“Someone has to point this out. The opening of the Obama Presidential Center is an experience and immersion of joy, hope, love, and pride; the 250th anniversary of our founding could have been celebrated.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Cadet Bonespurs, the worst negotiator ever, has basically given away the U.S. and its wealth. He’s trying to make his Iran War debacle look like something other than a costly disaster that took the lives of our soldiers and innocent Iranian people. I’m going to let Bill Kristol and the rest of the conservative gang at The Bulwarksum this up.
Thanks to their operational control of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran was able to get away with murder in setting the terms of further peace talks with the United States—and now they’re pushing for even more. The first round of scheduled peace talks under the new memorandum of understanding were supposed to begin in Switzerland today, but Iran abruptly called them off yesterday, citing the intensifying conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, which they deemed a violation of the MOU’s terms. This morning (eastern time) the Republican Guard Corps Navy—which Trump claims doesn’t exist—once again closed the strait. The message was clear: If you want to negotiate, you’d better figure out how to get Israel in line.
“Trump just can’t stand that President Obama is in the spotlight with the opening of his Presidential Library.” @repeat1968, John Buss
I’m also going to use the next headline there this morning to wish you a happy, long Juneteenth weekend! “Celebrate Juneteenth. Annoy MAGA.” Well, don’t do it completely to just ignore them. Let’s be reminded of how many black Americans were once considered property and treated as such. We still have a long way to go to get rid of this burdensome legacy and the racism that still plagues us today, but at least, at many points in the country’s history, we were capable of doing the right thing.
Today is Juneteenth, a holiday long celebrated, especially by black Americans, to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. In 2021, Congress, recognizing that the end of slavery was an event worthy of formal recognition by the whole nation, established it as a federal holiday for all Americans. The holiday’s name refers to June 19, 1865, the day when Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 ordering the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”
In the midst of this year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the commemoration of Juneteenth can have special resonance. But not for the Trump administration, which, so far as I can tell, has not deigned to acknowledge the holiday this year. When I searched the White House website this morning for “Juneteenth,” I got back no results found. Nor does there seem to be any presidential proclamation this year in honor of its observance.
The one time the Trump administration seems to have taken notice of Juneteenth was in December of last year, when the administration removed Juneteenth (and MLK Day) from the National Park Service’s list of free-admission days, replacing it with June 14, Flag Day—which is not an official federal holiday. But it is President Trump’s birthday, and that is the holiday he wishes all of us to celebrate, as he celebrated it Sunday with the cage match on the White House lawn.
One understands why Trumpists choose to neglect Juneteenth. After all, Trump’s vice president claimed earlier this week at a campaign event in New York that “they’ve become anti-white in the Democratic party.” If you’re appealing to those who think one of our two major parties is “anti-white,” if you’re trying to convince Americans that anti-whiteness is a great problem, if you’re the party that wants to foster and exploit white grievance, then you have little interest in calling attention to a holiday that is a reminder of the terrible injustices caused by fantasies of white supremacy.
That last sentence hits home. And I say no more going high when they go low. Call it out for what it is.
Meanwhile, Iran’s ally Russia has amped up its rhetoric against Ukraine. “Russia threatens escalation after Ukraine hits Moscow with largest-ever drone attack.” This story comes from CNBC. It’s written by Sam Meredith.
Russia has pledged to carry out frequent and “massive group strikes” against Ukraine shortly after Kyiv launched a barrage of drones on Moscow, triggering a huge explosion in one of the Russian capital’s key oil refineries.
Ukrainian forces conducted a large-scale attack against Moscow on Wednesday evening and Thursday, heavily targeting a major oil refinery located on the south-eastern outskirts of the city.
Nearly 200 drones were reportedly used in the attack, marking Ukraine’s biggest-ever air raid on Russia’s capital. Authorities said 16 people had been injured, while four Moscow airports temporarily grounded flights.
Columns of black smoke were seen billowing from Gazprom’s Moscow Refinery on Thursday, a facility that has been targeted by Ukrainian forces multiple times in recent weeks.
“It is no coincidence that the president announced some time ago, after yet another Kyiv terrorist attack, that we will now conduct massive group strikes on a regular basis against targets whose condition directly affects the combat readiness of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Kazan on Thursday, according to Interfax.
Ukrainian forces have repeatedly targeted Russia’s oil infrastructure, seeking to cut Moscow’s energy revenues and try to force President Vladimir Putin into bringing an end to the four-year war.
The New York Times has a big story today about the institutional racism being put back into place in the military by drunk, rapey Pete Hegseth. We have to stop going backward. “Secret Vetting and Blocked Promotions: Inside Hegseth’s War on Diversity. A Black admiral fixed one of the Navy’s worst messes. Mr. Hegseth blocked his promotion anyway.” Greg Jaffe and Kate Kelly share the lede.
The Navy’s top leadership believed that Rear Adm. Stephen D. Barnett was by far the best choice to lead the command that oversees the Navy’s bases at home and abroad.
He had more experience than the other candidates and had successfully managed the aftermath of one of the Navy’s biggest messes, a fuel spill that contaminated an aquifer on a base in Hawaii, sickening thousands.
The final decision this spring fell to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
To many in the Navy, Admiral Barnett’s promotion seemed like a foregone conclusion.
The officer, however, had a big strike against him. Like other Black military leaders, he had been encouraged by his superiors to help the Navy recruit and retain minority officers, who remain significantly underrepresented in the force. His years-old remarks on the importance of diversity had been flagged in a secret vetting process designed to weed out senior leaders whom Mr. Hegseth and his team pegged as a problem.
Instead of Admiral Barnett, Mr. Hegseth selected a white officer who was the Navy leadership’s third choice.
So far this year, Mr. Hegseth has blocked the promotions of at least 40 senior officers to general and admiral ranks. About half of those are women or members of minority groups.
Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon
Politico‘s Alexander Burns believes he’s found “The Most Surprising Miscalculation of Trump’s Second Term. He has underestimated the power of patriotic sentiment in countries besides the United States.” Well, I was hoping that more Americans found their patriotic sentiment–including those representing this country–, but that was just a dream, it seems.
When Donald Trump won a new term in the White House, Danielle Smith joined the parade of foreign leaders visiting Mar-a-Lago to honor the president-elect. The populist premier of Alberta, Smith enjoyed lively relationships across the American right, even hosting Tucker Carlson in Western Canada in 2024.
Yet when I asked Smith last fall, at a policy summit in Toronto, how she’d feel about Trump potentially intervening in Alberta’s fragile politics, her MAGA stripes vanished.
“I don’t want any foreign influence in our politics here,” Smith told me.
Admiring Trump from afar is one thing. But sovereignty is sovereignty, and borders are borders.
Trump used to understand that.
A decade ago, Trump waged his first-ever political campaign as a nationalist crusader, demanding harder borders and more muscular American sovereignty. When the United Kingdom held its 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union — the 10-year anniversary is in a few days — Trump cheered it on and crowned himself “Mr. Brexit.”
In his second term, Trump’s grasp of nationalist politics has slipped. He has underestimated the power of patriotism and national pride in countries other than his own.
This serial miscalculation has undermined Trump’s trade wars and military adventures, aggravated the cost-of-living crisis, weakened the Republican Party and battered Trump’s bonds with the global right.
It began even before Trump’s inauguration in 2025, with his campaign of bullying against Canada.
This is also from CNBC. “U.S.-Iran accord hits early snag after Swiss talks fail to proceed as planned.” This is reported by Justina Lee and Sam Meredith. They’re certainly a pair of busy reporters this week.
