Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: May 24, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, education, public corruption | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Woman and Cat, by Koji Fukiya, 1936.

Good Afternoon!!

Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s crypto dinner, where he briefly spoke to the people who had spent the most on his personal memecoin. The “gala dinner” was held at Trump’s Virginia golf club. The attendees–mostly from foreign countries–had spent their money hoping to gain “access” to Trump, but that didn’t happen, at least at this event. Trump showed up on a “military helicopter,” spoke for less than half and hour and then did his YMCA dance. Then he left again without speaking to anyone personally. And the food was terrible.

Wired: A Helicopter, Halibut, and ‘Y.M.C.A’: Inside Donald Trump’s Memecoin Dinner.

Donald Trump left the stage at his golf club near Washington, DC, on Thursday night, he pointed to the crowd, brought his index finger to his temple—as if to say: You know what’s coming—then began to dance. To the beat of “Y.M.C.A” by The Village People, Trump shimmied, gyrated, and pumped his arms above his head.

Looking on were more than 200 people who had been invited to the Trump National Golf Club for a private gala dinner. They had won their seats by purchasing large quantities of Trump’s own crypto coin—TRUMP—some holding millions of dollars’ worth….

By late afternoon, the dinner guests had started to filter through the gates of the golf club. By comparison to Trump’s previous banquets, thronging with DC insiders and members of the Silicon Valley elite, the crypto dinner attracted a mismatched collection of oddballs: independent traders rubbed shoulders with crypto executives, die-hard Trump fans, and even professional sports stars—former NBA player Lamar Odom towered overhead. A handful wore bowties in Bitcoin orange; others sported gold Trump sneakers.

Just after 7 pm, the dinner guests gathered at the window to watch Trump descend in Marine One, his presidential helicopter. A short while later, he appeared from behind a blue velvet curtain to whoops and applause from the crowd. Had they seen the helicopter, Trump asked. “Yeah, super cool!” somebody yelled….

From behind a lectern at one end of the dining room, backdropped by four US flags, Trump delivered a characteristically winding and digressive speech that sources say lasted around 25 minutes. At some point, he got round to crypto.

“We’ve got some of the smartest minds anywhere in the world right here in this room,” said Trump. “You believe in the whole crypto thing. A lot of people are starting to believe in it … This is really something that may be special—who knows, right? Who knows—but it may be special.”

For some, the dinner represented a chance to network with other deep-pocketed crypto figures, and to hear directly from Trump about his plans to bring an end to the regulatory uncertainty that crimped the industry’s expansion under Biden.

“You don’t get to meet the president easily,” Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at trading firm Kronos Research, told WIRED a few days before the dinner. “To be able to hear his message on crypto directly—I’m definitely looking forward to that.”

Woodblock print from Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885-1892)

No one got to meet the president, but I Wired says they also wanted to network with each other. On the general presentation and the food, served at circular tables

…each seating 10 people arrayed beneath a set of crystal chandeliers. Waiting on the chairs were gift bags containing Fight Fight Fight-themed hats and posters, and a collectible plastic card (some allege that they didn’t receive merch at their seats.) The four largest coin holders—along with two other attendees selected by raffle, sources say—received a gem-encrusted Trump gold watch.

Between mouthfuls, the attendees discussed trading and investment strategies—and Trump’s speech. “To feel his personal charisma to me was very inspiring,” says Liu. But others complained about the brevity of Trump’s appearance: After his speech, Trump had departed immediately in a golf cart bound for his helicopter. “Trump could have at least given the top people their watches himself,” says Pinto. “He didn’t.”

The food itself had left a bitter taste in the mouth, too. “It was the worst food I’ve ever had at a Trump golf course,” says Pinto, who added he left hungry. “The only good thing was bread and butter.” Another attendee described the meal as “OK, but not top-class.”

From Penn Live: Trump’s controversial crypto dinner ripped by attendee: ‘Trash.’

Donald Trump’s controversial memecoin dinner Thursday night was shrouded in secrecy, and while it still isn’t clear who all attended — the White House did not make the list public — we do have a report of how good the food was….

According to Fortune, 25-year-old Nicholas Pinto was one of those who attended. The site said he invested “more than $360,000 in Trump’s memecoin.

And for that, he told the site, the dinner that was served was “trash.”

“Walmart steak, man,” he texted Fortune.

The site said the menu for the included a “Trump organic field green salad” and an “entrée duet” of filet mignon and pan-seared halibut.

“Everybody at my table was saying the food was so of the worst they ever had,” Pinto said.

“I was hoping for Big Macs or pizza,” Pinto told Fortune. “That would have been better than the food that we were served.”

Trump is just raking in the dough as quickly as he can with the minimum effort.

The New York Times got the guest list: Who Won a Seat at Trump’s Crypto Dinner?

The invitees for President Trump’s private dinner for customers of his cryptocurrency business on Thursday included a Chinese billionaire fighting a lawsuit from U.S. regulators, a lawyer for Justice Clarence Thomas and a former basketball star, according to a guest list obtained by The New York Times and social media posts.

