Wednesday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

Will there ever be another slow news day in the U.S.? Every day we see more stunning news–violent incidents, embarrassing, chaotic, and illegal behavior from our “president,” shocks to the economy from Trump’s tariffs and mass deportations, and more. We have to survive 3 more years of this insanity. There are some hopeful signs. Trump is very unpopular and his poll numbers are dropping rapidly. There are also signs that he is having health challenges. But I think he has changed our country long-term by inflaming his followers with lies and disinformation. There is definitely a core group of about 30 percent of the population that clings to him no matter what. And one of the biggest dangers is the behavior of the Trumpists on the Supreme court. Anyway, on to today’s news and comment.

First, the breaking news. There has been a shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas.

Bullet casings from the Dallas shooting.

NBC News: Live updates: 2 dead, including suspect, in shooting at Dallas ICE facility.

What we know about the shooting

 — Three people were shot at an ICE facility in Dallas this morning, an ICE spokesperson confirmed to NBC News.

— Two people are dead, including the shooter, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Dallas police said in a news conference. No ICE officers were hurt in the shooting.

— Round found near the shooter, who was dead when police arrived, contained messages that were “anti-ICE in nature,” Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas FBI Joe Rothrock said at a news conference. He added that the attack was an act of “targeted violence.”

— The victims’ identities will not be released at this time, but Rothrock said no law enforcement personnel were hurt during the attack.

— The shooter fired multiple rounds from a nearby roof or an elevated position down into the field office’s sally port, an ICE spokesperson confirmed.

— The motive behind the shooting, or what the shooter was targeting, is not immediately clear.

According to FBI Director Kash Patel, “Anti-ICE” was written on one of shell casings. This story is still developing.

Paul Krugman is the latest writer to argue that Trump’s fascist takeover can be thwarted. From his Substack: Is the Jimmy Kimmel Saga a Sign that the Tide is Turning?

It’s irrefutable now: Trump is nakedly following the playbook of autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. As his poll numbers fall, he is rushing to lock in permanent power by punishing his opponents and intimidating everyone else into submission. Craven congressional Republicans and a complicit Supreme Court have abetted Trump’s destruction of our democratic safeguards and norms.

Yet Trump has a significant problem that neither Putin nor Orban faced. When Putin and Orban were consolidating their autocratics, they were genuinely popular. They were perceived by the public as effective and competent leaders. Just nine months into his presidency, Trump, by contrast, is deeply unpopular. He is increasingly seen as chaotic and inept. As David Frum says, this means that he is in a race against time. Can he consolidate power before he loses his aura of inevitability? Will those who run major institutions – particularly corporate CEOs – understand that we are at a crucial juncture, and that by accommodating Trump they have more to lose than by standing up to him?

To put it bluntly, is the Jimmy Kimmel affair the harbinger of a failed Trumpian putsch?

Krugman notes that Trump’s role models, Putin and Orban were popular during their takeovers, in contrast to Trump.

Trump’s net approval, by contrast, turned negative within weeks after taking office and has just continued to fall.

As G. Elliott Morris points out, his position looks even worse when you consider intensity. Almost half the public disapproves “strongly,” twice the share with strong approval.

Jimmy Kimmel

It’s clear that if Trump were subject to normal political constraints, obliged to follow the rule of law and accept election results, he would already be a political lame duck. His future influence and those of his minions would be greatly reduced by his unpopularity. But at this juncture he is a quasi-autocrat. He is the leader of a party that accommodates his every whim, backed by a corrupt Supreme Court prepared to validate whatever he does, no matter how clearly it violates the law.

As a result, Trump has been able to use the vast power of the federal government to deliver punishments and rewards in a completely unprecedented way. He has arbitrarily cut off funding to universities, refused to spend Congressionally-mandated funds, threatened to take away broadcast licenses, fired officials who are supposed to have job security, pardoned J6 insurrectionists, defied the lower courts, retaliated against those who have tried to hold him accountable, and enriched his family. This has created a climate of intimidation, with many institutions preemptively capitulating to Trump’s demands as if he already had total power.