News that the U.S. and Iran had reached an interim deal may have brought some initial relief to markets, but fresh uncertainty emerged on Friday after planned follow-up talks in Switzerland were called off, underscoring the challenges of turning the agreement into a lasting peace settlement.
Switzerland’s foreign ministry said U.S.-Iran talks scheduled to take place at Bürgenstock on Friday would not proceed as planned.
The White House also said that Vice President JD Vance was no longer traveling to Switzerland, citing unresolved logistical issues surrounding the negotiations.
“The plans for the upcoming technical talks have not been finalized, and the U.S. delegation has been prepared to depart at the first available opportunity,” a White House spokesperson said.
“But the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable.”
The developments came a day after President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at developing a permanent peace deal to end the months-long conflict.
Under the 14-point MOU, both sides agreed to extend the ceasefire, including in Lebanon, and reopen the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.
The Financial Times, however, reported that Friday’s talks were abruptly called off due to Israel launching a wave of deadly air strikes against Lebanon, citing three people familiar with the matter.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said 18 people were killed in the south of the country following a series of Israeli strikes overnight. Israel said four of its soldiers were also killed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a social media post Friday morning that he instructed the Israel Defense Forces to strike Hezbollah “with full force” in response to a “heinous attack” by the Iran-backed group.
Hours later, a U.S. official told CNBC that the two groups agreed to a ceasefire from 4 p.m. local time, or 9 a.m. ET.
Oil prices turned lower after the ceasefire was reported.
It sure looks like we have a lot of leaders of major countries completely out of their league. And back to Iran. This is from Reuters. “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards set up covert Iraqi cells to attack Gulf neighbors, sources say.” It’s the same old, same old since the 1970s if you ask me.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has set up secretive new cells in Iraq to carry out attacks on Gulf countries that host American forces, bypassing established militia networks to avoid detection, eight Iraqi sources told Reuters.
Three or four cells, each comprising about 10 elite Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim fighters, launched at least seven drone attacks from desert locations near the southern cities of Basra and Samawa against sites in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates between April 20 and May 17, three of the sources said.
A number of their members were drawn from Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of hardline Shi’ite factions with thousands of fighters. But the new groups operate outside its command structure, reporting directly to the IRGC, according to the sources, who include two Iraqi military officials, another security official and five local militia commanders.
The establishment of the new Iraqi cells, which has not previously been reported, reflects a shift in IRGC tactics aimed at preserving Iran’s ability to project force across the region at a time when its armed proxy groups are greatly diminished and its own military and economic resources are depleted, the five militia commanders said.
Feeling safer now? Me neither. Trump’s polls continue to fall on the Iraq war. As you can see from The Bulwark articles, the trad war hawks are not happy about the situation. Maybe we all need to start building bunkers. This is from the AP. “What Americans think about Trump’s handling of Iran, according to a new AP-NORC poll.”
Most Americans continue to disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling Iran, while his overall presidential approval holds steady, according to a new AP-NORC poll that was conducted as he suggested a deal with Iran had been reached.
The poll points to just how unpopular the war, which began Feb. 28, has been with Americans even as the Republican president turned abruptly from threatening Iran to reopening negotiations. Support for his handling of the war remains lopsidedly partisan. About two-thirds, 65%, of U.S. adults disapprove of how Trump is handling issues with Iran. But while the vast majority of Democrats and independents view Trump’s actions negatively, only 28% of Republicans are unhappy.
The new survey was conducted June 11-17, just after Trump called off threats to escalate the war with Iran. The poll was fielded as Trump announced a deal with Iran and authorized an end to the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, concluding just before the deal was signed Wednesday.
Well, at least we can fire up some grills, even though most of us will not be eating steaks or meat. I like the Juneteenth holiday and its proximity to Independence Day. The addition of Pride month fortifies the display. This shows that eventually we can include everyone who should be included. Unfortunately, Orange Caligula and his band of fascist, racist haters just never give up. We have to vote them out.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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“What a glorious birthday celebration on the lawn of the White House for The Grifter In Chief. The UFC event saw sweaty fighters kicking and punching each other bloody while mr. trump napped. This is what people voted for! ” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The headlines describing that mess on what used to be the White House Lawn last night are strikingly nasty. Most of us are happy with a birthday cake and a few friends to celebrate. Not Trump, he has to grift from the taxpayer and create a huge scene. Last year, it was a tank parade fitting of the North Koreans. However, without forced attendance, Trump forced attendance on our soldiers. It was also a wash-out. New Orleans was a lot more interested in the FIFA games. What did you think of Japan v the Netherlands? Wow, that was sports worth watching!
Meanwhile, this headline yesterday really lit a fuse under me. It’s from the Guardian. Aram Roston and Joseph Gedeon share the lede. “UFC to pay White House fighters in crypto issued by Trump company. Some fighters will receive bonuses in ‘stablecoins’ issued by Trump family business World Liberty Financial.” As usual, your tax dollars are dribbling their way to the Trump Crime Syndicate.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) announced on Friday that it will pay bonuses to fighters in a form of cryptocurrency issued by the Trump family business World Liberty Financial at the heavily publicized White House mixed martial arts event on Sunday.
The development connects the Trump family’s financial interests to the high-profile UFC competition being promoted on government property. The competition on the south White House lawn is scheduled for 14 June, Donald Trump’s birthday.
The UFC said some fighters will receive bonuses in World Liberty Financial crypto called “stablecoins”, whose value is pegged to the US dollar. World Liberty named the currency “USD1”.
World Liberty is a venture of the Trump family and the family of Steven Witkoff, Trump’s friend and special envoy to the Middle East. The company is now listed as an “official sponsor” of UFC Freedom 250, the fight scheduled for Sunday. The use of its stablecoin in the fight would appear to boost efforts to have it used more more broadly.
A White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, said there was no conflict of interest and that Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. “The Fake News’ continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible and reinforce the public’s distrust in what they read.”
The fight is not linked to Freedom 250, a separate organization promoting the 250th anniversary of the country.
World Liberty Financial, a Delaware-based cryptocurrency venture co-founded by Donald Trump and his sons in 2024 alongside the Witkoff sons, has emerged as one of the highest-profile businesses connected to the president’s family.
At one point, Trump Sr was publicly listed by the company as its “Chief Crypto Advocate”.
His financial disclosure form lists his holdings in World Liberty Financial as “over $50m”.
Reuters reported this month that the Trump family’s crypto ventures, led by WLF, have generated billions of dollars in paper gains and become one of the largest sources of wealth tied to the president and his family.
World Liberty announced the company was creating a “bonus pool” for the event the company and quoted Zach Witkoff, Steve Witkoff’s son and CEO of World Liberty Financial. “We believe this is the future of finance, and we’re excited to partner with UFC,” he said, “which has done more than any organization to modernize the business of sports”.
World Liberty was dogged by controversies surrounding its digital “governance token”, a type of crypto it sold, and is in litigation with Justin Sun, the crypto tycoon who was an early buyer of the tokens. He sued the company this year alleging it improperly froze his tokens, and World Liberty sued him for defamation.
The USD1 stablecoins are separate from the tokens and are tradable digital assets that are backed by dollar reserves. The firm has also applied for a banking license from the Office of Comptroller of the Currency.
Everything Trump does is for money and feeding the narcissistic monkey that lives where his brain should be. I’m not a big fan of The View, but check their Instagram for their basic thoughts on the matter. It zings. “There’s just no end to the grift from the Trump family.” As Pres. Trump prepares to host a UFC fight on the White House lawn.” I suppose Trump will try to Jimmy Kimmel them.