The dinner, at which Mr. Trump gave remarks, was an extraordinary moment in which the president leveraged his position to make money — for his crypto business and for his Virginia golf club, which hosted the event.

The event’s invited guests were not known publicly beforehand, even to each other. They were identified only by the pseudonyms they used on the electronic wallets where they kept their $TRUMP memecoins. Most had gained an invitation by becoming one of the top 220 holders of that memecoin over a certain period of time. The top 25 of those were given V.I.P. status and afforded a more intimate gathering before the dinner and an unofficial tour of the White House on Friday.

When they arrived at Mr. Trump’s club outside Washington Thursday evening, the digital world had become physical. The invitees’ names and contact information were delineated on paper lists, checked by staffers at the door. A Times reporter reviewed one of those lists, and used it to identify people who were present. Some other invitees self-identified on social media. A reporter and photographer from The Times also saw some $TRUMP crypto buyers enter and exit the White House on Friday.

Merchant’s Daughter by Mizuno Toshikata

Some top invitees:

Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto billionaire who was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for allegedly inflating the value of a cryptocurrency. Mr. Sun is a major investor in a separate crypto venture largely owned by a company tied to Mr. Trump, World Liberty Financial. After Mr. Trump took office, the S.E.C. asked a judge to put Mr. Sun’s case on hold….

Elliot Berke, a Washington attorney who has worked for congressional Republicans and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. The Times identified him because the invitee list included his email address at his law firm, Berke Farah. He was honored as “Republican Lawyer of the Year” in 2021 by the Republican National Lawyers Association….

Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and chief executive of a digital-asset firm, Wintermute. The Times identified him because the list of invitees included his Wintermute email….

Anil Lulla and Yan Liberman, two co-founders of Delphi Digital, a Miami Beach firm that offers market intelligence for crypto investors. Their corporate emails were included in the list of invitees….

Cheng Lu, 32, a crypto investor from Shanghai, was observed by a Times reporter entering the White House on Friday. He said he did not have a chance to speak with Mr. Trump during the dinner on Thursday or at the Friday tour. “I just want to see President Trump,” he said.

Several more are listed at the NYT link.

Another big story today is Trump’s terrifying persecution of Harvard University. Here’s the latest:

From The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Is Trump Trying to Destroy Harvard? The order against foreign students turns away the world’s brightest.

The Trump Administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back. And for what purpose?

That’s how we read the Department of Homeland Security’s move Thursday to bar foreign students from attending the world-renowned institution. That’s 6,800 students, or a quarter of Harvard’s student body, whose futures are suddenly in disarray. It’s also a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest.

The latest assault began when DHS demanded that Harvard turn over sundry records on its foreign students, including whether any had participated in illegal activity or left the university owing to “dangerous or violent activity or deprivation of rights.”

Some of its record requests are reasonable, but some overreached by requiring private student information. DHS also gave Harvard all of two weeks to respond. If it failed to do so, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she would “automatically withdraw” the school’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. “The withdrawal will not be subject to appeal.”

The SEVP program lets non-citizens enroll at universities on student visas. DHS can bar universities from the program if they fail to comply with “recordkeeping, retention, reporting and other requirements” on foreign students. Harvard says it responded with “information required by law” within two weeks and handed over more records on May 14.

Twin Guardians, by Hawse Sumi

That didn’t satisfy Noem and she banned Harvard from enrolling international students. Harvard soon got a restraining order from a federal court.

Most of Harvard’s foreign students are enrolled in graduate programs. Many assist with scientific research and teaching undergraduate courses. Driving them out of Harvard will disrupt research projects and might cause some professors in the sciences to leave for other universities. This seems to be a goal of freezing Harvard’s research grants.

Harvard sued on Friday, and a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the student ban. The university rightly says the Administration’s actions are “clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”

The university seems likely to prevail on the law, but until courts settle the merits, thousands of students who have done nothing wrong will be in legal limbo. Some of them no doubt opposed the anti-Israel protests and may even hail from Israel. Why punish them? [….]

This will be terribly damaging to America’s ability to attract talented young people who bring their enterprise and intellectual capital to the U.S. Non-citizens accounted for more than half of doctoral degrees in AI-related fields in 2022. Many have gone to work at U.S. companies like Nvidia or started their own.

Clearly Trump hates Harvard, higher education, and education generally. But I’m coming to the conclusion that Trump’s goal is to destroy the U.S. in every possible way and at the same time enrich himself and his wealthy friends. He doesn’t even appear to care about the economy anymore. He wants Americans to be poor, ignorant, and isolated from the rest of the world.

The New York Times: Universities See Trump’s Harvard Move as a Threat to Them, Too.

The Trump administration’s surprising bid to end Harvard’s international enrollment put the higher education world on edge this week, looming as a larger threat against academic autonomy.

Well beyond the halls of Harvard this week, college leaders were shocked that one swift move by the federal government could eliminate their ability to serve students from abroad, a growing population that has infused their campuses with cachet and wealth.

