The negotiations about the proposed cease fire in the Iran war are expected to begin soon, but meanwhile the news in the U.S. is suddenly filled with scandalous stories.
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Melania Trump’s mysterious announcement to the White House press; I have a bit more context to add to that. Then last night the news about serious accusations of sexual misconduct by Eric Swalwell broke. There’s also news about Kristy Noem’s husband and his identity crisis.
I’ll get to those items, but I want to begin with a feel-good story for once.
HOUSTON (AP) — Artemis II’s astronauts closed out humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than half a century with a Pacific splashdown on Friday, blazing new records near the moon with grace and joy.
It was a dramatic grand finale to a mission that revealed not only swaths of the lunar far side never seen before by human eyes, but a total solar eclipse and a parade of planets, most notably our own shimmering Earth against the endless black void of space.
With their flight now complete, the four astronauts have set NASA up for a moon landing by another crew in just two years and a full-blown moon base within the decade.
The triumphant moon-farers — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen — emerged from their bobbing capsule into the sunlight off the coast of San Diego.
In a scene reminiscent of NASA’s Apollo moonshots of yesteryear, military helicopters hoisted the astronauts one by one from an inflatable raft docked to the capsule, hauling them aboard for the short trip to the Navy’s awaiting recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha.
“These were the ambassadors from humanity to the stars that we sent out there right now, and I can’t imagine a better crew,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said from the recovery ship.
NASA’s Mission Control erupted in celebration, with hundreds pouring in from the back support rooms. “We did it,” NASA’s Lori Glaze rejoiced at a news conference. “Welcome to our moonshot.”
Read more at the AP link.
Now for the feel-disgusted news about Eric Swalwell. Based on what I’ve read, it’s surprising that this didn’t come out sooner. Apparently, he’s been DM young women, sending dick picks, and sexually assaulting women for years.
A former staffer of Rep. Eric Swalwell, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, says that the congressman raped her when she was heavily intoxicated and left her bruised and bleeding, an allegation Swalwell strongly denies.
“I was pushing him off of me, saying no,” the woman told CNN of the incident, which she said happened in 2024 after she had stopped working in Swalwell’s office. “He didn’t stop.”
By Francesca Strino
She said it was the second time Swalwell had nonconsensual sexual contact with her while she was drunk. In 2019, when she was still working for him, she said she woke up naked with him in a hotel room after a night of heavy drinking. She said she had no memory of what happened but could feel physically that they’d had sexual contact.
Three other women who spoke with CNN also alleged various kinds of sexual misconduct by the Democratic congressman – including Swalwell sending them unsolicited explicit messages or nude photos.
One woman who connected online with Swalwell over her interest in Democratic politics says she ended up extremely drunk inside his hotel room after a night out with the congressman, with little memory of what occurred. Earlier in the night at a bar, he kissed her and touched her leg without her consent, she said.
Another woman, who described receiving unsolicited nude messages from Swalwell, was social media creator Ally Sammarco. She said she initially reached out to the congressman on Twitter to discuss politics. “I truly never thought he would respond – I had like 1,000 followers at the time,” she said. “And he actually responded.”
Swalwell denied the women’s allegations.
“These allegations are false and come on the eve of an election against the front-runner for governor,” Swalwell said in a statement to CNN. “For nearly 20 years, I have served the public – as a prosecutor and a congressman and have always protected women. I will defend myself with the facts and where necessary bring legal action. My focus in the coming days is to be with my wife and children and defend our decades of service against these lies.”
I don’t think that’s going to work. These are not subtle accusations, and the women told others about their experiences at the time. Sammarco saved the messages she got from Swallwell. A bit more from CNN:
One member of Swalwell’s staff said they quit immediately after receiving CNN’s detailed list of questions about the allegations.
CNN found corroboration for key elements of each of the women’s claims, including the former staffer who said she was sexually assaulted. Two family members and a friend said in interviews with CNN that she told them about the alleged 2024 assault in the following days, and CNN also reviewed text messages she sent two friends describing her allegations at the same time. “I was sexually assaulted on Thursday,” she wrote to one of her friends, adding: “By Eric.”
The woman also shared medical records related to her receiving STD and pregnancy testing after the alleged assault.
For the woman who connected online with Swalwell over Democratic politics, a family member and two friends confirmed she told them last year about the incident where she ended up intoxicated in his hotel room. CNN also reviewed messages between her and Swalwell, including a photo he sent her that matches footage of him during a CNN interview in her city on the night they met in person.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi headlined a growing list of Democratic lawmakers called on Rep. Eric Swalwell Friday to withdraw his campaign for California governor amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Lily Walton with Raminou, 1922, by Suzanne Valadon
“This extremely sensitive matter must be appropriately investigated with full transparency and accountability,” Pelosi said in a statement. “As I discussed with Congressman Swalwell, it is clear that is best done outside of a gubernatorial campaign.”
In a joint statement with other elected House Democratic leaders, Jeffries called for a “swift investigation” as well as the end of his pending campaign.
“This is unacceptable of anyone — certainly not an elected official — and must be taken seriously,” the leaders said.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday that a former congressional aide accused the congressman of two sexual encounters without her consent, beginning in 2019. CNN later reported that four women allege that Swalwell has committed sexual misconduct, including one former staffer who accuses Swalwell of rape….
Key backers of Swalwell’s governor bid swiftly revoked their support after the Chronicle’s story was published, including Reps. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) and Adam Gray (D-Calif.), who served as campaign co-chairs.
“Today’s reports about Eric Swalwell’s conduct while in office are deeply disturbing,” Gray said in a statement. “Harassment, abuse, and violence of any sort are unacceptable. Given these serious allegations, I am withdrawing my support and Eric Swalwell should end his campaign immediately.”
But nothing underscored the peril for Swalwell’s nearly two-decade political career as vividly as Pelosi’s statement. The former speaker included Swalwell in her inner circle of favored Democratic members for years, tapping him for junior leadership roles and to serve as a manager in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021.
Read the rest at the link.
The Melania Trump story might have stayed on social media if she hadn’t decided to make a public statement at the lectern that is supposed to be reserved for the POTUS. But it’s out there now, and she will have to deal with it.
Last June, the man credited with introducing President Trump to his wife asked the administration for a favor.
Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent turned presidential special envoy, had learned that his Brazilian ex-girlfriend was in a Miami jail, arrested on charges of fraud at her workplace. They had been in a custody battle over their teenage son. Now he saw an opportunity.
Eduard Manet, Woman with a Cat, 1880
He reached out to a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, explaining that his ex was in the country illegally, according to records obtained by The New York Times and a person familiar with the communications. Could she be put in ICE detention? That could help him get his son back.
The official, David Venturella, promptly called the agency’s Miami office to ensure that ICE agents would pick up the woman from the jail before she was released on bail, according to the records and a person with knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity to discuss it. During the call, Mr. Venturella noted that the case was important to someone close to the White House.
The woman, Amanda Ungaro, was placed in ICE custody and ultimately deported, an outcome that may well have happened regardless of Mr. Zampolli’s meddling. But the ICE official’s willingness to spring into action for a Trump ally — even one in a low-level, largely ceremonial role — reflects a recurring theme of the second Trump administration: The levers of the federal government can be pulled to settle a personal score.
I read this story when it was published, but I didn’t make the connections I should have.
Amanda Ungaro is on X AKA Twitter, and she is fighting back. If you have access, you can read the many tweets she has been sending to Melania.
Melania is apparently sensitive about how she came to the U.S. In fact Zampolli is the one who brought her here and got her an H1-B visa. When she first arrived, she moved into a building occupied by other models who worked for Zampolli’s agency. It looks like Melania has really stepped in it. The Epstein files are back in the news.
The First Lady’s unprecedented public statement about Jeffrey Epstein yesterday raised a lot of questions about what, if anything, is about to be revealed about Donald and Melania Trump’s relationship with the late sex trafficker.
The Epstein case had quieted down in the wake of Trump’s decision to attack Iran — some critics allege that was one of Trump’s goals in launching a war in the first place — to cool the MAGA furor over DOJ’s inept release of the Epstein files.
Now it seems that plan, if true, has led to a Jack-In-The-Beanstalk effect — as in trading a cow for beans and climbing into danger without really thinking it through.
Because there is another story that I admit I missed when it ran in the New York Times a few weeks ago.
It appears that the Trump administration may have targeted Zampolli’s ex-girlfriend, a former Brazilian model named Amanda Ungaro, deporting her back to Brazil amid her custody battle with Zampolli over their teenage son.
