Lazy Caturday Reads: Space Cat on Mars, Plus Some News

Posted: August 30, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Good Day!!

I’m going to illustrate today’s post with another Space Cat adventure: “Space Cat Meets Mars,” by Ruthven Todd, drawings by Paul Galdone. A summary of the story from Amazon:

The dauntless Space Cat — aka Flyball — and his pal, Colonel Fred, blast off for their most fantastic destination yet! While they’re on their way home from Venus, the astronauts are forced to make an emergency landing on Mars. Although Flyball’s a bit bored by the Red Planet at first, his curiosity is piqued by its sole surviving fishing cat, a friendly female named Moofa. Will she turn out to be the cat’s meow?
This new edition of a charmingly illustrated story is the third of a four-book series starring the intrepid feline known as Space Cat. Young readers will delight in taking a look at space exploration from Flyball’s point of view and following his escapades across the solar system.
This is the third book in the Space Cat series, and the illustrations are great, IMHO.
On to the news.

I woke up at 3AM and couldn’t get back to sleep.

Naturally I picked up my phone and checked to see if anything was happening. It turned out that lots of people on Twitter (I don’t call it X) and Bluesky Social were discussing the fact that Trump had not been seen in Public since Wednesday, and even White House reporter had had no word from him for 48 hours. The conclusion of many posters (somewhat tongue in cheek, but hopeful) was that he must be having a health crisis or even have died. It was pretty funny. Sadly, Trump is golfing today, so it was a false alarm. There’s something wrong with him though, and I don’t think its just “chronic venous insufficiancy.” Some commentary:

Stephen Robinson at Public Notice: Alert the media: The White House is lying about Trump’s health.

Donald Trump held a bonkers press conference last Friday during which he lied about his authoritarian occupation of Washington DC and fantasized about sending troops to occupy other cities with Black leaders.

Given the stakes, it might seem inappropriate to focus on attire. Trump, however, was noticeably casual for an Oval Office event. Unless he’s on the golf course, he typically wears a suit with an obligatory red tie. But last Friday, he didn’t bother with a tie, and he wore a baseball cap that boasted “Trump Was Right About Everything.”

Trump’s boundless egomania is not unusual, but the head covering did raise larger questions. He also made a determined effort to hide the back of his right hand from cameras….

Flyball relaxes in hammock.

Trump wanted to hide his right hand for a reason. Pictures from Friday show it slathered with what seems like several coats of Sherwin-Williams. (I’m not going to post the photos; you can click the link to see them.) [….]

Trump’s hand still looked rough during a press event on Monday where his hand was no longer coated with makeup, but visibly bruised.

Something clearly is up with the 79-year-old president, and the official explanations don’t make sense. That’s not surprising given that Trump is a world historical liar surrounded by toadies who surrendered their shame long ago. But it’s past time for reporters to ask some questions.

The mainstream press is still in self-flagellation mode over how they purportedly “ignored” former President Joe Biden’s decline. (In reality, they never stopped talking about.) But this soul-searching is apparently only backward looking and exclusive to Democratic presidents.

Trump has never behaved in a manner you could reasonably define as “rational,” but since returning to power, he’s been more unhinged than ever — launching destructive trade wars, persecuting his political enemies, and sending troops into US cities. Biden’s age was an ongoing story even while he otherwise governed like a normal person, but so far the media has not even considered a connection between Trump’s disordered actions and his health.

I completely agree that the White House is lying. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a president’s health issues were covered up, e.g. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

Read the rest at Public Notice.

Jon Passentino at Status: Burying the Bruises.

On Monday, press photographers gathered in the Oval Office to capture President Donald Trump meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung when one unusual detail stood out. A large bruise on the back of Trump’s right hand.

It wasn’t the first time the 79-year-old president was seen with a noticeable bruise. Just days earlier, Trump was photographed with a large smear of makeup covering the same hand as he spoke to reporters at the White House about the FIFA World Cup. The images circulated widely online, drawing speculation from tabloids and social media sleuths. “WHAT IS GOING ON? PRESIDENT HEALTH DRAMA DEEPENS,” the Drudge Report banner blared. Yet from the country’s most powerful newsrooms, there was little more than silence. No front-page write-ups. No broadcast packages. The visible health problems of the oldest president in American history barely registered in mainstream coverage.

Flyball floats in weightlessness.

The White House has offered narrow explanations but refused to put Trump’s physician before reporters. In April, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella issued Trump’s annual physical, declaring the president in “excellent cognitive and physical health” and “blood flow to his extremities is unimpaired.” But within weeks, photos showed Trump’s ankles swollen enough that the White House acknowledged a diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency, a condition common in older adults. In July, Barbabella released a short memo attributing the bruises to aspirin use as “part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen” and “minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking.”

