We’re moving closer to the midterm elections. Yesterday, there were some important primaries in Texas. Another of Trump’s enemies–John Cornyn–went down in flames, and now he’ll join other losers like Bill Cassidy who are now free to criticize his policies. Is it possible that Texas could turn purple in 2026? Here’s the latest:
Ken Paxton, the Trump-endorsed and MAGA-backed insurgent, ousted Senator John Cornyn in a runoff on Tuesday, becoming the second primary challenger to knock out an incumbent Republican senator in less than two weeks in a raw display of President Trump’s powerful hold on the party base.
Texas Senator John Cornyn
The contest was the most expensive primary in American history — and Mr. Paxton prevailed despite being outspent on advertising by pro-Cornyn forces by roughly $80 million.
Now, Republicans are bracing for a potentially competitive general election in Texas, where Democrats have not won statewide in a generation. Democratic donors nationwide have swooned for their nominee, James Talarico, a smooth-talking 37-year-old seminarian and state legislator, in the hopes he will realize their long-dashed dreams of turning Texas blue.
National Republicans have warned for months that Mr. Paxton’s scandal-riddled past could put the Republican-held seat in jeopardy. But G.O.P. primary voters proved on Tuesday that they were in no mood for political guidance from Mr. Cornyn or a much-reviled party establishment.
The scope of his defeat was staggering. Mr. Cornyn, once the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, was trailing in nearly all of Texas’ 254 counties.
Here are Goldmacher’s takeways from the election. You can read more details on each with the gift link above.
— Cornyn’s defeat is another proof point of Trump’s sway.
— An ugly G.O.P. primary could take time to heal.
— The general election is going to have a Texas-size price tag.
— Cornyn’s loss could reverberate on Capitol Hill, too.
— An old-guard Democrat [Rep. Al Green] goes down.
— Crypto spent big and won.
— A sheriff’s deputy prevails over a sex therapist accused of antisemitism.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the Republican Senate primary in his state Tuesday night, ousting incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.
Paxton excited President Trump and his MAGA base. But many Republican leaders and strategists are worried.
Few politicians have garnered as much scandal in Texas as Paxton. He was impeached by the Republican-controlled state House on multiple charges of abuse of office. His own senior staffers reported him to the FBI, alleging he illegally used his position to help a prominent donor. His wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year on “biblical grounds,” citing adultery.
Ken Paxton
And yet, Paxton has repeatedly come out on top. The state Senate acquitted him on all charges, and the FBI dropped its investigation. Paxton won reelection for his current job twice and defeated Cornyn, one of the best-funded Republicans in the country, with a fraction of the resources and institutional support.
Senate Republicans are now nervous they’ll have to pour boatloads of cash into the race to prop up Paxton against state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic candidate in the race. Talarico has blown past fundraising records for a contest that is likely to break spending records.
Why is Paxton so controversial?
The state House impeached Paxton in 2023 on overwhelmingly bipartisan grounds, with 60 Republicans joining 61 Democrats. Only 21 Republicans voted against impeachment charges.
The charges stemmed from his relationship with Nate Paul, a real estate developer and political donor. Paxton allegedly ordered his employees to improperly intervene in Paul’s legal troubles. Paul allegedly provided Paxton free services including a home renovation and a job for a woman with whom Paxton was allegedly having an extramarital affair. Paxton was also charged with retaliating against whistleblowers on his staff who had reported his conduct to the FBI in 2020.
Paxton was tried on 16 charges in the Senate, which acquitted him on all of them. His wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, was part of the Senate jury, though she was not allowed to vote.
The Justice Department continued investigating the allegations made by his senior staff to the FBI but closed its investigation at the end of the Biden administration.
Paxton was also indicted on felony securities fraud charges just after becoming attorney general in 2015. He was charged, as a state senator, with defrauding his fellow lawmakers by encouraging them to invest in Servergy, a tech company where he was secretly making a commission on their investments. He agreed to settle the case in 2024, paying $300,000 in restitution, though he never admitted to any wrongdoing. That case was unrelated to his impeachment.
It’s hard to believe this guy is still in office. But Trump likes him, and I guess that’s enough for Texas Republican voters.
President Donald Trump proved once again that his endorsement is, as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton put it in his primary runoff victory speech Tuesday night, “the most powerful force in politics.”
One by one, Trump is putting an end to the political careers of lawmakers in his party that he deems, for reasons more personal than policy-oriented, to be apostates. But in doing so, he may also be liberating them as they serve out their remaining seven months in Congress. They now have nothing to lose if they stand up against him.
By giving belated independence to a handful of incumbents he vanquished at the ballot box or forced into retirement, the president is creating a growingly noxious dynamic between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Thom Tillis
“It’s hard for me to see how the president is going to get his agenda through the Senate in the next seven months if he keeps purging Republican senators who support him,” former senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) told CBS News last week. “… I think Republican senators will find they can say what they think and the country will be better off if they do.”
In his Trump-engineered defeat, Sen. John Cornyn joins a club of two other Republicans in the chamber, where their party holds a 53-47 majority. The other two are already expressing resistance to the president’s dictates.
One is Thom Tillis (North Carolina). Under a barrage of Trump attacks for opposing parts of the president’s agenda — including the sprawling One Big Beautiful Bill that was its domestic centerpiece — Tillis announced his retirement last year rather than making what was deemed to be a hopeless bid for a third term.
