“We’re on the cusp of discovering how the battle against the Deep State is progressing. Who controls the weather? The day formally known as Flag Day, now recognized as The Birthday All Will Celebrate, is fast approaching. Last year, a rather lame and uninspiring parade left us underwhelmed. This year, really sweaty men will do battle for the pleasure of our Grifter in Chief under the threat of severe weather.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Headlines today show that everything Trump touches does, indeed, turn to shit. The Iran War is still hot, but Trump insists there’s peace in the making. Our Nation’s Capitol has turned into a gross example of what it looks like to destroy a planet, a culture, and a democracy. The real death and destruction come into play with the policies thought up by the most hapless group of people ever appointed to lead a department. Meanwhile, government spending, inflation, and stock markets are providing us with numbers to worry about. The polls show the people hate it all. But, will they turn out to vote the people responsible out of office?
The New Republic has a take on those polls. “Trump Hits Record-Breaking Low in Polls as Aides Leak: He’s ‘Furious.’ As Trump arrives at a negative poll milestone that no other president has reached, a Democratic strategist explains how we’ll know it if his travails start translating into a serious midterm rout.” The analysis is provided by Greg Sargent and his guest, Christina Reynolds, in the podcast linked below.
Donald Trump’s polling just crashed to new lows. He’s hit a net approval on inflation of negative 50 points in numerous surveys, something no other president has done—ever. Trump also is at 80 percent disapproval on gas prices. And this is the first time Democrats have led Republicans on inflation since the 1970s. It’s no accident that this comes as sources around Trump tell CNN that he’s “furious” because the media didn’t make his latest Iran bombing look strong and powerful. These stories are linked: His failure to force Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is causing the very cost spikes that are tanking his approval and his party’s chances in the midterms. We talked to Democratic strategist Christina Reynolds, who has extensive experience in midterms. She explains how Trump’s travails are translating into new pickup opportunities in surprising places, parses a new poll showing Democrats up 10 in the generic House matchup, and explains why 2026 reminds her of Democratic routs in 2006 and 2018. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
An interesting take on this, Trump’s growing unpopularity, is provided by outgoing Senator John Cornyn from Texas. “After Senate Loss, Cornyn Predicts ‘Miserable’ Final Two Years for Trump. In his first extensive interview since his defeat by a Trump-backed challenger, the Texas Republican said the Senate was in for a “bumpy ride” as he and others flex new political freedom.” The interview is reported today in the New York Times by Carl Hulse.
Senator John Cornyn was not consoled when President Trump professed on social media that the senior Republican from Texas would “remain my friend for a long time to come” after the president had enthusiastically endorsed the man who defeated Mr. Cornyn, ending his Senate career.
“If that’s the way friends treat you, you wonder about his enemies,” Mr. Cornyn said this week in his first extensive interview since his loss two weeks ago to Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, an opponent Mr. Cornyn labeled corrupt and unfit for the Senate.
Mr. Cornyn said he had come to terms with his defeat, a stinging loss he attributed in part to public disillusionment with extreme partisan politics that led to low voter turnout. Now the Trump administration might find itself having to come to terms with Mr. Cornyn as he flexes new political freedom, joining a handful of other Senate Republicans not seeking re-election or defeated in primaries at Mr. Trump’s behest who now have added room to maneuver.
“I think it is going to be a pretty bumpy ride for the next seven months,” Mr. Cornyn said during a wide-ranging conversation in his Capitol office as he reflected on the tumultuous Texas election and his nearly quarter-century in Washington.
“It does give some of us a little more freedom, and certainly leverage,” he said, before invoking Mr. Trump’s notoriously heated Oval Office meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last year. “As the president told President Zelensky when he was in his office a year or so ago — he said, ‘You don’t have any cards.’ Well, we’ve got some cards to play.”
Mr. Cornyn said he is not a “wounded bear” seeking retribution or revenge. He is determined that Republicans hold the Senate because he said he feared they would lose the House in November.
But in the interview, he gave voice in starkly candid terms to a growing sentiment among Senate Republicans that Mr. Trump was hurting his own party with self-serving decisions and his insistence on “slavish” loyalty, ultimately setting himself up for a midterm “disaster” that would pave the way for “the most miserable two years of his life.”
And in the interim, Mr. Cornyn said, he reserves the right to choose “where I’m going to — or going to not — defer” to Mr. Trump.
One of those areas appears to be the special protection from I.R.S. scrutiny that the Justice Department granted Mr. Trump and his family and businesses as part of a settlement of a lawsuit over the leak of his tax data, an exemption Mr. Cornyn said needed to be overturned.
At least most of the Judges on the federal benches have held the line. Michael Kunzelman has this headline for the AP. “Judge extends block on Trump’s $1.8 billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’.”
A federal judge agreed on Friday to extend a court-ordered block on the Trump administration’s creation and operation of a $1.8 billion settlement fund for compensating people who claim to be victims of a weaponized government.
Earlier this month, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that the government is scrapping its plans for the fund in the face of a fierce bipartisan backlash, and government attorneys have argued that lawsuits challenging the fund are now moot. But plaintiffs’ attorneys aren’t satisfied by Blanche’s assurances that the fund won’t move forward.
Neither was U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who ruled that the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” will remain blocked until further notice from the court.
“The (government’s) mootness argument, in my view, doesn’t go anywhere,” the judge said.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has not publicly and unequivocally endorsed the fund’s cancellation. He has continued to express support for it in remarks to reporters.
Brinkema gave the parties a week to negotiate an agreement for Trump administration officials, including Blanche, to submit a sworn declaration that the administration won’t revive the fund.
Brinkema previously agreed to temporarily block the administration from proceeding with the fund for at least two weeks. Her May 29 order was due to expire on Friday.
Trump’s Republican administration created the fund to resolve his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.
Plaintiffs who sued to block fund payouts argue that the government can’t legally divert taxpayer money into what they argue is a slush fund for compensating Trump’s allies.
In a separate case on Wednesday, a different judge in Washington, D.C., rejected a government watchdog’s parallel request for a court order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from forging ahead with the fund. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said he accepts Blanche’s representation that the fund is now moot.
This next attempt to twist rulings and laws is simply astounding. I’m not shocked, but wow, how obviously corrupt and butt-hurt can one old man be? This is from Lawyers, Guns, and Money. “Trump trying to “void” his first two impeachments.” Paul Campos has the analysis.
A couple of days ago I was asked to comment on the possibility of impeaching Trump after the midterms. I hadn’t really thought about that at all, and I concluded that it was hard to say whether it’s going to happen, given the fecklessness of Jeffries and Schumer. This new report from the WSJ highlights why this very much should happen, whether or not the Guardians of the Guardrails want it to:
U.S. President Donald Trump and his allies have discussed pushing lawmakers to pass a resolution aimed at voiding his first-term impeachments, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. . . . The Journal reported that Trump and his team want lawmakers to pass a resolution aimed at voiding the impeachments.
White House officials have strongly urged forward progress on this issue, the White House official told reporters. . . . the resolution would allow Trump to claim a symbolic victory on a matter that has dogged him since his first term, but would have little legal significance since the Constitution provides no procedure for undoing an impeachment.
“Little” here means “none.”
This absurdity illustrates how narcissistic injury is something that somebody like Trump can’t ever escape or overcome, which is all the more reason to injure him in the same way again, not to mention that he deserves to be impeached on the merits for almost countless reasons at this point. As a matter of principle I personally would put the ongoing war crime that is the Iran “excursion” at the top of the list, recognizing of course that as a pragmatic political matter there are far more attractive options for impeachment resolutions. But this very much needs to happen early in 2027.
We all realize that the Constitution and laws are meaningless to Trump, the judges that he’s appointed, and those in his administration. This is one of the most significant acts of social justice you can sign on to. The strike, as reported by the Guardian, is growing.