As the NYT’s story notes: “The levers of the federal government can be pulled to settle a personal score.”
Self-Portrait with a Cat, created by Frida Konstantin
In this case, the score involved Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent who was appointed last year by Trump as special envoy for “global partnerships,” which allows him to travel the world to advance trade and other partnerships with the U.S.
Just days ago, he was in Hungary with Vice President Vance, supporting the re-election of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an effort to publicly back the right-wing leader in the days running up to the election.
Zampolli, 56, was in Epstein’s orbit around the time that Trump met Melania in 1998. He was also friends with Epstein, as the two entertained a business deal over buying a modeling agency.
And Zampolli’s name is in the Epstein Files, with Epstein noting in one email that he was “trouble.”
Still all the drama surrounding Zampolli’s custody battle with his estranged girlfriend didn’t connect any dots, at least not for me, until the First Lady’s speech yesterday.
President Trump said Friday that he had known his wife wanted to speak about Jeffrey Epstein at some point, and that he “thought she had a right to talk about it,” even if he had not known what exactly she planned to say.
“It doesn’t bother me,” Mr. Trump said in a brief telephone interview, referring to the remarks Melania Trump made from the entrance hall of the White House a day earlier.
“I didn’t know what the statement was,” he said, “but I knew she was going to make a statement.”
The first lady’s comments certainly came as a surprise to many other people who work in the White House, according to two officials familiar with the situation who asked for anonymity to discuss the matter. It was not clear why she had chosen that moment to talk about Mr. Epstein. Absent any explanation, questions and feverish conspiracy theories swirled.
The president said his wife had been agonizing for a long time over her press coverage and rumors connecting her to Mr. Epstein. What was particularly upsetting to her, Mr. Trump explained, was one theory positing that it was Mr. Epstein who introduced her to her future husband. In her remarks on Thursday, Mrs. Trump recounted the story of meeting Mr. Trump “by chance at a New York City party in 1998.” She said she did not encounter Mr. Epstein for the first time until two years after that.
“She finds it very insulting,” Mr. Trump said of the rumors. “And I said, ‘If you want to do that, you can do that.’ I said if she wants to do it — I didn’t recommend it, but I said, I let it be her, I said, if you want to do it. …”
He added, “She didn’t meet me through Jeffrey Epstein. And I could understand her feelings. But I said, ‘If you want to do it, do it.’”
He would not say when exactly he had this discussion with the first lady, but said that “it wasn’t a big discussion. I’d say it lasted for about two minutes. I had no problem. I thought she actually did a good job.”
He’s lying, obviously. I doubt if she told him. Now she has revived interest in the Epstein files and Trump can’t be happy about that.
The Black Cat, by Carl Wilhelm Wilhelmson , 1922, Swedish, 1866-1928
The last scandal for today–the Kristi Noem story. The story was originally in the Daily Mail, but it’s behind a paywall.
Kristi Noem’s husband, Bryon Noem, has pushed back on a report that he insulted his wife in phone calls and online messages with a dominatrix and expressed a desire to become a woman.
Bryon Noem told The Independent the claims in the report were “not all true.” He did not elaborate when asked for more information.
The 56-year-old was reported to have been in an on-off relationship online with Shy Sotomayor, a 30-year-old sex worker known as Raelynn Riley, since 2016, she claimed in an interview with the Daily Mail, published Friday.
It is the latest in a series of exposés on the husband of the recently ousted Homeland Security Secretary, who has been keeping a low profile since the story broke last week.
Sotomayor shared recordings of phone calls and screenshots of messages she said she exchanged with Bryon Noem, where he said she was “so much better” than his wife. He also expressed wanting to transition to become a woman, the messages showed.
In one recent message, the South Dakota insurance boss said he wanted to change his name to Crystal “so bad,” and that he wanted plastic surgery. “I want to be your trans bimbo b****,” the messages showed.
The outlet linked Bryon Noem’s telephone number to the messages with Sotomayor, and it also corresponded to an email address under the pseudonym “Chrystalballz666.”
The messages reportedly from Bryon Noem appear in stark contrast to Kristi Noem’s opposition to transgender rights. As South Dakota governor, she signed an exclusionary bill to ban surgical and non-surgical gender-affirming treatments for children in the state, and barred transgender girls and women from playing on women’s sports teams.
Read the rest at The Independent.
There’s no news on the Iran talks yet, so I’ll end this with two disturbing Iran stories:
Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them, according to U.S. officials.
The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance meet in Pakistan this weekend for peace talks.
Woman with a cat, Pierre Bonnard
Iran used small boats to mine the strait last month, soon after the United States and Israel began their war against the country. The mines, plus the threat of Iranian drone and missile attacks, slowed the number of oil tankers and other vessels passing through the strait to a trickle, driving up energy prices and providing Iran with its best leverage in the war.
Iran left a path through the strait open, allowing ships that pay a toll to pass through.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has issued warnings that ships could collide with sea mines, and semiofficial news organizations have published charts showing safe routes.
Those routes are limited in large part because Iran mined the strait haphazardly, U.S. officials said. It is not clear that Iran recorded where it put every mine. And even when the location was recorded, some mines were placed in a way that allowed them to drift or move, according to the officials.
As with land mines, removing nautical mines is far more difficult than placing them. The U.S. military lacks robust mine removal capabilities, relying on littoral combat ships equipped with mine sweeping capabilities. Iran also does not have the capability of quickly removing mines, even the ones it planted.
One of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s main defenses of the U.S. decision to negotiate a controversial ceasefire with Iran is that its ballistic missile program has been “functionally destroyed.”
But that claim has now been shot down by U.S. intelligence assessments, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
“Iran still has thousands of ballistic missiles in its arsenal that it could use by retrieving launchers from underground storage areas, according to American officials familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments,” said the report. “The assessments come as the U.S. is working to cement a cease-fire that would fully open the Strait of Hormuz and also insulate Iran, American troops and states in the region from further attacks. Some American officials said they are concerned that Iran will use the break in fighting to reconstitute some of its missile arsenal.”
The conflict has taken a toll on Iran, with around half of its missile stockpile lost, the assessment found — but “it retains thousands of medium- and short-range ballistic missiles that could be pulled out of hiding or retrieved from underground sites, said U.S. and Israeli officials.”
This comes as even a number of Republican and conservative analysts are crying foul about the terms of the ceasefire, which appear one-sidedly in favor of Iran.
That’s it for me today. I guess it’s okay to focus on salacious stuff on the weekend. Happy Caturday!
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Yesterday morning Trump threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilization beginning at 8:00 last night–the deadline he had set for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. Here’s what he posted on Truth Social:
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”
The obvious implication was that he would use nuclear weapons. Of course it turned out to be another Taco Tuesday, as Trump backed down and the White House dictated a ceasefire agreement to Pakistan and then Trump said that Iran’s 10-point plan was a good starting point for negotiations.
*many people are saying* it sure looks like the White House wrote this for Pakistan’s PM, who posted it then quickly deleted the top part 😬
According to state media, Iran will only accept the war’s conclusion once details are finalised in line with a 10-point peace plan reportedly submitted to the White House via Pakistani intermediaries.
The list of 10 points, published by Iranian state media, include a number of conditions the US has rejected in the past. The plan requires:
The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran.
Continued Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz.
US military withdrawal from the Middle East.
An end to attacks on Iran and its allies.
The release of frozen Iranian assets.
A UN security council resolution making any deal binding.
That certainly doesn’t sound like a great starting point for Trump. At the moment, Iran is still collecting tolls for ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and they are demanding that the U.S. close all military bases in the Middle East, plus they want compensation for losses from the war and the return of frozen assets going back to the George W. Bush administration.
Iran, the United States and Israel agreed to a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday, an 11th-hour deal that headed off U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash a bombing campaign that would destroy Iranian civilization. Hours after the announcement, Iran and Gulf Arab countries reported new attacks Wednesday, though it was not clear if the strikes would scuttle the deal.
All sides have presented vastly different versions of the terms. Iran said the deal would allow it to formalize its new practice of charging ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said the U.S. would work with Iran to remove buried enriched uranium, though Iran did not confirm that.
Pakistan and others said fighting would pause in Lebanon, which Israel has invaded to fight the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early Wednesday that the deal doesn’t cover fighting against Hezbollah.Israeli strikes hit several dense commercial and residential areas in central Beirut Wednesday afternoon without warning, killing dozens and wounding hundreds of people.
The ceasefire may formalize a system of charging fees in the Strait of Hormuz that Iran instituted — and give it a new source of revenue. Iranian attacks and threats deterred many commercial ships from passing through the waterway, through which 20% of all traded oil and natural gas passes in peacetime.