Are we seriously expected to believe that? I asked Dr. Jonathan Reiner, the renowned cardiologist and professor of medicine at George Washington University who served as the cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney, for his thoughts on the matter.

“The president’s recent swelling in his ankles has been dismissed as being ‘chronic venous insufficiency’ (despite the fact that during his yearly physical exam in March it was reported that he had no swelling, making the current issue really acute venous insufficiency),” Reiner said. “His hand bruising was described as the result of aspirin therapy and hand shaking which is not a plausible explanation. (Particularly if he also has bruises on his left hand).” Sure enough, recent images show Trump with bruises on the back of his left hand as well, raising more questions about the White House’s explanation of supposed aggressive hand-shaking.

Reiner noted that bruising of this kind is often linked to the use of strong blood thinners for heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation. “During his March exam the White House physician did not disclose that the president is taking a medication like that,” Reiner said. “I think the press should be asking these questions and the White House should make the president‘s medical team available to answer questions.” The press, however, has largely turned a blind eye to the matter.

When President Joe Biden ran for reelection at 81, his age and health were subjected to persistent scrutiny. Fox News and MAGA Media personalities relentlessly pumped out absurd claims about Biden’s health as if he was secretly on the brink of death and promoted “Dementia Joe” hysteria. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other major newspapers published dozens of stories about his age and physical fitness. Cable news devoted endless hours to the topic. In Trump’s case—the oldest person to take the oath of office who regularly fabricates stories and misremembers names—the bruises and swelling have barely merited a wire-service brief. A review of cable news transcripts shows virtually zero mentions of Trump’s bruises all week. Some who served in the Biden White House now rightfully see it as a clear double-standard.

Read more at the Substack link.

One more on this topic from Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast: Conservative Strategist: ‘MAGA Hunger Games’ Taking Place as Trump Health Slips.

Conservative political consultant Rick Wilson says a “MAGA Hunger Games” is playing out in Washington as President Donald Trump, 79, shows his age.

Wilson said “rumors from the Trumpverse” indicate that Vice President JD Vance is “moving fast” in this shuffling of power behind the scenes, positioning himself to take over the MAGA movement sooner rather than later, according to Wilson’s Substack.

Flyball meets a Martian insect.

“Slow or fast, he’s headed down,” Wilson said of Trump. “The circle who knows what’s up is very, very small and very, very paranoid. JD Vance knows, and he’s moving fast.”

Wilson pointed to Vance’s interview this week with USA Today—in which he said he is prepared to take over the presidency, having received “on-the-job training” in the first seven months of this term—as further proof of jostling behind the scenes….

Publicly, both Vance and White House spokespeople have brushed off rumors that Trump’s health is slipping.

In the same interview in which he declared he was prepared to become president, the vice president said Trump “is in incredibly good health” and has “incredible energy.”

“While most of the people who work around the President of the United States are younger than he is, I think that we find that he actually is the last person who goes to sleep,” Vance told USA Today.

Vance continued, “He’s the last person making phone calls at night, and he’s the first person who wakes up and the first person making phone calls in the morning. So yes, things can always happen. Yes, terrible tragedies happen, but I feel very confident the President of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of this term, and do great things for the American people.”

If that “terrible tragedy” takes place, Vance will have to stop taking so many vacations. Seriously though, he is so unlikable that I don’t think he would be able to appeal to Trump’s MAGA base.

Last night a federal appeals court ruled that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal.

Doug Palmer, Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein and Daniel Desrochers at Politico: Federal appeals court strikes down major chunk of Trump’s tariffs.

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers granted by Congress to impose tariffs, opening the door for the administration to potentially have to repay billions worth of duties.

Flyball encounters a Martian metal covered mouse

The 7-4 ruling raises doubt about deals Trump has struck with the European Union, Japan, South Korea and other major trading partners to reduce the “reciprocal” tariff rates on their imports, from the levels the administration originally set in April.

“We conclude Congress … did not give the president wide-ranging authority to impose tariffs” of the kind Trump imposed in his sweeping executive orders, the majority wrote.

The ruling also invalidates the tariffs that Trump has imposed on China, Canada and Mexico to pressure those countries to do more to stop shipments of fentanyl and precursor chemicals from entering the United States.

The decision, however, will not take effect until Oct. 14, giving the Trump administration time to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholds a May decision by the U.S. Court of International Trade, which concluded that Trump exceeded his authority under the 1977 law he invoked to impose both the fentanyl trafficking tariffs and his worldwide tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

“We are not addressing whether the President’s actions should have been taken as a matter of policy,” the majority wrote in its ruling, which was in response to a combined set of cases brought by several small importers and multiple Democratic-run states. “Nor are we deciding whether IEEPA authorizes any tariffs at all. Rather, the only issue we resolve on appeal is whether the Trafficking Tariffs and Reciprocal Tariffs imposed by the Challenged Executive Orders are authorized by IEEPA. We conclude they are not.”

