in by petitioner fits within that statutory term. For we must interpret the language Congress chose “against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964). The language [**1402] of the political arena, like the language used in labor disputes, see Linn v. United Plant Guard Workers of America, 383 U.S. 53, 58 (1966), is often vituperative, abusive, and inexact. We agree with petitioner that his only offense here was “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President.” Taken in context, and regarding the expressly conditional nature of the statement and the reaction of the listeners, we do not see how it could be interpreted otherwise. Watts, 394 U.S. at 708.”
No minimally rationally person could possibly conclude, seeing James Comey’s beachside dad joke, that he was expressing a sincere intent to harm the President. Nobody could look at it and conclude that Comey intended to convey that message. In evaluating whether a threat is “true,” the trier of fact must consider the context. Here the context is seashells. The context is the former Director of the FBI, a lifetime member of law enforcement, who is a well-known critic of the President and a target of the President’s wrath, using a campy mechanism to express opposition to the President, using slang for “ditch” or “eject” or “get rid of.” No rational person could see that and say “the former director of the FBI is saying he’s going to kill the President”!”
I could now cite to you a legion of cases for that proposition, finding rhetoric far more concerning than this protected by the First Amendment, analyzing language and context to show this is protected. But it wouldn’t matter, would it? If you are a minimally rational person, you don’t need to see the precedent, and if you’re a cultist, no amount of precedent matters to you.
He does go on; read the rest at the link above.
From Blanche’s press conference yesterday:
Q: Should we expect more indictments of this sort? For example, in 2020 Gretchen Whitmer did a TV hit with "8645" in the background." Would you pursue that?BLANCHE: As far as other instances of threats against the president — those will be investigated
I hope Blanche doesn’t have plans to continue legal work in the future. I don’t think he’s going to have a license. The same goes for the lawyers who prosecute this case.
Republicans hoping their party’s standard-bearer will stay focused on voters’ priorities heading into the November midterms caught no relief on Tuesday as the Trump administration announced charges against former FBI director James B. Comey and an aide to former chief medical adviser Anthony S. Fauci, as well as a review of Disney’s broadcast licenses.
The latest instances of turning government power against President Donald Trump’s critics and pursuing years-old grievances added to frustrations felt by Republicans who say the president isn’t doing enough to address the signature issues that won him a second term.
Two-thirds of Americans said Trump hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems in a CNN survey conducted late last month, up from 52 percent in February 2025 and higher than at any point in his first term.
“No Republican wants to run on ‘I stand with Donald Trump’s retribution tour’” while gas prices are so high, said Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist in Arizona. “There is no doubt that the vast majority of non-MAGA voters want Trump to focus on anything but his personal animus toward a wide variety of people.”
The White House said the Comey prosecution has no bearing on Trump’s efforts to bring down costs — moves that include signing a tax-cut bill, adding discounted drugs to a government-run portal, expanding domestic beef production, releasing oil reserves and easing restrictions on tankers moving fuel between U.S. ports.
“The idea that President Trump and his Cabinet agencies cannot execute multiple actions simultaneously is so laughably false,” spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. “The insinuation that a grand jury returning an indictment is mutually exclusive with the administration’s strong efforts on the economy is objectively false.”
Other Republicans, however, asked about the administration’s priorities. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned whether the Comey case was the best use of time and resources for the acting U.S. attorney from his state who brought the charges, W. Ellis Boyle. Trump renominated Boyle to the position in January after the Senate took no action on his nomination last year.
This is just who Trump is. We can only hope the Democrats will win the House and Senate and impeach him.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
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Hey, today I’ve got some cartoon and memes for you. I know that Dakinikat went over several points of the weekend “assassin attempt” in her post yesterday. So some of the things below will be sort of a repeat.
Odd, how a lone gunman failed to even enter a targeted room and no one was harmed—and Republicans go HYSTERICAL over the “tone” of Democrats. And yet heavily armed and masked fascists murdered two people at point-blank range in the streets of Minneapolis—and not a peep about the “tone” of the right.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance is escorted out by Secret Service followed by agents surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump after an incident at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 (Footage by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)www.gettyimages.com/detail/video…
Social media users highlight the irony after Karoline Leavitt urges viewers to tune in, saying Donald Trump will bring the heat and there will be “shots fired.”