“This is a grave moment,” Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a message to her campus.

More than 5,000 miles away, Wendy Hensel, the president of the University of Hawaii, said that it was “reverberating across higher education.”

President Trump has already unnerved universities this year by launching investigations, freezing grants, demanding changes in campus practices and attempting to deport international students. He has justified his punitive approach as a means to combat what he considers antisemitism. But he and his allies also have long resented a perceived liberal bias and racial diversity efforts at prestigious colleges.

The Trump administration said Thursday that it revoked Harvard’s international student certification because the university had failed to meet its demands, including a request for records of student protest activity dating back five years.

To many academics, that was a clear signal that Mr. Trump was prepared to use any federal mechanism as leverage if he did not get what he wants.

“While Harvard is the victim of the moment, it’s a warning and unprecedented attempt of a hostile federal government to erode the autonomy of all major universities in the U.S.,” said John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

Yesterday, Trump and Marco Rubio began dismantling the National Security Council.

CNN: More than 100 National Security Council staffers put on administrative leave.

The Trump administration has put more than 100 officials at the National Security Council at the White House on administrative leave on Friday as part of a restructuring under interim national security adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to two US officials and another source familiar with the matter.

Woman and cat, by Toyohara Kunichika

CNN previously reported that a significant overhaul of the body in charge of coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda was expected in the coming days, including a staff reduction and a reinforced top-down approach with decision-making concentrated at the highest levels.

An email from NSC chief of staff Brian McCormack went out around 4:20 p.m. informing those being dismissed they’d have 30 minutes to clean out their desks, according to an administration official. If they weren’t on campus, the email read, they could email an address and arrange a time to retrieve their stuff later and turn in devices.

The email subject line read: “Your return to home agency,” indicating that most of those affected were detailed to the NSC from other departments and agencies….

With this happening on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend, the official called it “as unprofessional and reckless as could possibly be.”

Those put on leave include career officials, as well as political hires made during the Trump administration….

Staffed by foreign policy experts from across the US government, the NSC typically serves as a critical body for coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda.

But under President Donald Trump, the NSC’s role has been diminished, with the overhaul expected to further reduce its importance in the White House.

Axios says they are trying to purge the “deep state.”

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have orchestrated a vast restructuring of the National Security Council, reducing its size and transferring many of its powers to the State and Defense departments.

Why it matters: Trump’s White House sees the NSC as notoriously bureaucratic and filled with longtime officials who don’t share the president’s vision.

  • A White House official involved in the planning characterized the reorganization as Trump and Rubio’s latest move against what they see as Washington’s “Deep State.”
  • “The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,” the official said of the move, which will cut the NSC staff to about half of its current 350 members. Those cut from the NSC will be moved to other positions in government, officials said.
  • “The right-sizing of the NSC is in line with its original purpose and the president’s vision,” Rubio told Axios in a statement. “The NSC will now be better positioned to collaborate with agencies.”

Zoom in: White House officials point to an NSC structure that’s filled with committees and meetings that they say slow down decision-making and produce lots of jargon and acronyms.

There’s a lot more a the link, but I think Trump is just trying to bring every part of the government under his personal control.

Finally, I want to look at what Trump and RFK Jr. are doing with Covid-19 and Covid vaccines.

ABC News: Why are more than 300 people in the US still dying from COVID every week? Experts say there is low vaccine uptake and people are not accessing treatments.

More than five years after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the United States, hundreds of people are still dying every week.

By Utagawa Hiroshige, 1797-1858

Last month, an average of about 350 people died each week from COVID, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

While high, the number of deaths is decreasing and is lower than the peak of 25,974 deaths recorded the week ending Jan. 9, 2021, as well as weekly deaths seen in previous spring months, CDC data shows.

Public health experts told ABC News that although the U.S. is in a much better place than it was a few years ago, COVID is still a threat to high-risk groups.

“The fact that we’re still seeing deaths just means it’s still circulating, and people are still catching it,” Dr. Tony Moody, a professor in the department of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University Medical Center, told ABC News.

The experts said there are a few reasons why people might still be dying from the virus, including low vaccination uptake, waning immunity and not enough people accessing treatments.

Read more details at the ABC link.

So why is the government limiting access to Covid Vaccines?

Scientific American: What FDA’s Planned Limits on COVID Vaccinations Mean for Health.

Larry Saltzman has blood cancer. He’s also a retired doctor, so he knows getting covid-19 could be dangerous for him — his underlying illness puts him at high risk of serious complications and death. To avoid getting sick, he stays away from large gatherings, and he’s comforted knowing healthy people who get boosters protect him by reducing his exposure to the virus.

Until now, that is.

Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.

“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”

The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.

Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.

“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”

The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.

Read the rest at the link. You can also check out this article at Technology Review: The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad.

Trump simply doesn’t care if Americans die. That’s obvious based on the way he dealt with Covid during his first term. He seems willing to let RFK Jr. do whatever he wants. So who can Americans turn to for guidance and access to vaccines and treatments?

That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?