“I’m pretty sure all the Military Brass are impressed that the Secretary of War had his own personal makeup room built in the Pentagon. John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Most of us knew that Project 2025 would be the basis of policy. Republicans have wanted an Imperial Presidency for some time. Republicans have elected at least 3 useful idiots as President with the goal of destroying American democracy in mind. It’s why we have a huge deficit, and spending has been concentrated on the rich who can pay-to-play to get massive tax cuts and huge government subsidies.
There are examples in every state they control. Here in Louisiana, the damage from oil extraction and affiliated chemical industries has created massive damage, and just at the precise time that the EPA has been fully filleted. Not only has nothing real been done to abate the chemical spill that happened earlier this summer after a poorly managed plant that exploded in Roseland, a primarily black community, but it has not been fully abated. The actions behind the removal of LSU’s premier Lake Maurapas researcher have become clearer. Today, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health released this important research. “Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ Is More Deadly Than Previously Imagined. New research shows that the industrial pollution—and the risk to human health—on Louisiana’s Cancer Alley have been significantly underestimated.
On an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, communities exist alongside some 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical production plants. Since the 1980s, the area has been known as Cancer Alley.
In this Q&A, adapted from that podcast episode, DeCarlo and Nachman discuss their work measuring levels of pollutants in Louisiana and explain what these conclusions mean for how the U.S. should regulate carcinogens.
We may be drowning in toxic chemicals, but other states and cities are experiencing ICE Raids that resemble SS maneuvers. Additionally, we have new threats. Since the reality on the ground has embarrassed the Trump plan to send the military to “wartorn” Portland to defuse his imagined war on the ground, he’s come up with an alternative plan. This is from ABC News. “Leavitt says Trump exploring cutting aid to Portland.”White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump is exploring plans to cut federal funding to Portland due to what she said was a rise in “Antifa” related incidents.”
“We will not fund states that allow anarchy,” she told reporters.
Antifa is not a group, but rather a political philosophy or movement. The term comes from the longer “anti-fascist” and is used as a catchall for groups that oppose the concept of authoritarianism, neo-Nazism and white supremacy.
If you want to sum it up, try this hypothesis for size. Republicans are willing to let all of us starve and die as long as they can get paid for enabling modern-day Robber Barons.
About six months into this reign of terror, murder, and destruction, I’m still not certain the legacy media is getting the bigger picture. However, yesterday, an announcement by Trump made them perk their ears once more. Will it be enough? This is from the AP. “Trump no longer distancing himself from Project 2025 as he uses the shutdown to further pursue its goals.”
President Donald Trump is openly embracing the conservative blueprint he desperately tried to distance himself from during the 2024 campaign, as one of its architects works to use the government shutdown to accelerate his goals of slashing the size of the federal workforce and punishing Democratic states.
In a post on his Truth Social site Thursday morning, Trump announced he would be meeting with his budget chief, “Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”
The comments represented a dramatic about-face for Trump, who spent much of last year denouncing Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation’s massive proposed overhaul of the federal government, which was drafted by many of his longtime allies and current and former administration officials.
You may recall that the implication of this document was central to the Democratic Party campaign. Kamala Harris made it a focal point of the convention and other speeches.
Top Trump campaign leaders spent much of 2024 livid at The Heritage Foundation for publishing a book full of unpopular proposals that Democrats tried to pin on the campaign to warn a second Trump term would be too extreme.
While many of the policies outlined in its 900-plus pages aligned closely with the agenda that Trump was proposing — particularly on curbing immigration and dismantling certain federal agencies — others called for action Trump had never discussed, like banning pornography, or Trump’s team was actively trying to avoid, like withdrawing approval for abortion medication.
Trump repeatedly insisted he knew nothing about the group or who was behind it, despite his close ties with many of its authors. They included John McEntee, his former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, and Paul Dans, former chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump insisted in July 2024. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” wrote Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita in a campaign memo. They added, “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”
Trump has since gone on to stock his second administration with its authors, including Vought, “border czar” Tom Homan, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller and Brendan Carr, who wrote Project 2025’s chapter on the Federal Communications Commission and now chairs the panel.
Heritage did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. But Dans, the project’s former director, said it’s been “exciting” to see so much of what was laid out in the book put into action.
“It’s gratifying. We’re very proud of the work that was done for this express purpose: to have a doer like President Trump ready to roll on Day One,” said Dans, who is currently running for Senate against Lindsey Graham in South Carolina.
It was frequently averred that Stephen Miller was central to all plans for the project’s implementation. Only a few public intellectuals continued to warn of the plan and steps taken, while Yam Tit still shrugged off any implication that he was following the plan’s blueprint during the first six months. Well, that curtain has dropped.
President Trump is seizing on the government shutdown as an “unprecedented opportunity” to consolidate control in the Oval Office, accelerating a trend toward unchecked power.
Why it matters: Many Democrats see the shutdown as a necessary evil to halt — or at least slow — Trump’s steamrolling of democratic norms and independent institutions. So far, the standoff is only emboldening the White House.
Zoom in: Trump said he met Thursday with White House budget chief Russ Vought to discuss what “Democrat agencies” should get cuts, casting the shutdown as a chance to shrink a federal workforce Trump has long viewed as hostile.
Goading Democrats, Trump flaunted Vought’s role in Project 2025(“he of PROJECT 2025 Fame”) — the hard-right blueprint for expanding executive power that Trump disavowed on the campaign trail after it became a political liability.
For Vought, the shutdown offers a unique opening: a live test of theories he has spent years refining on how to weaken Congress, purge the bureaucracy and concentrate power in the presidency.
Already, Vought has announced the termination of nearly $8 billion in funding for clean-energy projects in 16 states, all of which voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 and have Democratic senators.
He also has frozen $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects, a thinly veiled shot at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Legal challenges are inevitable: Congress controls the power of the purse, and federal officials privately have warned that Vought’s plans for mass firings during the shutdown may violate appropriations law.
The big picture: As Axios has documented, the shutdown is only one front in Trump’s broader campaign of consolidation.
Military: In an unprecedented partisan address this week, Trump told more than 800 generals and admirals to prepare for a “war” against domestic “enemies,” urging them to treat America’s cities as “training grounds.”
Academia: The administration is asking universities to sign a 10-point “compact” that would grant preferential access to federal funding if schools agree to freeze tuition, protect conservative speech, apply strict definitions of gender, limit international students and other Trump priorities.
Rule of law: Days after Trump publicly pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to charge his political enemies, the Justice Department indicted former FBI director James Comey. Other Trump foes, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), are under investigation.
Civil society: FBI director Kash Patel severed ties with the Anti-Defamation League on Thursday, accusing the Jewish civil rights group of “functioning like a terrorist organization” after MAGA activists discovered that Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA was listed in its now-removed “Glossary of Extremism and Hate.” Trump also has urged the Justice Department to investigate Democratic megadonor George Soros’ Open Society Foundations as part of a crackdown on liberal groups following Kirk’s assassination.
Corporate America: Trump demanded last week that Microsoft fire its head of global affairs, Lisa Monaco, because she served in the Biden administration — a reminder that even corporate giants aren’t immune from political retaliation. Trump had previously called on Intel’s CEO to resign over alleged ties to China, but backed off after the U.S. government took a 10% equity stake in the chip-maker.
More at the link.
MSNBC’s Maddow Blog has this analysis. As usual, Steve Benen has the led. “Trump picks a convenient time to change his tune about the Project 2025 agenda. Remember last year when Trump feigned ignorance about the right-wing governing blueprint? A year later, the president no longer bothers with the pretense.”
As the second full day of the latest government shutdown got underway, Donald Trump published an odd message to his social media platform, which raised plenty of eyebrows throughout the political world.
“I have a meeting today with [White House Budget Director] Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat [sic] Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” the president wrote.
We don’t yet know what transpired at that meeting, but Trump’s weird phrasing was itself notable. For example, there are no federal departments or offices that should be called “Democrat Agencies.” There are only American agencies, which do work on behalf of the American people and which are currently led, at least in part, by Trump’s own appointees.
Similarly, the idea that federal agencies deserve to be condemned as “a political SCAM” is every bit as bizarre as it sounds. We’re talking about offices, some of which have been around for many years, that were created by Congress. Their existence is reinforced in federal law, which the president is required to enforce.
As for the possibility that Trump and the far-right head of his Office of Management and Budget might “permanently” weaken departments that the White House no longer likes, it’s worth keeping in mind that such efforts might very well be illegal.
But let’s also not brush past that other phrase: Vought, the president wrote, is “of PROJECT 2025 Fame.” As The Associated Press summarized:
President Donald Trump is openly embracing the conservative blueprint he desperately tried to distance himself from during the 2024 campaign, as one of its architects works to use the government shutdown to accelerate his goals of slashing the size of the federal workforce and punishing Democratic states.
For those who might benefit from a refresher, throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump realized that the Project 2025 agenda was so radical and unpopular that he treated is as radioactive. “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” the Republican said over the summer about the blueprint largely written by members of his own team. He added, “I have nothing to do with them.”
Here’s some analysis from Time Magazine‘s Editorial Fellow Connor Greene. “Trump Is No Longer Denying Support for Project 2025: What to Know.”
President Donald Trump has changed his tune on the conservative policy plan Project 2025 after actively distancing himself from it for months during his reelection campaign.
Trump announced on Thursday that he would be meeting with Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, “he of PROJECT 2025 Fame,” to decide which “Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”
The post marks a significant shift from the President’s past disavowals of the unpopular right-wing policy blueprint, which was created by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation ahead of the 2024 election. “I have nothing to do with Project 2025. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it,” Trump said in a debate last year with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Despite Trump’s repeated insistence that he didn’t know anything about Project 2025, however, he had close ties with a number of its authors, several of whom have served in his Administrations—including Vought. And since he returned to the White House in January his second Administration has taken steps to implement a number of the proposals detailed in the over 900-page document.
Now, amid the government shutdown, Trump is moving to further fulfill Project 2025’s goals of reducing the federal workforce and extending his executive powers—and, it appears, openly embracing the plan.
The big question sis what does this mean for the shutdown and the country?
Despite his criticisms of Project 2025, many of the Trump Administration’s actions since he returned to office have mirrored aspects of the blueprint. An analysis by TIME in January found that nearly two-thirds of Trump’s early executive actions reflected—in whole or in part—proposals in Project 2025.