I loved this from Tom Nicolls at The Atlantic. “Trump Celebrates While America Capitulates. The peace deal with Tehran is an Iranian victory.” Again, he slept through a good deal of it if the reports are true, but damn, here I am putting that stupid war off again, and the utter war crimes we’re committing since Bibi is running it all. So, I’m slipping a bit of that news in also.
President Trump has announced that the United States and Iran have reached a deal to end their war. “Congratulations to all!” he said in a posting on his Truth Social site this evening. He then headed off to oversee the garish public spectacle he’d arranged for his birthday on the South Lawn of the White House. The United States, however, has little to celebrate: Trump and his team, in record time, just lost a war to a militarily mediocre—but nonetheless extremely dangerous—adversary.
The details of the agreement remain unconfirmed, but the president, of course, is eager to spin the outcome as a victory. (Trump was in a hurry to sign the deal on his birthday; the Iranians, who now seem to be in charge of this whole business, instead said they will send someone to a meeting in Switzerland on Friday.) But even before we have the details, it is clear that Trump has failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal, and deliver America’s capitulation as quickly as possible.
If defeat seems a strong word, consider what we do know about how this war will end. Iran has suffered significant damage from U.S. and Israeli military action. But as I and others warned at the outset, killing people and bombing things do not by themselves produce victory. The reality is that the war will close with the regime in Tehran intact and in the grip of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; the Strait of Hormuz will remain under the threat of Iranian attacks; Iran will continue to possess significant drone and missile stocks; the regime will maintain the capability to be a state sponsor of terror; and many sanctions will be lifted and billions of dollars in unfrozen assets will flow to Iran. In other words, the Iranians have achieved their key strategic aims—regime survival above all—while the Americans have achieved none of their own.
Indeed, the United States has perhaps done worse than gaining nothing. Iran, while temporarily weakened, is now an even more powerful political actor: The regime in Tehran stood up to a massive U.S. onslaught, survived, and then inflicted pain on various states in the Gulf as punishment for going along with Trump’s war.
The Israelis, for their part, have been left out in the cold. It is difficult to shed any tears for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who unwisely encouraged Trump to attack Iran, but he, too, is feeling the sting of humiliation. The Iranians cagily linked Netanyahu’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon to Trump’s war in the Gulf, and Trump is now angry at Netanyahu for making it harder for the United States to get out of the conflict. (When Netanyahu planned major strikes in Beirut at the beginning of June, Trump called him, swore at him, and said, “You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me.”)
This entire thing is the biggest shit show I’ve seen, and given how many years we’ve dealt with Trump, that’s saying a lot. William Kristol, writing for The Bulwark, also tore a new one in Trump’s follies. “We Can Reject Trump’s Orgy of Decline.” Count me in.
I’m sad to say that Tom has it right. And I’ll mention one point in particular that seems not to be getting the attention it deserves. The memorandum of understanding to be signed Friday reportedly says that Iran will not impose tolls in the strait of Hormuz for the next sixty days. This is presumably the basis of Trump’s claim that the strait will be “toll-free.” But the government of Iran says that the strait will operate in the longer run “under Iranian arrangements.” This seems likely to be true, since Iran has established the principle that it can close the strait, has paid no price, hasn’t repudiated a right to do so in the future, and will be more interested and able to enforce its will in the months and years to come than we’ll be able to stop them.
So Iran comes out a winner. But Iran’s victory isn’t the most important outcome of Trump’s foolish war. The most important outcome is our defeat. Trump’s failure in Iran has confirmed and accelerated the broader retreat during his second term from our standing as the linchpin and guardian of an American-friendly international order. We were a great power—the greatest world power—from 1941 to 2025. Now we appear to be one power among many, even one bully among many, perhaps the preeminent one, but one without much credibility among either allies or enemies.
Our allies at the G7 meeting in France over the next couple days will have no interest in highlighting the fact of our decline, as they want to buy time to make their adjustments. But everyone with eyes to see understands what Trump has wrought. This failed war will leave us both less feared and less respected than before, and will leave the world more dangerous and its future less hopeful than before.
You can see that most independent and nontraditional media outlets have not forgotten the main story. Wait! Has the Gray Lady returned? “Israel Counts the Ways That Netanyahu’s Iran Strategy Failed. The U.S.-Iran framework agreement appears to omit some of the most important provisions that Israel wanted.” This news analysis in today’s New York Times is provided by David M. Halbfinger and Ronen Bergman.
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the war he had hoped would secure his legacy — Israel and the United States together attacking Iran — may be ending in a way that could sully it.
The framework agreement to end the war in Iran, which was announced on Sunday, omits some of the most important things Israel wanted.
The full text of the deal has not yet been released and Israel was not directly involved in the negotiations. Initial details suggest that the agreement does nothing to curb Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, or its funding of regional proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen, who have attacked Israel with their own arsenals. It could help Iran bolster those proxies by easing sanctions, which would allow billions of dollars to flow into its bank accounts.
The deal’s terms when it comes to constraining Iran’s nuclear program — of greatest importance to Israel, and the greatest priority of Mr. Netanyahu’s career — remain undisclosed or still to be negotiated during the agreed 60-day cease-fire to allow for further talks. Questions remain over what will become of Iran’s stock of near-bomb-grade uranium and whether the country will be able to keep enriching nuclear fuel.
Worse still for Mr. Netanyahu, who faces re-election in a few months and is behind in the polls, President Trump, the Israeli leader’s most valuable political asset, has publicly rebuked him multiple times in recent weeks.
While Mr. Trump has praised Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, as pragmatic, he has called Mr. Netanyahu “crazy,” ungrateful and lacking in judgment.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump added “difficult” to that litany of insults, after Israel’s military — precisely as the United States was trying to close its deal with Iran — struck what it described as a Hezbollah target on the outskirts of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, in retaliation for a Hezbollah attack that wounded two Israeli soldiers.
Effectively, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to have fallen into a trap.
This MS NOW report, as discussed in The Raw Story last week, really says it all. “Iran takes startling step believing Trump is ‘legitimately mentally ill’: journalist.” Everyone with a functional brain knows he’s nuts. It’s good to see the consequences of his insanity make headlines like this.
Amid the ongoing peace talks between Washington and Tehran, Iranian negotiators have recently enlisted the help of “senior psychologists” to help them navigate what they believe to be a pressing issue involving President Donald Trump, investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill claimed Friday, citing Iranian sources.
“A couple of weeks ago, the Iranian side added senior psychologists to their negotiating team to review the communications that they were going to be sending to the mediators to give to Trump,” Scahill said during an appearance on the podcast “Breaking Points.”
“They did that because the Iranians believe that Trump is legitimately mentally ill and is operating in an impaired mental state. And they didn’t say this as a joke, they didn’t say this with any lightness.”
“The [Iranian sources] said ‘we recognize that we are dealing with a mentally incapacitated individual and we’ve had senior psychologists work up a psychological profile of what they think is going on with Trump’s brain, and so we started to cater our messages by running them past senior psychologists before delivering them to Trump,’” Scahill continued.
“And they said ‘we started to then see some progress’ – they almost talked about it in a clinical sense like they’re dealing with a patient.”
Public Notice‘s Noah Berlatzky puts it bluntly. “The US under Trump is a global scourge. We’re the baddies.” Yup.
News broke yesterday that the United States and Iran have reached some sort of agreement that may or may not end President Trump’s disastrous war.
Details remained scant as this newsletter was finalized Sunday evening, but significantly, Trump wasted no time moving the goalposts on when the Strait of Hormuz will reopen.
TRUMP: I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of HormuzTRUMP 1 HOUR LATER: The strait will open on Friday
Trump, of course, has claimed to be on the verge of a peace deal dozens of times before, only to back away when he realizes that ending the war inevitably means admitting the US lost.