But the fact is that Trump has not yet locked in his autocracy. Timid institutions are failing to understand not only how unpopular Trump is, but also how severe a backlash they are likely to face for surrendering without a fight.

Disney figured it out; we’ll see what happens with Sinclair and NexStar. Read the entire post at the link.

Politico Playbook on Kimmel’s return:

An unbowed Jimmy Kimmel took aim at President Donald Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr last night in a blistering, emotional return to ABC. Kimmel tore into the Trump administration for its “dangerous … anti-American” bid to have him canceled, and heaped praise on the conservative politicians and commentators who spoke up for freedom of speech. “This show is not important,” Kimmel said. “What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”

Kimmel blended humor with invective. “I’m not sure who had a weirder 48 hours,” he deadpanned, “me or the CEO of Tylenol.” Robert De Niro made an appearance, playing a mafioso-style Carr issuing threats to ABC. And addressing the expected sky-high audience for last night’s show, Kimmel said: “You almost have to feel sorry for [Trump]. He tried his best to cancel me — instead he forced millions of people to watch the show … He might have to release the Epstein files to distract from this.”

Kimmel came close to tears as he partially addressed his own comments — about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer — which sparked the initial backlash from the right. “I want to make something clear,” he said, voice wavering. “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.” Later, he hailed the words of forgiveness that Erika, Kirk’s widow, delivered at Sunday’s memorial. “It touched me deeply,” Kimmel said. “If there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that. Not this.”

Catch-up service: Watch the whole opening monologue

Naturally, Trump wasn’t happy that ABC brought Jimmy Kimmel back last night.

Ed Mazza at HuffPost: Trump Loses It Over Jimmy Kimmel’s Return In Unhinged New Rant, Then Threatens ABC.

Yesterday, Trump embarrassed himself and all Americans in an unbelievably bad speech to the U.N. It was truly horrifying, and a historic stain on our country.

David Rothkopf at The Daily Beast: Trump’s UN Address Was a Tragedy of Shakespearian Proportions.

Instead of a traditional public address from a world leader, U.S. President Donald Trump tilted back his badly-dyed hair-sprayed coif and howled at the moon for the better part of an hour during his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday morning.

Well, not the better part. Definitely not the better part.

To describe the speech as insane, while accurate, would distract from just how extraordinarily packed with lies it was. How profoundly ignorant it was. How much damage it did to the United States’ standing in the world—it clearly marked a low point in America’s relationship with the United Nations and the international order we helped create in the wake of World War II.

From a purely U.S. political perspective, emphasizing how haggard and low-energy our rapidly declining president was is key. He made a point to note that an apparent mechanical issue with a UN escalator was an insurmountable problem, for example—most of the rest of us who are in fairly reasonable shape might have noted a stalled escalator is actually just a stairway that we could have walked right up.

But it would nonetheless, be a mistake, to ignore just how crazed the speech was. It was apparent from Trump’s opening moments when he railed about the UN’s broken teleprompter to the point later when he brought it up again in his broader condemnation of the UN as also broken, highlighting what he saw as its uselessness in not coming to his assistance in solving the famous seven global conflicts that we all know he did not solve. It was apparent in the fact that he argued that he deserves the Nobel Peace prize while noting he also takes great pride in discussing the attack he authorized on Iran, and those he has ordered against boats he claims without evidence were trafficking in drugs on the high seas.

The speech contained the most extensive condemnation of green energy and what Trump considers the climate change hoax that we have ever heard from a public official since possibly the invention of the steam engine. Science be damned. Oligarchs love fossil fuels or what Trump noted that he demands White House staffers refer to as “beautiful, clean coal.” Windmills, windmills on the other hand, are the pinwheels of Satan. (Someday we will get to the bottom of Trump’s anemomenophobia. Clearly, he had a bad experience with something that blew him the wrong way as a child. Or more recently.)