Among the parts of the plan that Trump has carried out is its recommendation to aggressively reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
Trump and hisDepartment of Government Efficiency moved quickly to cut more than 200,000 federal employees, though some of the layoffs have since been held up in the courts after being challenged by lawsuits. His Administration has also looked to slash federal funding through various freezes, clawbacks, cuts, and recissions.
Trump has announced plans to execute still more cuts amid the government shutdown. In the leadup to the deadline to fund the government this week, the White House directed agencies to prepare for mass firings in the event that Congress couldn’t reach a deal, rather than furloughing those not deemed essential as in past shutdowns.
The Administration has additionally used the shutdown to cancel $8 billion in green energy projects in Democratic-led states, withhold $18 billion in transportation projects in New York City, and pause $2.1 billion in infrastructure projects in Chicago.
Here’s a just a bit of the latest information on Russell Voight. This startling headline is from Politico. “Thune warns Democrats about Russ Vought: ‘We don’t control what he’s going to do’ The Senate majority leader spoke out as some Republicans express qualms about the White House slash-and-burn campaign.” The reporter for this piece is Jourdain Carney.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune isn’t endorsing the slash-and-burn campaign White House budget director Russ Vought has planned for the federal government during the pending shutdown.
But he says Democrats have no one to blame for it but themselves.
“This is the risk of shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ Vought,” the Senate majority leader said in an exclusive interview Wednesday in the Capitol, adding that “there should have been an expectation” among Democrats that Vought’s Office of Management and Budget could broadly target government workers and programs in a shutdown.
Thune spoke on the same day that several Republicans aired discomfort with Vought’s moves after the shutdown went into effect. Rep. Mike Lawler of New York spoke out against his decision to hold up major transportation projects in his state, while Reps. Blake Moore of Utah and Brian Babin of Texas spoke up on a private House GOP call with Vought raising qualms about potential mass layoffs.
Vought’s actions also risk being a distraction for Republicans, who have sought to stick to a simple message putting the onus on Democrats to reopen the government. Pressed on whether Vought was muddying the waters, Thune said, “The only thing I would say about that is yes, and we don’t control what he’s going to do.”
The White House has made no secret that its strategy is to inflict maximum political pressure on Democrats to try to get them to reopen the government. Vought warned ahead of the start of the shutdown that OMB would take aggressive steps beyond typical furloughs, where employees are brought back to work after the government reopens.
The budget office directed agencies in a memo first reported by POLITICO last week to put together plans for reductions-in-force — or firings — of federal employees. Vought himself told House Republicans during the Wednesday call that those firings would start in a “day or two.”
“I can’t control that,” Thune said about decisions made by OMB. “But the Democrats ought to think long and hard about keeping this thing going for a long time, because it won’t be without consequence, I’m sure.”
This final suggested read is from Mother Jones. “Russ Vought Is Trump’s Shutdown Hero. His Neighbors Think His Work Is “Abhorrent.” The people living near Trump’s “grim reaper” of government cuts have put up signs letting him know they stand with federal workers.” This is reported by Isabela Dias.
On Thursday night, President Donald Trump shared a music video on Truth Social. In it, an AI-generated Russ Vought—Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget and a Project 2025 mastermind—is the grim reaper, carrying a scythe along a hallway lined with portraits of Democratic leaders. Vought, the video’s soundtrack explains, “wields the pen, the funds, and the brain” to enforce the president’s plans to axe federal workers.
“Everyone still remembers when he said he wanted to cause maximum trauma to federal workers,” the neighbor said. “And that’s hard to forget.”
Most of Vought’s neighbors I talked to for this article declined to speak on the record or asked to remain anonymous. Some said they didn’t want to create a rift in an otherwise cordial neighborhood, while others worried about retribution or negative repercussions from their employers.
“I just wish he would have gotten to know us,” Hunter said. “We consider ourselves good Americans, we have good values. And I don’t think he’s been interested in getting to know any of us, in hearing if we might have a difference of opinion.”
Last week, Vought sent around a memo blaming Democrats’ “insane demands” for the imminent lapse in funding and instructing agency heads to start making plans to cut non-mandatory programs “not consistent with the President’s priorities” and “use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force.” Appearing on Fox Business, Vought claimed an “authority to make permanent change to the bureaucracy here in government” during the shutdown.
He has since announced pauses to funding for infrastructure projects in New York—home state of House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), who called Vought a “malignant political hack”—and slowdowns in clean energy projects in several blue states.
Vought, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said on Fox News, “has been dreaming about and preparing for his moment since puberty.”
AsIwrote in a profile of Vought from 2024, the bespectacled official spent years as a Washington insider and government bureaucrat before becoming the architect of a supersized second Trump presidency.
An avowed Christian nationalist and dedicated America First warrior, he once described the job of OMB director as the “keeper of ‘commander’s intent” and criticized the federal bureaucracy for standing in the way of the president’s agenda. During Trump’s first term, Vought tried to implement an executive order that would have made it easier for political appointees to fire career civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. Now, he’s getting to realize his vision while earning points with the president.
See what’s in the cards for us? Read them and weep. The Voight cartoons are from The Nation. They have a primar on Vought that you really should read. “Project 2025: Vought’s Your Problem? Not too bad to be true.” Steve Brodner is the artist and his cartoons have descriptions of their design. Go see the rest!
I’ve been a little late today, I’m sorry. I woke up late last night in a lot of pain and took some acetaminophen for relief. In my mind I was seeing it as some sort of ritual to defang Trump’s war on Health Care. I also got a call from youngest with my first grandson. Aiden, like his mémé is quite verbal. I really worked on this piece because I wanted to get as many sources as I could on this abomination and put my time in it than usual. I was researching stuff like the researcher I am. I am vorasciously reading up on this and I suggest you do too.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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I’m feeling very sad today. I’ve actually been feeling sad and depressed for several days now. It just feels as if Trump is winning. He’s getting plenty of attention from his attack on Los Angeles, even though it’s illegal and so over-the-top as to be ridiculous. All this because people don’t like their law-abiding neighbors and co-workers being kidnapped by ICE thugs in masks.
Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has faded into the background, but it’s still there, threatening to radically change our health care system and hurt millions of lower income and elderly people.
Yesterday, Trump gave a speech to active U.S. Army troops that was supposedly about the 250th anniversary of the army, but instead consisted of political attacks on Joe Biden and California and bragging about Trump’s supposed accomplishments. And the audience of young soldiers laughed and applauded. He left the stage to “YMCA” and even did his ridiculous fist “dance.”
This weekend Trump will celebrate his birthday with a sickening military parade reminiscent of those put on in Russia and North Korea. Those are only four of the things that are making me so sad.
I really don’t know where to begin, but here are some suggested reads.
The immigration protests and Trump’s military response:
Gov. Gavin Newsom made the case in a televised address Tuesday evening that President Trump’s decision to send military forces to immigration protests in Los Angeles has put the nation at the precipice of authoritarianism.
The California governor urged Americans to stand up to Mr. Trump, calling it a “perilous moment” for democracy and the country’s long-held legal norms.
California Governor Gavin Newsom
“California may be first, but it clearly won’t end here,” Mr. Newsom said, speaking to cameras from a studio in Los Angeles. “Other states are next. Democracy is next.”
“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes — the moment we’ve feared has arrived,” he added.
Mr. Newsom spoke on the fifth day of protests in Los Angeles against federal immigration raids that have sent fear and anger through many communities in Southern California. He said Mr. Trump had “inflamed a combustible situation” by taking over California’s National Guard, and by calling up 4,000 troops and 700 Marines.
“Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles,” Mr. Newsom said. “Well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals, his agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.”
Donald Trump’s constant willingness to ignore the Constitution and core principles of American democracy means we are forever playing catch-up, stumbling behind while explaining why he absolutely cannot legally do the thing he is doing.
Digging into questions like “can Trump federalize the California National Guard because heavily-armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers picked a fight with a few hundred random Californians outside of Home Depot and lost?” is not a thing we should have to do, because the answer is no. The issue is that Trump just does these things anyway and justifies them with incoherent explanations that read as if an especially vicious badger memorized fragments of the Constitution and the US Code.
So, as we barrel toward a military occupation of California — and, really, anywhere else Trump wants — it’s time to figure out what on earth is going on, with two enormous caveats.
First, there are legal scholars who have spent their entire careers studying the deployment of the military on United States soil who are still trying to sort out what is happening. That’s not because they lack expertise, but because the situation is so rare and the administration’s justifications are so sloppy. Second, things are evolving so quickly that explanations quickly become outdated, so one has to try to anticipate the administration’s next wildly illegal move….
Generally, the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement. State National Guards generally can’t run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act because they are organized at the state level and report to a governor. That said, there are exceptions where, speaking only hypothetically, it would be completely legal for Trump to send National Guard members and even active duty troops to California. Identifying those possible situations is necessary to understand the relevant laws, but there’s no question that none of those situations currently exist in California or anywhere else.
The initial federalization of the California National Guard already happened on June 7 with Trump’s memo invoking 10 U.S.C. 12406. That allows state National Guards to be used in federal service for very limited reasons, but requires orders to be issued via the governor, a thing that definitely did not happen here.
Generally, the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement. State National Guards generally can’t run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act because they are organized at the state level and report to a governor. That said, there are exceptions where, speaking only hypothetically, it would be completely legal for Trump to send National Guard members and even active duty troops to California. Identifying those possible situations is necessary to understand the relevant laws, but there’s no question that none of those situations currently exist in California or anywhere else.
National Guard arrives in Los Angeles
The initial federalization of the California National Guard already happened on June 7 with Trump’s memo invoking 10 U.S.C. 12406. That allows state National Guards to be used in federal service for very limited reasons, but requires orders to be issued via the governor, a thing that definitely did not happen here….
Trump could also invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him, in certain circumstances, to deploy a state National Guard even over the objection of the governor. Active-duty troops can only be sent in if the Insurrection Act is invoked, though it appears the Trump administration is just bypassing that step and sending in 700 Marines anyway.
Even if the administration hadn’t skipped getting Newsom’s agreement to federalize state National Guard members, the limits in section 12406 still apply. That section can only be used when (1) there is an invasion or danger of invasion by a foreign nation; (2) there is a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the government; or (3) the president cannot execute federal laws with the regular forces available. (Section 12406 has only been used once, in 1970, when President Nixon invoked it to have the National Guard help deliver mail during a postal worker strike.)
President Trump thinks it is a sign of strength to send in troops to deal with protesters in Los Angeles. To that end, he has federalized a portion of the California National Guard and mobilized nearby Marines to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it confronts large protests in opposition to its efforts to arrest and deport undocumented immigrant laborers in the city.