Tillis has since become a regular Trump critic. He has criticized the Justice Department’s recently announced “anti-weaponization fund,” which could allow the Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to receive taxpayer dollars, as “stupid on stilts” and said: “These people don’t deserve restitution. Many of them deserve to be in prison.”
Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), who failed to even make the runoff in his party’s May 16 primary, voted for the first time a few days later to advance a resolution to block Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran without congressional authorization.
If you want to read more, you can use the gift link above. I’m using up my gift articles because it’s close to the end of the month.
Paxton will now face Democrat James Talarico in November.
In the end, James Talarico and Democrats got the matchup they had been salivating over for months.
Within two hours of Ken Paxton’s GOP primary win on Tuesday, Talarico had hauled in $600,000 — the strongest two hours of his entire campaign. Recent internal polling from a pro-Talarico PAC shows the Democrat has a 7-point lead against Paxton. Both figures were shared first with POLITICO.
In an interview, Talarico said he’s confident about his chances.
But Talarico faces a Texas-sized challenge to finally deliver on Democrats’ long-held fantasy of flipping the state, just two years after Trump won it by 14 points….
James Talarico
Talarico said Tuesday night that to win in November, he must convert supporters of Sen. John Cornyn — a conservative by almost any metric, except Trump’s. After Cornyn conceded, Talarico thanked the four-term incumbent for his service and told his supporters “you have a place in our campaign.”
It’s all part of his general election pitch, which Talarico outlined in the interview following Paxton’s primary win.
“I have a legislative record that I think has a lot to offer supporters of Senator Cornyn. Ken Paxton has a criminal record. I have a legislative record,” Talarico told POLITICO (Paxton struck a deal in 2024 where he paid restitution and securities fraud felony charges were dropped). He emphasized his history reaching across the aisle “to cut property taxes and raise teacher pay and lower the cost of housing and child care and prescription drugs,” and touted his willingness to break with Democrats on issues including energy and the border that are important in Texas.
“I’ve called out the extremes in both parties, on the right and left, and as you know, called out President Biden for failing to secure our southern border,” he said. “I’ve pushed back against national Democrats who want to hurt the Texas oil and gas industry and so I think that Texans are looking for a senator who is going to be independent, who’s not going to serve a political party, not going to serve any special interests or megadonors, but who’s going to serve people of Texas.”
We’ll have to wait and see. The dream of Texas going blue again has been with us for a long time, but so far it hasn’t come close to happening.
While it’s tempting to be skeptical, a blue Texas is increasingly easy to imagine. It’s even easier to imagine after Ken Paxton’s victory over John Cornyn, the incumbent senator, in the Republican primary runoff on Tuesday night.
That’s partly because Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general, has distinct political liabilities. He’s faced investigation, indictment,impeachment and a messy public divorce.
But there’s another reason Democrats might pull off a statewide win for the first time in three decades: demographics. Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country, and national polls show Democrats surging back in support among young and nonwhite voters — and especially Hispanic voters.
On paper, these national demographic trends ought to send Texas racing toward the left and into contention. Add in Mr. Paxton’s nomination and you can start to see how Democrats could flip Texas this fall.
After a decade of big talk from Democrats about Texas, it’s understandable that people could harbor some doubt about flipping the nation’s largest red state. Judging by presidential election results, Democrats barely made any progress at all: President Trump won Texas by almost 14 percentage points in 2024.
But beneath the state’s stable Republican voting record, extraordinary demographic shifts have put Texas Republicans in a much more vulnerable position. To an extent few would have imagined a decade ago, Texas’ status as a reliably Republican state now depends on elevated levels of support among Hispanic voters.
Read more at the gift link.
Let’s face it. Democrats have to take back the House if we are to have any hope of impeaching Trump. They need to take the Senate too, but even if that happens, they won’t have the votes to remove him. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to impeach him. Democrats need to do everything in their power to weaken Trump, because he obviously has no plans to leave the White House unless he is dragged out or carried out on a stretcher.
Iran war news:
The Trump administration and the Iran government disagree about what is in their supposed peace agreement.
Iranian state television on Wednesday released what it said were details of “an initial, unofficial document” outlining the framework for an agreement between Iran and the United States that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic.
The White House immediately dismissed the report as a “complete fabrication,” and it was not clear whether the United States and Iran were any closer to an agreement.
Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB, said that under the framework, Iran would allow shipping to resume through the strait in return for an end to the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports. For days, the two sides have been alternating between renewing hostilities and issuing positive signals.
In its framing of the draft, the broadcaster presented it as a broad victory for Iran while cautioning that it was not final.
The report said that, under the agreement, commercial marine traffic would return to prewar levels within a month of the framework’s implementation. It also said that Iran would handle the strait’s management in cooperation with the Gulf state of Oman, a U.S. ally.
A bit more:
The reopening of the strait was the only one of the five main sticking points in negotiations that was mentioned in the brief report. The waterway is a crucial route for the world’s oil and gas that Iran has effectively closed since March. There was no reference to the future of Iran’s nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium
The report said the framework included a U.S. pledge to “withdraw its military forces from the areas surrounding Iran” without specifying the geographic area included. The United States has a number of military sites in neighboring Iraq and nearby Gulf countries.