Nearly 40 women detained at Delaney Hall join striking men and outline demands ‘rooted in basic human rights’
Dozens of women detained inside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility in New Jersey announced their participation in a hunger and labor strike, advocates announced on Thursday.
The women, detained in unit 1 of the contentious privately run facility, also released a new list of demands. They are calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release women under 21, women with medical conditions and mothers. They are also demanding improved conditions inside the facility and for their immigration cases to proceed more quickly.
The Delaney Hall detention facility, run by the private prison company Geo Group, has in recent weeks become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s efforts to engage in mass deportations. A group of more than 300 men launched a hunger and labor strike last month, leading to demonstrations in support of the strikers and an aggressive police response.
The announcement that detained women in Delaney Hall were engaging in a strike came just one day after Trump signed a $70bn spending bill for immigration enforcement agencies and as immigrants in other detention centers participate in strikes of their own.
On Thursday morning, advocates, religious leaders and family members with detained loved ones gathered in front of the Delaney Hall facility to announce nearly 40 women were signing on to the strike. A series of speakers decried the conditions inside.
“Today, we stand with the women demanding release, safe living conditions, medical care, legal representation, family visitation, safe drinking water and protection from abuse,” said Archange Antoine, a minister with the Clergy Coalition for Liberation. “These are not radical demands – these are demands rooted in basic human rights.”
On 22 May, a group of detained men inside Delaney Hall announced a hunger and labor strike, making a list of demands including meeting with the New Jersey state governor, improved conditions, the release of sick and elderly detainees and for their cases to proceed in immigration court. At the time, a few women inside the facility joined in that effort, advocates told the Guardian.
Soon after the 22 May strike was announced, protesters outside the facility gathered in support of the striking detainees. Lawmakers have also come out in support of the striking detainees and to conduct oversight visits.
ICE officers responded to the protests by deploying pepper spray and using Tasers and batons. But later, amid national attention on the heated protests, New Jersey’s governor and Newark’s mayor deployed the state and local police forces who deployed teargas and arrested dozens in an effort to disperse the protesters.
Carol Leonnig of MS NOW reports that “FBI raids Ohio voting rights organization. Sources tell MS NOW that agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at staff members’ homes.” Shouldn’t they be working on something real, like the victims and perpetrators listed in the Epstein Files?
FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state, three people briefed on the search told MS NOW.
Agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at the homes of the group’s leaders and staff members, carrying some subpoenas and seeking information and electronic devices, according to the three people briefed, two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive ongoing investigation. Members of the group contacted lawyers on Thursday to determine their legal options, the people said.
Prentiss Haney, a board member of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, told MS NOW Thursday night that agents approached people with connections to the group, including some who had performed basic canvassing and volunteer work, and pressed them for information.
Agents were “basically trying to fish for information,” Haney said.
“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders’ and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask,” Haney said, adding that agents “asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.”
Some of the people said the agents approached without warrants, according to Haney.
“Just straight-up intimidation tactics,” he said.
Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday night.
The sources briefed on the search said they are concerned this new effort in Ohio is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to sow doubt and distrust in voting integrity in key swing states ahead of the midterm elections.
Here’s another horrifying action by RFK jr to turn health care into just another way to kill people. This is from the Guardian and reported by Ed Pilkington. “Autistic children being injected with unapproved stem cell treatments supported by RFK Jr. Desperate US parents paying up to $20,000 a session for a procedure scientists say could be bogus.”
Autistic children as young as 18 months old are being injected with human stem cells derived from umbilical cords in unapproved, unproven and potentially harmful “treatments” that scientists warn are proliferating across the US under the active encouragement of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Clinics in Florida, Texas and other states are selling what they bill as “regenerative medicine” to families with autistic children who have intensive care needs. Parents who have taken their children through the process talked to the Guardian about their hopes and fears for a therapy that appears to be gaining ground in the US.
The procedure, which can involve the child being sedated with ketamine before receiving intravenous doses of millions of stem cells, costs up to $20,000 each treatment. Families are often advised to return for regular top-ups.
Profoundly stressed parents are being wooed to the clinics with promises that a high-dose infusion of umbilical cord stem cells can lead to dramatic improvements in their children’s ability to speak, socialise, or avoid aggressive or self-harming behaviour. Yet there is no scientific evidence that the procedure works – the most comprehensive clinical trial staged so far, a placebo experiment conducted by Duke University, found insignificant benefits for most of the 180 children tested.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) directly cautions parents that if they are being offered stem cell treatments outside an approved clinical trial, “you are likely being deceived and offered a product illegally”.
Though the Duke trial found minimal safety concerns with properly administered stem cell infusions, authorities continue to highlight the potential risks of under-regulated therapies.
The FDA warned in 2021 that it had received reports of complications following applications of umbilical cord stem cells and other related unapproved products leading to “blindness, tumor formation, infections and more”.
In his 16 months as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services within the Trump administration, Kennedy has undercut established scientific endeavors. He has fired thousands of federal health officials, dismissed longstanding scientific advisers, defunded $31m in autism-related research and attempted to shrink the recommended list of childhood vaccinations.
At the same time, largely unnoticed, he has given his backing to alternative health providers moving to fill the gap. Kennedy appeared by video link at the first two annual summits held in San Diego by Autism Health, a leading advocate of stem cell infusions for autistic kids.
At the summit last year, he told the audience that “your issue is no longer on the fringe”. At this year’s gathering in April, he promised to “create opportunities that extend across a lifetime” and to work with the stem cell providers “to drive solutions together”.
Those providers included Mike Chan, a Malaysian physician who presented the San Diego summit with a protocol that he practices from his clinic in Bangkok. It involves injecting autistic children in the buttocks with high doses of stem cells extracted from slaughtered sheep and rabbits.
I do not believe that anyone could come up with a Trump appointment that actually knows what they’re doing in the job they’ve been given. It’s pathetic and dangerous. Anyway, there are more headlines out there about the administration and the Iran War that could fill at least one post. This is all I can handle for the day. Have a peaceful weekend.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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“I have an urge to stockpile toilet paper.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m going to start with something a little different. This is Heather Cox Richardson’s conversation today. The Historian’s headline caught my eye. She was asked a question and provided her answer. “What would have to happen for me to concede that the United States is beyond hope?” Her answer was simple. “The end of the world.” She explained that we have the ability to try to make the world a better place. I agree.
She’s right to argue that democracy and humankind have always been deeply flawed. And yet, we persist. In the long term, from a historical perspective, our ancestors have persisted. I always feel that I would fail the six direct relatives of mine who signed the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington, whose stepson is also a direct relative of mine. The Custis family has always been a group of fighters, and they were right there in the movement and the war to free slaves. I think about them a lot these days. Perhaps it is because of my age. More likely, it’s because I need to remind myself that it’s my turn to protect the family. I do not want to leave this shit to my grandchildren or anyone else’s.
In fact, I wonder what the world would be like if all these however great-grandfathers of mine had just shrugged it off. Or the farthest back, however, great-grandfather MacDuff had not killed Macbeth. For that matter, I have my father who bombed NAZIs out of France and Belgium to help liberate Europe from Fascism, or the great-great-grandfathers and uncles that fought for the Union during the Civil War. What about all the women who fought the war by doing everything their sons and husbands couldn’t help with anymore? And yet, they all persisted. So, I can and must too.
I hope her words give you the motivation to carry on.
“What would have to happen for me to concede that the United States is beyond hope?”
This is from the Washington Post. Meryl Kornfield has this essential read today. “Trump officials planned to mark 2.7 million living people as dead, whistleblower claims. A former Social Security executive said the plan, which was not carried out, would have used a death database to pressure immigrants to leave the country.”