Trump wanted to do something like this in his first term, during the summer that sealed his fate as a failed first-term president. But Mark Esper, his secretary of defense, refused. The protests in Los Angeles are not nearly as large as those that consumed the country in 2020, but Trump wants a redo, and Pete Hegseth, Esper’s more sycophantic successor, is just as eager to unleash the coercive force of the United States government on the president’s political opponents as Trump is.
You can almost feel, emanating from the White House, a libidinal desire to do violence to protesters, as if that will, in one fell swoop, consolidate the Trump administration into a Trump regime, empowered to rule America both by force and the fear of force.
The problem for Trump, however, is that this immediate, and potentially unlawful, recourse to military force isn’t a show of strength; it’s a demonstration of weakness. It highlights the administration’s compromised political position and throws the overall weakness of its policy program into relief. Yes, a certain type of mind might see the president’s willingness to cross into outright despotism as evidence of brash confidence, of a White House that wants to fight it out on the streets with its most vocal opponents because it thinks it will win the war for the hearts and minds of the American people.
But strong, confident regimes are largely not in the habit of meeting protests with military force, nor do they escalate at the drop of the hat. The Trump administration seems to have exactly one tool at its disposal — blunt force — and it’s clear that it has no plan for what happens when Americans do not fear being hit.
The background:
Last month, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Miller, the president’s senior aide, confronted leadership at Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a demand: Deport more people. And while Trump promised during his campaign to focus on criminals and “the worst of the worst,” there was no way to meet his (and Miller’s) goals by carefully selecting targets.
Protesters and National Guard in Los Angeles
Instead, Miller, who was raised in nearby Santa Monica, “directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores,” The Journal reported, which is what ICE opted to do, conducting an immigration sweep last Friday “at the Home Depot in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Westlake in Los Angeles, helping set off a weekend of protests around Los Angeles County, including at the federal detention center in the city’s downtown.” [….]
the administration’s crackdown on day laborers in the city sparked a predictable response from the community, which immediately rallied to their defense. Initially hundreds but soon thousands of residents went to the streets in what have been mostly peaceful protests, despite the police use of tear gas, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets and other so-called less lethal armaments. But there has been property damage in the form of burned-out cars and broken windows. And this damage, along with a few instances of looting, is the president’s pretext for a military crackdown.
Read the rest at the NYT. I’ve included a gift link.
Donald Trump loves authoritarian theater, but let’s not forget that Stephen Miller is also to blame for the violence and chaos in Los Angeles. Last week, the right-wing Washington Examiner reported that Trump’s deputy chief of staff called a meeting with the top officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “eviscerate” them for falling far short of the ridiculous goal he set of 3,000 deportations a day. In their desperation to keep Miller happy, ICE has already been targeting legal immigrants for deportation, mostly because they’re easy to find, due to having registered with the government. ICE agents stake out immigration hearings for people with refugee status and round up people here with work or student visas for minor offenses like speeding tickets, all to get the numbers up. But these actions were not enough for Miller.
“Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” he reportedly screamed at ICE officials. One ICE leader protested that the agency’s lead, Tom Homan, said they’re supposed to be going after criminals, not people who are just working everyday jobs. Miller reportedly hit the ceiling, furious that arrests aren’t widespread and indiscriminate. Trump has repeatedly implied he was only targeting criminals, but as Charles Davis reported at Salon, that conflicts with his promise of “mass deportations.” Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born Americans. The expansive efforts to find and arrest immigrants in California, which kicked off the protests, appear to be a direct reaction to Miller’s orders to grab as many people as possible, regardless of innocence.
But Miller doesn’t seem to care about crime. Or, perhaps he thinks having darker skin should be a crime. For Miller, the goal of “mass deportations” has never been about law and order, but about the fantasy of a white America. His desire to deport his way to racial homogeneity has always been not only deeply immoral, but pretty much impossible. His impotence shouldn’t breed complacency, however. As the violence in Los Angeles shows, petty rage can lead to all manner of evils.
Stephen Miller
The term “white nationalist” is often used interchangeably with “white supremacist,” but it has a specific meaning. White supremacists think the government should enshrine white people as a privileged class over all others. White nationalists, however, want America to be mostly, if not entirely, white — a goal that cannot be accomplished without mass violence. That Miller appears to lean more into the white nationalist camp is well known. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center reviewed a pile of leaked emails Miller had sent to media allies that illustrated his obsession with white-ifying America. He repeatedly denounced legal immigration of non-white people and endorsed the idea that racial diversity is a threat to white people. He longed for a return to pre-1965 laws that banned most non-white immigrants from moving to America.
“Trump’s mass deportation project is actually a demographic engineering project,” Adam Serwer of the Atlantic explained on a recent Bulwark podcast, pointing to the administration’s expulsion of legal refugees of color while making exceptions to the “no refugee” policy for white South Africans. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau defended the exception by claiming that “they can be assimilated easily into our country.”
But it’s clear this language is code for “white.” By any good-faith definition of the word, thousands of non-white people targeted for deportation have also assimilated. They have jobs. They get married. They have kids. They are part of their communities.
Sure enough, a sea of MAGA influencers have responded to the Los Angeles protests like parrots trained quite suddenly to say “ban third world immigration.”
Please read the whole thing. Amanda Marcotte is good.
The protests in LA have triggered more immigration protests around the country.
Those were the words thousands of people chanted near the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office, and throughout the streets of Manhattan Tuesday night as part of a series of nationwide rallies against President Trump’s immigration sweeps and the deployment of the U.S. military in California.
NYC protest
“There are many voices in my community that can’t be here today out of fear of what the administration is doing, so I want to be here for them,” 19-year-old Jeanet told NPR as she joined hundreds of other protesters in lower Manhattan Tuesday night….
Across the country, protesters also took to the streets in Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle, Dallas and half a dozen other cities.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out its largest Nebraska workplace raid of the current presidential administration on Tuesday.
The raid on the Glenn Valley Foods meatpacking plant near 68th and J streets led to an estimated 75 to 80 people being detained, a spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Don Bacon told the Flatwater Free Press.
The large-scale raid also involved the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and Omaha police, according to the plant’s president.
It led to confusion inside the plant and anger outside of it, as some protesters clashed with law enforcement. It shocked company executives, who said they’d used the federal government’s system to verify the legal status of their employees. And it also set off a fresh round of fear and rumors that plants and stores elsewhere in Nebraska had been raided, or were soon to be. Those reports couldn’t be verified by the Flatwater Free Press on Tuesday evening.
ICE executed the federal search warrant on Glenn Valley Foods “based on an ongoing criminal investigation into the large-scale employment of aliens without authorization to work in the United States,” the agency said in a statement.
It’s not yet known where the workers were taken, but Glenn Valley employees leaving the scene told the Flatwater Free Press they saw dozens of their colleagues being led by agents into a white bus.
Tensions escalated between protesters and ICE as a procession of SUVs carrying federal agents left the plant after the raid. Several protesters cursed at law enforcement, jumped on moving vehicles and threw rocks and debris at the cars, shattering one window….
The raid shocked Glenn Valley Foods President Chad Hartmann, who said company leaders had “no notification, no idea whatsoever” that a raid was coming.
While Donald Trump has challenged many norms both as a presidential candidate and as president, he has made a special effort to violate the standards that have long kept the U.S. military out of partisan politics. To be clear, the U.S. armed forces have always engaged in politics, seeking to avoid getting involved in some conflicts, seeking to escalate in others. But they have not been a Democratic military or a Republican military since the Civil War. Generations of civilian and military leaders did much to keep party and military separate. Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg on June 10 may undo all that work.
In his first term, Trump did much to undermine the norms of American civil-military relations. Rather than appoint a civilian as secretary of defense, a tradition reflecting civilian control of the military, he appointed a recently retired general, James Mattis. He constantly referred to the senior military leaders as “my generals.” He blamed the military when soldiers were killed, rather than accept that the buck stops with the commander in chief. And according to his own secretary of defense at the time, Mark Esper, Trump asked whether soldiers could shoot peaceful protestors in their legs during demonstrations after the death of George Floyd in 2020.
Trump at Fort Bragg Tuesday
Less than five months into his second term, Trump has gone much further to challenge the traditional separation of the military from partisan politics. This time, he chose an unqualified Fox News host to be defense secretary to ensure he would not face the resistance he met from Mattis and Esper. Then he fired multiple senior leaders of the military for being, well, Black or female. Just in the past few days, Trump deployed the Marines to Los Angeles in response to anti-ICE protests, even though
Then on Tuesday, Trump gave a virulently partisan speech at Fort Bragg, during which he egged on the troops to boo the Democrats serving as mayor of Los Angeles and governor of California. This speech, by itself, is incredibly damaging, as it projects the image of the military siding with the president against his political foes.
When scholars like myself talk about politicization of the military, we mean one of two things: either the military is jumping into partisan politics or politicians are pulling the military there. In this case, Trump is dragging the U.S. military into the partisan fray, attempting to turn the American military into a Republican or Trumpian army.
Click the link to read why this is so terrible for our country.
President Donald Trump continued his war against America’s most cherished military traditions today when he delivered a speech at Fort Bragg. It is too much to call it a “speech”; it was, instead, a ramble, full of grievance and anger, just like his many political-rally performances. He took the stage to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”—which has become a MAGA anthem—and then pointed to the “fake news,” encouraging military personnel to jeer at the press.
He mocked former President Joe Biden and attacked various other political rivals. He elicited cheers from the crowd by announcing that he would rename U.S. bases (or re-rename them) after Confederate traitors. He repeated his hallucinatory narrative about the invasion of America by foreign criminals and lunatics. He referred to 2024 as the “election of a president who loves you,” to a scatter of cheers and applause. And then he attacked the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles, again presiding over jeers at elected officials of the United States.
He led soldiers, in other words, in a display of unseemly behavior that ran contrary to everything the founder of the U.S. Army, George Washington, strove to imbue in the American armed forces.
The president also encouraged a violation of regulations. Trump, himself a convicted felon, doesn’t care about rules and laws, but active-duty military members are not allowed to attend political rallies in uniform. They are not allowed to express partisan views while on duty, or to show disrespect for American elected officials. Trump may not know these rules and regulations, but the officers who lead these men and women know them well. It is part of their oath, their credo, and their identity as officers to remain apart from such displays. Young soldiers will make mistakes. But if senior officers remain silent, what lesson will those young men and women take from what happened today?