“Whether this includes forces newly deployed to the region or only permanent base personnel remains subject to negotiation,” the report said.
Trump called a cabinet meeting to discuss the situation.
The administration’s new plan would also keep U.S. citizens who might have been exposed to Ebola out of the country, according to two of the people with knowledge of the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
A few dozen Public Health Service officers are now being trained to deploy to Kenya to provide medical care to Americans who are deemed at high risk of developing Ebola. The initial plan was to monitor those Americans in Kenya, but to move anyone who started to show symptoms for treatment in Europe.
Because we no longer have a real CDC, and Trump, Musk, and RFK, Jr. fired all the disease experts.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has asked staff to volunteer for urgent deployment to support Ebola screening at the country’s entry points, according to an email seen by Reuters on Tuesday.
CDC Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya said in the email that the agency had activated a Level 2 emergency response on May 18 to an outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and was expanding recruitment beyond its usual emergency responder pool as screening of selected international arrivals ramps up.
Level 2 is an intermediate level of emergency response. It indicates a need for substantial additional staffing to meet response demands, according to the CDC’s website.
The CDC said enhanced screening operations are already under way at several port health stations and will require additional personnel. Staff across roles, including public health advisers, emergency specialists and licensed medical providers, are being asked to support the effort, subject to supervisor approval.
Volunteers could be tasked with monitoring incoming travelers for signs of illness, checking temperatures and referring suspected cases for further assessment, according to the email.
Unbelievable. Ebola remains dormant for weeks after exposure. What if people don’t report exposures or don’t realize they’ve been exposed? We’re going to have a lot of Ebola cases here, aren’t we?
Construction is under way on the White House lawn for an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) arena that will host a cage match next month to mark the US’s 250th anniversary and Donald Trump’s 80th birthday.
The mixed martial arts fight is planned for 14 June.
Photos of cranes and other construction equipment on the White House lawn on Tuesday showed the beginnings of the temporary construction. Trump has said that the finished project will feature “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House”.
Online renderings depict what the completed, wire-mesh-fence-ringed fight space is expected to look like. The octagon-shaped cage will be ringed by a red, white and blue stage under a towering arch featuring stars and stripes patterns and two large screens carrying the action live.
The cage and stage will themselves be surrounded by thousands of temporary seats, including ringside space for a full marching band that can set the entire scene to blaring music.
In December, Trump said the White House event would host “eight or nine championship fights – the biggest fights they’ve ever had”. But like the size of the crowd, the number of fights expected to be held on the White House
lawn has shrunk. The fight card includes two title fights: a lightweight championship fight between Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje in the main event, and an interim heavyweight title fight between Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane.
This is beyond disgusting. I feel like I’m going to throw up.
I’ll end there, even though there are plenty more Trump messes that someone will have to clean up. Hang in there everyone. We can and will survive!
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Oh, how happy I would be to come across something like that…
A livestream of a volcano in the Philippines captured a meteor crashing to Earth today. What are the odds?Mayon Volcano, Location: Albay, Luzon, Philippines
“Hopefully, funded by seizure of Trump’s ill-gotten gains.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s another Memorial Day where we recognize and show our gratitude for the 1.3 million soldiers who died in the service of our country. We’re still not savvy enough to stop the wars. We’re now in a hot one started by the idiot who told us the black lady would take us to war. This war is not going well.
I’m going to start with this analysis by Dr. Paul Krugman. This is his contribution on his SubStack today. “Donald Trump’s Ego-Driven ‘Excursion’ Has Crashed Into Reality. Trump lost his war, bigly. Why?”
“Many questions, few details in latest Iran peace proposal,” read the headline on a New York Times report Sunday. As the subhead explained, “It is too early to tell what exactly Trump and Iran have agreed to, or if they have agreed to much at all.” The article, by the way, was written by David Sanger, who Trump called “treasonous” over his clearly accurate reporting on how badly the war was going.
But, in fact, Trump’s Iran war may be over, or virtually over. America lost.
Iran may or may not agree to exercise restraint in its control over the Strait of Hormuz and its nuclear program. But as Donald Trump of all people should know, agreements can be broken. At a fundamental level Trump, who began by demanding UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER and trying to impose a subservient new regime, is now slinking away, leaving Iran’s hard-liners empowered — and America’s reputation shattered.
How did that happen? America is a superpower, Iran a middle-sized regional power at best. Spending isn’t the only determinant of armed might, but even so a comparison of the two government’s military budgets is ludicrously one-sided:
Yet the Iranian regime is not only still standing, it is stronger than before. Meanwhile, Trump is running away.
Trump’s disastrous leadership isn’t the sole factor behind this debacle, although it’s a large part of the story. In my view there are four main reasons Trump’s Iran “excursion” is ending in humiliation.
First, this was a fundamentally unwinnable war.
You may read his rationale at the link. The funniest thing is that the regime in Iran just will not let Trump tell lies about their situation. This is from NBC News. “Iran says no deal ‘imminent’ despite progress in talks with U.S. Secretary of State. Marco Rubio said earlier Monday that an agreement could be finalized ‘today,’ though he cautioned that if talks fail, Washington would find ‘another way’ to resolve the situation.” Yuliya Talmazan has the story.
While Tehran acknowledged progress but played down the idea that an announcement could come soon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a deal was still possible Monday.