Good Wednesday morning. This is Jack Blanchard, still slowly exhaling. It’s Day One of the ceasefire in Iran. Get in touch.
In today’s Playbook …
— The war in Iran is on hold for now. So who wins the peace? [….]
WHAT DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES: “A big day for World Peace!” Trump trumpeted on Truth Social at 12:01 a.m., a mere 16 hours after threatening to erase an entire civilization off the face of the planet. Iran has “had enough” of war, Trump said, and “so has everyone else.” Plenty of people will be nodding along with that.
So let the good times roll: “There will be lots of positive action!” Trump predicted. “Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process … This could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!!” You don’t need to read too far past the hyperbole to get the crucial point: “Two-week” ceasefire or no, Trump is already moving on.
And let’s be clear: Given the unpopularity of this war in America, the devastating impact on oil prices, the rapidly worsening global economic outlook and Trump’s looming May 14 summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, it’s hard to imagine Trump reviving his bombing campaign. Oil prices have already plummeted below $100 a barrel following the ceasefire announcement. Stock markets are surging. He’s not going to want to go back.
So brace yourselves for the White House comms blitz. Your zone is about to be flooded with Trump world messages that America won the war, even before this two-week negotiation gets underway. This is “total and complete victory,” Trump told the AFP last night. “100 percent. No question about it.” It’s the first of what will surely be many “exclusive” calls with journalists today….
But here’s the problem: This “total victory” narrative looks tough to sell. Clearly these past few weeks have been painful for Tehran, and Hegseth and Caine will rattle off an astonishing number of military targets that U.S. and Israeli missiles flattened. But is the regime actually worse off?
The charge sheet: Iran’s leadership structures remain intact. Its hard-liners now have total control. Sanctions have been lifted, for now. Missiles can be rebuilt. The enriched uranium remains in Iran. And the discovery that even the full force of the American military cannot prevent Iran from turning one of the world’s most important shipping lanes into a de facto parking lot — with a hefty pay-to-leave barrier — will not be quickly forgotten.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi
Strait talking: Crucially, the ceasefire statement from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi last night — reposted in full by Trump on Truth Social — states that even during this two-week period, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will only be permitted “via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces.” In other words, the U.S. has already accepted that Iran can impose limits on shipping in the Strait — limits that did not exist before the war began.
And there’s more: Iran is already charging punitive tolls for passage through the strait, and AP reports this will continue during the ceasefire. Trump’s description of Iran’s 10-point list of demands as “a workable basis on which to negotiate” suggests further concessions are entirely possible. Iran’s national security council is already taking a victory lap, though Trump railed angrily at CNN last night for reporThe ting it.
Much remains unclear. Pakistan — the central mediator — said the ceasefire includes Israeli attacks on Lebanon, but Israel said overnight it does not. There are reports Iran continued firing missiles at neighboring countries after the ceasefire was agreed. And there’s no clarity at all on what happens to Iran’s enriched uranium, though Trump told AFP it will be “perfectly taken care of.”
Just 90 minutes before President Donald Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline to wipe out “a whole civilization” with massive strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure and bridges, he granted a two-week extension for diplomacy to continue.
“Subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said Tuesday on social media, “I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.”
“We have already met and exceeded all Military objectives,and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran,” Trump said. A 10-point proposal received from Tehran, he said, was a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”
Trump added, “This will be a double-sided CEASEFIRE!”
After Trump’s announcement, a statement posted by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, which he attributed to the Supreme National Security Council, said it too was responding to Pakistan’s request and Trump’s “acceptance of the general Framework of Iran’s 10-point proposal for negotiations.”
“If attacks against Iran are halted,” it said, “our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations.” For two weeks, it added, “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination” with the Iranian military.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif
Trump said his ceasefire decision was in response to an appeal from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and military chief Gen. Asim Munir. Pakistan has led a group of mediators, including Egypt and Turkey, that has been looking for an exit to the war that has destabilized the entire region. Trump has forged a particularly close relationship with Munir and, in an interview with Fox News before the extension announcement, described Sharif as “a highly respected man all over.”
In a statement following Trump’s announcement, Sharif said U.S. and Iranian delegations were invited to Islamabad on Friday “to further negotiate for a conclusive agreement to settle all disputes.” He said that the ceasefire would include Lebanon, where Israel is engaged in a massive bombing campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu didn’t agree to include Lebanon in the ceasefire.
In a brief statement issued in English by his office early Wednesday, local time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supported Trump’s “decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks subject to Iran immediately opening the straits and stopping all attacks on the U.S., Israel and countries in the region.”
“Israel also supports the U.S. effort to ensure that Iran no longer poses a nuclear, missile and terror threat. … The United States has told Israel that it is committed to achieving these goals … in the upcoming negotiations,” Netanyahu said.
In a caveat that did not bode well for the negotiations, he added that the ceasefire “does not include Lebanon,” contradicting Sharif’s claims.
The Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday it had “ceased fire in the campaign against Iran” but would continue “its combat and ground operations” in Lebanon.
Mr. Trump’s tactic of escalating his rhetoric to astronomical levels certainly helped him find an offramp he had been seeking for weeks. That success alone may fuel his belief that the tactics he learned in the New York real estate world — ignore old conventions, make maximalist demands — works in geopolitics as well.
The Strait of Hormuz
Without question, it was a down-to-the-wire tactical victory, one that should, at least temporarily, get oil, fertilizer and helium flowing again through the Strait of Hormuz, and calm markets that feared a global energy shock would lead to a global recession.
But it resolved none of the fundamental issues that led to the war.
It leaves a theocratic government, backed by the vicious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in charge of a cowed population that has been pummeled by missiles and bombs, and finds itself still under the thumb of a familiar regime, even if under new management. It leaves Iran’s nuclear stockpile in place, including the 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade material that was, in theory, the casus belli of this war.
It left Gulf allies reeling, with the discovery that the glass skyscrapers of Dubai and the desalination plants that make wealthy enclaves in Kuwait livable can be taken out by Iranian missiles and drones. Gas prices have soared, and are about to test Mr. Trump’s promise that they will fall again to old levels as soon as the fighting stops.
And it has left Mr. Trump’s political base fractured, with onetime supporters now accusing the president and his loyalists, starting with Vice President JD Vance, with violating their promise not to get America tied up in unwinnable wars in the Middle East.
It all happened at a moment when Iran has demonstrated that it can absorb 13,000 targeted strikes and still conduct an impressive asymmetric war, choking off oil supplies and sending its cyber army to attack American infrastructure.
Now Mr. Trump faces the challenge not only of reaching a more permanent settlement but proving to the United States and the world that this conflict was worth fighting in the first place. And to do so, he will have to demonstrate that he has removed Iran’s death-grip on the 21-mile channel that makes up the strait, and its chances of ever building a nuclear weapon.
On that point there was an ominous-sounding element buried in the Iranian description of the deal. Shipping would proceed, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote, but under the control of “Iran’s Armed Forces,” who would determine who passes, and when.
And then there’s that 10-point list of demands.
“Iran remains in the control of the Strait, which was not the case before the war,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. “I find it hard to believe that the United States and the world could accept a situation in which Iran remains in control of a key energy checkpoint indefinitely. That would be a materially worse outcome than existed before the war.”
So might a final agreement. Four weeks ago Mr. Trump was demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender,’’ saying he would determine when the country had been completely defeated. On Tuesday evening his tone was different. He agreed to base the next two weeks of talks on a 10-point plan Iran submitted to the Pakistanis. Mr. Trump called it “a workable basis on which to negotiate.”
“Have you looked at Iran’s plan?” asked Mr. Fontaine. “It reads like a Tehran wish list from before the war, calling for a global recognition of Iran’s right to enrich uranium, the removal of all American forces from the region and a lifting of economic sanctions. And it calls for the payment of reparations to Iran for damage caused in the war.”
Use the gift link to read the rest, if you’re interested.
Officials in the U.S. and Israel learned of an intriguing development on Monday, with President Trump’s ultimatum looming: Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had instructed his negotiators, for the first time since the war began, to move towards a deal, according to an Israeli official, a regional official and a third source with knowledge.
Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei
The big picture: As Trump was publicly threatening total annihilation, there were signs of diplomatic momentum behind the scenes — though even sources close to Trump didn’t know which outcome to expect right up until a ceasefire was announced….
Setting the scene: On Monday morning, as Trump worked the crowd at a White House Easter celebration, a “very angry” Steve Witkoff was working the phones.