The president cares nothing for the military, for its history, or for the men and women who serve the United States. They are, like everything else around him, only raw material: They either feed his narcissism, or they are useless. Those who love him, he claims as “his” military. But those who have laid down their life for their country are, as he so repugnantly put it, just suckers and losers, anonymous saps lying under cold headstones in places such as Arlington National Cemetery that clearly make Trump uncomfortable. Today, he showed that he has no compunction about turning every American soldier into a hooting partisan.
Why has no military leader spoken up about this outrage?
Trump’s supporters and his party will excuse his behavior at Fort Bragg the way they always have, the same way that indulgent parents shrug helplessly at their delinquent children. But senior officers of the United States military have an obligation to speak up and be leaders. Where is the Army chief of staff, General Randy George? Will he speak truth to the commander in chief and put a stop to the assault on the integrity of his troops? Where is the commander of the airborne troops, Lieutenant General Gregory Anderson, or even Colonel Chad Mixon, the base commander?
And if these men cannot muster the courage to defend American traditions—by speaking out or even resigning—where are the other senior officers who must uphold the values that have made America’s armed forces among the most effective and politically stable militaries in the world? Where is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine? He was personally selected by Trump to be America’s most senior military officer. Will he tell the man who promoted him that what he did today was obscene?
Use the gift link to read the rest.
On Saturday, Trump will celebrate his birthday with a military parade, and on the same day there will be “No Kings” protests around the country.
While tanks, armored troop carriers and artillery systems pour into Washington for the Army’s 250th birthday celebration, National Guard troops from the Army’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, supplemented by active-duty Marines, have been deployed to the streets of Los Angeles.
It is a juxtaposition that has military officials and experts concerned.
Army vehicles gathered in Jessup, Md., on Monday being prepared for the military parade in Washington, Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images
Several current and former Army officials said the military parade and other festivities on Saturday — which is also President Trump’s 79th birthday — could make it appear as if the military is celebrating a crackdown on Americans.
“The unfortunate coincidence of the parade and federalizing the California National Guard will feel ominous,” said Kori Schake, a former defense official in the George W. Bush administration who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Dr. Schake initially did not consider the parade much of a problem but is now concerned about “the rapid escalation by the administration” in Los Angeles.
The two scenes combined “erode trust in the military at a time when the military should be a symbol of national unity,” said Max Rose, a former Democratic congressman and an Army veteran.
“They are deploying the National Guard in direct contradiction to what state and local authorities requested, and at the same time there’s this massive parade with a display more fitting for Russia and North Korea,” he said.
Some veterans groups soured on the parade well before the latest deployments in Los Angeles. The Army recently asked the Vietnam Veterans of America chapter in Northern Virginia if it would provide 25 veterans to sit in the official reviewing stand. The group said no.
“If it were just a matter of celebrating the Army’s 250th birthday, there’d be no question,” said Jay Kalner, the chapter’s president and a retired C.I.A. analyst. “But we felt it was being conflated with Trump’s birthday, and we didn’t want to be a prop for that.”
Organizers with the “No Kings” movement are planning some 1,500 demonstrations across the country to protest the upcoming military parade on Saturday.
One notable location, however, is missing from that list — Washington, D.C., where the parade will take place.
Protest organizers have framed the move as a rejection of the spectacle, which will mark the 250th birthday of the Army as well as the 79th birthday of President Trump.
“Instead of allowing this birthday parade to be the center of gravity, we will make action everywhere else the story of America that day: people coming together in communities across the country to reject strongman politics and corruption,” organizers wrote.
They instead encouraged those in D.C. to join the flagship march in Philadelphia or one of the local protests in Virginia or Maryland. Organizers are also marketing DC Joy Day starting at 3 p.m. in Anacostia Park, which will have music, grilling, activities for children, and a grocery distribution.
Read more at The Hill.
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Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, a nine-term congressman who was the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, died on Wednesday, his family said in a statement. He was 75.
Mr. Connolly died at his home surrounded by his family, the statement said. It did not give a cause of death. Mr. Connolly had announced in 2024 that he was being treated for cancer of the esophagus.
In April, he announced that his cancer had returned and that he would not seek re-election in 2026. He also said he would soon relinquish his spot on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
U.S. Rep. Gerald “Gerry” Connolly, an outspoken Democrat who sought key reforms in the federal government while bringing transformational development to his populous Virginia district, died Wednesday. He was 75….
The spirited and at times bullheaded Fairfax Democrat became known for his voluble nature and willingness to engage in spirited debates. In one hearing, he accused Republicans of engaging in a witch hunt against the IRS, asking a witness if they ever read Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”
“I am heartbroken over the loss of my dear friend,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. “To me, he exemplified the very best of public service.” He said Connolly “met every challenge with tenacity and purpose, including his final battle with cancer, which he faced with courage, grace, and quiet dignity.”
A fixture of Virginia politics for three decades, Connolly was first elected to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in 1995. On the county board, he steered the transition of northern Virginia’s Tysons Corner from a traffic-heavy mall area to a downtown business hub.
In 2003, Connolly was elected board chairman, and he continued pushing for transportation investment that had been debated among officials for decades. Connolly sought billions in state and federal dollars to develop the regional rail system’s Silver Line connecting the national capital region to Tysons Corner.
Connolly’s dream was realized with the Silver Line’s opening in 2014, and eight years later, the rail line was extended an extra 11 miles (18 kilometers) to reach Dulles International Airport.
What’s happening in politics today:
The news getting the most attention today is the so-called “big beautiful bill” that Trump and House Republicans are trying to pass and send to the Senate. Yesterday, we got some shocking news about this nightmare bill. Not only does it cut nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid. It also cuts Medicare by more than $500 billion from Medicare. If you watched Lawrence O’Donnell’s show last night, you heard all about it. In case you missed it, here is O’Donnell’s interview with Rep. Brendan Boyle:
Rep. Boyle: The one thing I would point out, though, is this bill is actually significantly worse [than the GOP’s ACA repeal attempt in 2017], because this piece of legislation will throw 13.5 million, almost 14 million Americans off their healthcare.
First, you’re cutting people off Medicaid. But second, this does include very deep cuts to Obamacare as well. And finally, I have breaking news for you tonight, that literally just came out in the last few minutes as I’ve been sitting here: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the official authority on these figures, has now confirmed that this bill, in addition to Medicaid cuts, in addition to Obamacare cuts, includes $500 BILLION WORTH OF CUTS TO MEDICARE that is now in this bill as well.
Lawrence O’Donnell: That is breaking news…$500 billion in cuts to Medicare. That’s the biggest cut to Medicare ever contemplated by the Congress. There have been, over the years, trims to Medicare for budget reasons, but nothing on this order has ever been done to Medicare. What happened? Talk more about that, about that breaking news piece that the CBO has projected in here. Is that because of interactions that Medicare has with the Medicaid program?
Rep. Boyle: Yeah, and forgive me this…given your great experience on the Senate Finance Committee, you’ll understand this, but it does get a bit wonky for normal folks. Basically it’s because of those interactions and specifically because of a provision called “Paygo” that will force a certain amount of Medicare sequestration, again, to the tune–and these aren’t my figures, these are the Congressional Budget Office official figures–$500 billion.
So they take the biggest cuts to Medicaid in American history. They take massive cuts to Obamacare. And then, add on top of that, the impact of all their policies mean a result of the biggest cuts to Medicare in American history on top of all of it.
House Republicans are pushing to slash nearly $1 trillion from two of the nation’s bedrock safety net programs, Medicaid and food stamps, as part of their sweeping package aimed at enacting President Donald Trump’s agenda. If the legislation is approved, millions of Americans could lose access to these benefits as a result of a historic pullback in federal support.
Trump has repeatedly vowed not to touch Medicaid, while GOP lawmakers insist that their proposals would largely affect adults who could – and should, in their view – be employed. But the actual impact would likely hit a far broader range of Americans, including some of the most vulnerable people the GOP has promised repeatedly to protect, experts say. They include children, people with disabilities and senior citizens.
A sizeable share of the US population depends on these programs. More than 71 million people are enrolled in Medicaid, and roughly 42 million Americans receive food stamps, according to the federal agencies that oversee them.
Hospitals would also feel the financial fallout of the Medicaid cutbacks, which could prompt some to raise their rates for those with job-based insurance and others to close their doors.
States would have to shoulder more of the costs of operating these programs, which could force them to make some tough decisions. Among their options could be slashing enrollment, benefits and provider rates in Medicaid or pulling back on residents’ access to food stamps. They might also shift spending from other state-supported programs such as education and infrastructure or hike taxes.
In addition, grocery store owners are warning that cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as food stamps are formally known, could harm local economies and cost jobs.
Read the details at the CNN link.
The House Rules Committee met under cover of darkness beginning at 1:oo this morning.
House Republicans on Wednesday are set to try to push President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration package across the finish line, hoping to conquer internal divisions and tee up a vote that would send Trump’s sprawling agenda to the Senate.
The House Rules Committee worked through the night on the legislation, trying to push the bill past a procedural test that would allow for a final vote. Lawmakers were still debating its provisions early Wednesday after a committee session that began at 1 a.m.
But the GOP’s narrow majority is far from unified around the proposal. And although Trump visited the U.S. Capitol for a conservative pep rally Tuesday, warring Republican factions on both sides dug in to oppose what is now officially called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The House GOP’s narrow majority means leaders can afford to lose only a handful of votes — and for now, they don’t have the support they need to pass the measure.
The bill would extend tax cuts that Trump signed into law in 2017 that are otherwise due to expire at the end of this year, along with new changes to reflect Trump’s campaign promises — such as no taxes on tips and overtime wages — and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on border security, the White House’s mass deportation campaign and funding for defense priorities and a “Golden Dome” continental missile defense system.
The Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers’ nonpartisan scorekeeper, projects that it will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. The national debt already exceeds $36.2 trillion.
Hard-line conservatives said Tuesday that the legislation did not sufficiently cut spending to pair with trillions of dollars of new tax cuts or extensions of current rates, and they angled for deeper budget reductions to Medicaid and federal benefits programs.
Blue-state Republicans demanded a higher cap on how much people can deduct from their federal taxes to offset what they pay to state and local tax authorities, and they warned that any cuts to the social safety net could cost them their political futures — and hand control of the House to Democrats after the 2026 midterm elections.
The big legislation Republicans are trying to pass this week would shrink economic resources for the poorest Americans while boosting the richest, according to a new analysis by Capitol Hill’s official budget scorekeeper.