An agreement could be finalized “today,” Rubio said during a trip to India. He cautioned that if talks fail, Washington would find “another way” to resolve the situation.
As a flurry of diplomacy unfolded from the Middle East to China, Iran’s top negotiators were in Qatar — an increasingly central player in the accelerating efforts to secure a deal that would end the three-month war and restore shipping through the crucial Strait of Hormuz trade route.
On Monday morning, Trump warned that while negotiations were proceeding “nicely,” fighting would resume “bigger and stronger than ever before” if the talks failed.
Trump had said Sunday that he would not “rush into a deal,” a step back from earlier public statements from the president and officials from both nations that indicated an announcement may be close.
Trump also explicitly linked an Iran deal with the Abraham Accords, calling on a number of nations in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to join the breakthrough agreements between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Orange Caligula is basically ill and beyond incompetent. Tom Nichols has this analysis at The Atlantic. “Trump’s War Is Staggering to an Incoherent Defeat. Even the president’s supporters are alarmed.” The Presidential Venn Diagram over there sums it up nicely. The buzz has really gotten to him. It’s obvious he can’t make a decent deal. It completely blows his image
No one yet knows the details of the Iran deal that President Trump has been teasing on social media for the past day or so. The president himself has admonished his followers not to “listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about.” But as this war stumbles to a close, it is clear that the president, too, is lost: He didn’t know what he was doing when he began it, and now he doesn’t know how to get out of it.
Only a day ago, Trump was trying to project confidence. Yesterday, he hailed an agreement with Iran as mostly done; it was, he said on his Truth Social site, “largely negotiated” and close to “finalization.” The Iranians, of course, immediately disputed this characterization, and by the next day, Trump was backpedaling. “If I make a deal with Iran,” he posted this afternoon, “it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon.” The agreement that was only a day earlier “largely negotiated” was now only a notional memorandum, and Trump griped that it was unfair to criticize it because “nobody has seen it, or knows what it is,” and it “isn’t even fully negotiated yet.”
By this afternoon, Trump was reduced to posting a meme of a jet carrying a bomb under its wing with Thank you for your attention to this matter written on it.
Many of those most alarmed about what Trump might end up accepting to get out of this dead-end conflict in Iran are not his critics, but his supporters. Trump’s enablers may not have access to the details of an agreement, but they’re clearly worried: Senators Lindsey Graham, Roger Wicker, and Ted Cruz were all posting expressions of shock and dismay on social media. Graham said that any deal that caves to Iran “makes one wonder why the war started to begin with”; Wicker said that a possible 60-day cease-fire would be a “disaster.” Cruz gently suggested that the tsar does not know what his devious boyars are up to, describing the deal as “being pushed by some voices in the administration.”
Even Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser, posted a long screed warning Trump not to make a deal. “I know you want to get out of this mess,” he said. He then counseled the president to “give it some thought.” Trump’s former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo weighed in as well, comparing the possible outline of a deal to the kind of thing Barack Obama’s team might have come up when designing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and warning that it could mean that America would end up paying “the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world.” Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, during his first term, and he regularly speaks of the JCPOA (and Obama) with contempt; Pompeo’s comparison was sure to infuriate the Trump team.
And sure enough, Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, responded almost immediately to Pompeo—and gave the world a glimpse of what appears to be some sweaty panic building inside the White House. “Mike Pompeo has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about,” Cheung posted on X. “He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know?” (Cheung also kept posting updates about Trump working in the Oval Office on a Saturday, as if this were an amazing illustration of the president’s work ethic.)
Trump’s worried sycophants probably know that the details of an eventual agreement likely do not matter very much at this point. As my colleague David Frum noted earlier today, the war has already ended with America’s strategic defeat by the Islamic Republic of Iran, an outcome for which Trump is directly responsible. How much Iran will get away with, and how much humiliation the United States will endure, has yet to be ironed out by the negotiators, but the war is now almost certain to end with Tehran’s theocrats firmly in power, and with a stronger chokehold both on their own people and on the international economy than they had three months ago.
There’s definitely a pattern here. The smell of failure is everywhere. This is from The Hill. Steff Danielle Thomas has the lede. “Trump urges Gulf allies to join Abraham Accords amid US-Iran talks.
The pressure comes as the two nations are reportedly working on a deal to extend the ceasefire in the region and reopen the Strait of Hormuz — while also laying the groundwork for broader talks over Tehran’s embattled nuclear program and potential sanctions relief. Officials on both sides have cautioned that key elements remain under negotiation.
“Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are proceeding nicely! It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before — And nobody wants that!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
The president said he spoke with multiple regional leaders over the weekend, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
“I stated that, after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords,” he continued, acknowledging that the UAE and Bahrain were already members.
“It may be possible that one or two have a reason for not doing so, and that will be accepted, but most should be ready, willing, and able to make this Settlement with Iran a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be,” Trump added.
The Abraham Accords were established in 2020 under the first Trump administration to broker ties between Israel and the Gulf states.
In his Memorial Day post, the president pressed Saudi Arabia and Qatar to join first, “and everybody else should follow suit.”
“If they don’t, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intension,” he added.
As negotiations between U.S. and Iranian officials continue, Trump said Sunday that his administration would not “rush” into any deal, adding “time is on our side.” The emerging framework, however, is drawing intense criticism from Republicans, who compared parts of it to the Obama-era nuclear agreement.