The U.S. envoy told the mediators the 10-point counter-proposal the U.S. had just received from Iran was “a disaster, a catastrophe,” a source with direct knowledge said.
That began a “chaotic” day of amendments, with the Pakistani mediators passing new drafts between Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and the Egyptian and Turkish foreign ministers trying to help bridge gaps.
By Monday night, the mediators had U.S. approval for an updated proposal for a two-week ceasefire. It was then up to Khamenei — whom the sources said was actively involved in the process on Monday and Tuesday — to make a decision.
The intrigue: The involvement of the new supreme leader was necessarily clandestine and laborious. Facing an active threat of assassination by Israel, Khamenei has been communicating primarily via runners passing notes.
Two sources described Khamenei’s blessing for his negotiators to cut a deal as a “breakthrough.”
The regional source said Araghchi also played a central role both in handling the negotiations and in pushing commanders from the Revolutionary Guards to accept a deal.
China was also advising Iran to seek an off-ramp.
But at the end of the day, all major decisions on Monday and Tuesday went through Khamenei. “Without his green light, there wouldn’t have been a deal,” the regional source said.
How it happened: It was clearby Tuesday morning that progress was being made, but that didn’t stop Trump from making his most harrowing threat: “A whole civilization will die tonight.”
Some U.S. media outlets reported Iran was breaking off talks in response. Sources involved in the negotiations told Axios that was not the case, and that there was actually some momentum.
Vice President Vance was working the phones from Hungary, dealing primarily with the Pakistanis.
Meanwhile Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in frequent contact throughout the day with Trump and his team — though the Israelis were growing increasingly concerned that they’d lost control of the process.
By around noon ET on Tuesday, there was a general understanding that the parties were converging on a two-week ceasefire.
I’m old enough to remember when President Trump assured us, “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”
That was a month ago.
Since then, Trump has bombed and blustered and caused all manner of damage to Iran, to its neighbors, to the United States, and to the world. But Iran hasn’t unconditionally surrendered. It hasn’t even conditionally surrendered. It’s agreed to a ceasefire followed by negotiations. These negotiations will be based not on Iranian surrender but, as Trump said last night, on a ten-point proposal from Iran that Trump believes “is a workable basis on which to negotiate.”
So we’re off to negotiations. Trump and the Iranian regime are making wildly contrasting claims and promises about what has been or will be agreed to. For now, as Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondent of the Economist, put it:
So if you’re keeping score at home, the ceasefire includes Lebanon but also doesn’t include Lebanon, America has agreed to all of Iran’s demands and Iran has agreed to all of America’s demands, America will recognize Iran’s right to enrichment and also insist on zero enrichment, Hormuz is completely open but also Hormuz is subject to unclear limitations.
Oil market researcher Rory Johnston wittily called this “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.”
But the fog of ceasefire doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything. In fact, we know quite a lot already.
We know that the Iranian regime remains in place. The mullahs and the IRGC remain in control of Iran.
We know that the Iranian regime still has its enriched uranium (even if they can’t get to a lot of it right now). And we know that while its military capabilities have been much degraded, it still has functional missile and drone capabilities. We know there’s no reason not to expect Russia and China to be willing to rearm Iran.
We know that primary and secondary sanctions on Iran seem likely to be relaxed or even lifted.
We know that at least for now the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened. But it’s unclear whether it will remain an international waterway, as it was before, or whether Iran will be able to charge fees or tolls for passage. And we know that the fact that the Iranian regime was able to close the waterway, cause significant damage to the global economy, and live to boast about it, can’t be unseen. Whatever promises are now made, Iran will retain leverage with respect to the strait.
We know more generally that Trump’s war has further shaken any confidence our allies might still have in us. It will be seen as confirmation that Trump’s United States of America has become just another rogue nation in the international arena, if a less disciplined and cunning one than Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. We know that the old international order with the United States as its anchor is gone.
What we know mocks Trump’s claim in an interview with AFP last night that the United States “won a total and complete victory. One hundred percent. No question about it.”
That’s about all I can handle for today. We have a fool as president, and I’m not sure we can survive the rest of his term. Our only hope is that Democrats can wind the House and Senate and impeach and remove him.
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The news continues to be confusing and depressing.
We are supposedly in a war, and the enemy has shot down two of our planes and hit two helicopters. An airman has been missing in Iran for 2 days now. But the “president” is spending time posting insults to Bruce Springsteen and the New York Times on his social media site. So far, he has said nothing publicly about the missing serviceman.
What else is Trump focusing on during the war that he unilaterally started? Releasing a new budget demanding even more defense spending, cuts to domestic programs, and–incredibly–money to rebuild Alcatraz. Oh, and he’s sent his VP to campaign for reelection of the right-wing president of Hungary.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of Defense is firing generals because he’s afraid of losing his job.
U.S. forces were searching for an F-15E crew member after a two-seater fighter jet went down over Iran, a U.S. official said Friday. The other crew member has been rescued.
Iran shot down the F-15E Strike Eagle, a U.S. official said, and the American military was scrambling to find the second aviator after a regional governor offered a bounty for its crew.
A U.S. aircraft that was mobilized to support the search and rescue mission was also struck by Iranian fire after the F-15E jet was downed, a U.S. official told NBC News.
That aircraft, a single-pilot A-10 Thunderbolt, known as a Warthog, made it to Kuwaiti airspace, where the pilot ejected and the aircraft crashed, the official said. The pilot is safe and the A-10 is down in Kuwait, according to the official.
Two U.S. military Blackhawk helicopters that were involved in search and rescue efforts were also struck by Iranian fire, but the service members were unharmed, according to a U.S. official.
Iran’s media published photos alongside claims from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that it had shot down the F-15E. The Pentagon and the White House did not immediately comment on the claims.
The governor of Iran’s Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province in Iran’s southwest, where Iranians were reported to have been searching for the missing pilot, on Saturday denied reports that the second American crew member had been found and arrested, according to Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency.
The regional leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also denied that “the second pilot of an F-15E fighter jet has been captured and detained by special airborne forces,” Mehr also reported.
The missing airman, a weapon systems officer, was aboard a US F-15 fighter jet that was downed in southern Iran. A pilot who was also on board has been rescued, US media report.
Iranian officials are urging citizens to find them “alive” and are offering rewards for their capture, according to state media.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump says Iran has 48 hours to make a deal or reopen the Strait of Hormuz or “all Hell will reign down on them.”
Iran says the area around the Bushehr nuclear power plant has been attacked with one person killed – the global nuclear watchdog says no increase in radiation has been reported, but calls for “maximum military restraint” to avoid a nuclear accident.
It’s a risky US operation to rescue the missing crew member, even though they’ve all prepared for years for this kind of moment.
It is also fraught with political peril.
If Iran finds this airman, and he’s paraded on TV, it will be a propaganda victory for Iran, and a political humiliation – and worry – for the US.
And, it would provide Tehran with a prisoner of war – a bargaining chip at a time when efforts to end this war are already stuck, despite US President Donald Trump’s claims of great progress.
It’s a moment which could give real meaning to the name of this US military operation – Epic Fury.
Retaliation when it comes will be risky for Iran, the region, and a world already suffering economic shocks.
After five weeks of war, the US and Israel have inflicted serious damage on Iran’s military capabilities.
But the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has repeatedly declared they’ve achieved “total air dominance.”
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social early Saturday not to address the public on the fate of a U.S. service member at the center of desperate search efforts in Iran, but to complain about The New York Times.
At the heart of the 79-year-old president’s post, as usual, was himself.
Rachael, by Thomas John Carlson
“The Failing New York Times, whose lack of credibility, and their constant Fake News attacks on your favorite President, ME, has caused its circulation to absolutely PLUMMET, referred to our severely weakened and extremely unreliable ‘partner,’ NATO, as the North American Treaty Organization,” he wrote….
The newspaper’s communications team acknowledged the mistake that Trump had seized upon, saying the name of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had been “misstated.”
Trump’s post comes a day after Iran shot down an Air Force F-15E fighter jet over the country, marking a dangerous new turn in a war now into its fifth week.
Iran has since placed a bounty on the aircrew, and a dramatic search and rescue mission ensued, resulting in one crew member being rescued by American forces. The second remains missing, and both the White House and Pentagon have been silent on the status of rescue efforts.
Trump, asked Friday about the missing service member, told NBC News the situation wouldn’t affect negotiations to end the war, saying, “It’s war. We’re in war.”
It’s not news, but it’s always stunning when Trump demonstrates his complete inability to feel empathy.