Read more at Politico.

Adam Gabbatt, Dominic Rushe at The Guardian: Here’s what to know about the court ruling striking down Trump’s tariffs.

Donald Trump suffered the biggest defeat yet to his tariff policies on Friday, as a federal appeals court ruled he had overstepped his presidential powers when he enacted punitive financial measures against almost every country in the world.

In a 7-4 ruling, the Washington DC court said that while US law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency”, none of those actions allow for the imposition of tariffs or taxes.

Flyball sees a Martian fish.

It means the ultimate ruling on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, which were famously based on spurious economic science and rocked the global economy when he announced them in April, will probably be made by the US supreme court….

The decision centers on the tariffs Trump introduced on 2 April, on what he called “liberation day”. The tariffs set a 10% baseline on virtually all of the US’s trading partners and so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on countries he argued have unfairly treated the US. Lesotho, a country of 2.3 million people in southern Africa, was hit with a 50% tariff, while Trump also announced a tariff of 10% on a group of uninhabited islands populated by penguins.

The ruling voided all those tariffs, the judges finding the president’s measures “are unbounded in scope, amount and duration”. They said the tariffs “assert an expansive authority that is beyond the express limitations” of the law his administration used to pass them.

Tariffs typically need to be approved by Congress, but Trump claimed he has the right to impose tariffs on trading partners under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency.

The court ruled: “It seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the president unlimited authority to impose tariffs.”

Trump invoked the same law in February to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, claiming that the flow of undocumented immigrants and drugs across the US border amounted to a national emergency, and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.

Read the rest at The Guardian.

Another legal loss for Trump, this time on his “mass deportations.”

Zach Montague at The New York Times: Judge Blocks Pillar of Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign.

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from carrying out fast-track deportations of people detained far from the southern border, removing, for now, one of the cornerstones of President Trump’s campaign to carry out mass deportations.

The case focused on a policy shift announced during the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term that authorized the Department of Homeland Security to launch quick deportations, across the country and without court proceedings, of undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they have lived in the country for more than two years.

Flyball sees Moofa for the first time.

Such quick deportations, known as expedited removal, have been carried out for decades, but they were concentrated among people arrested at or near the southern border. The Trump administration sought to expand the practice nationwide, to hasten the removal of people arrested deep inside the country.

In a 48-page opinion, Judge Jia M. Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the Trump administration had acted recklessly in a frenzied effort to quickly remove as many people as possible, likely violating due process rights and risking wrongful detentions.

She wrote that the administration had taken over a process that was once as simple as turning back migrants with negligible ties to the United States “after a single conversation with an immigration officer” near the southern border, making it a default practice in places as far away as New York.

“When it comes to people living in the interior of the country, prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process,” Judge Cobb wrote.

Dakinikat wrote yesterday that Trump cancelled Secret Service protection for former VP Kamala Harris. California Governor Gavin Newsom will pick up the slack.

The Los Angeles Times: CHP to protect ex-VP Kamala Harris after Trump pulls Secret Service detail, sources say.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris will receive protection from the California Highway Patrol after President Trump revoked her Secret Service protection, law enforcement sources said Friday.

California officials put in place a plan to provide Harris with dignitary protection after Trump ended an arrangement that gave his opponent in last year’s election extended Secret Service security coverage.

Fred, Moofa and a reluctant Flyball swim in the Martian canal.

Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday ending Harris’ protection as of Monday, according to sources not authorized to discuss the security matter.

Former vice presidents usually get Secret Service protection for six months after leaving office, while ex-presidents get protection for life. But before his term ended, then-President Biden signed an order to extend Harris’ protection beyond six months to July 2026. Aides to Harris had asked Biden for the extension. Without it, her security detail would have ended last month, according to sources.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who would need to sign off on such CHP protection, would not confirm the arrangement. “Our office does not comment on security arrangements,” said Izzy Gordon, a spokesperson for Newsom. “The safety of our public officials should never be subject to erratic, vindictive political impulses.”

The decision came after Newsom’s office and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass were in discussions Thursday evening on how best to address the situation. Harris resides in the western portion of Los Angeles.

Trump has alienated India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and may have driven him to align of China, Russia, and North Korea.

Mujib Mashal, Tyler Pager, and Anupreeta Das at The New York Times (gift link): The Nobel Prize and a Testy Phone Call: How the Trump-Modi Relationship Unraveled.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India was losing patience with President Trump.

Mr. Trump had been saying — repeatedly, publicly, exuberantly — that he had “solved” the military conflict between India and Pakistan, a dispute that dates back more than 75 years and is far deeper and more complicated than Mr. Trump was making it out to be.