Meanwhile, Trump’s still trying to kill us by not allowing our doctors and researchers to take part in any sort of international collaboration on any potential global health issue. This story comes from Sarah Owermohle, reporting for CNN. “Exclusive: Trump admin shutting key US researchers out of global virus response talks, documents and sources reveal.”
Key officials responsible for leading US research on infectious disease threats have been barred from speaking directly with the World Health Organization — effectively shutting some of them out of the global discussions on virus outbreaks, according to documents and multiple sources who spoke to CNN.
The Trump administration issued the directive stopping individuals at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from communicating with the WHO.
The federal health subagency was led for decades by Dr. Anthony Fauci and oversaw developing treatments for public health emergencies including HIV/AIDs and Covid-19.
The prohibition has been in place during an outbreak of hantavirus that some Americans have been exposed to. The communication limits were relaxed slightly in the past week as another virus outbreak — an unfolding Ebola epidemic centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo — intensified.
Now, some NIAID officials can attend virtual WHO meetings, but only in small groups and only in a “listening capacity,” according to a May 18 email from a senior NIAID official to staff obtained by CNN. Any follow-up to those meetings would be handled by the Department of Health and Human Services, NIAID’s parent agency.
“We’ll be operating in the same manner for Ebola as we have been doing for Hantavirus, assembling a small groups of experts — no more than three — to participate,” the email said. “Should we have legitimate research questions or countermeasure testing ideas, we can bring those up through the proper chain of command.”
The restrictions hobble quick cooperation with global counterparts, multiple current and former health officials said. One staffer characterized it as unheard of during a US response to emerging public health emergencies.
The directive is part of a broader Trump administration retreat from participation in global health forums — the US withdrew from WHO in January at President Donald Trump’s direction, a move that was widely criticized by public health officials — and as many US health agencies are operating with interim heads.
Among the vacant positions are the director of the infectious disease agency; surgeon general; head of the Food and Drug Administration; deputy health secretary; and head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a leadership vacuum that observers say is unprecedented.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said it “engages with the WHO to support information sharing and coordination during infectious disease outbreaks” through the CDC — which is on the ground in disease outbreaks — and it is “fully equipped to protect Americans and mitigate risks.”
“Teams across the Department coordinate on key response areas, including contact tracing, diagnostics, and medical countermeasures, to avoid duplication and reduce confusion in outbreak response efforts,” the spokesperson said.
Trump has once again tried to make a presidential-sounding speech on Memorial Day. I’m running late on everything today, and I’m lucky I missed it. However, the news reports are coming in. Here’s the take from Lee Moran at HuffPost. “Donald Trump Marks Memorial Day With Early-Morning Online Rampage At
Donald Trump kicked off the Memorial Day holiday on Monday in what has become something of a tradition in recent years by taking aim at his political opponents on social media.
The president began posting on his Truth Social platform at 6:10 a.m., slamming critics of a potential deal with Iran to end the war he launched in February as “losers.”
Eight minutes later, at 6:18 a.m., Trump offered a “Happy Memorial Day” message, including to whom he called the “Dumocrats,” his latest nickname for Democrats, who he claimed, “disrespect our Military and all of the tremendous success that it has had over the last year.”
“God Bless those that have made the ultimate sacrifice. I love you all!” added Trump, whose military strikes on Iran have killed 13 U.S. troops.
I’m putting up this crazy Truth Social post by Trump because it really shows how crazy and obsessed he’s become. It even contains a reference to my soon-to-be-out-of-a-job Senator, Bill Cassidy. Isn’t this about the most pathetic thing you’ve ever read?
So, the rain is relentless here. Everything is drenched, and even my garden looks waterlogged. I’m basically going to stay home and do something quiet and relaxing. Peace always starts by keeping the TV News off.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
This is one of my favorite anti-war songs, sung by Glen Campbell and written by one of my favorite songwriters, Jimmy Webb. It was one of the great hits in 1969 with a very Americana style about the Vietnam War.
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BREAKING: Gunshots were heard outside the White House moments ago, with reports estimating approximately 20-30 shots fired. Secret Service instructed members of the press present on the grounds to immediately run inside the press briefing room as the situation unfolded.
The 21-year-old who pulled a revolver out of a bag and opened fire at Secret Service agents outside the White House died after being shot, according to CNN.
CNN reporters heard what appeared to be dozens of gunshots near the White House on Saturday, triggering a lockdown and a rapid response from the US Secret Servicewww.cnn.com/2026/05/23/p…
Autopsies show how hard doctors tried to save babies who died after not getting a vitamin K shot: tubes inserted in their airways, blood transfusions.They’re excruciating to read because they underscore how preventable these deaths could have been.By @deldeib.bsky.social
BREAKING: President Trump announces "largely negotiated" agreement with Iran that would include reopening the Strait of Hormuz.www.ms.now/news/trump-i…
Authorities in Southern California on Friday were racing to figure out how to prevent the explosion of a storage tank that has been leaking a hazardous chemical used to make plastic parts, as some 40,000 people were under evacuation orders in the area. https://to.pbs.org/3RYklt5
Not enough people are talking about this. A Florida airport was renamed after Donald Trump. He walked away with the trademark, the licensing rights, and a deal that lets him profit off every piece of merchandise sold there.www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026…
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and there’s not a whole lot of exciting news today. We’re still dealing with the most corrupt president and cabinet in history. Trump is still evil and certifiably insane. Here’s what’s happening today.