He defended his irrational, lose-lose global trading system destroying tariffs which in and of itself will soon be listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as an extreme symptom of economic psychosis. He downplayed civilian casualties in Ukraine and explained this war wouldn’t have happened if there had been good leadership in the country—in front of President Volodymyr Zelensky, no less.

And there was so much more. He even claimed that he had settled 7 global conflicts and that everyone thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Read more at the link.

Steve Benen at MaddowBlog: With bizarre remarks at the U.N., Trump embarrasses himself and the United States.

Seven years ago this week, Donald Trump addressed the United Nations and began his remarks with an absurdity. “In less than two years,” the American president said, “my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” The boast, of course, was plainly false.

But just as important at the time was that everyone in attendance at the U.N. General Assembly recognized the rhetoric as silly — and some of the diplomats in the room started audibly laughing. The laughter caught the Republican off-guard and left Trump in a position he’d long hoped to avoid: the target of international ridicule.

In some ways, the Republican’s address was a handy encapsulation of where Trump stands in the fifth year of his White House tenure.

The Trumps struggle with a UN escalator.

Over the course of his remarks, he told strange lies about foreign investments in the U.S. He generated murmurs in the hall by declaring, “Our message is very simple. If you come illegally into the United States, you’re going to jail or you’re going back to where you came from — or perhaps even further than that. You know what that means.”

He pretended that he’s ended seven wars, while pointing to approval ratings that exist only in his mind. He renewed his pathetic lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize, falsely claiming that “everyone” wants him to get one. He took pointless shots at ostensible U.S. allies in NATO and at the United Nations itself. He told unnamed officials that their countries are “going to hell.” He bragged about campaign swag sales. He attacked clean, renewable energy, while insisting that climate science is an elaborate “con job” and a “hoax” concocted by nefarious people with “evil intentions.”

And for good measure, he claimed that unnamed “environmentalists” want to ban cows.

Perhaps most importantly, Trump told one of his favorite lies, bragging that international respect for the U.S. has reached all-time highs now that he’s back in power.

Read more at the MSNBC link.

You might also want to check out this piece by Zachary B. Wolf at CNN: Trump’s ‘your countries are going to hell’ speech, annotated.

One more from AP: After mechanical challenges, UN says Trump’s team to blame for nonworking escalator and teleprompter.

President Donald Trump broke from his prepared remarks at the United Nations on Tuesday to bemoan an inoperable escalator and a defective teleprompter, using the incidents to portray the global body as dysfunctional.

“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle,” he mused, chopping the air with his hand.

But it turns out the cause was closer to Trump.

Stephane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman, said a videographer from the U.S. delegation who ran ahead of him triggered the stop mechanism at the top of the escalator.

“The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing,” Dujarric said in a statement. “The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function.”

On the Teleprompter:

As he began his speech, Trump also noted that the teleprompter wasn’t working. He joked that whoever was running the teleprompter “is in big trouble.”

A U.N. official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue contributed that one to his side as well, saying the White House was operating the teleprompter for the president.

The day before yesterday, Trump gave an insane “health” press conference with RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz. JJ, in which they claimed that Tylenol as well as vaccines are causes of autism. JJ covered it in yesterday’s post.

Today, STAT has a response to Trump’s “medical” advice: Trump’s ‘tough it out’ to pregnant women meets wave of opposition by medical experts Doctors explain the medical consensus on autism, leucovorin, and Tylenol for fever.

Federal health officials are telling Americans no, they shouldn’t take Tylenol during pregnancy for fear of autism and yes, they should try a drug used in cancer care to treat children who have developed autism. The medical world disagrees.

“We were actually pretty alarmed by some of the output that was coming from the administration,” Marketa Wills, CEO and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association, said in an interview. At a remarkable White House briefing on Monday, President Trump and his top health and science officials said Tylenol use in pregnancy caused some cases of autism in children and said leucovorin, a form of vitamin B9, could treat the disease.