The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as it’s officially known, would shrink household resources for the lowest-income households by 2% in 2027 and 4% in 2033, mainly because of cuts to health and nutrition programs.
Food Stamps are on the chopping block
”By contrast, resources would increase by an amount equal to 4 percent for households in the highest decile in 2027 and 2 percent in 2033, mainly because of reductions in… taxes they owe,” CBO director Phillip Swagel wrote in a letter to Democrats.
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, requested the CBO analysis of the bill’s distributional effects for the top and bottom 10% of households by annual income.
“This is what Republicans are fighting for – lining the pockets of their billionaire donors while children go hungry and families get kicked off their health care,” Boyle said in a statement. “CBO’s nonpartisan analysis makes it crystal clear: Donald Trump and House Republicans are selling out the middle class to make the ultra-rich even richer.”
The legislation uses about $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to help pay for $3.8 trillion in tax cuts that benefit all income groups, but especially wealthier Americans. The CBO has previously estimated the legislation would shrink Medicaid enrollment by more than 7 million, including through increased eligibility checks and limits on benefits for people without jobs.
What will happen to the U.S. debt if the bill passes the Senate in it’s current form?
The United States hit its record debt level at the end of 1945, after a world war and the Great Depression.
That record, in which the debt was briefly larger than the size of the entire economy, is almost certain to be broken in the next several years. Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office published in January showed that the country was on track to overtake it in 2032 — and that was before the Republicans’ large tax and spending bill was taken into account.
Under the G.O.P. megabill being considered in the House, budget experts now say, the U.S. debt would blow past the record even sooner and climb significantly higher in coming decades.
America has had periods of high debt before, but they have tended to occur during wars, recessions or other major shocks. Generally, federal deficits have been lower during periods of low unemployment. Today, there is no war or recession to easily explain the rapidly increasing pace of borrowing.
Because the government has been spending more than it collects in taxes over the past two decades, the debt has been growing. Without any changes to existing law, the Congressional Budget Office predicts the debt will rise to about 117 percent of the economy’s size by 2034, higher than the 1945 record.
The Republicans’ bill would widen the gap further by extending and expanding tax cuts and increasing military spending, partly offset by spending cuts in other areas. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that favors debt reduction, estimates that the nation’s debt could be as high as 129 percent of the economy by 2034 under those plans.
More details at the NYT. I’ve run out of gift links for this month, unfortunately.
The president went to Capitol Hill to urge Republicans to unite behind a budget-busting budget bill, and Axios reported that his strong-arm tactics were putting conservatives into a precarious position.
“Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill‘ is projected to add trillions to the deficit over the next decade — rattling conservatives who have long warned that the U.S. is barreling toward fiscal catastrophe,” Axios reported. “Some Republicans now find themselves trapped between two of the party’s most animating principles: Deficit reduction vs. absolute loyalty to Trump.”
The White House is hoping the budget bill will receive a vote on the House floor this week, and the president and his aides have brushed off warnings that the tax cuts embedded in the measure would explode the national debt without politically toxic cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
“This tax bill’s enormity is being underplayed … [It] will cost more than the 2017 tax cuts, the pandemic CARES Act, Biden’s stimulus, and the Inflation Reduction Act combined,” Jessica Riedl, a budget specialist at the conservative Manhattan Institute, told Yahoo Finance.
The Trump administration claims Biden created the deficits and Trump policies will lower the debt.
“[Those projections] assume consistent economic growth,” Jim Millstein, a former chief restructuring officer at the Treasury Department, told Bloomberg. “Just imagine the Trump tariffs … cause a recession. They are risking a fiscal disaster.”
For decades, budget hawks warned that America’s debt load was unsustainable and that runaway spending financed with borrowed money was eventually going to scare investors away from lending to the United States. Those fears are now taking hold more strongly in the bond market, and are at risk of spreading further.
Tax cuts pushed by the Trump administration are amplifying debt and deficit concerns among bond investors, a powerful group of market players who strongly influence how much it costs for the government to finance its budget. The buying and selling of government debt, known as Treasuries, also influences interest rates on a wide variety of debt extended to American households and businesses, including mortgages, credit cards and car loans.
Those investors were already on edge over President Trump’s whipsawing tariff policy. Then this week’s attempt to push through sweeping tax cuts without significantly slashing spending — in what the president has called a “big, beautiful bill” — set off a fresh bout of bond market turmoil. Mr. Trump put more pressure on Republican lawmakers on Tuesday, visiting Capitol Hill and warning that failing to advance the bill would lead to higher taxes.
Since dropping below 4 percent in early April, the 10-year Treasury yield has risen back above 4.5 percent, a large move reflecting deficit worries. The moves for the 30-year yield this year have also been stark: It has jumped above 5 percent, its highest level in about a year and a half.
As you probably know, that’s how much we have to pay the bondholders.
Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, warned that volatility in the Treasury market could add to already heightened uncertainty about the economic outlook.
That risks making people “even more cautious about how they engage,” he said. “If that happens, then I’ll have to assess the extent to which that should change my outlook on how the economy is going to perform.”
House Republicans’ internal negotiations on the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” went south Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, with GOP hardliners publicly digging in their heels against the legislation.
Why it matters: Some of the anger centers on a deal House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is nearing with blue-state Republicans to raise the State and Local Tax Deduction cap.
“I think, actually, we’re further away from a deal because that SALT cap increase upset a lot of conservatives,” House Freedom Caucus chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) said in a Newsmax interview.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), another GOP holdout, told Axios in a text message: “THINGS ARE NOT LOOKING GOOD!!”
State of play: Johnson and a group of House Republicans from New York, California and New Jersey were close to a deal on SALT as of Tuesday night, Axios’ Hans Nichols reported.
The deal would have raised the SALT cap to $40,000 a year for those making up to $500,000.
The income phaseout would grow by 1% for 10 years, and then the deduction would become permanent.
Yes, but: Johnson’s right flank has long been skeptical of the SALT cap, which would increase the deficit and disproportionately benefit taxpayers in high-tax Democratic states.
Some conservative hardliners also feel the bill doesn’t go far enough in cutting Medicaid and nutrition assistance spending.
I don’t buy it. My guess is the right-wingers will vote for it in the end. But if they don’t go with the SALT increase, blue state Republicans are going to lose their seats. In fact, if this bill passes, I think that will guarantee Democrats take the House in 2026.
I’m going to end there. All this talk about tax cuts, cuts to social programs, and the exploding U.S. debt are making me very tired and depressed. Take care, everyone!
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“Wow, eye-opening interview!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m a little late on this because I’ve finally reached the end of all these tests to figure out why I keep having to sing Feet Don’t Fail Me Now. I’m finally getting a bit of information on my poor polyneuropathic feet. It seems they likely came from the intense rounds of chemotherapy I had for the cancer I developed after my youngest was born. Anyway, I’m back from the EMG which involves a lot of needle poking and shocking your nerves. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, much like Yam Tits’ reign of terror, but now I know. I guess the best thing I can do is take a couple more supplements, so I will keep on Truckin’ here in New Orleans. Anyway, the Polycrisis continues on all fronts.
So, now is the time for all good citizens to come to the defense of Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster, and all the Sesame Street gang. The AP reports that “Trump signs executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aiming to slash public subsidies to PBS and NPR as he alleged “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting.
The order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and further requires that that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. The White House, in a social media posting announcing the signing, said the outlets “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”
It’s the latest move by Trump and his administration to utilize federal powers to control or hamstring institutions whose actions or viewpoints he disagrees with. Since taking office, Trump has ousted leaders, placed staff on administrative leave and cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to artists, libraries, museums, theaters and others, through takeovers of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Trump has also pushed to withhold federal research and education funds from universities and punish law firms unless they agreed to eliminate diversity programs and other measures Trump has found objectionable.
The broadcasters get roughly half a billion dollars in public money through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and have been preparing for the possibility of stiff cuts since Trump’s election, as Republicans have long complained about them.
March 20, 2017
I have to say that PBS is a mainstay of the small amount of TV viewing I actually do. Master Piece Theater has been a staple of my viewing since University, and my daughters grew up with Mr Rodgers, Sesame Street, and my youngest was addicted to Barney and Friends. My mother always watched all the Detective Shows they ever showed, including Mystery Theater. It’s where I learned to love Dr. Who and Monty Python. I can’t even imagine #FARTUS has even seen any of those shows. The actual Federal Spending on the public networks is very small. They get most of their money from corporate sponsorship and their viewers. The amount going to Elon Musk’s enterprises is huge. You can view the funding numbers for PBS at this link: “Frequently Asked Questions about Support.”
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) receives a congressional appropriation each year of about $500M. CPB allocates the appropriation mostly to public television and radio stations, with some assigned to NPR and PBS to support national programming.
CPB funding to stations covers a portion of each’s annual operating budget (the percentage varies from station to station but as a general rule the percentage is smaller for larger market stations). Stations rely on generous donations from viewers like you, corporate sponsorships, and foundation grants to cover the rest of their operating budget.
Part of each station’s operating budget is programming dues which it pays to PBS (and NPR) for National programming like PBS News Hour.
The News Hour receives about 35% of its annual funding/budget from CPB and PBS via national programming funds – a combination of CPB appropriation funds and annual programming dues paid to PBS by stations re-allocated to programs like ours. The remaining 65% is generated from individual donations, foundation grants and corporate sponsorships.
Elon Musk and his cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service team have been on a mission to trim government largesse. Yet Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers.
Over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, often at critical moments, a Washington Post analysis has found, helping seed the growth that has made him the world’s richest person.
The payments stretch back more than 20 years. Shortly after becoming CEO of a cash-strapped Tesla in 2008, Musk fought hard to secure a low-interest loan from the Energy Department, according to two people directly involved with the process,holding daily briefings with company executives about the paperwork and spending hours with a government loan officer.
When Tesla soon after realized it was missing a crucial Environmental Protection Agency certification it needed to qualify for the loan days before Christmas, Musk went straight to the top, urging then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to intervene, according to one of thepeople. Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Nearly two-thirds of the $38 billion in funds have been promised to Musk’s businesses in the past five years.
In 2024 alone, federal and local governments committed at least $6.3 billion to Musk’s companies, the highest total to date.
The total amount is probably larger: This analysis includes only publicly available contracts, omitting classified defense and intelligence work for the federal government.SpaceX has been developing spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, the Pentagon’s spy satellite division, according to the Reuters news agency. The Wall Street Journal reported that contract was worth $1.8 billion, citing company documents.