The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts, according to a former senior Social Security executive.
The previously unreported plan, which the Social Security Administration said was not carried out, would have used one of the government’s most consequential identity databases to effectively erase people from the financial system, potentially cutting them off from wages, banking, government benefits and other services.
Jeremiah Schofield, who worked at Social Security for 25 years and helped lead the agency’s IT modernization efforts before leaving in October, said he refused to help implement the plan after agency lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead could violate federal law. Schofield said he realized the plan’s possible intent — to intimidate and worsen the finances of immigrants — as well as its potential unlawfulness after taking a sample of people from the 2.7 million and discovering they were all alive. Some were U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, teenagers and senior citizens, including one widow who was a legal permanent resident receiving survivor benefits.
Schofield has provided details on the plan in a 49-page whistleblower disclosure to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is on the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The disclosure was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it offers the most detailed account yet of howofficials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sought to use Social Security data in service of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In an interview with The Post, Schofield said he is speaking publicly for the first time because he believes Americans need to understand how government data can be misused and, in some cases, already has been.
Social Security carried out a smaller version of such an effort last year, The Post previously reported, moving 6,100 immigrants into its “Death Master File” — a database used by banks, employers and government agencies to determine whether someone is alive. Some of those people later showed up at Social Security field offices to prove they were alive and were restored in agency records.
In a written statement, a Social Security spokesperson who did not provide their name said the agency “did not add a list of 2.7 million names to the Death Master File. SSA maintains the highest level of internal controls. This includes having all appropriate policies and procedures in place to maintain the integrity and accuracy of agency records.”
Schofield’s whistleblower complaint describes a tumultuous period inside Social Security, as career officials questioned the legality of such efforts and watched DOGE officials gain access to some of the government’s most sensitive databases. In one meeting, Schofield said, a DOGE official working with the Department of Homeland Security described the goal of declaring 2.7 million living people dead: making immigrants so miserable that they self-deported or went to Social Security offices for help, where they could be arrested.
“That call was one of the most disappointing calls I’ve been in in my 25-year career,” Schofield told The Post. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
Before he was announced as President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US intelligence community, Bill Pulte did not have a security clearance granting him access to highly-classified information – meaning he lacked what has long been considered a basic prerequisite for the job he will soon occupy, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
On Thursday, days after Trump’s announcement that Pulte would serve as acting director of national intelligence, the office he is expected to lead – at least temporarily – initiated the vetting process for his security clearance by requesting a background investigation, one of the sources told CNN.
Pulte — a wealthy businessman who was confirmed as Federal Housing Finance Agency director last year— already appeared to be an unusual choice for acting DNI given his lack of demonstrated experience in national security matters. A staunch Trump loyalist, Pulte played an extraordinary role in pushing the Justice Department to pursue some of its most eye-popping cases against the president’s personal foes.
Evidence that Pulte did not have access to classified material before he was announced as Trump’s top intelligence official this week underscores just how atypical his credentials are compared to nearly every other DNI that came before him.
“The director of national intelligence has access to all of our most classified intelligence,” Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, told CNN.
There is no evidence that Pulte “would respect those classifications,” Warner said.
Sources told CNN there is no evidence that Pulte previously maintained even the lowest form of security clearance before he was tapped as acting DNI.
Incompetence and lack of basic knowledge of your job are not even part of the vetting process for Orange Caligula. Wicked amounts of blind loyalty and eye-popping stupidity appear to be.
And of course, it wouldn’t be Trump if he wasn’t out to destroy every American monument, institution, and historical and nature-based asset of the country. This is from Torrence Banks writing at NOTUS. “Trump Is Eyeing Control of Smithsonian’s Budget. The administration is creating a conflict with how Congress intended its money be spent.” He can’t stand anything that’s not saturated by his presence. He also has no respect for the separation of powers. Feeding his narcissism and insecurity is the basis of all decisions.
A directive from the Office of Management and Budget could force the Smithsonian Institution to change its spending plans to match President Donald Trump’s priorities — or risk not getting some of the money Congress appropriated for its operations.
An apportionment — documents that direct federal agencies on how to spend congressionally approved money — approved by OMB in May is aimed at compelling the Smithsonian to spend congressionally appropriated funding in a way that’s “consistent with the FY 2026 President’s Budget” in order to receive it. The president’s budget differed widely from what Congress ultimately chose to fund.
OMB also instructed the Smithsonian to submit a request “specifying each activity and the associated estimated federal obligation amount.”
Trump has repeatedly tried to reshape the Smithsonian, insisting its prior offerings were too “woke” and insufficiently patriotic. The May directive puts the Smithsonian in a major bind, creating hurdles to access congressional funding, experts said.
“The budget guys at the Smithsonian, it puts them in a ridiculous position,” a former Hill staffer and appropriations expert who would only talk on the condition of anonymity told NOTUS. “If they spend money that OMB tells them to spend, then they’re in violation of the Antideficiency Act, which dates back to the Civil War. It involves an agency or a person spending money that’s not been appropriated, and it has criminal fucking penalties, man.”
“And if they don’t spend money Congress told them to spend, then they’re in violation of the Impoundment Control Act, which does not have criminal penalties. But it’s a pretty good constitutional crisis.”
Speaking of Constitutional amendments, check this one out. This is from The ReligiousNews Service. “Defense Department to drop atheists, pagans, 175 others from list of military faiths. The new list includes 31 recognized faiths, most of them Christian denominations.” Weird cultural indoctrination, anyone? Adelle M. Banks and Yonat Shimron share the lede.
The Department of Defense is substantially reducing the number of religions it officially recognizes, reportedly excluding atheists, pagans, humanists and New Age faiths, an independent military-focused news website reports.
The reduction of recognized faith groups represents the first time the military has revised the list since 2017, when it vastly expanded the list of recognized faith groups to about 211. The new list includes 31 recognized faiths, as first reported by Military.com on Thursday (June 4).
The outlet said its report was based on a May 20 memorandum it obtained after it was issued by the undersecretary of defense.
The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request from RNS for additional information, including the specifics of who was included on the list and how such decisions would affect military members of other faiths who might desire assistance from a chaplain.
But the report seems to reflect developments previously announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
In a March video, he introduced upcoming Pentagon plans relating to reforms of the chaplain corps and recognition of religions.
“The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes,” Hegseth said. “It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all.”
“Our internal review committee recommended that going forward the department use 31 religious affiliation codes,” he added.
Molly Jong-Fast put a smile on my face with this Op Ed at the New York Times. “It’s No Wonder Grads Are Booing Their Commencement Speakers.” Now there’s our sweet freedom of speech value.
Commencement address season hasn’t been going well — for the commencement speakers.
I’m sure you’ve seen the videos on social media. The big shots who have been brought in to inspire a next generation of graduates have used their speeches as opportunities to extol the limitless possibilities that artificial intelligence will bring. They’re speaking to graduates who are entering a shaky job market and are already burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. However, companies of all stripes are using A.I. as an excuse to slow entry-level hiring and lay off workers. Tech executives have been warning (though it sometimes seems as if they are bragging) that their technologies will be job destroyers.
Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive who spoke at the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities, told graduates that “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.” Scott Borchetta, the chief executive of the record label Big Machine, told the graduates of Middle Tennessee State University that “A.I. is rewriting production as we sit here.” In each case, the students expressed their displeasure at the speakers’ blatant A.I. boosterism the best way they could: with loud boos.
When Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google, told graduates at the University of Arizona about their A.I.-shaped future, the shouting got so intense that he paused and said that graduates feared “that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.” Mr. Schmidt told them to make the best of it. “The question is not whether A.I. will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.”