Trump snubbed his eldest son by refusing to attend his wedding this weekend. He usually spends his weekends playing golf and was scheduled to go to his golf club in New Jersey his weekend; but after the announcement that he wasn’t going to the wedding, trump decided to stay in DC.
President Donald Trump has returned his eldest son’s wedding RSVP with only a day’s notice, announcing to Truth Social that he will not attend.
Trump, 79, officially snubbed Donald Trump Jr. in a Friday afternoon post—then quickly changed his weekend schedule to show he was no longer planning on golfing in New Jersey as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., says “I do.”
“While I very much wanted to be with my son, Don Jr., and the newest member of the Trump Family, his soon to be wife, Bettina, circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America, do not allow me to do so,” Trump claimed. “I feel it is important for me to remain in Washington, D.C., at the White House during this important period of time. Congratulations to Don and Bettina!”
A public schedule for the president initially said he intended to spend the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey—more than 200 miles away from the White House. However, Axios reported shortly after Trump’s announcement that he will now spend the holiday weekend in Washington.
Don Jr. and Bettina Anderson, who began dating after the younger Trump dumped Kimberly Guilfoyle in late 2024, will tie the knot on a private island in the Bahamas on Saturday in front of a small group of family and friends.
Sprung with a question about the wedding in the Oval Office on Thursday, the president hinted that he could not make the trip because of the war with Iran.
“He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small little private affair, and I’m going to try and make it, I’m in the midst—,” Trump said before cutting himself off. “I said, ‘You know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things.’”
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, married socialite Bettina Anderson on Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida, according to Palm Beach County records.
A private wedding celebration is expected to take place Saturday in the Bahamas, Page Six reported. President Donald Trump indicated Thursday that he will not be in attendance, saying the date “was not good timing for me,” citing the ongoing war in Iran and other presidential matters. The president was initially scheduled to be in Bedminster, New Jersey, this weekend but is now expected to be at the White House….
Anderson comes from a prominent Palm Beach family. Her father is Harry Loy Anderson Jr., a banker and philanthropist.
Is Trump actually planning military actions this weekend? He has been threatening more strikes in Iran and is suggesting the possibility of regime change in Cuba.
President Trump was in the Oval Office on Friday morning with his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in what appeared to be a review of military options for potentially resuming the bombing campaign against Iran.
The existence of the meeting was revealed by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a graduation ceremony at the Naval Academy. While he said nothing about the substance of the meeting, the timing was notable, as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and its blockage of the Strait of Hormuz appear to have hit a dead end.
There is no shortage of targets, should Mr. Trump, in coordination with Israel, decide to resume the assault on Iran that paused on April 8. There are energy facilities left untouched after about 38 days of bombing, the deep underground nuclear storage site at Isfahan where Iran’s supply of near-bomb-grade uranium is already under rubble, and missile sites that were attacked back in March but appear to have been dug out.
And after weeks of declaring that an agreement was near, and then that the Iranians were “dangling” him, negotiations seem to be at a standstill. Mr. Trump announced on Friday that he was skipping the wedding this weekend of his son and namesake, Donald Trump Jr., because of “circumstances pertaining to the Government, and my love of the United States of America.” [….]
Now he has to deal with the reality that after five weeks of war and six weeks of cease-fire, he has failed to force Iran’s leaders to relent. Mr. Trump frequently notes — accurately — that Iran’s navy has been sunk and its air force destroyed, and that many of its missile sites and military bases have been reduced to rubble or badly damaged. But the destruction has not translated into victory.
Crucially, the near-bomb-grade nuclear uranium remains where it has been since Mr. Trump ordered a bombing raid on three nuclear sites nearly a year ago, deep underground at Isfahan. Iran’s missile capability has been degraded, but not destroyed. And the Strait of Hormuz has fallen under Iran’s control, even as the U.S. Navy intercepts shipments headed into or out of Iranian ports.
If Mr. Trump orders new combat operations, the political risks are high. Already gas prices are over five dollars a gallon in some parts of the country, and renewed military activity could send them even higher. Popular sentiment is clearly against the war, a range of public opinion polls show, and Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted to around 37 percent.
You can use the gift link to read about Trump’s options for military action in Iran.
Washington is also warning that a peaceful agreement with the Caribbean nation is unlikely, while Cuba says the US is using a “fraudulent case” to justify military intervention….
Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has made clear his desire to change Havana’s leadership and has openly mused that Cuba is “ready to fall”.
In March, he suggested the country was in “deep trouble” as he threatened a “friendly takeover”.
There has been no announcement of plans for any military intervention but Cuba is on edge, especially as surveillance activity in the Caribbean increases.
Leaving the flight transponders on “is likely deliberate”, said UK drone expert Dr Steve Wright, with the US intending to send “a clear message it has eyes in the sky to maintain the squeeze”.
It also quoted a US official who said the intelligence – which it characterised as a potential pretext for US military intervention – suggested Iranian military advisers were in Havana.
When CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Havana last week for a rare meeting with senior Cuban officials, he brought along one of the operators involved in the U.S. mission to capture then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, multiple people familiar with the matter told CBS News.