It’s notable that the administration has been very leery of revealing the actual details of the agreement to the public. But it appears to involve the United Arab Emirates unlocking billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, which is especially humiliating since Republicans have raged for more than a decade about the Obama administration releasing a measly $1.7 billion in Iranian assets to secure a nuclear agreement.
To add insult to injury, it’s unclear that Iran will commit to ending its nuclear program; it has agreed to continue to talk about it over the next 60 days, but nothing more. All Trump seems to really be getting is a pinky swear that the Strait of Hormuz will open at some point in the future — which was open before the war started, and which Iran can now close again whenever it’s threatened or wants concessions.
Iran’s victory has been a disaster for the US. The shuttering of the strait has pushed gas and fertilizer prices into the stratosphere and inflation hit a three-year high this month. US credibility globally has been shredded.
But the worst effects of Trump’s viciously erratic foreign policy have been born by those subjected to it overseas. Americans are, like everyone, mostly focused on their own worries — worries which now include a seemingly endless fascist assault on our liberty and lives. But the bloodiest and most painful costs of fascism are inflicted on the fascist’s neighbors, and when you’re talking about a global power like the US, “neighbors” here means “everyone on earth.”
Authoritarians disregard the voices and needs of their own people, but they are even less constrained when they deal with people that are not their own. If you want to see what Trump would like to do at home, you have only to look to the misery he has unleashed in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and Africa. It’s a bleak and terrifying picture.
I’d just like to remind you that a really great holiday is coming up to celebrate on Friday. It’s National Garfield the Cat Give Your Cat Lasagna Day! I’m sure Dinah and Kristal will be up for it! Today, the furbabies are headed to the vet, so they’ll deserve something for today’s jaunt. I’ll likely be drinking wine as soon after student time as possible. We’ll have our own little mixed martial arts dog and cat still soon.
Meanwhile, if you really want to know how low these assholes can go, check the headline on UFC Fighter Joe Hokit (who now makes me really regret that I even know his name). Via ABC NEWS 3340, if you can stomach it: “UFC fighter says ‘Michelle Obama is a man’ after winning White House match.” A real man fight should include taking it in the balls, not degrading women.
And you noticed that I managed to slip in an Iran War post rather than giving more than a nod to Orange Caligula’s short reach for a birthday event. BTW, the next country-wide No Kings protest held yesterday was a doozy! The Guardian coverage showed where all the big stars showed up for a real songfest! “No Kings event set for 14 June, as Trump celebrates birthday with White House UFC bout. A Night to Build Community will feature concert with Bette Midler, Patti Smith and Rufus Wainwright streaming nationwide.”
The No Kings movement has announced a nationwide event on 14 June, directly counter-programming Donald Trump’s 80th birthday celebrations and a Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bout on the south lawn of the White House.
The centerpiece is a 90-minute concert at New York’s Town Hall featuring entertainer Bette Midler, songwriter Patti Smith, actor Jane Fonda, musician Rufus Wainwright and commentator Joy Reid – streaming free nationwide, while local groups host watch parties across the country. The event is co-presented by the Committee for the First Amendment, a coalition of artists and cultural figures, and frames the US’s 250th anniversary as a moment of democratic reckoning.
The plans put two very different visions for the occasion in direct competition.
The US president is billing UFC Freedom 250 as a historic national celebration: a star-spangled octagon arena on the south lawn of the White House, with 4,000 ticketed guests, and a fan festival on the Ellipse expected to draw up to 100,000 people. The weigh-ins are reportedly set to take place at the Lincoln Memorial.
Trump has claimed that demand for tickets, for an event which will feature a title fight between the lightweight champion Ilia Topuria and the interim champion Justin Gaethje, has been unlike anything he has seen. The White House spokesperson Davis Ingle called it “one of the greatest and most historic sports events in history”.
No Kings, meanwhile, announced a concert, billed as A Night to Build Community, after a string of major mobilizations.
“We can let strongman politics and corruption define the moment,” it said in a statement. “Or we can make the story of America about people coming together – across race, background, identity, belief and community – to defend our rights and build a future rooted in people power.”
I’ll take Bette Midler singing any day over sweaty, dumb men punching the fuck out of each other. It’s not a real sport unless they can kick each other in the balls, and in that case, I nominate Trump and his MAGA Republicans for the first few rounds. Let’s see if Pete Hegseth can take a direct hit to the balls and if someone can find Trump’s dick.
Meanwhile, can we bulldoze all that shit he did to the White House now and put him in a nice home somewhere in upstate Transylvania? Even CBS News can report this headline. “Trump’s changes to history at national parks must be undone, judge rules.” Let’s just erase his name and face wherever they appear, and restore the Rose Garden, the Reflecting Pool, and the Front Lawn. Oh, and fuck that damn ballroom.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?
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“What a glorious time to be alive. We’re living the dream!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
With so much winning, you have to wonder when it’s going to end! Today’s top headline shows we’re seriously losing Cadet Bonespur’s Iran Adventure. We’ve attacked Iran again, and this time we’ve managed to stop missiles aimed at Kuwait. This war got hot really quickly.
Don’t be distracted by all the bulldozing going on around the White House and the amazing number of has-beens that refuse to sing at his shindig. Although, damn, who asked for all this tacky shit like a Mixed Martial Arts Arena on the White House lawn or another Kid Rock concert? Doesn’t the Reflecting Pool look like it’s been filled with blue Gatorade? Why are we paying for shit we do not need or want? We are just funding Orange Caligula’s wet dreams!
Okay, let’s try Iran first. This is from CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger. I now have a daily ritual of being thankful I don’t have a car, while living on a bus line in an urban area. “Iran stops negotiations with U.S., vows to ‘completely’ block Strait of Hormuz: State media.” This is winning?
Iranian negotiators will stop exchanging messages with the U.S. through intermediaries, and Tehran will move to fully close the Strait of Hormuz, in retaliation for ongoing ceasefire violations, Iran’s state-affiliated news outlet Tasnim said Monday.
The report, in a translated post on the social media site Telegram, homed in on Israel’s military operations in Lebanon against the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah.
“No dialogue will take place” until Israel fully withdraws from occupied areas in Lebanon and stops all attacks in both Lebanon and Gaza, per Tasnim.
“Also, the resistance front and Iran have resolved to completely block the Strait of Hormuz and activate other fronts including the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, in order to punish the Zionists and their supporters,” the report said.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a trade chokepoint that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
Oil prices leapt more than 7% higher following Tasnim’s report, which signaled a breakdown in efforts to reach a diplomatic end to the war that is now in its fourth month.
The AP reports that Iran sent bombs towards Kuwait, just as US Bombs were dropped on some of Iran’s military sites. “US bombs Iranian military sites, then downs missiles Tehran fired at troops in Kuwait.” Jon Gambrell has the lede.
The United States said Monday that it bombed radar and drone sites in Iran after Tehran shot down an American drone over the weekend. Iran then said it targeted American soldiers in Kuwait with missiles, which the U.S. says it shot down.
The nominal ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. has been repeatedly tested with such back-and-forth attacks, even as officials from both countries try to negotiate an end to the war. It’s not clear how close they are to a deal — and there is always the risk that an attack could derail those talks.
In the meantime, Iran has maintained its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies and driving up the price of fuel around the world, with far-reaching consequences. A cargo ship came under attack off Iraq Monday afternoon, the British military said.
Fighting has also escalated between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, despite their nominal ceasefire. Israel has extended its occupation deep into Lebanon, and Hezbollah — which joined the war in support of its main backer, Iran — continues to launch drones into Israel.