Fred and the cats walk to the spaceship Halley.

During a phone call on June 17, Mr. Trump brought it up again, saying how proud he was of ending the military escalation. He mentioned that Pakistan was going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor for which he had been openly campaigning. The not-so-subtle implication, according to people familiar with the call, was that Mr. Modi should do the same.

The Indian leader bristled. He told Mr. Trump that U.S. involvement had nothing to do with the recent cease-fire. It had been settled directly between India and Pakistan.

Mr. Trump largely brushed off Mr. Modi’s comments, but the disagreement — and Mr. Modi’s refusal to engage on the Nobel — has played an outsize role in the souring relationship between the two leaders, whose once-close ties go back to Mr. Trump’s first term.

The dispute has played out against the backdrop of trade talks of immense importance to India and the United States, and the fallout risks pushing India closer to American adversaries in Beijing and Moscow. Mr. Modi is expected to travel to China this weekend, where he will meet with President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Use the gift link to read the rest, if you’re interested.

I’ll end with this disturbing piece from Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian: Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode.

If this were happening somewhere else – in Latin America, say – how might it be reported? Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets …

Except this is happening in the United States of America and so we don’t quite talk about it that way. That’s not the only reason. It’s also because Donald Trump’s march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it’s easy to become inured to it: you can’t be in a state of shock permanently. And, besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down rather than scream at the top of their voice.

There’s something else, too. Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. It’s like being woken in the night by a burglar wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag marked “Swag”: we would assume it was a joke or a stunt or otherwise unreal, rather than a genuine danger. So it is with Trump. We cannot quite believe what we are seeing.

Flyball and Moofa weightless and happy as kittens.

But here is what we are seeing. Trump has deployed the national guard on the streets of Washington DC, so that there are now 2,000 troops, heavily armed, patrolling the capital. The pretext is fighting crime, but violent crime in DC was at a 30-year low when he made his move. The president has warned that Chicago will be next, perhaps Baltimore too. In June he sent the national guard and the marines into Los Angeles to put down protests against his immigration policies, protests which the administration said amounted to an “insurrection”. Demonstrators were complaining about the masked men of Ice, the immigration agency that, thanks to Trump, now has a budget to match that of the world’s largest armies, snatching people from street corners or hauling them from their cars.

Those cities are all run by Democrats and, not coincidentally, have large Black populations. They are potential centres of opposition to Trump’s rule and he wants them under his control. The constitution’s insistence that states have powers of their own and that the reach of the federal government should be limited – a principle that until recently was sacred to Republicans – can go hang.

A bit more:

Control is the goal, amassing power in the hands of the president and removing or neutering any institution or person that could stand in his way. That is the guiding logic that explains Trump’s every action, large and small, including his wars on the media, the courts, the universities and the civil servants of the federal government. It helps explain why FBI agents last week mounted a 7am raid on the home and office of John Bolton, once Trump’s national security adviser and now one of his most vocal critics. And why the president hinted darkly that the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is in his sights.

It’s why he has broken all convention, and possibly US law, by attempting to remove Lisa Cook as a member of the board of the Federal Reserve on unproven charges of mortgage fraud. Those charges are based on information helpfully supplied by the Trump loyalist installed as federal housing director and who, according to the New York Times, has repeatedly leveraged “the powers of his office … to investigate or attack Mr Trump’s most recognisable political enemies”. The pattern is clear: Trump is using the institutions of government to hound his foes in a manner that recalls the worst of Richard Nixon – though where Nixon skulked in the shadows, Trump’s abuses are in plain sight.

And all in the pursuit of ever more power. Take the firing of Cook.With falling poll numbers, especially on his handling of the economy, he craves the sugar rush of an interest rate cut. The independent central bank won’t give it to him, so he wants to push the Fed out of the way and grab the power to set interest rates himself. Note the justification offered by JD Vance this week, that Trump is “much better able to make those determinations” than “unelected bureaucrats” because he embodies the will of the people. The reasoning is pure authoritarianism, arguing that a core principle of the US constitution, the separation of powers, should be swept aside, because all legitimate authority resides in one man alone.

Read the rest at The Guardian.

Those are my offerings for today. Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Wednesday Reads: A Mixed Bag of News

Posted: May 7, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Donald Trump, Foreign Affairs, India, Pakistan | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

I’m trying not to let myself fall into despair over what’s happening in our country and the world, but it isn’t easy. I try to distract myself by reading novels and by watching shows on Netflix and Max. But inevitably I open my phone or turn on cable news and get hit with awful news about what new insane thing Trump is doing or saying.

This morning, as I look around at stories in the news, I find myself sinking into sadness over what we have already lost from our democracy and what more losses could be coming. It’s all so tragic. I honestly despise the people who voted for Trump.