Venezuela and Cuba were allies before Maduro’s arrest, and the Cuban government has said 32 of its military and police officers were killed in the January operation to extract Maduro.
Ratcliffe made a point of introducing the paramilitary leader to the Cubans as the one who killed their people in Venezuela, several sources said.
The presence of a paramilitary officer who was involved in capturing a key partner of the Cuban government just months earlier may have been intended to send a signal….
Ratcliffe’s visit followed months of pressure on Cuba. The administration has threatened steep tariffs on any countries that export oil to the island nation, leading to severe fuel shortages.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the country needs to make fundamental economic and political reforms, and President Trump has floated a “friendly takeover” of the island, which has vexed U.S. administrations since Cuba’s communist movement rose to power in 1959.
Hours after the Maduro raid, Rubio pointed to Cuba’s ties to Venezuela, telling reporters that Venezuela’s “whole spy agency” was “full of Cubans.”
“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit,” he said.
Here’s hoping there won’t be any US bombs dropped anywhere this weekend.
More foreign intervention news: Trump is still meddling in Greenland. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who is also Trump’s “envoy” to Greenland showed up there this week.
President Donald Trump’s envoy to Greenland says he got a warm welcome on his first visit this week. But the mood on the Arctic island was decidedly frostier, with one of its most prominent lawmakers calling the visit “appalling” and “offensive.”
Pipaluk Lynge, who chairs Greenland’s foreign and security policy committee, slammed Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s trip as “a clear attempt to divide us” during the sensitive negotiations on the future of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
She singled out his attempts to offer chocolate chip cookies to a group of Greenlandic children, seen by some as a surreal effort to win approval despite grown-up Greenlanders saying no to American advances.
“I think it’s remarkable that they feel welcome even though they weren’t invited,” Lynge said in an interview with NBC News.
Trump has caused outrage in Greenland and Europe by suggesting he could use force to seize the island, which has vast mineral resources and is strategically positioned in a region increasingly contested between the United States, Russia and China. Most officials and experts agree that were the U.S. to invade a fellow NATO member, it would spell the end of the troubled military alliance.
While Trump has rowed back these explicit militaristic threats, his designs on Greenland have not gone away. Arriving this week, Landry said his mission was to “make friends” but also that it was time for Washington “to put its footprint back” on the Arctic territory.
There was little evidence of any friendliness on the street, with the governor being heckled by people shouting “Don’t come here” and others giving him the finger.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges that the “anti-weaponization” fund creates a politically discriminatory process that excludes individuals like the plaintiffs, who say they were mistreated by Republican officials and administrations.
“By its own terms, the Anti-Weaponization Fund is available only to claimants who assert that they were targeted by ‘Democrat’ administrations, even though the current administration has weaponized the awesome power of the federal government against its perceived political opponents like no other administration before it,” the suit states.
“First, hundreds of people attacked the foundation of an ordered society by trying to stop the results of a free and fair election—committing serious assaults on law enforcement and other crimes as they did so,” Floyd said in a statement, referring to the failed effort by Trump supporters to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Then, this administration pardoned them — removing the accountability that had been hard earned by victims, witnesses, law enforcement, and prosecutors and imposed by impartial jurors and judges. Now they are asking taxpayers to illegally reward them for their crimes,” he said.
Another plaintiff is Cal State Channel Islands professor Jonathan Caravello, who was acquitted of an assault on law enforcement charge over an incident last summer in which he picked up a tear gas canister that had been deployed by federal agents during a protest against an immigration raid at a California cannabis farm.
The city of New Haven, the National Abortion Federation and the watchdog group Common Cause also joined the suit. All the plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, a progressive nonprofit legal group that filed more than 150 lawsuits in the first year of Trump’s second term.
Read more details about the lawsuit at the NBC link.
The Justice Department has removed press releases detailing the charges against hundreds of individuals who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot from its website, the department confirmed Friday.
“Nothing ‘quiet’ about it,” the DOJ Rapid Response X account said in a post replying to allegations that the Justice Department had deleted press releases related to Jan. 6.
“We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration,” the post continued. “We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”
A review by NBC News found that the vast majority of press releases pertaining to Jan. 6 defendants have been removed from the DOJ website as of Friday evening.
The move to wipe hundreds of press releases from the official government site is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to reframe the Jan. 6 siege and to paint the rioters who participated in it as victims.
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump mass pardoned the rioters. Soon after, Justice Department officials and FBI agents who were a part of the Jan. 6 investigation and prosecutions were fired.
After acting Attorney General Todd Blanche did not rule out Jan. 6 rioters’ eligibility to be paid by the fund, outrage swelled from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
It appears that Trump is losing support among Senate Republicans after announcing this naked attempt to steal nearly $1.8 billion from US taxpayers. Acting AG Todd Blanche met with GOP Senators yesterday, and it did not go well.
Screaming, yelling and accusations of self-dealing.
That’s how Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Friday described a closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that’s drawn bipartisan opposition.
On his podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” the Texas senator described the meeting as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.”
“Fiery does not begin to cut it,” Cruz said. “My guess is there’re probably 45 senators in the room, at least half of them were blasting the attorney general, and they were pissed.”