As the war in Iran erupted five weeks ago, social media sleuths across Western and Chinese platforms flagged a wave of viral posts detailing equipment at U.S. bases, the movements of American carrier groups and granular breakdowns of how military aircraft were assembling for strikes on Tehran.
The intelligence came from a fast growing new market: Chinese firms — some with links to the People’s Liberation Army — marrying artificial intelligence with open-source data to market information they claim can “expose” the movements of U.S. forces.
Beijing has sought to distance itself from any direct involvement in the Iran war, but the firms — many of which have emerged in the past five years as part of the government’s push to harness private AI for military use — are capitalizing on the conflict.
U.S. officials and intelligence experts are divided over whether Chinese firms’ publicly marketed tools pose a genuine threat or are being credibly used by U.S. adversaries, but say the surge in private-sector offerings points to a growing security risk and reflects Beijing’s intent to project the strength of its intelligence capabilities.
Beijing has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting private firms developing AI with practical defense applications under its civil-military integration strategy, and last month announced plans to supercharge those efforts as part of a broader five-year national strategy….
Private firms have long used open-source data — including flight trackers, satellite imagery and shipping data — to generate market intelligence. But the growing AI capability of Chinese firms is making these tools more powerful, underscoring the growing challenge of concealing U.S. military movements from adversaries.
On Friday, the Trump administration submitted its annual budget request to Congress. The document called for dramatically reducing what the United States government does for Americans. The budget called for steep cuts to funding for education, housing and health, funneling resources toward the military as the war in Iran reaches its fifth week. This shift would leave the portion of the budget known as “nondefense discretionary,” or NDD funding, which accounts for most domestic activities aside from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and SNAP, at its lowest level since at least Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency.
These NDD programs have already suffered more than 15 years of disinvestment, including particularly sharp cuts over the last three years. In total, the president called to cut NDD funding (excluding Veterans Affairs medical care) by $83 billion below last year’s levels.
When Trump signed the “big, beautiful bill” last July, he enacted the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in history. The same law provided enormous tax cuts that disproportionately further enriched the very rich. Taken together, it instituted the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history. The new budget proposal would double down on his legacy of cutting programs that ordinary Americans, and especially those already struggling to make ends meet, rely on.
Fortunately, the proposed cuts are all but certain to be dead on arrival — not just because congressional Democrats will reject them, but because congressional Republicans can’t pass them. In 2023, House Republicans appropriators attempted to write funding bills with “only” $60 billion in cuts to nondefense programs. With Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate at the time, those bills were primarily a messaging exercise rather than a sincere attempt at legislation. And yet $60 billion proved too extreme even for the extreme House Republican conference, which pulled five of its 12 bills, abandoning the process altogether.
If House Republicans could not stomach $60 billion of cuts that had no chance of becoming law, they certainly can’t write bills calling for $83 billion in actual cuts to services on which Americans rely.
The proposed defense funding increases are similarly extreme. The budget is calling for $1.5 trillion in a $445 billion increase above this year, with $1.15 billion coming from annual appropriations and the remaining $350 billion from the budget reconciliation process. First off, the proposal is not tethered to actual policy. To be clear, the president first proposed this $1.5 trillion number nearly two months before the U.S. attacked Iran, so the administration can’t even credibly claim this is related to specific new requirements created by the war.
President Trump is asking for $152 million from Congress to try to transform Alcatraz, the popular tourist attraction, back into a maximum-security prison.
The request, included in a 2027 fiscal year budget proposal released on Friday, is the most concrete step the president has taken so far to realize an idea he first mused about last year on social media, when he said he wanted the island in the San Francisco Bay to be enlarged and rebuilt “to house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.”
But the plan faces immense political and practical roadblocks. It has generated enormous pushback in San Francisco, where tourism is one of the biggest industries and Alcatraz is at the top of many visitors’ itineraries.
And Alcatraz, which has not housed an inmate in more than 60 years, is largely in ruins. It has no running water or sewage system. Much of the island, known as “The Rock,” is covered in bird droppings. All supplies must be brought in by boat.
The new White House budget proposal seeks $5 billion for the Bureau of Prisons to improve the nation’s “crumbling detention facilities,” including the makeover for Alcatraz. The $152 million would cover the first year of costs for the “President’s commitment to rebuild Alcatraz as a state-of-the-art secure prison facility,” it states. The full cost of restoring and reopening Alcatraz would be far higher.
Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco last year called the proposal to turn Alcatraz back into a federal prison “not a serious proposal.” Asked on Friday for his thoughts on the Trump administration’s budget allocation, his spokesman pointed back to those same comments and said he had nothing more to say.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, whose congressional district includes most of San Francisco, said that Alcatraz was a historic museum that belonged to the public. “Rebuilding Alcatraz into a modern prison is a stupid notion that would be nothing more than a waste of taxpayer dollars and an insult to the intelligence of the American people,” she said in a statement, vowing to fight the plan.
Meanwhile, Trump sent JD Vance to Hungary to campaign for Victor Orbán.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance is set to land in Budapest on Tuesday for a high-stakes intervention that underscores how far the White House is willing to go to shore up Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán before the April 12 national election.
Orbán is flailing in the polls, as anti-corruption opposition candidate Péter Magyar surges ahead in his bid to claim power in Budapest after 16 years of leadership by the ruling Fidesz party.
Cat Nap, Susan Blackwood
Vance’s visit, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, was framed by Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács as a celebration of deep ties between the two countries. “The visit highlights the strong and enduring alliance between Hungary and the United States,” he wrote on X on Friday.
The outspoken U.S. vice president will hold talks with the MAGA-allied Orbán and then give a public address, during a trip that directly involves Washington in the final stretch of a heated election campaign.
It echoes an American effort in Argentina last year, where U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent intervened to support President Javier Milei ahead of national midterm elections, to keep a key hemispheric, ideological ally in a strong position.
In multiple speeches and remarks over the 15 months since President Donald Trump returned to office, senior U.S. officials have made clear they believe Europe is on the wrong political path, and that the nationalist-populist Orbán is a model for the continent to follow.
The Hungarian prime minister has promoted his vision of illiberal democracy, while frequently clashing with Brussels over the EU’s direction on migration, Russia and minority rights.
Unbelievable.
Trump’s incompetent Defense Secretary has been on another firing spree.
The ousters of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Army Gen. David Hodne blindsided military leaders and have generated concern among defense officials about the implications for the war in Iran and the longer-term adoption of new tech and tactics.
Why it matters: George and Hodne join a growing list of generals and flag officers booted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. These abrupt exits have reshaped the Joint Chiefs of Staff, intel-collecting agencies and combatant commands.
Driving the news: George’s dismissal was motivated by clashing personalities and not disagreements over where the Army is headed, according to two U.S. officials.
One of those officials described the firing during a war as “insane.”
Hodne was late last year put in charge of Transformation and Training Command (T2COM), meant to accelerate the service’s tech development and deployment. The organization was birthed from the Army Transformation Initiative, which George helped lead.
“This doesn’t feel like a very strong, self-assured decision,” one of the officials said of Hegseth’s move.
Friction point: The firings come while elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division are bound for the Middle East. The service is also responsible for integrated air-and-missile defenses.
“Here is a four-star general who is actively working to get equipment and people into theater — to protect U.S. forces — and you fire him? In the middle of a war?” a third U.S. official told Axios.
Hegseth has named a former aide, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, to replace George.
WASHINGTON — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “paranoia” about Army Secretary Dan Driscoll taking his job fueled the firing of the Army’s top general, current and former administration officials tell The Post — as a top contender emerges to replace Driscoll if he’s canned next.
Hegseth on Thursday demanded the resignation of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George — Driscoll’s top aide — in the middle of the Iran war for reasons that were not publicly stated.
Marie Witte, Mittens
“This is all driven by the insecurity and paranoia that Pete has developed since Signalgate. Unfortunately, it is stoked by some of his closest aides who should be trying to calm the waters,” an official said, referring to Hegseth’s March 2025 group chat with national security officials that inadvertently included a reporter.
Two other Army generals — Gen. David Hodne of the Army’s Transformation and Training Command and Maj. Gen. William Green of the Army’s Chaplain Corps — were dismissed in the purge, with the department only saying “it was time for a leadership change.”
“[Hegseth] has got a big conflict with Driscoll. And he’s been told by the White House he can’t fire Driscoll, at least for the moment,” a source close to the Trump administration said.
“[Hegseth] is very concerned about being fired and he knows that Driscoll is one of the top contenders, or a natural contender, to succeed him. So what Pete has been doing is taking anyone he perceives to be close with Driscoll and going after them. And this is the latest and most spectacular [example] of that.”