The Post found nearly a dozen other local grants, reimbursements and tax credits where the specific amount of money is not public.
An additional 52 ongoing contracts with seven government agencies — including NASA, the Defense Department and the General Services Administration — are on track to potentially pay Musk’s companies an additional $11.8 billion over the next few years, according to The Post’s analysis.
Well, isn’t that special? Here’s a read from Politico about the pushback from NPR to Trump. “Public media executives push back against Trump targeting NPR and PBS: ‘Blatantly unlawful’. The president issued an executive order late Thursday trying to cut federal funding.”
Public media executives are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s late Thursday executive order seeking to strike federal funding for NPR and PBS, arguing it is unlawful.
Trump’s Thursday order directed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private nonprofit that Congress awards more than $500 million annually to fund public media, to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law” to NPR and PBS.
“Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,” she wrote.
Trump and his allies in Congress have repeatedly targeted NPR and PBS, arguing that the two outlets have a liberal bias and seeking to strip their funds.
The leaders of both organizations were hauled in front of Congress for a hearing in front of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency — a companion to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — and the FCC has launched an investigation of both’s underwriting messages.
The White House is expected to ask Congress to cancel already approved funding for public broadcasting, in what is known as a rescission request, POLITICO previously reported.
PBS Chief Executive Paula Kerger released a statement Friday in response to the president’s order, calling it “blatantly unlawful” and said the broadcaster is “exploring all options” to ensure it can continue programming across the country.
In a press release from NPR, the organization said it would “vigorously defend our right to provide essential news, information and life-saving services to the American public” and challenge the executive order “using all means available.”
The order explicitly called on the CPB Board of Directors to end direct, indirect and future funding to the two public broadcasters. Federal funds make up about 15 percent of PBS’ annual revenue and about 1 percent of NPR’s budget every year.
Well, kids, the President says you have to scale back holiday gifts, and he doesn’t want you to access Blue’s Clues. Work it out, Wombat, Milo, and Carl the Collector. Lawrence O’Donnell is now calling him Donny Two Dolls. Martine Powers–writing for the Washington Post–has this to say. “Is Trump waging a war on dolls? The president’s call for American children to own fewer dolls sounded to some like an implicit rebuke of U.S. consumerism. It’s not his usual message.”
Call it the Great Barbie Belt-Tightening — as if that were even possible with her waistline.
President Donald Trump and his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, might have a new target in their trade war crosshairs: dolls.
Or, more specifically, excessive numbers of dolls. Or, dolls that are not of the superior manufacturing quality befitting America’s children.
On Wednesday, Trump predicted during a Cabinet meeting that higher prices caused by tariffs will mean “children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls.” The next morning, Miller doubled down in a White House briefing, suggesting that American parents agree that fewer dolls would be better.
People of all ideological stripes, from liberals to conservatives to the late Pope Francis, have cautioned against American overconsumption — and suggested that the world’s richest nation should make do with less. But Trump has never come close to espousing such a philosophy, not even in his messaging around his tariff policies, which threaten to raise prices on myriad consumer products, including dolls. In his second term, the president has decorated the Oval Office with gilded accents — and has promised repeatedly, as he did Tuesday at a political rally in Warren, Michigan, to “make America wealthy again.”
History shows that there is great political peril in asking Americans to do more with less. Just ask Jimmy Carter, the late president whom Republicans have pilloried for nearly 50 years for scolding the country to make sacrifices during the energy crisis of the late 1970s.
Plus, there are few more uniquely American icons than toy dolls. Barbie was the runaway bestseller for decades before it became a blockbuster movie in 2023. One of the most popular brands of dolls is literally called American Girl. And among the best-selling dolls are action figures marketed to boys, such as the U.S.-military-inspired G.I. Joe.
Some Democrats have suggested that Trump’s comments are an act of political self-sabotage — a bridge too far for American consumers, who don’t want to be told by a rich politician that their children should expect a smaller-than-usual stack of toys on Christmas morning.
So, you intrepid reporter wants to know if Yam Tit’s has just started an official war on Christmas? This surely looks like it. Good thing Sky Dancing Blog doesn’t rely on any federal or state funding.
Why it matters: Miller — the deputy chief of staff and the brain behind Trump’s controversial immigration crackdown — is one of the president’s longest-serving and most-trusted aides.
Miller’s name surfaced shortly after Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser on Thursday and nominated Waltz to become the next United Nations ambassador.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is temporarily taking over Waltz’s responsibilities, but sources familiar with his thinking say he’s busy enough running the State Department.
Zoom in: Miller already is the administration’s Homeland Security adviser, and is an aggressive defender of the administration’s legal push for immediate deportations of unauthorized immigrants without court hearings.
One White House source told Axios via text that Miller has made the Homeland Security Council run “like clockwork,” and that it’s “infinitely more effective than the NSC [National Security Council] with a tiny fraction” of the staff.
Zoom out: Trump has a penchant for putting his faith in a small number of advisers and piling responsibilities on their plate, so insiders say it wouldn’t be unusual for Miller hold multiple titles, just as Rubio does.
“Marco and Stephen have worked really closely on immigration and it might be a perfect match,” said another White House source.
“Given how well he’s worked with Marco, many see him as the perfect person to restore the role of the NSA to a staff-level policy role that reports to the chief of staff, instead of some inflated Cabinet position,” said another insider.
A fourth source said Miller signaled interest in the job Thursday, but Miller couldn’t be reached for comment to confirm.
A fifth source said Miller might not want the job “if it takes him away from his true love: immigration policy.”
What’s next: Those who understand the president’s thinking say it’s unclear how long he wants to keep Rubio as national security adviser.
But one of the administration sources said that “if Stephen wants the job, it’s hard to see why Trump wouldn’t say yes.”
Judges that have made decisions against Trump continue to be under threat of violence and death as are their families. This headline is from Reuters. “These judges ruled against Trump. Then their families came under attack. As federal judges rule against the Trump administration in dozens of politically charged cases, the families of at least 11 of the jurists have been targeted with threats and harassment. The intimidation campaign has strained judges and their relatives – and legal scholars fear it could have a chilling effect on the judiciary. Multiple reporters have contributed to this very jarring story.
When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled in April that Trump administration officials could face criminal contempt charges for deporting migrants in defiance of a court order, the blowback was When Elon Musk shared an online post that mischaracterized the work of Judge Boasberg’s daughter, some of his followers responded on X with calls “to lock her up.”
The president’s supporters unleashed a wave of threats and menacing posts. And they didn’t just target the judge. Some attacked Boasberg’s brother. Others blasted his daughter. Some demanded the family’s arrest – or execution.v
U.S. District Judge John McConnell’s family endured similar threats after he ruled that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority in freezing grants for education and other services. Far-right provocateur Laura Loomer tweeted a photo of the judge’s daughter, who had worked at the U.S. Education Department as a policy advisor, and accused McConnell of protecting her paycheck. Billionaire Elon Musk amplified the post to his 219 million X followers. Neither mentioned the daughter had left her job before Trump’s inauguration.
When Elon Musk shared an online post that mischaracterized the work of Judge Boasberg’s daughter, some of his followers responded on X with calls “to lock her up.”
Loomer continued her attacks with nine more posts in the ensuing days – and more than 600 calls and emails flooded McConnell’s Rhode Island courthouse, including death threats and menacing messages taunting his family, according to a court clerk and another person familiar with the communications.
Trying to fly anywhere? Are you willing to take this hits to your time and the risk to your safety?
“Newark Liberty Airport posted a statement to X advising, “Flights at @EWRairport continue to be disrupted due to @FAA staffing shortages, with delays and cancellations expected to continue throughout the day.”😱 How many more “Newark’s” are there?#DemVoice1 http://www.rawstory.com/newark-airpo…
Jennifer Bowers Bahney–writing for Raw Story— has the scary details. “Insider issues ‘incredible’ warning to avoid critical air hub ‘at all costs’ over safety.” Is this another shot across the bow of America’s Christmas celebrations? Well, Mister and Misus American and all the ships at sea, you let me know.
MSNBC correspondent Tom Costello claimed Friday that an air traffic controller who “handles airspace” at the Newark, NJ, airport gave him some “rather concerning and startling information” about public safety.
“He said, It is not safe. ‘It is not a safe situation right now for the flying public,” Costello said. “Really an incredible statement, unsolicited. He just said that to me, and separately, ‘Don’t fly into Newark. Avoid Newark at all costs.”
Costello said that there were about two-hour delays for planes coming into Newark on Friday following a week of major delays due to staffing issues.
“We’ve got a lot of problems going on,” Costello said, including “equipment failures.”
“They have lost both radios and radars this week,” Costellos said. “And because of the stress, some controllers have walked off the job.”
Costello said that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was touring the Newark facility, along with the president of the air traffic controllers union, “trying to reassure the public and reassure controllers that they’re working on this.”
“But,” Costello added, “this is not going to be an easy fix by any means.”
CNN reports that “Trump says the government will revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.”
President Donald Trump says Harvard University will be stripped of its tax-exempt status, redoubling an extraordinary threat amid a broader chess match over free speech, political ideology and federal funding at the Ivy League school and across American academia.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump posted Friday morning on Truth Social.
Trump floated a trial balloon April 15 for the notion of removing Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and the Internal Revenue Service had been making plans to carry out the idea.
“There is no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status,” a university spokesperson told CNN. “Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission.”
Money for federal taxes would have to be taken away from other priorities and “would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation,” the spokesperson said Friday.
US law specifically prohibits presidents from directing the IRS to investigate anyone. If it found Harvard’s tax-exempt status should be revoked, the agency would have to formally notify and give the school a chance to challenge the decision. The IRS did not immediately respond to CNN’s questions about how Trump’s announcement might be implemented.
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts said Friday that Trump’s actions are an attempt to force Harvard to comply with his ideology and described the move as unconstitutional. He added the disruption caused by Trump’s threats has had a negative impact on life-saving research and people’s livelihoods.
The trouble is, if you give in just a little bit on a Mafia shake-down, they always return for more. “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”
I’m not sure it was the pokes or the shocks this morning, but I seem to be floating back somewhere to the 70s where Nixon was making trouble for every one. That seems picayune now. I was planning to do some work around the garden and the backyard but for some reason, I just want to hug the furbabies, make so lunch, and find something distracting. I certainly hope you’re upcoming weekend will be joyful and peaceful. I’m wondering how much tea I’m going to have to stock up on.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Looking at the headlines today makes me want to just throw up my hands and give up. Events are moving so quickly that no one could possibly keep track of everything. Things that happened just days ago recede into the past as new horrors arise.