Senate Republicans met with Blanche on Thursday to discuss the fund, which ultimately derailed a vote on a Republican bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, NBC News previously reported.
Cruz said several of his GOP colleagues felt that they could not politically defend the fund because it appeared as though President Donald Trump “cut a deal with himself.”
“There were multiple senators yelling at the attorney general, saying this feels like self-dealing,” Cruz said.
“I got to tell you, the Republican senators were pissed — people were the entire meeting. They were screaming at the acting attorney general, and he was trying to lay out the legal basis,” Cruz said, adding “the legal basis is quite sound.”
A bit more:
Cruz said on his podcast that if the Senate had gone forward with planned series of votes pertaining to the ICE and Border Patrol bill Thursday night, roughly half of the Republican caucus would have voted with Democrats in favor of amendments seeking to rein in the fund.
He emphasized “the degree of the jailbreak of Republicans who were bolting, who were saying we’re going to vote with the Democrats.”
Cruz warned that if the administration does not modify the anti-weaponization fund by the time Congress comes back into session, “they’ve got a full-on revolt in the Senate.”
Howard Lutnick, President Trump’s secretary of commerce, made a $5 million donation last month to a committee supporting House Republicans, an unusually large contribution for a sitting cabinet secretary.
Mr. Lutnick gave the money to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC behind House Republicans and Speaker Mike Johnson, according to a new filing made public on Thursday. Mr. Lutnick has recently been a major Republican donor, but this was his first contribution since being named commerce secretary. It ties his largest-ever federal donation, $5 million he gave to Mr. Trump’s super PAC in 2024….
Federal employees are permitted to make donations, but it is rare to see such a high-ranking official donate such a significant amount. Mr. Lutnick is the first Trump cabinet official to make a seven-figure disclosed federal donation after being confirmed to a post, according to a review of federal election filings.
The closest analogue in Mr. Trump’s administration was the role played by Elon Musk during his stint as a part-time government employee, during which he continued to donate millions to conservative causes.
Lutnik should be fired.
Before I wrap this up, here are two significant immigration stories:
A federal judge on Fridaydismissed the Justice Department’s human-smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego García, ruling that the Trump administration improperly brought it to punish him for successfully challenging his illegal deportation last year.
U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. in Tennessee wrote that “evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power.”
The decision delivered an extraordinary defeat for the administration, which marshaled the resources of multiple federal agencies to publicly malignAbrego after court rulings concluded that officials had unlawfully deported him to his native El Salvador, in violation of a 2019 immigration court order.
Crenshaw’s ruling also marked the first time a judge validated what has become an increasingly common defense raised by high-profile defendants targeted by the Justice Department in Trump’s second term: the claim that they are being prosecuted not in pursuit of justice but rather for political revenge.
In a decision released Friday afternoon, the judge acknowledged the incredibly high bar defendants must meet to warrant a case’s dismissal on those grounds. It requires defense attorneys to prove that charges would not have been brought but for improper, vindictive motives on the part of government attorneys.
Crenshaw, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote that in Abrego’s case, itwas clear that the investigation into him was tainted “with a vindictive motive.”
Foreigners in the U.S. who want a green card will need to leave and apply in their home country, the Trump administration announced Friday, in a surprise change to a longstanding policy that sowed confusion and concern among aid groups, immigration lawyers and immigrants.
For over half a century, foreign nationals with legal status have been able to apply for and complete the entire process for permanent residence in the United States — including individuals married to U.S. citizens, holders of work and student visas, and refugees and political asylum seekers, among others.
The announcement from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said foreigners who are in the U.S. temporarily and who want to apply to become lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, have to return home and apply there, except in “extraordinary circumstances.” USCIS officers would decide whether applicants meet those.
“Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose. Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process,” the agency said in a statement.
That isn’t true. People have always been able to apply for Green Cards here in the US. For example, there are probably thousands of people working in important jobs at universities waiting to get Green Cards. These people are making valuable contributions to society. They may have married US citizens and had children. And now they are supposed to leave their jobs and families in order to get a Green Card? Back to the NPR story:
It is the latest step by the Trump administration making legal immigration more difficult for foreigners already in the U.S. and for those hoping to come here.
Hundreds of thousands apply for green cards from the U.S. each year
“The goal of this policy is very explicit. Senior officials in this administration have said over and over that they want fewer people to get permanent residency because permanent residency is a path to citizenship and they want to block that path for as many people as possible,” said Doug Rand, a former senior advisor at USCIS during the Biden administration, who added that about 600,000 people already in the U.S. apply each year for a green card.
USCIS did not say when the change would come into effect, whether individuals would be required to remain in another country throughout the entire process, or whether the policy impacts foreigners whose green card applications are already underway.
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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.
You may read his rationale at the link. The funniest thing is that the regime in Iran just will not let Trump tell lies about their situation. This is from 
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Orange Caligula is basically ill and beyond incompetent. Tom Nichols has this analysis at 
There’s definitely a pattern here. The smell of failure is everywhere. This is from 
Meanwhile, Trump’s still trying to kill us by not allowing our doctors and researchers to take part in any sort of international collaboration on any potential global health issue. This story comes from
Trump has once again tried to make a presidential-sounding speech on Memorial Day. I’m running late on everything today, and I’m lucky I missed it. However, the news reports are coming in. Here’s the take from Lee 
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