Shots fired, the Secret Service rushes in, and they let Trump continue to sit there? And now they’re going to resume the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and Trump still plans to deliver a speech?I’m not saying this was staged to boost Trump’s tanking approval numbers, but it looks odd.
Joy Harmon, who needed only three minutes, a bucket of soapy water and a housedress held together with a safety pin to sear herself into Hollywood history as a chain-gang prisoner’s fantasy come to life in the classic 1967 film “Cool Hand Luke,” died on April 14 in Los Angeles. She was 87.
She died in hospice care after contracting pneumonia in recent weeks, her daughter Julie Gourson Matthews said.
Ms. Harmon never achieved leading-lady status. Still, she tallied more than 30 screen and television credits, often popping up in an episode or two of popular 1960s and early ’70s TV shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “The Monkees,” “Batman,” “Bewitched” and “The Odd Couple.”
Onscreen, she was hard to miss, with her pinup figure, platinum hair and ice-blue eyes. “Gosh, you have the bluest eyes!,” she recalled Paul Newman, the star of “Cool Hand Luke,” once saying to her — no small praise coming from an actor known for his own dazzlingly blue eyes….
Ms. Harmon, listed in the credits as the Girl, appears about 23 minutes into the movie and is gone before minute 27. But she makes the most of her screen time.
Emerging from a farmhouse, bucket in hand, she languidly scrubs down a 1941 DeSoto in full view of the sweat-drenched, shirtless prisoners digging a roadside ditch nearby.
“Hey, Lord, whatever I’ve done, don’t strike me blind for another couple of minutes,” Dragline (George Kennedy), the alpha dog of the chain gang, says.
While the prisoners wipe their brows and gawk, the amply endowed Ms. Harmon nearly bursts out of her skintight dress as she bends to scrub hubcaps or sprawls across the hood, occasionally pausing to squeeze her sponge so that the suds cascade down her torso.
“Oh, God, she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” one lustful prisoner says.
“She knows exactly what she’s doing,” Luke responds. “She’s driving us crazy and loving every minute of it.”
A bit about Harmon’s life:
Patricia Joy Harmon was born on May 1, 1938, in Flushing, Queens, the elder of two daughters of Homer Harmon, a promotional director at the Roxy Theater in Manhattan, and Bernice (Hopmann) Harmon. (Many accounts cite her birth year as 1940, but she shaved two years off her age once she was in Hollywood, her daughter said.)
She grew up in Wilton, Conn., and began modeling at an early age. At 17, she was a runner-up in the Miss Connecticut beauty pageant.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi departed Islamabad on Saturday evening local time, according to Iranian sources familiar with the discussions, after meetings in the Pakistani capital to discuss a truce with Washington and consult key allies in the region.
It was not initially clear where Araghchi would travel next, but the Iranian Foreign Ministry previously said he would also visit Oman and Russia during the trip.
Lindsay, by Linda Lee Nelson
Some background: Araghchi landed in Islamabad on Friday evening for a flurry of meetings with Pakistan’s top leadership, including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the country’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, who has served as a key mediator between Tehran and Washington.
Pakistani ministers are trying to facilitate a second round of talks between US and Iranian officials, after lengthy discussions in early April failed to alleviate the thorniest diplomatic hurdles between the warring parties.
The White House said Friday that a US delegation would travel to Islamabad this weekend, but Iranian media had denied reports that Araghchi would directly negotiate with Washington during his trip, leaving the status of talks uncertain.
Trump has just called off the trip to Pakistan by Witkoff and Kushner.
The New York Times published a fascinating article about Iran’s leaders this week. It appears that the Revolutionary Guards are actually in control of the government, and it’s not clear if the men doing the negotiating actually have the power to make final decisions.
When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled Iran as the supreme leader, he exerted absolute power over all decisions about war, peace and negotiations with the United States. His son and successor does not play the same role.
Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the son, is an elusive figure who has not been seen and whose voice has not been heard since he was appointed in March. Instead, a battle-hardened collective of commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and those aligned with them are the key decision makers on matters of security, war and diplomacy.
In the Garden, by Thomas Little
“Mojtaba is managing the country as though he is the director of the board,” said Abdolreza Davari, a politician who served as senior adviser to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he was president and knows Mr. Khamenei.
“He relies heavily on the advice and guidance of the board members, and they collectively make all the decisions,” Mr. Davari said in a phone interview from Tehran. “The generals are the board members.” [….]