Mr. Schmidt’s solution to world-upending technological change is … what? To pull yourself up by your bootstraps? His approach is peak billionaire brain, directed at the young people who have, for the better part of a decade, been treated as woke, lazy, avocado-toast-eating snowflakes. All these speakers just don’t get it. The problem isn’t woke; the problem is work. It’s a lack of social mobility. It’s that college may no longer elevate a graduate to the middle class. It’s that nobody even bothers to pretend that a house, a good job and the ability to start a family are at all guaranteed.
Think of this from the graduates’ perspective: Wealthy old people telling you your future is being pulped by acres and acres of electricity-sucking, water-guzzling data centers feels dystopian because it is. Companies are trying to automate your future away. No wonder you’re furious.
Young people are facing what M.I.T. Technology Review calls a “looming crisis in entry-level work,” and college, once assumed to be a prerequisite for a secure job, no longer feels worth it. The general gestalt coming from a certain sliver of affluent Americans is that college graduates are more liberal trouble than they’re worth and perhaps could be replaced by bots. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and G.O.P. megadonor, mused to Joe Rogan that a bot “never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high” and “never files H.R. complaints.” (It never boos a smug commencement speaker, either.)
I highly recommend reading this thought-provoking Op-Ed. The link is gifted. I also proffer this. The only expendable thing in this country that matters right now is Orange Caligula.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
This video performance features Keith Richards and my dear friend and neighbor, Washboard Chaz. His dog and Temple are bestest of buddies, too.
“Get Up, Stand Up! Stand up for your Rights! Get up, Stand up! Don’t give up the Fight!
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“In case you’re wondering why former Attorney General Pam Bondi was allowed to be “questioned”, not under oath and in private, after being subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight Committee about the Epstein File Coverup. John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
You’re seeing me today because of three days of fasting and a dreaded hospital procedure. Nothing serious. Just no fun at all. It’s kind of like living in this country under Orange Caligula’s craziness. Thankfully, BB came to my rescue yesterday! Now my doctor has to determine the intent of five polyps. She’s not expecting anything bad. Too bad we can’t say the same about the Trump Administration.
We still have a mostly functioning Judicial System. This New York Times headline is a keeper. “5 Takeaways From a Kennedy Center Ruling That Angered Trump. A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to take President Trump’s name off the building. What happens next?” Too bad we can’t get some court to stop the damage to the White House and the surrounding grounds. This analysis is by Zach Montague and Julia Jacobs.
Signed into law in 1964, only two months after Kennedy was assassinated, the legislation renamed what was first known as the National Cultural Center after a leader who had championed the performing arts.
“The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, designated by this Act,” the law read in part, “shall be the sole national memorial to the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the city of Washington and its environs.”
In his ruling on Friday, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington found that the president’s effort to rebrand the building after himself flew in the face of lawmakers’ original intent. He ordered that the 18 new letters added to the center’s white marble facade — which currently reads the “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” — be removed.
The order also temporarily blocked the center from beginning a two-year closure for renovations, drawing a scathing rebuke from Mr. Trump, who has made the institution a centerpiece of his effort to transform Washington’s cultural landscape.
The judge’s decision — released on Kennedy’s birthday — boiled down to a straightforward application of the 1964 law.
“Congress made clear that the Kennedy Center would serve as both the nation’s premier performing arts center and a living memorial, the sole one dedicated to the late president in the Washington, D.C. area,” Judge Cooper wrote. “The center has played those roles for over five decades.”
But as with other projects championed by Mr. Trump, such as a ballroom for which he ordered the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, the plans to overhaul the Kennedy Center did not receive the approval of lawmakers.
While the ruling left open the possibility that the president could pursue and support some aesthetic changes at the center, it professed little doubt about the law surrounding its name, which Judge Cooper said was “crystal clear.”
It’s a long read but well worth it. The link has been gifted, so you may read the entire thing. Another bit of Trump overreach is going back to court. This is from Politico. “Judge launches inquiry into Trump-IRS settlement that led to ‘anti-weaponization’ fund. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams asked Trump’s lawyers to respond to a call for her to explore the deal that led to the $1.8 billion fund.” The job market must be booming for lawyers. The leded here is shared by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein.
A federal judge is demanding answers to allegations that President Donald Trump defrauded her court by filing a lawsuit against the IRS as a pretext to reach a settlement that resulted in a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to make payouts to his political allies.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams launched the inquiry Friday, after closing the lawsuit on her docket last week. The Miami-based Obama appointee cited a request by 35 former federal judges who urged her to reopen the case to determine whether Trump’s effort amounted to “serious misconduct” and an abuse of the court system.
It’s the latest wrinkle in a developing scandal that has drawn bipartisan outrage on Capitol Hill, multiple lawsuits aimed at blocking the “anti-weaponization” fund and demands for further investigation by government watchdogs and courts.
Earlier this year, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns by a private contractor in 2019 and 2020. The lawsuit immediately triggered questions about conflicts of interest: How could the Justice Department and IRS now controlled by Trump appointees defend against a lawsuit brought by their boss?
But before the lawsuit advanced, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed that a settlement had been reached. Instead of a payout to Trump, the settlement would result in the establishment of the nearly $1.8 billion fund to make payouts to people described in the settlement as victims of government weaponization.
The announcement generated particular excitement among hundreds of people Trump pardoned for their roles in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with many announcing their intention to pursue payouts. Police officers who defended the Capitol and former Justice Department prosecutors who pursued Jan. 6 defendants sued to block the fund altogether, with another judge earlier Friday ordering a two-week pause on its establishment.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In her four-page order Friday, Williams indicated that she’s considering reopening the case. She also noted the former judges’ suggestion that Trump’s attorneys knew from the start that their lawsuit had no merit and filed it solely to justify a purported settlement that the administration wanted to announce.
This doesn’t mean that the J6 rioters are paying any attention to this ruling. This headline is from the AP. “Capitol rioters clamor for payouts from Trump’s new ‘anti-weaponization’ fund despite backlash.” Michael Kunzelman has the story.
David Johnston was a licensed attorney when he illegally entered the Capitol with a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. More than five years later, the South Carolina man is offering to help fellow “J6ers” apply for payouts from the Trump administration’s nearly $1.8 billion new fund for people claiming to be victims of a weaponized government.
He’ll do it for a 10% cut of any award, capped at $5,000 apiece.
“I think the narrative is changing” about how the history of that day is being told, Johnston said in a video he posted to social media. “I think good things are happening for us.”
Hundreds of Trump loyalists pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol, admitting under oath that they broke the law. Now pardoned by Trump, many hope to capitalize on their crimes by tapping into the $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate the Republican president’s allies who believe they were politically prosecuted.
A bipartisan backlash to the fund and a legal roadblock have not dimmed the celebratory response from Jan. 6 rioters clamoring for a share of the taxpayer money. Some are staking claims even though the government has not established an application process and a judge has frozen the fund’s formation, at least temporarily.
As usual, you may read more at the link. The Orange Caligula slush fund continues to horrify most Americans. This analysis is provided by Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson writing for Public Notice. “A new low” — watchdog sounds off on Trump’s J6 slush fund. “It’s an effort to signal to the violent element of his base.”
As a weekend bonus for subscribers, we connected with Donald Sherman, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), for his take on President Trump’s most corrupt move yet — the theft of nearly $2 billion from taxpayers for an insurrectionist slush fund he can operate with impunity.
Sherman characterized Trump’s self-dealing “settlement” with his own government as “corruption on a scale without precedent in America,” and argued its purpose is to incentive political violence.
“It’s an effort to absolve himself and his supporters from the insurrection he incited and to signal to the violent element of his base that if you engage in violence in support of him, you will not just be safe from prosecution, but made whole and then some,” he said. “So it’s not just backward-looking, it’s forward-looking. And it follows his pardoning of the January 6ers, which was another signal.”