There’s one person who never fails to lift my spirits, if only temporarily: MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. Recently, he has had a great time making fun of Trump’s seeming obsession with American girls’ dolls and how they need to make do with just 2 or 3 or 4 instead of 35 because of his tariffs.

Last night Lawrence made an interesting point about Trump’s cognitive decline. He pointed out that Trump saying “I don’t know,” when asked if people in the U.S. have a right to due process and when asked if he has a duty to defend the Constitution is something new for him. Normally, Trump never admits to not knowing something. He would rather bumble around talking complete nonsense than admit to not knowing.

Lawrence argues that Trump is a pathetic husk of his former self, exhausted and befuddled by his responsibilities. Not that any of this is going to drive Trump from office, but it’s an interesting thought. The danger, of course is that other people like Elon Musk and Stephen Miller could be in control of the presidency.

Lawrence also discussed Trump’s embarrassing appearance yesterday in the Oval Office with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Ed Mazza from HuffPost via Yahoo News: Lawrence O’Donnell Shows Moment Trump Was ‘Humbled And Humiliated’ On Live TV.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said President Donald Trump “is clearly off his game” after watching footage of his Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday.

“The Canadian prime minister both humbled and humiliated Donald Trump at the same time without Donald Trump having the slightest idea it was happening,” he said on Tuesday night.

O’Donnell said there’s been a “steady stream of that sort of humiliation,” starting with French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit in February and when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stopped by days later.

Later in the segment, O’Donnell slammed Trump’s “utterly demented attempt” to turn Canada into a state. Carney, he noted, responded by saying “absolutely no to Donald Trump to his face.”

But Trump, he said, barely noticed.

“Donald Trump had no fight in him today when the very polite Canadian beside him talked rings around Donald Trump like a ring master in a circus with a trained animal, threw in some magic words that sounded flattering enough to Donald Trump so that Donald Trump actually ― and you’ll see this ― ends up nodding and agreeing with the man who is humiliating him and defeating him right there in the room on TV,” O’Donnell said. “No president has ever lost more in one conversation in the Oval Office than Donald Trump lost in these 90 seconds.”

O’Donnell rolled the footage of the meeting, where Carney told him Canada would never be for sale and would not be a U.S. state.

So, on to today’s news.

India and Pakistan–both nuclear powers–appear to be on the verge of war.

CNN: India strikes deep inside Pakistan, Pakistan claims 5 Indian jets shot down, in major escalation.

India launched military strikes on targets in Pakistan, both countries said on Wednesday and Pakistan claimed it had shot down five Indian Air Force jets, in an escalation that has pushed the two nations to the brink of wider conflict.

India’s missile strikes early Wednesday morning targeted “terrorist infrastructure” across nine sites in Pakistan’s densely populated Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, it said. They came in response to a massacre by militants of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir two weeks ago, that New Delhi blamed on its neighbor.

India Pakistan map

Pakistan said at least 26 people were killed in Wednesday’s strikes – including women and a three-year-old girl – and 46 wounded. The country’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif described the strikes as “an act of war” and Islamabad has vowed to retaliate.

From early Wednesday the two sides have exchanged shelling across their border, with locals on both sides telling CNN they were taking shelter. A CNN journalist in Pakistan-administered Kashmir heard multiple loud explosions.

“A shell landed at a house close to the mosque in which two people were injured. Shells also hit other houses in our area and we fled from our area to a safer place,” said Shakeel Butt, a resident of Muzaffarabad, in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. A senior Indian defense source said at least eight people had been killed on the Indian side of the border.

Pakistani military sources later said they shot down five Indian Air Force jets and one drone in “self-defense,” claiming three Rafale jets – sophisticated multi-role fighters made in France – were among those downed as well as a MiG-29 and an SU-30 fighter.

A local resident and government official told CNN that an unidentified fighter aircraft had crashed on a school building in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Niha Masih and Frances Vinall at The Washington Post: Are India and Pakistan at risk of war? Here’s what to know.

Tensions between India and Pakistan intensified Wednesday after India’s military launched strikes against the neighboring country in response to a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir last month, heightening fears of war between the nuclear-armed rivals….

The strikes have set the region on edge and shattered the fragile ceasefire that has largelyheld since 2021, with analysts warning of escalation in the decades-long conflict that has riven the South Asian subcontinent over the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir, parts of which are controlled by India and Pakistan, though the area is claimed in full by both countries.

Wednesday’s aerial assault is on a far bigger scale than in 2019, when India struck a single, remote Pakistani site in response to a suicide bombing that killed more than 40 Indian soldiersin Kashmir….