The fighting in Lebanon could threaten the emerging deal to extend the Iran war ceasefire. Tehran wants any agreement to include Lebanon.
Are we winning yet? You may read the details of all this at the link. Let’s move over to Slate where Dahlia Litwick and Mark Joseph Stern partner up with a story that’s a must-read. Thank goodness for the independent press. “The John Roberts vs. Donald Trump Story Conceals Something More Sinister.” See what hides behind all that destruction of our nation’s house and its norms?
This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work—and unlock exclusive legal analysis—is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!)
On this week’s episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern kicked off Opinionpalooza by discussing the court’s dangerous game of enabling the president right up until he imperils its own prerogatives. An excerpt of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Dahlia Lithwick: The Supreme Court keeps aligning with Donald Trump on this maximalist view of the imperial presidency, both in front of the curtain and behind it. For every case on the merits docket that gives Trump a big win in public, there are shadow docket cases that do the same in secret. It feels like any appearance of conflict between the president and the court is stage-managed, with lots of invisible wires we don’t always pay attention to
The Supreme Court has entered its final stretch of the term, with about two dozen opinions to hand down before the justices flee for their summer break at the end of June. At Slate, we call this mad dash to the finish line “Opinionpalooza,” and we approach it with equal parts fascination, skepticism, and dread every year. These remaining cases have massive implications for democracy, civil liberties, and the fundamental question of who gets to be an American; they include disputes over birthright citizenship, voting rights, immigration, and executive authority. Many will test Donald Trump’s ability to collapse the separation of powers into an autocratic presidency with no real limits on his rule. The justices will likely imposesome restraints on Trump’s supersized monarchical ambitions in the weeks ahead, especially when they threaten judicial supremacy. All told, however, they will still hand him more victories in his larger assault on constitutional constraints. And where the ambitions of the MAGA wing of the court dovetail with Trump’s goals, Trumpism will run the table.
Mark Joseph Stern: This is one reason why, if the justices do strike down his attack on birthright citizenship, nobody should say: “Look, they’re putting Trump in his place! He’s really not a king!” Because there are so many other cases where the court is absolutely making him a king. It’s allowing him to consolidate so much power in the executive branch and specifically in the person of the president, and to run roughshod over all of these checks and balances that Congress enacted to prevent a monarchical or authoritarian president from abusing his power. And the Supreme Court is almost entirely aligned with Trump on this stuff, especially over the shadow docket, where that consolidation continues.
John Roberts does this magic trick: Do something small, get people accustomed to it, then do it big. We’ve seen this pattern in cases over the years where the Supreme Court makes a tiny tweak to prepare the country for when you later do the big thing. Then it’s less of a surprise and almost looks like it flows logically from when the court did it in a lesser way. The shadow docket has become the way you do that now, right? You seed the ground on the shadow docket and say: “Well, this is the law now.” This process used to take four or five years—do it small, wait a couple terms, then do it big. Now, with the shadow docket, you can do it within the same term, and make it look as though it’s inevitable or inexorable.
It leads to this interplay between the shadow docket and the merits docket. Roberts’ great gift is that he’s a master of optics and PR. He must know there was a huge outcry against the incredibly fast pace with which questions were being decided on the shadow docket: If Trump wanted something, the court saw it as an emergency; it assumed the president was always harmed, but ignored harm to the other parties. This second half of the term, there has been a pumping of the brakes on deciding big, existential questions over the shadow docket. Why is that?
I have a very cynical view of this: It’s less that the court has learned its lesson or become more solicitous toward lower court judges, and more that the court already accomplished a huge amount of what it wanted in terms of giving Trump what he sought. Trump came in and had expansive ideas about the scope of his executive power—impounding federal funds, firing executive officials, rewriting immigration laws—and by and large, the Supreme Court let him do it. The conservative supermajority issued all these shadow docket orders clearing the way for that to happen. Now it has happened; Trump’s takeover of the federal government is largely complete. So I just don’t think the court needs to issue nearly as many shadow docket orders as it did during that shock-and-awe campaign; it has already achieved its objectives.
You may head to Slate and catch all of the opinions on this very important subject. I have to mention the absolute shit show that was to be Trump’s Freedom 250 music concert. Social Media is just full of all the musicians who were listed but never contacted, dead but couldn’t be contacted, and, of course, wouldn’t be caught dead doing anything positive for Orange Caliguala. It’s meme heaven on there on this topic. Public Notice has this headline up. Paul Waldman has the story. “Trump’s ‘Freedom 250’ concert implodes spectacularly. His quest to dominate culture the way he dominates politics keeps going badly.”
It was going to be so beautiful: A spectacular concert to celebrate 250 years of freedom and democracy, featuring some of the greatest musical acts this nation has produced.
Okay, maybe not the greatest, but they were definitely musical acts! Depending on whether you count Milli Vanilli, or more accurately, one of the two guys who pretended to sing in Milli Vanilli. Along with a guy who was in C+C Music Factory. And Bret Michaels of Poison. For anyone itching to stand outside in the baking Washington summer sun to hear some guys in their 60s wheeze their way through “Girl You Know It’s True” and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” the disappointment must be crushing.
It now appears that this concert, part of the Freedom 250 celebration and the most awe-inspiring assemblage of talent since your local middle school’s last Battle of the Bands, will not be taking place after all. One after another, the 1990s-era performers pulled out, many saying that when they booked the event they didn’t know it was going to be political.
In other words, once they realized the event was all about Donald Trump, most of them wanted nothing to do with it.
Despite the fact that Vanilla Ice was still planning to perform, Trump announced on Saturday that he was pulling the plug, and would instead make the event just another Trump rally:
Trump: “I understand Artists are getting ‘the yips’ having to do with their performance on Wednesday, so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, DONALD J. TRUMP”
Does this sound like someone who is grounded in reality or sanity?
Max Boot sure has changed since his days of being a staunch movement conservative. He wrote this Op-Ed for the Washington Post. “Trump is taking a wrecking ball to U.S. alliances around the world. Trashing America’s European partners while undermining its Asian allies’ security.” This should be obvious to everyone. But here we are back with the legacy media, finding that they’ll publish something harsh ever so often.
The “secret sauce” of American power in the post-1945 era has been the country’s network of alliances. The Soviet Union had satrapies in Eastern Europe, but few real friends. Russia doesn’t even have satellite states anymore, aside from Belarus. It does have an increasingly warm but still wary relationship with China. Beijing, in turn, is close to just a handful of other countries; North Korea is its only treaty ally.
The United States, by contrast, has 51 treaty allies all over the world. Advantage, America. But good news for America’s enemies: President Donald Trump appears intent on doing to U.S. alliances what he has already done to the East Wing of the White House. Let’s take a tour of the world to see the damage he is inflicting with his wrecking-ball diplomacy.
Start in Europe. Trump did possibly irreparable damage to the transatlantic alliance when he threatened to annex Greenland. In January, Denmark, a NATO ally, was getting ready to fight U.S. troops if they invaded Greenland. After backing off, Trump is now making fresh demands — such as guaranteeing U.S. troops access to Greenland even if it becomes independent — that Greenland officials view as a major imposition on their sovereignty.
Trump has also ratcheted up his attacks on NATO for not doing more to support the reckless war the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran. He focuses on countries such as Italy and Spain that have blocked access to their bases, while ignoring NATO countries such as Britain and Germany that remain major hubs of the U.S. war effort. He has even demanded that NATO countries reopen the Strait of Hormuz — a mission the U.S. Navy hasn’t dared to take on. In late March, Trump said of NATO: “Why would we be there for them, if they’re not there for us?”