Mr. Khamenei, who was selected by a council of senior clerics as the new supreme leader, has been in hiding since American and Israeli forces bombed his father’s compound on Feb. 28, where he also lived with his family. His father, wife and son were all killed. Access to him is extremely difficult and limited now. He is surrounded mostly by a team of doctors and medical staff who are treating the injuries he sustained in the airstrikes.
Senior commanders of the Guards and senior government officials do not visit him, fearing that Israel may trace them to him and kill him. President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is also a heart surgeon, and the minister of health have both been involved in his care.
Though Mr. Khamenei was gravely wounded, he is mentally sharp and engaged, according to four senior Iranian officials familiar with his health. One leg was operated on three times, and he is awaiting a prosthetic. He had surgery on one hand and is slowly regaining function. His face and lips have been burned severely, making it difficult for him to speak, the officials said, adding that, eventually, he will need plastic surgery.
Just a bit more:
Mr. Khamenei has not recorded a video or audio message, the officials said, because he does not want to appear vulnerable or sound weak in his first public address. He has issued several written statements that have been posted online and read on state television.
Messages to him are handwritten, sealed in envelopes and relayed via a human chain from one trusted courier to the next, who travel on highways and back roads, in cars and on motorcycles until they reach his hide-out. His guidance on issues snakes back the same way.
The combination of concern for his safety, his injuries and the sheer challenge of reaching him has resulted in Mr. Khamenei’s delegating decision making to the generals, at least for now. Reformist factions, as well as ultra-hard-liners, are still involved in political discussions. But analysts say that Mr. Khamenei’s close ties to the generals, whom he grew up with when he volunteered to fight in the Iran-Iraq war as a teenager, have made them the dominant force.
President Trump has said that the war, along with the killings of layers of Iran’s leaders and security establishment, has ushered in “regime change” and that the new leaders are “much more reasonable.” In reality, the Islamic republic has not been toppled. Power is now in the hands of an entrenched, hard-line military, and the broad influence of the clerics is waning.
“Mojtaba is not yet in full command or control,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa for Chatham House who has contact with people in Iran. “There is, perhaps, deference to him. He signs off or he is part of the decision-making structure in a formal way. But he is presented with fait accompli presentations right now.”
So it appears that the Generals are actually running things in Iran now. You can use the gift link to read the whole article. It’s very interesting.
Back in the USA, the DOJ has withdrawn the charges against Fed chair Jerome Powell, but the damage is done.
The Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome H. Powell, appears to be over. But the ramifications for the central bank are likely to prove much longer lasting.
Nine months after President Trump made a hasty visit to the Fed’s Washington headquarters and promised to “take a look” at a costly renovation, the administration has concluded its inquiry with seemingly nothing to show. Far from the criminal charges that they once pursued, prosecutors left in their wake a dark cloud over the institution and the person Mr. Trump has chosen to next lead the central bank.
The about-face has removed, for now, the immediate threat of a further escalation against the Fed. It has also potentially cleared a path for Mr. Trump’s nominee for Fed chair, Kevin M. Warsh, to succeed Mr. Powell, whose term ends on May 15.
By Richard Williams
What will be far harder to recoup is confidence in the Fed’s ability to operate independently from a White House that has shown little restraint in its efforts to bully the central bank into slashing interest rates.
Even as Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, announced that the investigation was shutting down, she warned that she would “not hesitate” to reopen the inquiry if warranted. Ms. Pirro added that she had asked the Fed’s inspector general to take over the investigation, even though the internal watchdog had been looking into the matter since July….
Kathryn Judge, a Columbia Law School professor who was a Supreme Court law clerk for Justice Stephen G. Breyer, said she feared “lasting damage” from the investigation into Mr. Powell — not only for the Fed but for policymakers across government.
Until now, she said, officials did not have to worry about repercussions from “taking a strong stance on policy issues in ways that are inconsistent with the president’s agenda.” But that was the sort of pressure that Mr. Powell faced as Mr. Trump sought to force rates down.
There’s some news about Trump’s corrupt case against the IRS.
A federal judge is asking the Justice Department and President Donald Trump’s private attorneys to explain whether his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, an agency he oversees as president, is the type of dispute federal courts can hear.