The sharp rise in tensions follows a deadly April 22 attack on tourists near the town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Gunmen armed with rifles killed 25 Indians and one Nepalese citizen. More than a dozen others were injured. The attack was the deadliest against civilians since the 2008 Mumbai attacks by the Pakistani-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba that killed 166 people.

Indian-administered Kashmir is a heavily militarized zone. An armed insurgency — either seeking independence or favoring accession to Pakistan — has continued against Indian rule for more than three decades.

India has long accused Pakistan of fomenting separatist violence in Kashmir. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said Wednesday that India had found evidence linking themilitants in the Pahalgam attack to Pakistan.

The Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi revoked Kashmir’s semiautonomous status in August 2019 and instituted a crackdown, including imposing the world’s longest internet shutdown in a democracy. Promising development and investment, New Delhi had touted a return to relative peace, citing the surge of tourists to the region, a narrative upended by the deadly attack last month.

Read more at the WaPo.

Joe Biden gave his first major interview since he left the White House.

Anthony Zurcher at BBC News: Five takeaways from Biden’s BBC interview.

Former US President Joe Biden has given his first in-depth interview since he left the White House in January, speaking to the BBC about his legacy, foreign policy and his view of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days.

He said that he had few regrets, but he offered grave warnings about global affairs as Europe marks 80 years since the end of World War Two on the continent….

The former president also reflected on his decision to drop out of the 2024 election race – but he had less to say about any mistakes he and the Democrats may have made along the way….

On leaving the 2024 presidential race:

Democratic strategists have lamented that the last-minute handover left their campaign flat-footed, ultimately aiding Trump’s path to the White House, even as Democrats held a financial advantage in the 2024 race.

Biden boasted of being “so successful on our agenda” – a reference to the major legislation enacted in his first two years in office on the environment, infrastructure and social spending, as well as the better-than-expected Democratic performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

“It was hard to say now I’m going to stop,” he said. “Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away.”

Ultimately, quitting was “the right decision”, he said, but it was “just a difficult decision”.

On Trump and Ukraine:

Biden described the Trump administration’s suggestion that Ukraine give up territory as part of a peace deal with Russia as “modern-day appeasement” – a reference to European allies that allowed Adolf Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia in the 1930s in an ill-fated attempt to prevent a continent-wide conflict.

Joe Biden at BBC interview

“I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him. I don’t quite understand,” Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin….

Though Biden’s repeated assertion that Russian tanks would be rolling through central Europe if America and its allies didn’t support Ukraine is impossible to prove, he views the threat posed by Putin as serious and worthy of the comparison.

Biden also said that if the US allowed a peace deal that favoured Russia, Putin’s neighbours would be under economic, military and political pressure to accommodate Moscow’s will in other ways. In his view, the promise of American support to European allies becomes less believable and less of a deterrent.

Read more on the interview at the link above.

Nick Robinson at BBC News: Joe Biden on Trump: ‘What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are.’

Until this week, President Biden himself (former presidents keep their titles after they leave office) has largely observed the convention that former presidents do not criticise their successors at the start of their time in office. But from the moment we shake hands it is clear that he is determined to have his say too.

In a dark blue suit, the former president arrives smiling and relaxed but with the determined air of a man on a mission. It’s his first interview since leaving the White House, and he seems most angry about Donald Trump’s treatment of America’s allies – in particular Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky….

“I found it beneath America, the way that took place,” he says of the explosive Oval Office row between Trump and Zelensky in February. “And the way we talk about now that, ‘it’s the Gulf of America’, ‘maybe we’re going to have to take back Panama’, ‘maybe we need to acquire Greenland, ‘maybe Canada should be a [51st state].’ What the hell’s going on here?

“What President ever talks like that? That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity – not about confiscation.”

There’s much more from the interview at the link.

Speaking of Trump’s obsession with Greenland, the Wall Street Journal has a scoop by Kathryn Long and Alexander Ward: U.S. Orders Intelligence Agencies to Step Up Spying on Greenland.

The U.S. is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, according to two people familiar with the effort.

Several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a “collection emphasis message” to intelligence-agency heads last week. They were directed to learn more about Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes on American resource extraction on the island.

The classified message asked agencies, whose tools include surveillance satellites, communications intercepts and spies on the ground, to identify people in Greenland and Denmark who support U.S. objectives for the island.

The directive is one of the first concrete steps Trump’s administration has taken toward fulfilling the president’s often-stated desire to acquire Greenland.

A collection-emphasis message helps set intelligence-agency priorities, directing resources and attention to high-interest targets. The Greenland order, which went to agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, underscores the administration’s apparent commitment to seeking control of the self-governing island. It forms part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member and a decadeslong ally.

James Hewitt, a National Security Council spokesman, said the White House doesn’t comment on intelligence matters, but added: “The president has been very clear that the U.S. is concerned about the security of Greenland and the Arctic.”