Driscoll is a close friend of Vice President JD Vance, with whom he attended Yale Law School after both men served in the Iraq War. His name was floated as a possible Hegseth successor last summer and the Pentagon boss’s suspicions deepened last fall when Driscoll served as a Ukraine war negotiator.
“This is not just one of those things where Pete is focused on DEI. That’s not what this is about. He keeps going after the Army in particular,” the second person said.
I don’t know what’s going through Hegseth’s so-called mind other than his next drink. Dakinikat wrote about the “DEI” issue in the firing yesterday.
FBI agents prepared handwritten interview notes that contain names of possible corroborating witnesses and other information detailing a woman’s accusations that Jeffrey Epstein lured her into his deviant orbit when she was a teen on Hilton Head Island and sexually abused her.
The Post and Courier reviewed 30 pages of FBI agents’ notes, which have not been publicly released. The notes, made by agents in a series of 2019 interviews, offer a few new details about her claim that she traveled with Epstein to the New York area in the 1980s. She alleged that she encountered Donald Trump during a visit and was once forced into a sex act. The White House has assailed her claim, describing it as backed by no evidence.
Chanela by Grażyna Jeżak
The agents’ unredacted notes were not disclosed in the millions of Epstein documents released so far by the U.S. Department of Justice. They flesh out some aspects of her claims that she crossed paths with Epstein in the Lowcountry before he built a global sex-trafficking operation.
The Post and Courier compared the notes with official summaries, known as 302s, that agents prepared after the interviews. Some details in the handwritten notes never made it into the prepared summaries, which were heavily redacted by the Justice Department before their public release as required by law.
During one interview, for instance, an agent scribbled that the woman provided the names of four young teen girls who, by her account, attended a pool party on Hilton Head when Epstein came by. This was during the time when, she alleged, Epstein was sexually assaulting her and plying her with drugs and alcohol. Details about the four friends were not visible in the FBI’s 302 reports and may have been redacted in an effort to protect victim privacy.
It is unclear whether the FBI ever pursued leads offered by the alleged victim. One of the women identified in the interview notes as a high school friend told The Post and Courier that she was never contacted by the FBI.
Agents’ notes from a fourth interview with the alleged victim in 2019 were not available for The Post and Courier to review.
You can read the whole thing at the link. There’s no paywall this time. The Post and Courier has been doing great work on the Epstein story.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
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“This season of Trumplican Apprentice is lit! Bondi, you’re fired!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The ultimate goal of #FARTUS may be to launch us back to the Gilded Age. While the Captain of the Trumptanic kicks women off the sinking ship first, there don’t appear to be any lifeboats in this version. First, it was Kristi Noem; then, Pam Bondi. Tulsi Gabbard is the likely third to head face-first into the cold sea. Linda McMahon is about to have her entire office building sold out from under her. “Trump Administration Sells First Major Federal Building in DC, Shifts Education HQ to Energy.” Remember, His Stupidness still thinks of the Energy as the Department of Oil, Gas, and Coal. Let’s hope he has no plans for the nuclear stockpile while he’s deciding exactly how he can get Iran’s Oil and the Straight of Hormuz.
Let’s start with the insider buzz, Bondi. This is from the New York Times. “Pam Bondi Wanted a Graceful Exit. But Trump Wanted Her Gone. Pam Bondi had a feeling her days as attorney general were numbered. But she didn’t expect President Trump to drop the curtain quite so soon.” No matter how much she tried to do Trump’s bidding, the Justice System was still functional enough to stop most of it. Like most of Trump’s attorneys. I think disbarment is actually what she deserves.
Attorney General Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea her days were numbered.
President Trump had complained too freely, too frequently, to too many people about her inability to prosecute the people he hates. She was falling short of Mr. Trump’s unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies. She had made mistake upon mistake in her handling of the Epstein files. Her critics were in the president’s ear.
Last month, Ms. Bondi told a friend that Mr. Trump’s willingness to fire Kristi Noem from her post as homeland security secretary meant she might be in jeopardy too.
But Ms. Bondi had not expected Mr. Trump, the man responsible for elevating her to one of the most powerful positions in the country, to drop the curtain quite so soon, according to four people familiar with the situation.
On Wednesday, the 60-year-old Ms. Bondi, downcast but determined, joined Mr. Trump for a glum crosstown drive to the Supreme Court, where they watched arguments in the birthright citizenship case. In the car, Mr. Trump told her it was time for a change at the top of the Justice Department.
Ms. Bondi hoped to save her job or, at the very least, buy a little more time — until the summer — to give herself a graceful exit.
She ended up with neither, and grew emotional Wednesday in conversations with friends and colleagues after she realized she was out. The next morning, Mr. Trump made it official, and fired her via social media post.
Ms. Bondi’s precipitous fall laid bare a cornerstone truth of Mr. Trump’s second term: Loyalty, flattery and obeisance are prerequisites for power, but they don’t provide durable protection from a president intent on carrying out his maximalist personal and political goals
You may read the rest of the analysis by John Thrush and Tyler Pager at the gift link. Actually, I think The Bulwark gets it. “All the President’s Women Scapegoats. The women get the boot while the men get off scot-free.” Bill Kristol has the analysis.
According to the Access Hollywood tape, our president, Donald Trump, likes to “move on” women. In fact he seems to relish moving on them “very heavily.” “I don’t even wait. . . . Grab ‘em by the p—y. You can do anything.”
Trump likes to move on women. He also apparently likes to fire them. A month ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the first cabinet official of Trump’s second term to be removed. She had tried dutifully to implement the mass-deportation agenda under the direction of Trump’s top aide, Stephen Miller. But it was Noem, not Miller, who was dumped when Trump needed a scapegoat for its unpopularity.
Not that one should shed tears for Noem. Nor should one cry for Attorney General Pam Bondi. She too was more than willing and eager to do Trump’s bidding. But Trump judged her to have failed to secure adequate revenge against his enemies. He probably also blamed her for the botched coverup of the Epstein files—even though Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel seemed equally involved in that effort. But it was Bondi who was dumped, not Blanche or Patel. In fact, Blanche is now acting attorney general.
And then there’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who’s been a central player in Trump’s signal foreign policy failure, the war on Iran. He’s not been fired either. To the contrary. He’s doing a lot of firing at Trump’s behest. Hegseth is continuing to remove senior military officers who are not or might not be sufficiently compliant with Trump’s wishes.
Yesterday, Hegseth summarily fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. One of the precipitating factors seems to have been Gen. George’s resistance to Hegseth’s attempt to block the promotion of four officers, two black and two female, to be brigadier generals. General George, joined by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, with whom he’d reportedly formed a close relationship, refused to strike them from the list. They cited the officers’ long records of exemplary service. Hegseth had to intervene to purge them.
A few months earlier, Gen. George and Driscoll had refused to accede to demands from Hegseth’s office to block the scheduled promotion of Maj. Gen. Antoinette R. Gant to take command of the Military District of Washington. The Washington District commander appears alongside the president at ceremonial functions in the D.C. area, for example at Arlington National Cemetery. Hegseth’s chief of staff reportedly told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events. Driscoll and Gen. George skillfully deflected, insisting that the president was neither sexist nor racist (how could anyone say such a thing?) and that the objection to Maj. Gen. Gant’s promotion was therefore unwarranted.
So yesterday’s removal of Gen. George seems to have been gender- and race-related: the firing of a man who refused to discriminate against officers for being black and/or women.
There are barrels of deplorables carrying Trump’s water. But, hey it’s the woman he throws in the trash heap first. This is from The Guardian. “Trump accused of running ‘misogynistic administration’ after Bondi dismissal. Bondi and Kristi Noem the only two cabinet members to be removed despite string of scandals involving male officials.”
Donald Trump has been accused of running a “misogynistic administration” after making Pam Bondi the second woman to be fired from a cabinet already dominated by men.
The US president dismissed the attorney general on Thursday amid mounting frustration with her performance, especially over the release of files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The move came less than a month after Trump ousted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, following criticism of her management of the department and immigration enforcement.
Bondi and Noem are the only two cabinet members to lose their jobs so far in Trump’s second term despite male officials such as the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and health secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr, stumbling from controversy to controversy.
And both have been replaced by men, at least for now: Senator Markwayne Mullin took over at homeland security while Todd Blanche was appointed interim attorney general in what was already the least diverse US cabinet this century.
Democrats cried foul on Thursday. “I see a theme,” Jasmine Crockett, a congresswoman from Texas, posted on social media. “He will throw the incompetent women under the bus a lot faster than the incompetent men.”