By launching over 600 products on his merch store this term, Trump has essentially put a "For Sale" sign on the presidency.And if 2024 is any indication (the store brought in $8.8 million that year), the grift will bring in a hefty profit.
This is the article upon which the interview was based. It’s from Citizens for Ethics. The investigation was led by Miru Osuga and Caitlin Moniz. There’s absolutely nothing that the Trump Grifting Syndicate can’t try to monetize.
In the first fourteen months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Trump Store launched at least 622 products, costing nearly $43,000 all together, to profit off the presidency. This is an unprecedented level of monetization of the presidency, even by the standards of Trump’s own first term.
The Trump Store’s launch during his first year in office in 2017 immediately attracted ethics scrutiny as the Trump Organization—the for-profit Trump empire that directly benefits Trump and his family—found another avenue to profit off the presidency. And if sales are any indication, it’s now a well-oiled grifting machine, with Trump’s last released financial records showing that in 2024, the store brought in approximately $8.8 million, more than double the amount the store made in 2023—and more than 17 times the amount it made in its first full year of operation.
While the red “Make America Great Again” hats may now seem like the store’s obvious cash cow, during the first Trump term, these hats and others that referenced the presidency were only sold through the campaign store–a largely symbolic separation between Trump the president and Trump the businessman. But after Trump lost the 2020 election, any appearance of separation, slight as it may have been, was shattered as the store began to stock MAGA hats and never stopped.
A supporter now could buy one of each currently in-stock product and spend $91,145.12 on 1,492 items. They would receive at least 99 items that include reference to the presidency costing $7,511.28, with additional items commemorating actions that Trump took as president like a $55 “Space Force” hat or a $50 “Gulf of America – Yet Another Trump Development” ballcap.
More concerningly, they would also receive a number of items that sell the idea of an unconstitutional third presidential Trump term, including a “Four More Years!” hat, “Trump 2028” hats and can coolers, and “Trump 2028 (Rewrite The Rules)” shirts. The body of a Trump Store marketing email with the subject line “Four More Years | Trump 2028” reads: “Manifesting the future…Four More Years…A Hat for the Next Term.” There’s really only one way to take the explicit calls for a “next term” and “four more years” one year into a second presidential term: as a call for an unconstitutional third term.
You should read this article and then proceed to the interview. It’s really exceptional journalism and nothing you’d see in the legacy media these days.
We’ve all wondered about Trump’s obviously failing health. This CNN News article should not be a surprise. “White House breaks from precedent by not releasing Trump’s medical report.” Adam Cancryn has the lede.
The White House has yet to release any results from President Donald Trump’s most recent physical exam, a break from its own past practice that’s likely to fuel further questions about his health and fitness.
Trump, who is the oldest president to be inaugurated, declared on social media that he was in perfect health following an hourslong visit on Tuesday to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
But despite promising to provide a summary of the checkup in “the next day or so,” the White House has since offered no additional information — nor has it confirmed that Trump’s physician plans at any point to offer a public readout.
The three-day silence marks a departure from the White House’s handling of Trump’s prior physical exams. After a visit to Walter Reed last April, personal physician Dr. Sean Barbabella summarized the results in a memo released two days later. When Trump returned for another exam in October, Barbabella’s declaration that he remained in “exceptional health” was published later the same day.
This time, Trump has so far served as the only source of information about his own health just weeks out from his 80th birthday.
“It’s unimaginable to me that the White House would not release a statement about the president’s health — even the most basic statement,” said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor at The George Washington School of Medicine & Health Sciences who was the longtime cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney. “It’s going to really spark concerns about the president’s fitness for office if the White House refuses to disclose his medical report.”
Trump has long been cagey about any personal health problems, placing a great deal of value on portraying himself as a pinnacle of strength and vitality. On the campaign trail and in the Oval Office, Trump has made his vigor core to his political identity, boasting frequently about his mental and physical well-being. Past medical readouts often reflected this attitude: In Trump’s first term, then-presidential physician Dr. Ronny Jackson effusively praised his “incredible genes” during an hour-long press conference solely about Trump’s health, held at the president’s insistence.
But as he approaches his eighth decade, Trump’s visible signs of aging — and at-times erratic behavior — have nevertheless intensified scrutiny of his health and demands for more disclosure. And after intense doubts swirled about the mental acuity of former President Joe Biden, the American public is perhaps particularly sensitive nowadays to questions about the commander-in-chief’s physical and cognitive health.
So, it’s business as usual on steroids at the White House. This story in Lawfare isn’t shocking in Trump time, but wow, would it be unusual under any other President? “The Justice Department Erases History; Lawfare Restores It. Last week, the Justice Department deleted thousands of press releases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection and other matters. Here they are.” Tyler McBrien, Michael Feinberg, and Benjamin Wittes show us their homework.
The operation started without fanfare or formal announcement and proceeded largely unnoticed. Until, that is, journalists such as the Washington Post’s Meryl Kornfield took notice of certain press releases and other materials that had conspicuously disappeared from http://www.justice.gov.
“The Trump admin is quietly deleting info about the Capitol attack from the DOJ website as it prepares to give funds to J6ers,” Kornfield posted. “This week, DOJ deleted a press release about one man with an ongoing child solicitation case who came to the Capitol with bear spray.”
Then, with typical bombast, the Justice Department responded by taking issue with one particular aspect of Kornfield’s characterization. “Nothing ‘quiet’ about it,” the DOJ Rapid Response account replied. “We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”
We are not erasing history quietly, the Justice Department seemed to suggest. We are erasing historyloudly and proudly.
At Lawfare, we have restored the vast bulk of what was deleted. We have also started to preemptively archive a raft of material that has not yet been deleted but probably will be, given its thematic relationship to the material that was 86ed.
The Jan. 6 investigation was one of the largest investigations and collections of prosecutions in Justice Department history. In the FBI’s Washington Field Office alone, agents and analysts worked shifts to maintain a 24/7 posture identifying perpetrators. For more than a month after Jan. 6, there was never a time during day or night when roughly a third of the office was not investigating the insurrection or analyzing evidence.
All other FBI field offices, while not dealing with the same volume as the Washington Field Office, also surged agents to help identify, investigate, and apprehend any participants who had traveled to Washington, taken part in the insurrection, and then left town. Record numbers of leads and tips were provided to the FBI, and every single one of them was examined—and if merited—used to predicate a case.
For its part, the Justice Department stood up an entire new branch of prosecutors tasked specifically with these events. Assistant United States attorneys were also brought in from around the country to augment efforts.
This is the record the Justice Department is now trying to delete.
Any effort to erase history and replace it with lies warrants concerted pushback. In this case, the department has deleted a large repository of accessible public information about the storming of the Capitol and the individuals who did it. That data, unlike the court documents that lay beneath them, are in lay language. They are easily digestible by anyone interested. And they contain fair-minded summaries of evidence that—in the overwhelming majority of cases—was either proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt or pleaded to by defendants who ultimately conceded their truth.
Again, please read the details at the link. I’m pretty sure all this J6 build-up has something to do with the midterms and the next presidential election. Are they planting the seeds for more insurrection? Your guess is as good as mine!
Well, that’s it for me today. Time to get back to work on the kathouse! Hope you have a great weekend!
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?
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“Hopefully, funded by seizure of Trump’s ill-gotten gains.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s another Memorial Day where we recognize and show our gratitude for the 1.3 million soldiers who died in the service of our country. We’re still not savvy enough to stop the wars. We’re now in a hot one started by the idiot who told us the black lady would take us to war. This war is not going well.
I’m going to start with this analysis by Dr. Paul Krugman. This is his contribution on his SubStack today. “Donald Trump’s Ego-Driven ‘Excursion’ Has Crashed Into Reality. Trump lost his war, bigly. Why?”