In a statement, Gabbard said: “The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of aiding deep state actors who seek to undermine the President by politicizing and leaking classified information. They are breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy.”

More at the WSJ. I got past the paywall by clicking the link on Memeorandum.

What is going on with the U.S. Navy? They’ve lost another $60 million fighter jet.

The Washington Post: Another Navy jet falls into sea, marking fourth major mishap in months.

A Navy fighter jet failed to land on an aircraft carrier and plummeted into the Red Sea on Tuesday, marking the fourth major mishap involving the vessel and the third loss of a fighter jet deployed with it since the warship left home last year.

The F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet, worth about $67 million, went overboard after an unsuccessful attempt to slow it down upon landing on the USS Harry S. Truman, the Navy said in a statement. Both aviators aboard the jet safely ejected and were rescued at sea by helicopter with minor injuries, and no one aboard the warship’s flight deck was harmed, the service said.

Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet

The latest incident, reported earlier by CNN, followed the loss of another jet, an F/A-18E, in an accident aboard the Truman last week in which the aircraft tumbled overboard after sailors aboard lost control of it while towing it in the ship’s hangar bay. A third fighter jet from the Truman was shot down accidentally over the Red Sea in December by another Navy warship, the USS Gettysburg, in an incident that triggered concerns about communication among warships and fighter jets in the region.

The Truman also was involved in a collision in the Mediterranean Sea in February, prompting the service to fire its commanding officer, Navy Capt. Dave Snowden. He was replaced by Navy Capt. Christopher Hill, who had just completed the deployment of another carrier, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

While the incidents have not killed any service members, they have raised questions about the strain placed on the aircraft carrier’s crew and its ability to carry out a grueling deployment in which troops have clashed for months with Houthi militants in Yemen, who have repeatedly launched drone and missile attacks against vessels in the region. The mishaps have the attention of senior U.S. military leaders, a defense official familiar with the discussion said Tuesday night, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has twice extended the aircraft carrier’s deployment since it left its home in Virginia last September, most recently last week, to ensure that the Navy had two aircraft carriers on hand to battle the Houthis. Since March, the carrier has been on the front lines of a full-scale assault that President Donald Trump ordered against the Yemen-based militant group in response to its attacks on commercial and military vessels dating to late 2023.

Pete Hegseth isn’t the only cabinet member who doesn’t seem to care about protecting the nation’s secrets.

Wired’s Tim Marchman has a disturbing story about DNI Tulsi Gabbard: Tulsi Gabbard Reused the Same Weak Password on Multiple Accounts for Years.

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, used the same easily cracked password for different online accounts over a period of years, according to leaked records reviewed by WIRED. Following her participation in a Signal group chat in which sensitive details of a military operation were unwittingly shared with a journalist, the revelation raises further questions about the security practices of the US spy chief.

WIRED reviewed Gabbard’s passwords using databases of material leaked online created by the open-source intelligence firms District 4 Labs and Constella Intelligence. Gabbard served in Congress from 2013 to 2021, during which time she sat on the Armed Services Committee, its Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations, and the Foreign Affairs Committee, giving her access to sensitive information. Material from breaches shows that during a portion of this period, she used the same password across multiple email addresses and online accounts, in contravention of well-established best practices for online security. (There is no indication that she used the password on government accounts.)

Tulsi Gabbard

Two collections of breached records published in 2017 (but breached at some previous unknown date), known as “combolists,” reveal a password that was used for an email account associated with her personal website; that same password, according to a combolist published in 2019, was used with her Gmail account. That same password was used, according to records dating to 2012, for Dropbox and LinkedIn accounts associated with the email address tied to her personal website. According to records dating to 2018 breaches, she also used it on a MyFitnessPal account associated with a me.com email address and an account at HauteLook, a now-defunct ecommerce site then owned by Nordstrom.

Records of these breaches have been available online for years and are accessible in commercial databases.

Gabbard’s spokesperson downplayed this story, saying the information is a decade old and passwords have been changed many times since then. But check out this info on Gabbard:

The password associated with all of the accounts in question includes the word “shraddha,” which appears to have personal significance to Gabbard: Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that she had been initiated into the Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement into which she was reportedly born and which former members have accused of being a cult. Several former adherents told The Journal that they believe Gabbard received the name “Shraddha Dasi” when she was allegedly received into the group. Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, responded to questions from The Journal at the time by posting them on X and accusing the news media of publicizing “Hinduphobic smears and other lies.”

Wow. I never knew that.

Just a few more interesting stories:

The Washington Post (gift link): DOGE aims to pool federal data, putting personal information at risk.

The U.S. DOGE Service is racing to build a single centralized database with vast troves of personal information about millions of U.S. citizens and residents, a campaign that often violates or disregards core privacy and security protections meant to keep such information safe, government workers say.