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari of Arizona drew a contrast with Hegseth, who was found by a Pentagon watchdog to have put US service members at risk when he used the Signal messaging app, and the FBI director, Kash Patel, whose string of errors include prematurely announcing the arrest of the wrong suspect in the Charlie Kirk murder investigation.
Ansari wrote on X: “Noem and Bondi were both awful and committed egregious, impeachable offenses. But isn’t it … interesting … that it’s just the women getting fired? Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth each have a laundry list of scandals under their belts and should be fired as well. Hmmmm.”
There is a lot of speculation in the Beltway that Orange Caligula will take more heads. Thiis is from POLITICO. “Trump weighs more Cabinet changes after Bondi ouster. Pam Bondi was ousted from her post as attorney general on Thursday, but Trump is said to be considering also removing others.” Our bets here on Sky Dancing is that Tulsi faces the hatchet next Here’ Dasha Burn’s thoughts.
President Donald Trump has expressed frustration and disappointment with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer — and is pondering making additional changes to his Cabinet.
“He’s very angry and he’s going to be moving people,” an administration official familiar with the dynamics told POLITICO. That official and three other people with knowledge of Trump’s thinking around his Cabinet were granted anonymity to discuss the unresolved personnel issues.
The additional potential moves follow the ouster of Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last month.
No final decisions have been made on Chavez-DeRemer and Lutnick — and Trump has contemplated firing people and then backed off before.
Should Trump proceed with a larger set of Cabinet changes, it could represent a major attempted reset for an administration confronting an ominous political landscape.
The potential high-level shuffling, a second, senior official said, is focused on Cabinet officials Trump feels have “underperformed or who have generated too much negative attention.”
In a statement, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said Chavez-DeRemer and Lutnick are “both doing a great job standing up for American workers, and they continue to have President Trump’s full support.”
Reasons for the speculation are at the link. Let’s remember the reasons that no sane person should cry over Bondi’s departure.
"Under Bondi, in the first six months of Trump’s administration, DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, fraud, and drugs…"www.propublica.org/article/trum…
Here’s the ProPublicaarticle. “Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration.”
In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace.
The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investors.
In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica.
The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrations that believed a federal crime may have been committed. The DOJ routinely declines to prosecute cases for any number of reasons, including insufficient evidence or because a case is not a priority for enforcement.
But the number of declinations under Bondi marks a striking departure not only from the Biden administration but also the first Trump term, according to the ProPublica analysis, which examined two decades of DOJ data, including the first six months of Trump’s second term. ProPublica determined the increase is not the result of inheriting a larger caseload or more referrals from law enforcement.
In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019, during Trump’s first administration.
Some of the cases shut down were the result of yearslong investigations by federal agencies such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges.
The shift comes as the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump administration, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency.
In doing so, the DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights, according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left the department under Trump. The Trump DOJ, the employees wrote, is “taking a sledgehammer” to long-standing work to “protect communities and the rule of law.”
The change in priorities was outlined in a series of memos sent to attorneys early last year. Trump’s DOJ has said it is “turning a new page on white-collar and corporate enforcement” and emphasizing the pursuit of drug cartels, illegal immigrants and institutions that promote “divisive DEI policies.” Trump, in an address last March at the department, said the changes were necessary after a “surrender to violent criminals” during the past administration and would result in a restoration of “fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”
The department prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases in the first six months of the administration, which was nearly triple the number under the Biden administration and a 15% increase from the first Trump term. It has pursued fewer prosecutions of nearly every other type of crime — from drug offenses to corruption — than new administrations in their first six months dating back to 2009.
Orange Caligula probably doesn’t want his kids being prosecuted for all they’re up to now. Anyway, another day in Trumplandia, another minute farther from democracy and common sense.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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Trump is struggling to deal with his losing war in Iran. He is supposed to give a speech to the nation about it tonight, something he should have done before he started dropping bombs. He is also threatening to pull the U.S. out of NATO. Here’s the latest.
Donald Trump has told The Telegraph he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of Nato after it failed to join his war on Iran.
The US president labelled the alliance a “paper tiger” and said removing America from the defence treaty was now “beyond reconsideration”.
It is the strongest sign yet that the White House no longer regards Europe as a reliable defence partner following the rejection of Mr Trump’s demand that allies send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr Trump was asked if he would reconsider the US’s membership of Nato after the conflict.
He replied: “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.” [….]
Mr Trump added: “Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic.
He is single-handedly wrecking the international alliances that have maintained relative peace since the end of WWII. The rest of the interview consisted mostly of insults to the UK and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”
“You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work,” he said, referring to the state of Britain’s fleet of warships.
Asked whether the Prime Minister should spend more on defence, Mr Trump added: “I’m not going to tell him what to do. He can do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter. All Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof.”
After speaking to The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr Trump had raised the issue of withdrawing from Nato with White House aides.
The newspaper said he had made comments to Mr Rubio and others in private but had made no final decision on the future of the alliance.
No one seems to know what Trump is going to say tonight in his overdue “speech to the nation.” It seems likely he will try to bring an end to U.S. involvement, and leave the mess he created for other countries to clean up In addition to the threat to pull out of Nato, according to the AP:
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has confirmed direct contact with
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the Strait of Hormuz falls under the territorial control of Iran and Oman File, Khaled Elfiqi AP Photo
Araghchi confirmed that he had held conversations with Witkoff, Trump’s trusted envoy for peace negotiations around the world, during the current conflict.
But the Iranian foreign minister downplayed that contact.
“I receive messages from Witkoff directly, as before, and this does not mean that we are in negotiations,” he said.
“There is no truth to the claim of negotiations with any party in Iran. All messages are conveyed through the Foreign Ministry or received by it, and there are communications between security agencies,” he added.
Araghchi explained that they have never had a “good experience” negotiating with the US, referring to Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Barack Obama-era nuclear deal during Trump’s first term. The US has also twice attacked Iran during negotiations over the past nine months — in June 2025 and with the current war, which began on February 28, at a time when Oman, the mediator between the two sides, had said they were on the cusp of a breakthrough over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
“We do not have any faith that negotiations with the US will yield any results. The trust level is at zero,” Araghchi said, adding: “We don’t see honesty.”
Sounds about right. On the Strait of Hormuz:
In the interview, Araghchi argued that the waters of the Strait of Hormuz fall under the territorial control of Iran and Oman, and that once the war is over, it is these two countries who would decide the future of the waterway.
But he added that the strait should be a “peaceful waterway”.
Gulf nations, including Qatar, have, however, insisted that they be included in any talks to decide the future of the strait.
Araghchi also insisted in the interview that, from Iran’s perspective, the strait is open for ships from most nations.
“Only for the ships of those who are at war with us, this strait is closed. That is normal during war – we cannot let our enemies use our territorial waters for commerce,” he explained.
Read more at the link.
But what about Netanyahu? Will he be OK with Trump wimping out of their war?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel and the United States are “beyond the halfway point in terms of success” in their war against Iran, saying that the joint strikes are focusing on the country’s nuclear material.
He added that he doesn’t want to “put a schedule on” the timeline for ending the war with Iran.
In an interview with the right-wing American media outlet Newsmax, Netanyahu said the Iranian regime is “pursuing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to American cities,” adding, “That’s what this war is about – preventing that outcome.”
The Israeli prime minister also said that the attacks have “already degraded their missile capabilities, destroyed factories, and eliminated key nuclear scientists.”
He appeared to be sending messages to Trump in the interview:
Iran “killed and maimed more Americans than any other force in recent decades,” Netanyahu told Newsmax, saying Tehran also tried to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump. “Thousands and thousands killed and maimed in Afghanistan by Iranian IEDs. They bombed our embassies. They tried to kill President Trump twice. They’re still trying to kill him.”
According to Netanyahu, Iran has openly shown it is a threat to the West. “Most importantly, is they they chant ‘Death to America.’ They also say ‘Death to Israel.’ But they say America is the Great Satan. They’re religious zealots, and they have to wipe out Western culture led by America,” he said.
Netanyahu also said Iran is more dangerous to the United States than North Korea, China and Russia. “I don’t hear North Korea chanting ‘Death to America.’ I don’t hear China chanting … I don’t hear Russia,” he said.
I guess we’ll find out something about Trump’s plans tonight in his speech–if he makes any sense, which is unlikely.
President Trump isn’t just befuddling foreign leaders and financial markets with his mixed signals on Iran. Advisers who speak regularly with the president tell Axios they’re just as uncertain.