“Many questions, few details in latest Iran peace proposal,” read the headline on a New York Times report Sunday. As the subhead explained, “It is too early to tell what exactly Trump and Iran have agreed to, or if they have agreed to much at all.” The article, by the way, was written by David Sanger, who Trump called “treasonous” over his clearly accurate reporting on how badly the war was going.
But, in fact, Trump’s Iran war may be over, or virtually over. America lost.
Iran may or may not agree to exercise restraint in its control over the Strait of Hormuz and its nuclear program. But as Donald Trump of all people should know, agreements can be broken. At a fundamental level Trump, who began by demanding UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER and trying to impose a subservient new regime, is now slinking away, leaving Iran’s hard-liners empowered — and America’s reputation shattered.
How did that happen? America is a superpower, Iran a middle-sized regional power at best. Spending isn’t the only determinant of armed might, but even so a comparison of the two government’s military budgets is ludicrously one-sided:
Yet the Iranian regime is not only still standing, it is stronger than before. Meanwhile, Trump is running away.
Trump’s disastrous leadership isn’t the sole factor behind this debacle, although it’s a large part of the story. In my view there are four main reasons Trump’s Iran “excursion” is ending in humiliation.
First, this was a fundamentally unwinnable war.
You may read his rationale at the link. The funniest thing is that the regime in Iran just will not let Trump tell lies about their situation. This is from NBC News. “Iran says no deal ‘imminent’ despite progress in talks with U.S. Secretary of State. Marco Rubio said earlier Monday that an agreement could be finalized ‘today,’ though he cautioned that if talks fail, Washington would find ‘another way’ to resolve the situation.” Yuliya Talmazan has the story.
While Tehran acknowledged progress but played down the idea that an announcement could come soon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a deal was still possible Monday.
An agreement could be finalized “today,” Rubio said during a trip to India. He cautioned that if talks fail, Washington would find “another way” to resolve the situation.
As a flurry of diplomacy unfolded from the Middle East to China, Iran’s top negotiators were in Qatar — an increasingly central player in the accelerating efforts to secure a deal that would end the three-month war and restore shipping through the crucial Strait of Hormuz trade route.
On Monday morning, Trump warned that while negotiations were proceeding “nicely,” fighting would resume “bigger and stronger than ever before” if the talks failed.
Trump had said Sunday that he would not “rush into a deal,” a step back from earlier public statements from the president and officials from both nations that indicated an announcement may be close.
Trump also explicitly linked an Iran deal with the Abraham Accords, calling on a number of nations in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to join the breakthrough agreements between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Orange Caligula is basically ill and beyond incompetent. Tom Nichols has this analysis at The Atlantic. “Trump’s War Is Staggering to an Incoherent Defeat. Even the president’s supporters are alarmed.” The Presidential Venn Diagram over there sums it up nicely. The buzz has really gotten to him. It’s obvious he can’t make a decent deal. It completely blows his image
No one yet knows the details of the Iran deal that President Trump has been teasing on social media for the past day or so. The president himself has admonished his followers not to “listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about.” But as this war stumbles to a close, it is clear that the president, too, is lost: He didn’t know what he was doing when he began it, and now he doesn’t know how to get out of it.
Only a day ago, Trump was trying to project confidence. Yesterday, he hailed an agreement with Iran as mostly done; it was, he said on his Truth Social site, “largely negotiated” and close to “finalization.” The Iranians, of course, immediately disputed this characterization, and by the next day, Trump was backpedaling. “If I make a deal with Iran,” he posted this afternoon, “it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon.” The agreement that was only a day earlier “largely negotiated” was now only a notional memorandum, and Trump griped that it was unfair to criticize it because “nobody has seen it, or knows what it is,” and it “isn’t even fully negotiated yet.”
By this afternoon, Trump was reduced to posting a meme of a jet carrying a bomb under its wing with Thank you for your attention to this matter written on it.
Many of those most alarmed about what Trump might end up accepting to get out of this dead-end conflict in Iran are not his critics, but his supporters. Trump’s enablers may not have access to the details of an agreement, but they’re clearly worried: Senators Lindsey Graham, Roger Wicker, and Ted Cruz were all posting expressions of shock and dismay on social media. Graham said that any deal that caves to Iran “makes one wonder why the war started to begin with”; Wicker said that a possible 60-day cease-fire would be a “disaster.” Cruz gently suggested that the tsar does not know what his devious boyars are up to, describing the deal as “being pushed by some voices in the administration.”
Even Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser, posted a long screed warning Trump not to make a deal. “I know you want to get out of this mess,” he said. He then counseled the president to “give it some thought.” Trump’s former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo weighed in as well, comparing the possible outline of a deal to the kind of thing Barack Obama’s team might have come up when designing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and warning that it could mean that America would end up paying “the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world.” Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, during his first term, and he regularly speaks of the JCPOA (and Obama) with contempt; Pompeo’s comparison was sure to infuriate the Trump team.
And sure enough, Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, responded almost immediately to Pompeo—and gave the world a glimpse of what appears to be some sweaty panic building inside the White House. “Mike Pompeo has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about,” Cheung posted on X. “He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know?” (Cheung also kept posting updates about Trump working in the Oval Office on a Saturday, as if this were an amazing illustration of the president’s work ethic.)
Trump’s worried sycophants probably know that the details of an eventual agreement likely do not matter very much at this point. As my colleague David Frum noted earlier today, the war has already ended with America’s strategic defeat by the Islamic Republic of Iran, an outcome for which Trump is directly responsible. How much Iran will get away with, and how much humiliation the United States will endure, has yet to be ironed out by the negotiators, but the war is now almost certain to end with Tehran’s theocrats firmly in power, and with a stronger chokehold both on their own people and on the international economy than they had three months ago.
There’s definitely a pattern here. The smell of failure is everywhere. This is from The Hill. Steff Danielle Thomas has the lede. “Trump urges Gulf allies to join Abraham Accords amid US-Iran talks.
The pressure comes as the two nations are reportedly working on a deal to extend the ceasefire in the region and reopen the Strait of Hormuz — while also laying the groundwork for broader talks over Tehran’s embattled nuclear program and potential sanctions relief. Officials on both sides have cautioned that key elements remain under negotiation.
“Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are proceeding nicely! It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before — And nobody wants that!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
The president said he spoke with multiple regional leaders over the weekend, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
“I stated that, after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords,” he continued, acknowledging that the UAE and Bahrain were already members.
“It may be possible that one or two have a reason for not doing so, and that will be accepted, but most should be ready, willing, and able to make this Settlement with Iran a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be,” Trump added.
The Abraham Accords were established in 2020 under the first Trump administration to broker ties between Israel and the Gulf states.
In his Memorial Day post, the president pressed Saudi Arabia and Qatar to join first, “and everybody else should follow suit.”
“If they don’t, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intension,” he added.
As negotiations between U.S. and Iranian officials continue, Trump said Sunday that his administration would not “rush” into any deal, adding “time is on our side.” The emerging framework, however, is drawing intense criticism from Republicans, who compared parts of it to the Obama-era nuclear agreement.
Meanwhile, Trump’s still trying to kill us by not allowing our doctors and researchers to take part in any sort of international collaboration on any potential global health issue. This story comes from Sarah Owermohle, reporting for CNN. “Exclusive: Trump admin shutting key US researchers out of global virus response talks, documents and sources reveal.”
Key officials responsible for leading US research on infectious disease threats have been barred from speaking directly with the World Health Organization — effectively shutting some of them out of the global discussions on virus outbreaks, according to documents and multiple sources who spoke to CNN.
The Trump administration issued the directive stopping individuals at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from communicating with the WHO.
The federal health subagency was led for decades by Dr. Anthony Fauci and oversaw developing treatments for public health emergencies including HIV/AIDs and Covid-19.