The team overseen by Elon Musk is collecting data from across the government, sometimes at the urging of low-level aides, according to multiple federal employees and a former DOGE staffer, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The intensifying effort to unify systems into one central hub aims to advance multiple Trump administration priorities, including finding and deporting undocumented immigrants and rooting out fraud in government payments. And it follows a March executive order to eliminate “information silos” as DOGE tries to streamline operations and cut spending.

At several agencies, DOGE officials have sought to merge databases that had long been kept separate, federal workers said. For example, longtime Musk lieutenant Steve Davis told staffers at the Social Security Administration that they would soon start linking various sources of Social Security data for access and analysis, according to a person briefed on the conversations, with a goal of “joining all data across government.” Davis did not respond to a request for comment.

But DOGE has also sometimes removed protections around sensitive information — on Social Security numbers, birth dates, employment history, disability records, medical documentation and more. In one instance, a website for a new visa program wasn’t set up behind a protective virtual private network as would be customary, according to a Department of Homeland Security employee and records obtained by The Washington Post.

The administration’s moves ramp up the risk of exposing data to hackers and other adversaries, according to security analysts, and experts worry that any breaches could erode public confidence in government. Civil rights advocates and some federal employees also worry that the data assembled under DOGE could be used against political foes or for targeted decisions about funding or basic government services.

“Separation and segmentation is one of the core principles in sound cybersecurity,” said Charles Henderson of security company Coalfire. “Putting all your eggs in one basket means I don’t need to go hunting for them — I can just steal the basket.”

This is sickening. Adam Liptak at The New York Times: Supreme Court Lets Trump Enforce Transgender Troop Ban as Cases Proceed.

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration may start enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the military that had been blocked by lower courts.

The ruling was brief, unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. It will remain in place while challenges to the ban move forward.

The court’s three liberal members — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — noted dissents but provided no reasoning.

Commander Emily Shilling

The case concerns an executive order issued on the first day of President Trump’s second term. It revoked an order from President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that had let transgender service members serve openly.

A week later, Mr. Trump issued a second order saying that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle.”

The Defense Department implemented Mr. Trump’s order in February, issuing a new policy requiring transgender troops to be forced out of the military. According to officials there, about 4,200 current service members, or about 0.2 percent of the military, are transgender.

The context:

The Supreme Court’s order came against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s broad attacks on transgender rights. The administration has sought to bar transgender athletes from sports competitions. It has tried to force transgender people to use bathrooms designated for their sex assigned at birth. And it has objected to letting people choose their pronouns.

The justices will soon decide the fate of a Tennessee law that bans transition care for transgender youths, challenged in a case brought by the Biden administration. The Trump administration flipped the government’s position in that case in February, after an executive order directed agencies to take steps to curtail surgeries, hormone therapy and other gender transition care for people under 19 years old.

In the case decided on Tuesday, seven active service members, as well as a person who sought to join and an advocacy group, sued to block the policy, saying, among other things, that it ran afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

One of the plaintiffs, Cmdr. Emily Shilling, who began transitioning in 2021 while serving in the Navy, has been a naval aviator for 19 years, flying more than 60 combat missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Her lawyers said the Navy had spent $20 million on her training.

In March, Judge Benjamin H. Settle of the Federal District Court in Tacoma, Wash., issued a nationwide injunction blocking the ban, using Commander Shilling as an example of the policy’s flaws.

One more from Politico EU: Cardinals are watching ‘Conclave’ the movie for guidance on the actual conclave.

Faced with the highly secretive and complex ritual of choosing a new pope, Catholic cardinals have turned to Hollywood to learn how it could all play out.

As crazy as it might sound, some of the 133 high-ranking clerics set to enter the Sistine Chapel when the conclave starts on Wednesday have looked to the Ralph Fiennes movie ― handily titled just “Conclave” ― for pointers.

“Some have watched it in the cinema,” a cleric involved in the real thing admitted to POLITICO.

The movie, directed by Edward Berger, features English actor Fiennes as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, the dean of the College of Cardinals. As the pope-appointed steward of the conclave, he has to deal with fractious clerics, the emergence of scandalous dossiers targeting papal favorites and the appearance of an unknown candidate from an obscure diocese.

It all might sound painfully relevant. The film is seen as remarkably accurate even by cardinals, said the cleric, making it a helpful research tool, especially at a time when so many of the conclave participants have little experience of Vatican politics and protocol.

A majority of the cardinals who flocked to Rome in the weeks since the death of Pope Francis were appointed by the late pontiff, and have never experienced a conclave. Mirroring the Fiennes film, many also come from small, previously overlooked dioceses across the globe.

This has gotten way too long, so I’d better wrap it up. What’s on your mind today?