Since then, his administration has announced plans to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany and canceled the deployment of a brigade to Poland, although Trump subsequently said he would send more troops to Poland, perhaps from Germany. There are also reports that the administration wants to substantially reduce the number of U.S. warplanes and warships committed to Europe in a crisis. Trump has blocked new U.S. aid for Ukraine, and hasn’t condemned Vladimir Putin’s recent missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian civilians — and now on an apartment building in Romania. He doesn’t even call out Putin for helping Iran target U.S. forces. How could anyone have any confidence that, if Russia were to start a war with NATO, the U.S. would come to its defense?
This is my last offering, although wow, this week’s headlines are sure to continue to shock and awe the globe. Don Monihan has this analysis up on his SubStackabout the War against Science. This is, again, an important subject. We can always drain the Reflecting Pool of its Blue Gatorade after he’s gone. “The Creep of Politicization. A new assault on science highlights a broader pattern.”
The White House proposed new policies governing the federal funding of American science. You’ve already heard about the funding cuts, de facto impoundments of funds, funding freezes to disfavored universities, and cancelation of grants that include the long list of the Trump’s forbidden words.
I think the level of alarm is appropriate, but I also want to place it into a broader context. Instinctively, scientists know this policy is not a stand-alone, but the ratcheting of the vice-grips of politicization. Trump has assembled five distinct tactics of politicization that are now starting to work in tandem with one another.
As Trump’s politicization tactics operate together, they begin to generate more interactive effects, reinforcing one another.The creep of politicization seeps into every office and decision, choking any views other than those of Trump and his army of loyalists.
Politicization can mean different things. The classic pre-Trump and mostly bipartisan Presidential tactics of politicization are:
Tactic #1: Centralization of policymaking into the White House, moving power from agencies
Tactic #2: Strategic use of political appointees, moving power away from distrusted career employees
Tactic #3: Building a personalist regime centered on loyalty to a single person.
Tactic #4: Governing by fearvia conspiratorial messaging and threat.
Tactic #5: Weakening the protections of civil servants to effectively make them at will employees.
The nature and the scale of these tactics is really without parallel in US history, even in the spoils era. In the spoils era there was real and endemic corruption. That is occurring now, but in a more damaging and extractive way, disproportionately favoring an inner circle looking to get rich(er), not just the loyal partyman looking for a job.
The US government is also doing a lot more now than it was in the spoils era. Science is a good example. The current US scientific empire is the result of the post World War II set of arrangements that Trump and Vought are now seeking to control and corrupt for their own ends.
You may read more at the links. It’s going to be a long, hot summer. I’ve got to get my backyard peace garden into shape. I’m hoping for a more traditional 4th of July with neighbors and friends.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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“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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“Upon further reflection, the Rededicate 250 National Prayer thing now makes huge sense. He Is Risen!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The one thing you can depend on every time Orange Caligula gets the reins of government is that things will always get worse, except for democracy backsliding. It’s just a matter of how shocking the next thing is. How many of us are in a constant state of being stunned that we aren’t the least bit surprised by the news, even though we still find the actions stomach-churning? Well, hang on! It’s been a week of WTF moments.
Today’s Tit-for-Tat announcement shows just how brazen the entire administration has gotten. This is from Time Magazine. It’s reported by Rebecca Schneid. What kind of monster thinks these things up?
President Donald Trump has withdrawn his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) amid reports that he struck a deal with his own Justice Department to create a $1.7 billion fund to compensate political allies who claim they were wrongly targeted by the Biden Administration.
The alleged plan, first reported by the New York Times and ABC News, would be paid for with taxpayer funds and is being fast-tracked, but has yet to be officially approved. If approved, the fund would be used to pay damages to people who say they were harmed by the Biden Administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Court documents showed Trump withdrew his lawsuit against the IRS, a move that could herald a private deal between the president and the agency he controls, while skirting legal oversight of the deal.
In a lawsuit filed in a Miami federal court in January, Trump and other plaintiffs accused federal agencies of failing in their duty of stopping a former IRS contractor from illegally obtaining and disclosing tax returns to the New York Times, ProPublica, and “other left-wing media outlets,” between May 2019 and September 2020.
The funds would also be used to settle his request for $230 million in legal claims from the Justice Department for the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and investigation into alleged ties between his campaign and Russia
As part of the settlement, Trump would also reportedly ask the IRS to public1pologize for the disclosure of his personal financial records and to waive an IRS audit
According to the Times, the Justice Department would model the program after the historic $760 million settlement fund stemming from the Keepseagle v. Vilsack class-action lawsuit, settled in 2011, which alleged that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) systematically discriminated against Native American farmers and ranchers in its farm loan and loan servicing program.
We know someone who can sum this up nicely. This is how Hillary put it this morning.
Trump didn’t just pardon his followers who stormed the U.S. Capitol. He’s now set them up for payments through a slush fund he created to reward his allies—out of your tax dollars. You could not make this up.
Robert Reich had some additional thoughts and analysis. He elucidated them on his SubStackthis morning. “Has Trump’s Republican Party Become a Criminal Enterprise? Trump’s purge of all political opponents, including Senator Bill Cassidy, leaves it with no purpose other than helping Trump achieve his lawless goals.” Trump puts us in a Mafia State every time he’s elected. Grifting is his only talent, and he’s been rich and influential enough to find ambitious and greedy toadies to carry out his wishes. We’ve known this forever here.
On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other Republican senators who have stood up to Trump — such as North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Utah’s Mitt Romney — saw the writing on the wall and didn’t seek reelection.)
Trump’s purge of Cassidy comes in the wake of Trump’s purges of House Republicans who stood up to him, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney.
Trump’s next Republican target in the House is Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, who had the guts to oppose U.S. military involvement in Iran, demand release of the Epstein files, and criticize Trump’s spending bills for adding to the national debt. Massie appears likely to be defeated by a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary.
Trump has also purged state legislators who have refused to do his bidding, such as the seven Indiana Republicans who refused to redistrict the state as Trump demanded they do, and who Trump insured were defeated in their recent primaries.
The message is clear to every current or aspiring Republican politician: Be a toady to Trump, or you’re out.
In his concession speech Friday night, Cassidy stated the obvious reference to Trump:
“Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution. And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”
Nicely put but sadly irrelevant because Trump — who’s clearly serving himself rather than the American public — now possesses all levers of power in the official Republican Party.
As Republican senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday on Meet the Press,“There’s no room in this party to destroy [Trump’s] agenda.”
There’s more at the link. My question is, what the hell can the rest of us who don’t support him do? I voted Saturday morning, wondering which candidate I had voted for would even have a chance under the new gerrymandering. That doesn’t even consider that we couldn’t even vote for our Congressional representatives, given the Supreme Court decision and the quick fix redraw of our map to ensure maybe one black person will retain their seat. The only good news to come out of the election was that all five constitutional amendments proposed by Governor Klandry were voted down.
Will these latest bits of news set up another J-6 self-coup? There will certainly be a rabid MAGA candidate sitting in Cassidy’s seat come next January. This is from NPR. “Louisiana senator who voted to convict Trump loses Republican primary.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of seven Republican senators who voted to remove President Trump from office after the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, lost his bid for reelection.
Louisiana’s Senate primary on Saturday was the latest test of Trump’s hold on his party. The president recruited a challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow, and urged supporters to defeat Cassidy over his vote.
“His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now part of legend,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post about Cassidy. “And it’s nice to see his political career is OVER.”
Cassidy finished third in a three-way race, according to the Associated Press. Letlow and another candidate, state Treasurer John Fleming, will advance to a June 27 runoff.