The prohibition has been in place during an outbreak of hantavirus that some Americans have been exposed to. The communication limits were relaxed slightly in the past week as another virus outbreak — an unfolding Ebola epidemic centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo — intensified.
Now, some NIAID officials can attend virtual WHO meetings, but only in small groups and only in a “listening capacity,” according to a May 18 email from a senior NIAID official to staff obtained by CNN. Any follow-up to those meetings would be handled by the Department of Health and Human Services, NIAID’s parent agency.
“We’ll be operating in the same manner for Ebola as we have been doing for Hantavirus, assembling a small groups of experts — no more than three — to participate,” the email said. “Should we have legitimate research questions or countermeasure testing ideas, we can bring those up through the proper chain of command.”
The restrictions hobble quick cooperation with global counterparts, multiple current and former health officials said. One staffer characterized it as unheard of during a US response to emerging public health emergencies.
The directive is part of a broader Trump administration retreat from participation in global health forums — the US withdrew from WHO in January at President Donald Trump’s direction, a move that was widely criticized by public health officials — and as many US health agencies are operating with interim heads.
Among the vacant positions are the director of the infectious disease agency; surgeon general; head of the Food and Drug Administration; deputy health secretary; and head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a leadership vacuum that observers say is unprecedented.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said it “engages with the WHO to support information sharing and coordination during infectious disease outbreaks” through the CDC — which is on the ground in disease outbreaks — and it is “fully equipped to protect Americans and mitigate risks.”
“Teams across the Department coordinate on key response areas, including contact tracing, diagnostics, and medical countermeasures, to avoid duplication and reduce confusion in outbreak response efforts,” the spokesperson said.
Trump has once again tried to make a presidential-sounding speech on Memorial Day. I’m running late on everything today, and I’m lucky I missed it. However, the news reports are coming in. Here’s the take from Lee Moran at HuffPost. “Donald Trump Marks Memorial Day With Early-Morning Online Rampage At
Donald Trump kicked off the Memorial Day holiday on Monday in what has become something of a tradition in recent years by taking aim at his political opponents on social media.
The president began posting on his Truth Social platform at 6:10 a.m., slamming critics of a potential deal with Iran to end the war he launched in February as “losers.”
Eight minutes later, at 6:18 a.m., Trump offered a “Happy Memorial Day” message, including to whom he called the “Dumocrats,” his latest nickname for Democrats, who he claimed, “disrespect our Military and all of the tremendous success that it has had over the last year.”
“God Bless those that have made the ultimate sacrifice. I love you all!” added Trump, whose military strikes on Iran have killed 13 U.S. troops.
I’m putting up this crazy Truth Social post by Trump because it really shows how crazy and obsessed he’s become. It even contains a reference to my soon-to-be-out-of-a-job Senator, Bill Cassidy. Isn’t this about the most pathetic thing you’ve ever read?
So, the rain is relentless here. Everything is drenched, and even my garden looks waterlogged. I’m basically going to stay home and do something quiet and relaxing. Peace always starts by keeping the TV News off.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
This is one of my favorite anti-war songs, sung by Glen Campbell and written by one of my favorite songwriters, Jimmy Webb. It was one of the great hits in 1969 with a very Americana style about the Vietnam War.
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“Upon further reflection, the Rededicate 250 National Prayer thing now makes huge sense. He Is Risen!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The one thing you can depend on every time Orange Caligula gets the reins of government is that things will always get worse, except for democracy backsliding. It’s just a matter of how shocking the next thing is. How many of us are in a constant state of being stunned that we aren’t the least bit surprised by the news, even though we still find the actions stomach-churning? Well, hang on! It’s been a week of WTF moments.
Today’s Tit-for-Tat announcement shows just how brazen the entire administration has gotten. This is from Time Magazine. It’s reported by Rebecca Schneid. What kind of monster thinks these things up?
President Donald Trump has withdrawn his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) amid reports that he struck a deal with his own Justice Department to create a $1.7 billion fund to compensate political allies who claim they were wrongly targeted by the Biden Administration.
The alleged plan, first reported by the New York Times and ABC News, would be paid for with taxpayer funds and is being fast-tracked, but has yet to be officially approved. If approved, the fund would be used to pay damages to people who say they were harmed by the Biden Administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Court documents showed Trump withdrew his lawsuit against the IRS, a move that could herald a private deal between the president and the agency he controls, while skirting legal oversight of the deal.
In a lawsuit filed in a Miami federal court in January, Trump and other plaintiffs accused federal agencies of failing in their duty of stopping a former IRS contractor from illegally obtaining and disclosing tax returns to the New York Times, ProPublica, and “other left-wing media outlets,” between May 2019 and September 2020.
The funds would also be used to settle his request for $230 million in legal claims from the Justice Department for the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and investigation into alleged ties between his campaign and Russia
As part of the settlement, Trump would also reportedly ask the IRS to public1pologize for the disclosure of his personal financial records and to waive an IRS audit
According to the Times, the Justice Department would model the program after the historic $760 million settlement fund stemming from the Keepseagle v. Vilsack class-action lawsuit, settled in 2011, which alleged that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) systematically discriminated against Native American farmers and ranchers in its farm loan and loan servicing program.
We know someone who can sum this up nicely. This is how Hillary put it this morning.
Trump didn’t just pardon his followers who stormed the U.S. Capitol. He’s now set them up for payments through a slush fund he created to reward his allies—out of your tax dollars. You could not make this up.
Robert Reich had some additional thoughts and analysis. He elucidated them on his SubStackthis morning. “Has Trump’s Republican Party Become a Criminal Enterprise? Trump’s purge of all political opponents, including Senator Bill Cassidy, leaves it with no purpose other than helping Trump achieve his lawless goals.” Trump puts us in a Mafia State every time he’s elected. Grifting is his only talent, and he’s been rich and influential enough to find ambitious and greedy toadies to carry out his wishes. We’ve known this forever here.
On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other Republican senators who have stood up to Trump — such as North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Utah’s Mitt Romney — saw the writing on the wall and didn’t seek reelection.)
Trump’s purge of Cassidy comes in the wake of Trump’s purges of House Republicans who stood up to him, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney.
Trump’s next Republican target in the House is Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, who had the guts to oppose U.S. military involvement in Iran, demand release of the Epstein files, and criticize Trump’s spending bills for adding to the national debt. Massie appears likely to be defeated by a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary.
Trump has also purged state legislators who have refused to do his bidding, such as the seven Indiana Republicans who refused to redistrict the state as Trump demanded they do, and who Trump insured were defeated in their recent primaries.
The message is clear to every current or aspiring Republican politician: Be a toady to Trump, or you’re out.
In his concession speech Friday night, Cassidy stated the obvious reference to Trump:
“Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution. And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”
Nicely put but sadly irrelevant because Trump — who’s clearly serving himself rather than the American public — now possesses all levers of power in the official Republican Party.
As Republican senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday on Meet the Press,“There’s no room in this party to destroy [Trump’s] agenda.”
There’s more at the link. My question is, what the hell can the rest of us who don’t support him do? I voted Saturday morning, wondering which candidate I had voted for would even have a chance under the new gerrymandering. That doesn’t even consider that we couldn’t even vote for our Congressional representatives, given the Supreme Court decision and the quick fix redraw of our map to ensure maybe one black person will retain their seat. The only good news to come out of the election was that all five constitutional amendments proposed by Governor Klandry were voted down.
Will these latest bits of news set up another J-6 self-coup? There will certainly be a rabid MAGA candidate sitting in Cassidy’s seat come next January. This is from NPR. “Louisiana senator who voted to convict Trump loses Republican primary.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of seven Republican senators who voted to remove President Trump from office after the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, lost his bid for reelection.