RFK Jr. and Trump claim to have found causes for autism.

The event has drawn a flood of pushback from medical societies, autism organizations, and pediatric experts through official statements, interviews, and social media. Much more research is needed on the claims about Tylenol and leucovorin in particular, experts emphasized.

Until more research is conducted, Wills recommends that doctors rely on professional societies, peer-reviewed research in medical journals, and resources like UpToDate and the Washington Manual for guidance on how to talk with patients.

John Whyte, CEO of the American Medical Association, pointed out that there were discrepancies between the bold statements from the president and other government guidance. “If I ignore the press conference, and I listen to what the FDA wrote to providers, I would say — you know what? It’s talking about the lowest dose for the shortest period of time, and that’s not a bad thing,” White said. “That’s different than what I heard at the press conference.” [….]

While President Trump repeatedly told women to “tough it out” rather than take Tylenol for fever or pain during pregnancy, medical experts said there are good reasons to consider the medication.

An untreated fever can cause serious harms in pregnancy, including neurodevelopmental injuries to fetuses such as spina bifida, they told STAT.

“Brains are impacted by fever,” Joia Crear-Perry, an OB-GYN and founder and president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, told STAT.

There are also studies suggesting fever is associated with the risk of autism spectrum disorder, but it’s unknown whether treatment decreases that risk, Brenna Hughes, interim chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University School of Medicine, wrote in an email to STAT.

There’s much more information at the STAT link.

The New York Times has published a shocking investigation about Elon Musk’s family, by Kirsten Grind and John Eligon (gift link): Elon Musk’s Father Accused of Child Sexual Abuse.

Elon Musk has not been shy about putting much of his life on public display. The tech billionaire posts daily on his social network X, has cooperated with two biographies and often speaks on podcasts and at conferences.

But there is one part of his life that he has not revealed much about — his longtime estrangement from his father, Errol Musk, who has become increasingly outspoken about his family and business ventures tied to the Musk name.

Errol Musk

A New York Times investigation found that a significant factor in Elon Musk’s rupture with his father stems from accusations against Errol Musk of child sex abuse. The allegations have repeatedly spilled over into Elon Musk’s life as relatives have contacted him for help and he has sometimes taken action to intercede, according to personal letters, emails and interviews with family members.

The family’s troubles have entangled Elon Musk in a painful three-decade multigenerational saga that continues to trail him. The fallout has kept the 54-year-old mogul tethered to South Africa, where he was born and where Errol Musk lives, even as he has built a business empire in the United States and briefly ascended to political power as a close adviser to President Trump.

The allegations against Errol Musk involve five of his children and stepchildren, whom he was accused of abusing in South Africa and California, according to police and court records, personal correspondence, social workers and interviews with family members.

The earliest accusation was in 1993 when Errol Musk’s stepdaughter, then 4 years old, told relatives he had touched her at the family house. A decade later, the stepdaughter said she caught him sniffing her dirty underwear. Some family members have also accused Errol Musk of abusing two of his daughters and a stepson. And as recently as 2023, family members and a social worker attempted to intervene after his then 5-year-old son said his father had groped his buttocks.

Three separate police investigations were opened, according to police and court records, as well as family members. Two of the inquiries ended, while it’s unclear what happened in the third. Errol Musk, 79, has not been convicted of any crime.

The abuse allegations have caused strife within the Musk family, with some relatives turning to Elon Musk — who is Errol Musk’s eldest child — for help. Around 2010, one relative wrote Elon Musk a five-page letter about some of the accusations and implored him to intervene.

“We really need your advice, help and guidance in these matters because we daily see these children suffer,” the relative wrote in the letter, which was viewed by The Times.

Use the gift link to read the rest.

Those are my recommended reads for today. What stories have you been following?