In conceding the race, Cassidy hinted that he would not finish his second term quietly. But in an apparent dig at Trump, he also said he wouldn’t contest his loss.
“You don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim that the election was stolen,” Cassidy told supporters on Saturday night. “You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you’ve had that privilege. And that’s what I’m doing right now.”
Cassidy told voters they should cast their ballot based on the present and the future, not the past, a subtle discouragement from re-litigating the 2020 election six years on. But for many primary voters, Cassidy’s move to convict felt like a betrayal, and Trump’s endorsement was paramount.
“I’m the type of person, if you cross me, I probably won’t trust you anymore,” retired sheriff deputy Kevin Dupree said earlier this month. “I think his political career in Louisiana is finished.”
My friend Robert Mann, a former Journalism Professor at LSU, has something poignant to say about the loss. This is from his SubStack. “Enjoy your tarnished legacy, Bill Cassidy. You earned it.” It’s a good lesson: while all politics is local, it can be influenced by a cult of personality.
Although he pandered shamelessly to Trump and MAGA to the bitter end, Sen. Bill Cassidy could have written a different ending to his political career.
He could have left office with his head held high, proud and satisfied that he’d remained true to his principles and the Hippocratic Oath.
He could have protected our families by blocking Trump’s efforts to destroy our public health system.
He could have legislated (and campaigned) as the moderate he told me and others he truly was.
He could have put the state of Louisiana — and the nation — ahead of his desire for another U.S. Senate term.
He could have been our senator, not Donald Trump’s.
He could have done all this and more, but Cassidy lacked the courage, the imagination, and the decency to put you and me ahead of his political ambition.
What Cassidy received in return for his soul is eternal shame and a well-earned legacy of cravenness.
I hope Cassidy enjoys his earnings.
I hope he also feels the harsh judgment of history that will be reserved for a Trump critic turned shameless toady who sold out to the worst, most corrupt president in American history—and still lost.
Bill Cassidy could have written a different story for himself and his state, but he just didn’t have it in him.
Speaking of Mafia-like behavior, here’s a little something on the Don’s Greenland Grab. This is from the New York Times. “In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland. Greenlandic officials worry about the direction of the negotiations aimed at defusing President Trump’s threats to seize their island. But they have little leverage.” The story has a number of contributing reporters.
With the conflict in Iran still smoldering, President Trump’s obsession with Greenland seems like a forgotten sideshow.
But for the past four months, negotiators from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, have been holding confidential talks in Washington about Greenland’s future.
The talks were meant to give Mr. Trump an offramp to his threats of a military takeover of Greenland and to scale back a crisis that risked breaking apart the NATO alliance. But Greenlandic leaders are worried about what is being proposed, which is a much larger U.S. role on the Arctic island. And they fear that if the conflict with Iran winds down, the president will swing his aggression back on them.
Some Greenlandic politicians say they have even circled a date on their calendars to be wary: June 14, Mr. Trump’s birthday.
An investigation by The New York Times, based on interviews with officials in Washington, Copenhagen and Greenland, has discovered:
The United States is trying to modify a longstanding military arrangement to ensure American troops can stay in Greenland indefinitely, even if Greenland becomes independent. The notion is basically a forever clause, and Greenlanders do not like it.
The United States has pushed the talks beyond military matters and wants effective veto power over any major investment deals in Greenland to box out competitors like Russia and China. Greenlanders and Danes strongly object to this.
The United States is discussing cooperation with Greenland on natural resources. The island is loaded with oil, uranium, rare earths and other critical minerals, though much of it is buried deep beneath Greenland’s ice.
The Pentagon is rapidly moving ahead on plans for a military expansion and recently sent a Marine Corps officer to Narsarsuaq, a town in southern Greenland, to inspect the World War II-era airport, the harbor and places where American troops could be housed.
The American demands are so steep, Greenlandic officials fear, that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty. Despite all of the talk from Danish and American officials that Greenland’s future is up to the island’s 57,000 people, Greenlandic officials said the American demands would tie their hands for generations.
If the Americans get everything they want, said Justus Hansen, a member of Greenland’s Parliament, there will never be any “real independence.”
“We might as well raise our own flag halfway,” he said.
There’s a lot more at that gifted link. Jeer Heeter has this description of our Grifter-in-Chief in his article in The Nation. “Trump Gloats About “Making a Fortune” While Americans Suffer. As his war in Iran wreaks havoc, Trump is fixated on personal glory and enrichment.”
Donald Trump is annoyed that he can’t celebrate the massive profits oil companies are making due to the war he launched in the Middle East. Left to his own druthers, Trump would be exulting in the hundreds of billions of dollars produced by skyrocketing oil prices—if it weren’t for the pesky fact that it comes at the expense of ordinary Americans, who are now paying roughly 40 percent more every time they fill up the gas tank than they were before Trump started bombing Iran nearly three months ago.
We know this thanks to Trump’s endless dedication to saying the quiet part out loud. Speaking with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Thursday, Trump chortled that because far less oil was coming out of the Middle East, “people are finding other places to buy oil, like Texas.” Trump added, “So I don’t want to say we’re making a fortune, you understand that? Because if I say that, they’re going to say ‘oh, he forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.’”
The juxtaposition between “making a fortune” and the “little man” suffering at the gas station underscores just how obtuse Trump and his allies have become in their economic message. Their response to the harm caused by Trump’s policies is not to reverse those policies, or even to appear sympathetic about their effects. It’s to express their total indifference to the suffering of the American people. At the same time, Trump is obsessively focused on his real priorities: enriching himself and his family, and creating gaudy monuments to himself such as a new White House ballroom and a Triumphal Arch that will squat in the middle of Washington, DC. In response to a reporter’s query as to whom the arch would celebrate, Trump pointed to himself and said “me.”
Trump twice won the White House on a message of economic populism, promising in his 2025 inauguration that he would “bring prices down.” Today, he sings a very different tune, with a message that amounts to the apocryphal words misattributed to the French Queen Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake.”
Speaking to reporters last Monday, Trump said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.” He also said that concern for the financial suffering of Americans would not be a factor in making a deal with Iran “not even a little bit.”
Under normal political circumstances, the Republican Party would be wise to separate itself from Trump’s callousness. But the GOP has become a hollowed-out operation mainly concerned with tending to Trump’s cult of personality. On Saturday, Trump won a major victory against critics in the party when Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy came in third in his party’s Senate primary race, losing to a candidate Trump had supported. Cassidy’s loss underscores a lesson Trump has taught the GOP again and again over the last decade: There is no future in the party for anyone who defies his will.
So, rather than distancing themselves from Trump’s “let them eat cake” message, Republicans are embracing the president’s self-defeating rhetoric. On Thursday, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan told CNN that oil prices were “were coming down until we had to deal with this situation, but, you know, that’s life, that’s dealing with…the world we live in.”
It’s going to take hard work and a lot of voting to get rid of this monster and all the dregs of humanity he’s put in charge of the country. It appears they have all been profiting from insider news on the Iran War.
1. What I found in Trump's new 113-page financial disclosure report. It doesn't look good.
This is from Jude Legum’s SubStack. “The smoking guns in Trump’s new financial disclosure, Trump publicly praised companies the same day he bought their stock.”
On March 11, President Trump took a tour of a manufacturing facility in Reading, Ohio, owned by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a medical supply company. During the tour, Trump lavished praise on Thermo Fisher which uses the facility to manufacture prescription drugs on a contract basis. “It’s a great honor being here. It’s a great company,” Trump said, appearing alongside CEO Marc Casper. “You have done a fantastic job and I’d like to congratulate you.”