The global economic crisis that Trump has triggered with his insane tariffs is still going on, but the realization that he is going to keep sending innocent people to a torture prison in El Salvador has pushed that into the background for now.
Even though he has “paused” the worst of the tariffs, many still remain in effect and will continue to affect the global economy, as Dakinikat discussed in her post yesterday. Meanwhile, the trade war with China continues, and it’s clear that China won’t back down.
On the immigration front, Trump is involving the military in border enforcement, even though that is illegal, and he is trying to find a way to send American citizens to the El Salvador gulag.
And of course Social Security is being ravaged by DOGE, while RFK, Jr. lays waste to the FDA and the U.S. health care system, and DOGE plans to take over control of all government grants.
According to longtime columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr., Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff threats almost makes it appear he wants to be impeached, with Jenkins writing, “A future Trump impeachment seemed all but guaranteed by last Wednesday morning. It seems only slightly less likely now. It may even be desirable to restore America’s standing with creditors and trade partners.”
As he sees it, the president’s last great achievement was being re-elected in 2024, and the damage he has been creating since then belies his promise of a “golden age,” so an impeachment is “already in the cards.”
“No consensus or even significant coalition exists for trying to force into existence a new American ‘golden age’ with tariffs, which anyway is like asking a chicken to give birth to a lioness. He invented this mission out of his own confused intuition,” he accused.
Noting that conservative historian Niall Ferguson labeled Trump’s trade policy going “full retard,” he contributed, “I go with ‘neurotic’ for the word’s wider applicability to any leader who, lacking a clear bead on his times, fabricates a gratuitously ambitious mission to meet his misguided sense of importance.”
“Nobody in Mr. Trump’s orbit actually shares his belief in the magical efficacy of tariffs because it makes sense only in a world that doesn’t exist, where other countries don’t retaliate,” he pointed out before concluding, “The founders never anticipated today’s instantly responsive trillion-dollar financial markets. And yet these markets neatly adumbrate the founders’ scheme of checks and balances, also known as feedback. Mr. Trump, still sane enough to appreciate what’s good for Mr. Trump, listened this week to their feedback.”
The guidance, issued late Friday evening, comes after Trump earlier this month imposed 145% tariffs on products from China, a move that threatened to take a toll on tech giants like Apple, which makes iPhones and most of its other products in China.
The guidance also includes exclusions for other electronic devices and components, including semiconductors, solar cells, flat panel TV displays, flash drives, and memory cards.
These products could eventually be subject to additional duties, but they are likely to be far lower than the 145% rate that Trump had imposed on goods from China.
The exemptions are a win for tech companies like Apple, which makes the majority of its products in China. The country manufactures 80% of iPads and more than half of Mac computers produced, according to Evercore ISI.
“This is the dream scenario for tech investors,” Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC. “Smartphones, chips being excluded is a game changer scenario when it comes to China tariffs.”
I wonder what Trump got from the tech companies in return for these exemptions?
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump bragged that many foreign leaders were “kissing his ass” to avoid the steep tariffs he’d imposed on their countries. But China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was not one of them. “We are waiting for their call,” Trump said of China’s leadership in a social-media post.
He might be waiting for a while. Xi became China’s most powerful political figure in half a century by promoting a new Chinese nationalism—not by kowtowing to anyone, least of all the president of the United States.
“Seeking to negotiate on U.S. terms would be deeply embarrassing for Xi and could potentially weaken his standing and even control over the Communist Party and the country,” Steve Tsang, the director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, told me. That’s because the party justifies Xi’s dictatorship by portraying him as the ultimate defender of the Chinese people—the man who will restore China’s past glory and attain the “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation. He must be seen standing up to foreign oppressors who seek to humiliate China and thwart its rightful rise.
“The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress, or enslave us,” Xi said in a speech commemorating the centennial of the Communist Party in 2021. “Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel.
Little wonder, then, that Xi has been quick to retaliate against Trump while other leaders have held back. Trump slapped an additional 34 percent duty on Chinese imports on April 2, and Xi responded two days later with a 34 percent tariff on U.S. imports. Trump then retaliated by imposing another 50 percent duty, which Xi matched the next day. On Wednesday, Trump tried isolating Xi by pausing most tariffs on all countries for 90 days—except for China, on which he increased his duties yet again. On Friday, Beijing raised its duties on American imports once more….
The Chinese Communist Party is characterizing Trump’s trade war as an American effort to contain and suppress China’s economic success—one the government is fully prepared to thwart, according to one commentary in the People’s Daily. This framing commits Beijing to holding out, because the alternative is for a party that predicates its power on the projection of strength to appear to be capitulating to a hostile onslaught.
Trump and his team do not seem to understand Xi’s political realities. They seem to believe that if they keep turning up the pressure, Xi will eventually come to heel. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted that Xi’s retaliation was “a big mistake.” Because China exports so much more to the U.S. than it imports, “they’re playing with a pair of twos,” he said.
This is going to really hurt small businesses who buy parts and inventory from China and farmers who sell soybeans to China.
The upheaval in stocks has been grabbing all the headlines, but there is a bigger problem looming in another corner of the financial markets that rarely gets headlines: Investors are dumping U.S. government bonds.
Normally, investors rush into Treasurys at a whiff of economic chaos but now they are selling them as not even the lure of higher interest payments on the bonds is getting them to buy. The freak development has experts worried that big banks, funds and traders are losing faith in America as a stable, predictable, good place to store their money.
“The fear is the U.S. is losing its standing as the safe haven,” said George Cipolloni, a fund manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management. “Our bond market is the biggest and most stable in the world, but when you add instability, bad things can happen.”
That could be bad news for taxpayers paying interest on the ballooning U.S. debt, consumers taking out mortgages or car loans — and for President Donald Trump, who had hoped his tariff pause earlier this week would restore confidence in the markets.
A 60-foot wide strip of land along three southwestern border states will be placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. military to help deter illegal immigration, the White House said Friday.
President Donald Trump issued a memorandum directing the military to take temporary control over the Roosevelt Reservation, a corridor that runs along the border line in California, Arizona and New Mexico.
The order would empower troops to detain people attempting to illegally enter the U.S. within the stretch of land, which was established by President Theodore Roosevelt for border security in 1907. Trump authorized the military to operate in the same area during his first administration to aid construction of a wall to deter migrant crossings.
The memorandum marks an escalation in the president’s use of the military to facilitate his sweeping crackdown on immigration. And while unclear how far the administration will go, it could be an additional step to militarizing the nation’s southwestern border….
Immigration, military and legal experts have said that Trump’s move to militarize the border could raise legal questions about potential violations to the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that generally prohibits active-duty troops from being used in domestic law enforcement.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said it appeared the administration was trying to find a way around restrictions on the use of the U.S. military for civilian border enforcement.
Donald Trump and his White House have moved to deport green-card holders for espousing pro-Palestinian views, shipped hundreds of migrants to a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison without due process (in defiance of a judge’s order), and are now publicly musing about sending United States citizens to prison in El Salvador.
Trump said last weekend he would “love” to send American criminals there — and would even be “honored” to, depending on “what the law says.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed this week that the president has discussed this idea privately, too, adding he would only do this “if it’s legal.” El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has for months been offering to hold U.S. citizens in his country’s prison system, which he has turned into “a judicial black hole” rife with “systematic torture,” as one human rights advocate recently told Rolling Stone.
Consuelo by Olga Sacharoff, 1924
Legal experts agree that sending American citizens to prison in El Salvador would be flagrantly illegal under both U.S. and international law — and that the idea itself is shockingly authoritarian, with few parallels in our nation’s history.
The Trump administration is indeed discussing this idea behind the scenes, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Rolling Stone. In their most serious form, these conversations have revolved around attempting to denaturalize American citizens and deport them to other countries, including El Salvador.
“You can’t deport U.S. citizens. There’s no emergency exception, there’s no special wartime authority, there’s no secret clause. You just can’t deport citizens,” says Steve Vladeck, a legal commentator and law professor at Georgetown. “Whatever grounds they try to come up with for denaturalization or expatriation, the one thing that is absolutely undeniable is that people are entitled to individualized processes, before that process can be effectuated.”
In the United States, the grounds to strip a naturalized individual of their citizenship encompass serious material offenses. They include: committing treason or terrorism, enlisting in a foreign military engaged in opposition to the United States, or lying in applications for citizenship or as part of the naturalization process.
The Trump administration on Friday continued to pursue its stubborn fight against securing the freedom of a Maryland man it inadvertently deported to a Salvadoran prison last month despite a court order that expressly said he could remain in the United States.
Taking an increasingly combative stance, the administration defied a federal judge’s order to provide a written road map of its plans to free the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Trump officials then repeatedly stonewalled her efforts to get the most basic information about him at a court hearing.
During the hearing, in Federal District Court in Maryland, the judge, Paula Xinis, called the administration’s evasions “extremely troubling” and demanded that the Justice Department provide her with daily updates on the White House’s progress in getting Mr. Abrego Garcia back on U.S. soil.
“The court finds that the defendants have failed to comply with this court’s order,” Judge Xinis wrote in a ruling Friday afternoon.
The conflict between the judge and the White House arose just one day after the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody and only a few days before President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador was set to arrive in Washington for an official visit.
Asked about the case on Friday, President Trump appeared in no hurry to take steps to ensure Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return, despite repeated court orders and a Supreme Court intervention.
“If the Supreme Court said, ‘Bring somebody back,’ I would do that,” he said, seeming to ignore the court’s order. “I respect the Supreme Court.”
By Hedda Oppenheim
Of course the Supreme Court has already said that.
The public recalcitrance on the part of Mr. Trump and his officials highlighted questions about why they have been so reluctant to follow the orders or leverage the president’s relationship with Mr. Bukele to simply ask for Mr. Abrego Garcia to be freed.
Judge Xinis, by ordering the government to detail its progress in getting Mr. Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador, managed to avoid an immediate showdown with the White House. But the fiery clashes left open the possibility of a future standoff.
The administration has already had friction with judges in other cases — particularly those involving Mr. Trump’s deportation policies — but the conflict with Judge Xinis was one of the most contentious yet. Last week, a federal judge in Washington said there was a “fair likelihood” that the administration had violated one of his rulings ordering the White House to stop using a powerful wartime statute to deport scores of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.