In a Friday order, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams questioned whether an actual disagreement exists, writing that a case can only stand if there is “adverseness” between the parties.
“Typically, adverseness is found in a situation where one party is asserting its right and the other party is resisting,” Williams wrote. “Consequently, if there is no adverseness, there is no case or controversy.”
The Constitution’s “case or controversy” clause says federal courts may only hear actual “controversies.”
The judge ordered both parties to explain “whether a case and controversy exists” by May 20. Williams set a hearing on the matter for May 27 in Miami.
The order comes as both sides seek to resolve the dispute. Attorneys representing Trump and the IRS asked a federal court in a joint filing last week to pause proceedings for 90 days while the parties hold talks to find a resolution.
How the hell can they resolve a “dispute” when Trump is the boss?
Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department in January alleging that the agency was at fault for the unauthorized release of his tax documents by a government contractor who shared them with news outlets. Trump argued that the IRS did not take the necessary steps to prevent the actions of the contractor, Charles Littlejohn, who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024 following a guilty plea.
In her order, Williams did recognize that Trump sued the IRS in “his personal capacity,” rather than as president, but wrote that “he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction.”
The corruption in this administration is beyond belief.
Some good news–it looks like Trump’s “SAVE” act is dead.
Senate Republicans have sidelined the SAVE America Act, arguing that it shouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the party’s priority list, especially amid the Iran war and growing economic woes.
Quiet Day by Yuriy Sultanov
Republican leaders this week were forced to remove the proposal as pending business in the chamber as they shifted gears to pass the budget resolution. That effectively benched the bill — which has been championed by President Donald Trump and considered a top agenda item — after an extensive pressure campaign by conservative members and influencers.
The necessary move, however, was greeted with a sigh of relief by a number of Republicans who, while supportive of the measure, believe it’s time to move on to more pressing matters. They also believe the pro-SAVE America Act blitz, led by Sen. Mike Lee and like-minded conservatives, did little to help the case, and may have backfired. Members are ready to bid it adieu as they near the final six months before the midterms.
“They’ve convinced themselves that the longer it hangs around, the more popular it gets. The reality is — I’m quite certain they haven’t gained a single vote, and may have lost a few with time,” one Senate Republican told NOTUS. “There’s some things that aren’t possible, and this is one of them.”
The member noted that while key parts of the bill — which requires voter ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote — poll well with wide swaths of Americans, including Democrats, it is hardly considered a leading issue for voters.
“When put in a lineup of the top 100 things people are thinking about every day, it doesn’t get very high on the list,” the senator continued. “We’re spending a lot of the precious resource of time and energy on something that’s not top-of-mind awareness to voters.”
I already had to produce a photo ID and prove my citizenship when I registered to vote. Good riddance to this idiotic bill.
Sarah Fitzpatrick, The Atlantic investigative journalist behind last week’s bombshell story about FBI Director Kash Patel, has said she has since been “inundated” with messages from new sources corroborating her reporting.
Fitzpatrick’s story alleged that Patel drinks to excess – so much so that, in one instance, breaching equipment was ordered to break into a locked bedroom when he did not respond to inquiries about his well-being. The profile and also characterized him as deeply paranoid about being fired by President Donald Trump.
Patel claimed the stories were false and has filed a ludicrous lawsuit.
Speaking to the Radio Atlantic podcast one week after the article, Fitzpatrick was asked about the director’s retaliatory moves and said she was undaunted.
“My response is that I stand by every single word of this report,” she said. “We were very diligent. We were very careful. It went through multiple levels of editing, review, care.
“And I think one of the things that has been most gratifying, after – immediately after the story published was, I have been inundated by additional sourcing going up to the highest levels of the government, thanking us for doing the work, providing additional corroborating information.”
Fitzpatrick said that she used more than two dozen sources for her original report, characterizing the officials she spoke to as “people who felt that not only was this conduct embarrassing, unbecoming, but that it was a national security vulnerability, and that Americans were perhaps less safe as a result.”
Asked about some of the more shocking details in her report, she said: “I had never heard anything like this as a reporter, and I think I spent a very long time, a very diligent amount of time checking it out because it was so explosive.
“And I think the fact that this was known throughout the FBI, throughout the Justice Department, that it reached the White House is because it was so alarming. And people were really frightened.”
There’s more at the link.
Those are the stories that caught my attention today. What’s on your mind?
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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.
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