Later, Trump asked another Thermo Fisher executive to share “some great information about this incredible company.” The executive talked about how Thermo Fisher is producing drugs for Merck and others at the facility. Trump then explicitly encouraged other pharmaceutical companies to contract with Thermo Fisher to “on-shore” more jobs. He claimed that some pharmaceutical companies were building their own U.S. manufacturing facilities but said “they can get here a lot faster by using this great company.”
Trump did not mention that, the same day of the tour, March 11, he purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 of Thermo Fisher stock. (Federal disclosure rules only require filers to list their transactions in broad ranges.) Trump did not publicly disclose the purchase until May 14. It was listed on page 38 of a 113-page document cataloging Trump’s stock purchases in 2026.
Trump also purchased between $51,000 and $115,000 worth of Thermo Fisher stock about one month before his visit on February 12. He made another purchase of Thermo Fisher valued between $15,000 and $50,000 on March 2. So at the time of Trump’s effusive remarks about Thermo Fisher, he had purchased as much as $215,000 worth of the company’s stock over the previous month.
The fact that Trump visited a Thermo Fisher facility on the same day he purchased the company’s stock — and bought Thermo Fisher stock repeatedly in the weeks before his visit — has not previously been reported.
The disclosures reveal that Trump has been a highly active trader in 2026, executing thousands of transactions — many in individual stocks impacted by his administration’s policies. In response to criticism, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization claimed that the trades were completely separate from Trump’s official duties and managed by an independent outside financial advisor. “President Trump’s investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions,” the spokesperson said. “Trades are executed and portfolios are balanced through automated investment processes and systems administered by those institutions.”
The fact that Trump purchased stock in Thermo Fisher the same day that he toured its facility undercuts this claim. Further, the March 11 purchase of Thermo Fisher stock was marked “UNSOLICITED” in the document. An “unsolicited” trade is one that is not recommended by a broker, but initiated by the customer.
At least three immigrant children were taken into custody and restrained with zip ties at the San Antonio Immigration Court. The children were between the ages of 9 and 12.www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/a…
Brookings reminds us that there are still thousands of families with children experiencing horrible detentions and deportations because of the MAGA obsession with keeping America as white as possible. “The administration has detained 400,000 immigrants: What do we know about their children?” Is this really the kind of country you want to live in and that you thought you grew up in?
The Trump administration has made detention and deportation the centerpieces of its immigration policy. Around 60,000 people are being held in detention currently, and around 400,000 people have been booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention from an interior arrest since the administration began. Detention capacity is likely to expand, with $45 billion allocated to expanding detention facilities in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Though it is mostly adults who are detained and deported, many children are impacted by separation from their parents. However, there are no reliable data on how many detainees or deportees have children in the U.S., nor on what happens to them once their parent is taken into custody. Here we focus on detainees, about whom we have better information than deportees. Even a short separation from a parent is likely traumatic for a child, but a majority of detentions are not short-lived separations. A ProPublica study following ICE arrests of mothers of U.S. citizen children over the first seven months of the administration found that 60% had been removed and 17% remained in custody at the study’s conclusion.
To estimate the number of children affected by parental detention, we rely on demographic characteristics of detainees matched with likely unauthorized immigrants in the American Community Survey. Our analysis (detailed below) suggests that more than 145,000 U.S. citizen children have likely experienced a parent booked into detention since the administration began, with more than 22,000 of those experiencing detention of all their co-resident parents. In the accompanying interactive, we allow users to explore how the estimates change when the underlying assumptions are varied. Regardless of the assumptions used, it is clear that tens of thousands of children have faced parental detention since January 2025.
Please use the link to read the details. The time and research it took to find out all this was amazing and hard to believe.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
I can’t even explain what kind of crush I had on Cat Stevens in ninth grade. I could basically play his entire songbook. He’s an amazing songwriter and musician.
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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.
That last sentence hits home. And I say no more going high when they go low. Call it out for what it is.
The New York Times has a big story today about the institutional racism being put back into place in the military by drunk, rapey Pete Hegseth. We have to stop going backward. “Secret Vetting and Blocked Promotions: Inside Hegseth’s War on Diversity. A Black admiral fixed one of the Navy’s worst messes. Mr. Hegseth blocked his promotion anyway.” Greg Jaffe and Kate Kelly share the lede.
It sure looks like we have a lot of leaders of major countries completely out of their league. And back to Iran. This is from Reuters. “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards set up covert Iraqi cells to attack Gulf neighbors, sources say.” It’s the same old, same old since the 1970s if you ask me.
Feeling safer now? Me neither. Trump’s polls continue to fall on the Iraq war. As you can see from The Bulwark articles, the trad war hawks are not happy about the situation. Maybe we all need to start building bunkers. This is from the AP. “What Americans think about Trump’s handling of Iran, according to a new AP-NORC poll.”
Everything Trump does is for money and feeding the narcissistic monkey that lives where his brain should be. I’m not a big fan of The View, but check their Instagram for their basic thoughts on the matter. It zings. “There’s just no end to the grift from the Trump family.” As Pres. Trump prepares to host a UFC fight on the White House lawn.” I suppose Trump will try to Jimmy Kimmel them.
This entire thing is the biggest shit show I’ve seen, and given how many years we’ve dealt with Trump, that’s saying a lot. William Kristol, writing for The Bulwark, also tore a new one in Trump’s follies. “We Can Reject Trump’s Orgy of Decline.” Count me in.
You can see that most independent and nontraditional media outlets have not forgotten the main story. Wait! Has the Gray Lady returned? “Israel Counts the Ways That Netanyahu’s Iran Strategy Failed. The U.S.-Iran framework agreement appears to omit some of the most important provisions that Israel wanted.” This news analysis in today’s New York Times is provided by David M. Halbfinger and Ronen Bergman.
This MS NOW report, as discussed in The Raw Story last week, really says it all. “
Public Notice‘s Noah Berlatzky puts it bluntly. “The US under Trump is a global scourge. We’re the baddies.” Yup.
I’d just like to remind you that a really great holiday is coming up to celebrate on Friday. It’s National Garfield the Cat Give Your Cat Lasagna Day! I’m sure Dinah and Kristal will be up for it! Today, the furbabies are headed to the vet, so they’ll deserve something for today’s jaunt. I’ll likely be drinking wine as soon after student time as possible. We’ll have our own little mixed martial arts dog and cat still soon.
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.
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
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.
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.”
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
There’s more at the link. My question is, what the hell can the rest of us who don’t support him do? I voted Saturday morning, wondering which candidate I had voted for would even have a chance under the new gerrymandering. That doesn’t even consider that we couldn’t even vote for our Congressional representatives, given the Supreme Court decision and the quick fix redraw of our map to ensure maybe one black person will retain their seat. The only good news to come out of the election was that all five constitutional amendments proposed by Governor Klandry were voted down.
My friend Robert Mann, a former Journalism Professor at LSU, has something poignant to say about the loss. This is from his SubStack. “Enjoy your tarnished legacy, Bill Cassidy. You earned it.” It’s a good lesson: while all politics is local, it can be influenced by a cult of personality.
Speaking of Mafia-like behavior, here’s a little something on the Don’s Greenland Grab. This is from the New York Times. “In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland. Greenlandic officials worry about the direction of the negotiations aimed at defusing President Trump’s threats to seize their island. But they have little leverage.” The story has a number of contributing reporters.
There’s a lot more at that gifted link. Jeer Heeter has this description of our Grifter-in-Chief in his article in The Nation. “Trump Gloats About “Making a Fortune” While Americans Suffer. As his war in Iran wreaks havoc, Trump is fixated on personal glory and enrichment.”
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