The dispute involving Judge Xinis emerged after the Supreme Court late Thursday told Trump officials to take steps to free Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran migrant, from the CECOT prison in El Salvador, where he was sent with scores of other migrants on March 15.
DOGE’s bread and butter has been slashing headcounts but it is now wielding its influence deep inside the nation’s immigration system — an initiative led by one of Elon Musk’s closest friends, three Trump administration officials granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics told POLITICO.
Antonio Gracias, a Musk confidante whose history with the billionaire goes back more than 20 years, is quietly heading up a specialized DOGE immigration task force that’s embedded engineers and staffers across nearly every nook of the Department of Homeland Security, two of the people said. The task force is also working with DOGE operatives stationed at other agencies like the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, which house sensitive data on undocumented immigrants.
With Musk’s trusted friend and fixer at the helm, the task force marks a significant expansion of DOGE’s portfolio — from primarily working on agency-wide layoffs to executing the president’s most hardline immigration policies. It’s also a test for how far DOGE’s reach can extend.
Key DOGE engineers now embedded at DHS include Kyle Schutt, Edward Coristine, (aka “Big Balls”) and Mark Elez, according to their government email addresses. At least two others, Aram Moghaddassi and Payton Rehling also have access to DHS data, as DOGE fingerprints are spread throughout DHS, including Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Security Agency.
They are providing the technical infrastructure for a sweeping set of actions aimed at revoking parole, terminating visas, and later on, reengineering the asylum adjudication process, according to the officials.
Their first mission: implement parole terminations for 6,300 undocumented immigrants who either have criminal records or are on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist. That effort required coordinating with the Social Security Administration to have their Social Security numbers effectively canceled by adding them to a database that tracks dead people, the New York Times and the Washington Post first reported. Their theory is that without effective Social Security numbers – needed for bank accounts and loans, among other things – these people would “self deport.”
The Social Security Administration will no longer be communicating with the media and the public through press releases and “dear colleague” letters, as it shifts its public communication exclusively to X, sources tell WIRED. The news comes amid major staffing cuts at the agency.
“We are no longer planning to issue press releases or those dear colleague letters to inform the media and public about programmatic and service changes,” said SSA regional commissioner Linda Kerr-Davis in a meeting with managers earlier this week. “Instead, the agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public … so this will become our communication mechanism.”
Woman holding cat, by Liang Yi Er
Previously, the agency used dear colleague letters to engage with advocacy groups and third-party organizations that help people access social security benefits. Recent letters covered everything from the agency’s new identity verification procedures to updates on the accuracy of SSA death records (“less than one-third of 1 percent are erroneously reported deaths that need to be corrected,” the agency wrote, in contrast to what Elon Musk claims).
The letters and press releases were also a crucial communications tool for SSA employees, who used them to stay up on agency news. Since SSA staff cannot sign up for social media on government computers without submitting a special security request, the change could have negative consequences on the ability for employees to do their jobs.
It could also impact people receiving social security benefits who rely on the letters for information about access benefits. “Do they really expect senior citizens will join this platform?” asked one current employee. “Most managers aren’t even on it. How isn’t this a conflict of interest?” Another staffer added: “This will ensure that the public does not get the information they need to stay up-to-date.”
The White House response to the Wired story:
“This reporting is misleading. The Social Security Administration is actively communicating with beneficiaries and stakeholders,” says Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson. “There has not been a reduction in workforce. Rather, to improve the delivery of services, staff are being reassigned from regional offices to front-line help – allocating finite resources where they are most needed. President Trump will continue to always protect Social Security.”
I guess we’ll find out eventually. Social security advocates are warning that the system is going to collapse and the 73 million recipients could go months with out payments.
Two days after the Social Security Administration purposely and falselylabeled 6,100 living immigrants as dead, security guards arrived at the office of a well-regarded senior executive in the agency’s Woodlawn, Maryland, headquarters.
Greg Pearre, who oversaw a staff of hundreds of technology experts, had pushed back on the Trump administration’s plan to move the migrants’ names into a Social Security death database, eliminating their ability to legally earn wages and, officials hoped, spurring them to leave the country. In particular, Pearre had clashed with Scott Coulter, the new chief information officer installed by Elon Musk. Pearre told Coulter that the plan was illegal, cruel and risked declaring the wrong people dead, according to three people familiar with the events.
Buthisobjections did not go over well with Trump political appointees. And so on Thursday, the security guards in Pearre’s office told him it was time to leave.
They walked Pearre out of the building, capping a momentous internal battle over the novel strategy — pushed by Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service and the Department of Homeland Security — to add thousands of immigrants ranging in age from teenagers to octogenarians to the agency’s Death Master File. The dataset is used by government agencies, employers, banks and landlords to check the status of employees, residents, clients and others.
The episode also followed earlier warnings from senior Social Security officials that the database was insecure and could be easily edited without proof of death — a vulnerability, staffers say, that the Trump administration has now exploited….
Experts in government, consumer rights and immigration law said the administration’s action is illegal. Labeling people dead strips them of the privacy protections granted to living individuals — and knowingly classifying living people as dead counts as falsifying government records, they said. This is in addition to the harm inflicted on those suddenly declared dead, who become unable to legally earn a living wage or draw benefits they may be eligible for. Social Security itself has acknowledged that an incorrect death declaration is a “devastating” blow….
“This is an unprecedented step,” said Devin O’Connor, a senior fellow on the federal fiscal policy team for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank. “The administration seems to basically be saying they have the right to essentially declare people equivalent to dead who have not died. That’s a hard concept to believe, but it brings enormous risks and consequences.”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s visit to the FDA Friday was supposed to introduce him as a trusted leader to agency employees. It did anything but.
Over the course of 40 minutes, Kennedy, in largely off-the-cuff remarks, asserted that the “Deep State” is real, referenced past CIA experiments on human mind control and accused the employees he was speaking to of becoming a “sock puppet” of the industries they regulate.
Little Girl with Cat, by Pierre Bonnard
“Because of my family’s commitment to these issues, I spent 200 hours at Wassaic Home for the Retarded when I was in high school,” Kennedy said, in a reference to the Wassaic State School for the Mentally Retarded in Wassaic, New York. “So I was seeing people with intellectual disabilities all the time. I never saw anybody with autism.”
The remark jolted several FDA employees in the audience, who misheard the reference and thought he was making a derogatory remark about people with intellectual disabilities, according to two employees granted anonymity for fear of retaliation.
By the end of the event, billed as a welcome from the new commissioner, Marty Makary, several FDA staffers had walked out of the rooms where the speech was being broadcast at the agency’s headquarters in White Oak, Maryland, according to two employees granted anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“President Trump always talks about the Deep State, and the media, you know, disparages him and says that he’s paranoid,” Kennedy said, according to a transcript and audio of his remarks obtained by POLITICO. “But the Deep State is real. And it’s not, you know, just George Soros and Bill Gates and a bunch of nefarious individuals sitting together in a room and plotting the, you know, the destruction of humanity.”
He said “every institution that’s created by human beings” is inevitably captured by powerful interests, and urged FDA employees to take advantage of a four-year period under his leadership where he vowed that the Department of Health and Human Services would not be subjected to undue influence and would listen to “dissidents.”
U.S. DOGE Service employees have inserted themselves into the government’s long-established process to alert the public about potential federal grants and allow organizations to apply for funds, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive situation.
The changes to the process — which will allow DOGE to review and approve proposed grant opportunities across the federal government — threaten to further delay or even halt billions of dollars that agencies usually make in federal awards, the people said. The moves come amid the Trump administration’s broader push to cut federal spending and crack down on grants that DOGE and other officials say conflict with White House priorities.
DOGE employees have made changes to grants.gov, a federal website that has traditionally served as a clearinghouse for more than $500 billion in annual awards and is used by thousands of outside organizations, the people said. Federal agencies including the Defense, State and Interior departments have historically posted their grant opportunities directly to the site. Nonprofits, universities and local governments respond to these grant opportunities with applications to receive federal funding for activities that include cancer research, cybersecurity, highway construction and wastewater management.
But a DOGE engineer recently deleted many federal officials’ permissions to post grant opportunities, without informing them that their permissions had been removed, the people said. Now the responsibility of posting these grant opportunities is poised to rest with DOGE — and if its employees delay those postings or stop them altogether, “it could effectively shut down federal-grant making,” said one federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal operations.
Agency officials have been told that the grants.gov site has been under systems maintenance. They have been instructed to email their planned grant notices to grantreview@hhs.gov, an inbox at the Department of Health and Human Services that is being monitored by DOGE, the people said.
About 5,000 notices of funding opportunities are typically posted on grants.gov each year, with more than 10 million visitors to the site, according to people with knowledge of its operations. Some federal agencies have been able to post grant opportunities, known as Notice of Funding Opportunities or NOFOs, but the vast majority rely on grants.gov, the people said.
Unbelievable.
I’ll end there. I know this is way too long. Take care, everyone!
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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.
If you want to sum it up, try this hypothesis for size. Republicans are willing to let all of us starve and die as long as they can get paid for enabling modern-day Robber Barons.
It was frequently averred that Stephen Miller was central to all plans for the project’s implementation. Only a few public intellectuals continued to warn of the plan and steps taken, while Yam Tit still shrugged off any implication that he was following the plan’s blueprint during the first six months. Well, that curtain has dropped.
More at the link.
Here’s some analysis from 
The big question sis what does this mean for the shutdown and the country?
Here’s a just a bit of the latest information on Russell Voight. This startling headline is from 
This final suggested read is from
But the GOP’s narrow majority is far from unified around the proposal. And although Trump visited the U.S. Capitol for a conservative pep rally Tuesday, warring Republican factions on both sides dug in to oppose what is now officially called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The House GOP’s narrow majority means leaders can afford to lose only a handful of votes — and for now, they don’t have the support they need to pass the measure.
Tax cuts pushed by the Trump administration are amplifying debt and deficit concerns among bond investors, a powerful group of market players who strongly influence how much it costs for the government to finance its budget. The buying and selling of government debt, known as Treasuries, also influences interest rates on a wide variety of debt extended to American households and businesses, including mortgages, credit cards and car loans.
Here’s a recent article from WAPO on the amount of Federal Funding received by Musks’ businesses. “
Well, isn’t that special? Here’s a read from
Well, kids, the President says you have to scale back holiday gifts, and he doesn’t want you to access
Judges that have made decisions against Trump continue to be under threat of violence and death as are their families. This headline is from 
Jennifer Bowers Bahney–
CNN reports that “Trump says the government will revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.”
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