Why it matters: Trump’s off-the-cuff musings and Truth Social postings can have life-or-death consequences for the war, and massive implications for the market. Then the cycle restarts without any lasting clarity.
Between the lines: Some Trump aides and allies say he’s mostly improvising rather than following any clear plan.
He likes to keep his options open, spitball with different audiences, then capitalize if he thinks he sees an opportunity, they say.
Aides have been convinced at various points that Trump was leaning toward a major escalation, and at others that he was eager for a swift resolution. “Nobody knows in the end what he’s really thinking,” a senior adviser said.
“They had a plan for the first week and since then, they are making the plan up as they go along,” a former U.S. official said.
Others claim it’s all by design. “That’s the plan — for you to not have a clue,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who spoke to Trump on Monday, told Axios.
The UK will convene 35 countries – excluding the US – to explore ways to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route for oil and gas that has been blocked by Iran.
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the next phase of discussions in the joint British and French efforts to secure the waterway would be held on Thursday, with Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, alongside international leaders….
Starmer said on Wednesday the meeting would bring together 35 countries to “assess all viable diplomatic and political measures we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and to resume the movement of vital commodities”.
In other news, Trump attended the Supreme Court session his morning on his efforts to end birthright citizenship. No other president has done that.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. The justices questioned the attorneys about the definition of “domicile,” core to the government’s argument that only children of immigrants who are domiciled in the United States should receive birthright citizenship. In an indication of the political stakes in the case, Trump attended the hearing while Solicitor General D. John Sauer made his arguments, the first time a sitting president is known to have done so. Arguments concluded after Sauer made his rebuttal.
American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Cecillia Wang argued for the plaintiffs, immigrants using pseudonyms. The ACLU and other groups challenged Trump’s order, saying it violates the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to “all persons” born or naturalized in the United States.
In the hearing, Sauer argued that children born to parents without permanent immigration status should not be granted citizenship, upending the long-settled principle that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen.
A ruling upholding Trump’s order could have sweeping political, economic and social ramifications….
ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang said the 14th Amendment does not allow Congress to add more exceptions to the birthright citizenship rule.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh replied: “I guess the answer you just gave means they don’t have any authority to look at this, even if they passed it 435 to 0 in the House and 100 to 0 in the Senate. Your point is, no, they’re closed. They’re frozen forever.”
“Correct,” Wang said….
Arguments concluded after Solicitor General John D. Sauer made his rebuttal.
Congress “in 1866 had a very, very clear understanding that the children of the newly freed slaves have the requisite allegiance to the United States,” he said in his closing remarks. “This was all about overruling the grave injustice of Dred Scott and making sure that allegiance was granted to the children of slaves.”
“Thank you, counsel, general. The case is submitted,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said, as he does when arguments end in every case.
The Supreme Court is casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship in a consequential case that was magnified by Trump’s unparalleled presence in the courtroom.
Conservative and liberal justices on Wednesday questioned whether Trump’s order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens comports with either the Constitution or federal law.
Trump, the first sitting president to attend arguments at the nation’s highest court, spent just over an hour inside the courtroom for arguments made by the Republican administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer. The president departed shortly after lawyer Cecillia Wang began her presentation in defense of broad birthright citizenship.
Trump heard Sauer face one skeptical question after another. Justices asked about the legal basis for the order and voiced more practical concerns.
“Is this happening in the delivery room?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked, drilling down into the logistics of how the government would actually figure out who’s entitled to citizenship and who’s not….
“How much of the debates around the 14th Amendment had anything to do with immigration?” Thomas asked, pointing out that the purpose of the amendment was to grant citizenship to Black people, including freed slaves.
The justices are hearing Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.
The case frames another test of Trump’s assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court that has largely ruled in the president’s favor — but with some notable exceptions that Trump has responded to with starkly personal criticisms of the justices. A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.
Yesterday the Supreme Court voted 8-1 that conversion therapy cannot be banned in Colorado.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday held, on an 8-1 vote, that Colorado’s law banning therapists from engaging in conversion therapy with minor patients is presumptively unconstitutional as to talk therapy, deeming the law “an egregious form“ of speech regulation that almost always violates the First Amendment.
Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s decision — warning that the court might have made talk therapy “effectively unregulatable” and that the “fallout could be catastrophic.“ Taking the rare step of announcing her dissent from the bench, Jackson declared that the majority got it “wrong as a matter of precedent, first principles, and history.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s majority opinion, holding that lower courts had applied the wrong standard for addressing Kaley Chiles’s First Amendment challenge to the state’s ban on conversion therapy — efforts to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
As with his opinion in the wedding website case in 2023, 303 Creative v. Elenis, Gorsuch waved broadly at his purpose being to protect free speech and to stop, as he wrote on Tuesday, “censorious governments.“
The proper standard to be applied in Chiles’s case, the court held, is a particularly skeptical form of strict scrutiny because the law is a content-based regulation and, further, includes “viewpoint restrictions” by banning efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity and allowing efforts to affirm a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Gorsuch wrote that Chiles’s challenge would likely succeed when the case goes back to the lower courts because “Ms. Chiles seeks to engage only in speech, and as applied to her the law regulates what she may say.“
I guess the solution is public education about the research that shows conversion therapy doesn’t work. But that might not protect children in right wing religious families, especially if they are home schooled.
A few more stores of possible interest:
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander, from left, Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot, Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist, right, in a group photograph as they visit NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)
Tensions were high as hydrogen fuel started flowing into the rocket hours ahead of the planned launch. Dangerous hydrogen leaks erupted during a countdown test earlier this year, forcing a lengthy flight delay.
By mid-morning, no leaks had been reported.
The launch team needs to load more than 700,000 gallons of fuel (2.6 million liters) into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket on the pad before the Artemis II crew can board.
Read more at the link. I had no idea this was happening until I got a message from JJ this moring.
The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday.
The government’s investigation had united Penn leaders with Jewish students and faculty members as they opposed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s subpoena. Many on campus drew parallels between the government’s approach and methods deployed in Nazi Germany.
But the Trump administration has said that its request was typical for discrimination investigations to seek potential victims and witnesses, and Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court agreed on Tuesday. He gave Penn until May 1 to comply with the administration’s subpoena, though the ruling appeared unlikely to quell the debates around how the administration has pressured top American universities.
Judge Pappert, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, appeared to hint at the discomfort that the government’s subpoena had prompted and at the accusations that the E.E.O.C. had gone too far with its tactics, especially a demand for information tied to groups “related to the Jewish religion.”
“Though ineptly worded, the request had an understandable purpose — to obtain in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees, information on individuals in Penn’s Jewish community who could have experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the workplace,” Judge Pappert wrote in his 32-page opinion, issued three weeks after he heard oral arguments.
The cartoonishly large breasts. The pink spandex. The come-hither stare.
Byron Noem
“Must be A.I.,” a burly cattle rancher named Kevin Ruesink said as he inspected pictures of his neighbor Bryon Noem that had been published by The Daily Mail on Tuesday morning. The rancher was playing pinochle in the back of a convenience store with five other men in the tiny town of Castlewood, S.D., not far from the Noem family farm.
These men all knew Bryon Noem as the nice, tall insurance salesman who married Kristi Arnold, the town beauty queen who grew up to be governor. But now there were these pictures.
The rancher squinted at them with a mixture of suspicion and pity. “I grew up playing ball with Bryon,” he said. “I’ve never known him to be part of stuff like that. I don’t believe that at all.”
The British tabloid report on Tuesday was the latest and most dramatic development in the saga of Kristi Noem, who was sacked as homeland security chief earlier this month, the first Trump cabinet member to get the old heave-ho this term. She quickly put out a statement saying that she was “devastated” by the images of her husband and that “the family was blindsided by this.”
In response to multiple requests for an interview, Mr. Noem wrote in a text message on Tuesday: “I will at some point. Today is not the day. I appreciate your heart.”
While the pictures of Ms. Noem’s husband with what appear to be enormous inflated balloons under his spandex shirt ricocheted across the internet, becoming a political punchline for her many, many enemies, the reaction back on the proverbial ranch was a little more … tenderhearted.
That’s kind of a refreshing response from the townsfolk. Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
Those are the stories that caught my attention this morning. What stories have you been following?
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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.
Let’s start with the insider buzz, Bondi. This is from the 
You may read the rest of the analysis by John Thrush and Tyler Pager at the gift link. Actually, I think 
There are barrels of deplorables carrying Trump’s water. But, hey it’s the woman he throws in the trash heap first. This is from 
There is a lot of speculation in the Beltway that Orange Caligula will take more heads. Thiis is from 
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