Louisiana’s Senate primary on Saturday was the latest test of Trump’s hold on his party. The president recruited a challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow, and urged supporters to defeat Cassidy over his vote.
“His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now part of legend,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post about Cassidy. “And it’s nice to see his political career is OVER.”
Cassidy finished third in a three-way race, according to the Associated Press. Letlow and another candidate, state Treasurer John Fleming, will advance to a June 27 runoff.
In conceding the race, Cassidy hinted that he would not finish his second term quietly. But in an apparent dig at Trump, he also said he wouldn’t contest his loss.
“You don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim that the election was stolen,” Cassidy told supporters on Saturday night. “You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you’ve had that privilege. And that’s what I’m doing right now.”
Cassidy told voters they should cast their ballot based on the present and the future, not the past, a subtle discouragement from re-litigating the 2020 election six years on. But for many primary voters, Cassidy’s move to convict felt like a betrayal, and Trump’s endorsement was paramount.
“I’m the type of person, if you cross me, I probably won’t trust you anymore,” retired sheriff deputy Kevin Dupree said earlier this month. “I think his political career in Louisiana is finished.”
My friend Robert Mann, a former Journalism Professor at LSU, has something poignant to say about the loss. This is from his SubStack. “Enjoy your tarnished legacy, Bill Cassidy. You earned it.” It’s a good lesson: while all politics is local, it can be influenced by a cult of personality.
Although he pandered shamelessly to Trump and MAGA to the bitter end, Sen. Bill Cassidy could have written a different ending to his political career.
He could have left office with his head held high, proud and satisfied that he’d remained true to his principles and the Hippocratic Oath.
He could have protected our families by blocking Trump’s efforts to destroy our public health system.
He could have legislated (and campaigned) as the moderate he told me and others he truly was.
He could have put the state of Louisiana — and the nation — ahead of his desire for another U.S. Senate term.
He could have been our senator, not Donald Trump’s.
He could have done all this and more, but Cassidy lacked the courage, the imagination, and the decency to put you and me ahead of his political ambition.
What Cassidy received in return for his soul is eternal shame and a well-earned legacy of cravenness.
I hope Cassidy enjoys his earnings.
I hope he also feels the harsh judgment of history that will be reserved for a Trump critic turned shameless toady who sold out to the worst, most corrupt president in American history—and still lost.
Bill Cassidy could have written a different story for himself and his state, but he just didn’t have it in him.
Speaking of Mafia-like behavior, here’s a little something on the Don’s Greenland Grab. This is from the New York Times. “In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland. Greenlandic officials worry about the direction of the negotiations aimed at defusing President Trump’s threats to seize their island. But they have little leverage.” The story has a number of contributing reporters.
With the conflict in Iran still smoldering, President Trump’s obsession with Greenland seems like a forgotten sideshow.
But for the past four months, negotiators from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, have been holding confidential talks in Washington about Greenland’s future.
The talks were meant to give Mr. Trump an offramp to his threats of a military takeover of Greenland and to scale back a crisis that risked breaking apart the NATO alliance. But Greenlandic leaders are worried about what is being proposed, which is a much larger U.S. role on the Arctic island. And they fear that if the conflict with Iran winds down, the president will swing his aggression back on them.
Some Greenlandic politicians say they have even circled a date on their calendars to be wary: June 14, Mr. Trump’s birthday.
An investigation by The New York Times, based on interviews with officials in Washington, Copenhagen and Greenland, has discovered:
The United States is trying to modify a longstanding military arrangement to ensure American troops can stay in Greenland indefinitely, even if Greenland becomes independent. The notion is basically a forever clause, and Greenlanders do not like it.
The United States has pushed the talks beyond military matters and wants effective veto power over any major investment deals in Greenland to box out competitors like Russia and China. Greenlanders and Danes strongly object to this.
The United States is discussing cooperation with Greenland on natural resources. The island is loaded with oil, uranium, rare earths and other critical minerals, though much of it is buried deep beneath Greenland’s ice.
The Pentagon is rapidly moving ahead on plans for a military expansion and recently sent a Marine Corps officer to Narsarsuaq, a town in southern Greenland, to inspect the World War II-era airport, the harbor and places where American troops could be housed.
The American demands are so steep, Greenlandic officials fear, that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty. Despite all of the talk from Danish and American officials that Greenland’s future is up to the island’s 57,000 people, Greenlandic officials said the American demands would tie their hands for generations.
If the Americans get everything they want, said Justus Hansen, a member of Greenland’s Parliament, there will never be any “real independence.”
“We might as well raise our own flag halfway,” he said.
There’s a lot more at that gifted link. Jeer Heeter has this description of our Grifter-in-Chief in his article in The Nation. “Trump Gloats About “Making a Fortune” While Americans Suffer. As his war in Iran wreaks havoc, Trump is fixated on personal glory and enrichment.”
Donald Trump is annoyed that he can’t celebrate the massive profits oil companies are making due to the war he launched in the Middle East. Left to his own druthers, Trump would be exulting in the hundreds of billions of dollars produced by skyrocketing oil prices—if it weren’t for the pesky fact that it comes at the expense of ordinary Americans, who are now paying roughly 40 percent more every time they fill up the gas tank than they were before Trump started bombing Iran nearly three months ago.
We know this thanks to Trump’s endless dedication to saying the quiet part out loud. Speaking with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Thursday, Trump chortled that because far less oil was coming out of the Middle East, “people are finding other places to buy oil, like Texas.” Trump added, “So I don’t want to say we’re making a fortune, you understand that? Because if I say that, they’re going to say ‘oh, he forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.’”
The juxtaposition between “making a fortune” and the “little man” suffering at the gas station underscores just how obtuse Trump and his allies have become in their economic message. Their response to the harm caused by Trump’s policies is not to reverse those policies, or even to appear sympathetic about their effects. It’s to express their total indifference to the suffering of the American people. At the same time, Trump is obsessively focused on his real priorities: enriching himself and his family, and creating gaudy monuments to himself such as a new White House ballroom and a Triumphal Arch that will squat in the middle of Washington, DC. In response to a reporter’s query as to whom the arch would celebrate, Trump pointed to himself and said “me.”
Trump twice won the White House on a message of economic populism, promising in his 2025 inauguration that he would “bring prices down.” Today, he sings a very different tune, with a message that amounts to the apocryphal words misattributed to the French Queen Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake.”
Speaking to reporters last Monday, Trump said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.” He also said that concern for the financial suffering of Americans would not be a factor in making a deal with Iran “not even a little bit.”
Under normal political circumstances, the Republican Party would be wise to separate itself from Trump’s callousness. But the GOP has become a hollowed-out operation mainly concerned with tending to Trump’s cult of personality. On Saturday, Trump won a major victory against critics in the party when Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy came in third in his party’s Senate primary race, losing to a candidate Trump had supported. Cassidy’s loss underscores a lesson Trump has taught the GOP again and again over the last decade: There is no future in the party for anyone who defies his will.
So, rather than distancing themselves from Trump’s “let them eat cake” message, Republicans are embracing the president’s self-defeating rhetoric. On Thursday, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan told CNN that oil prices were “were coming down until we had to deal with this situation, but, you know, that’s life, that’s dealing with…the world we live in.”
It’s going to take hard work and a lot of voting to get rid of this monster and all the dregs of humanity he’s put in charge of the country. It appears they have all been profiting from insider news on the Iran War.
1. What I found in Trump's new 113-page financial disclosure report. It doesn't look good.
This is from Jude Legum’s SubStack. “The smoking guns in Trump’s new financial disclosure, Trump publicly praised companies the same day he bought their stock.”
On March 11, President Trump took a tour of a manufacturing facility in Reading, Ohio, owned by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a medical supply company. During the tour, Trump lavished praise on Thermo Fisher which uses the facility to manufacture prescription drugs on a contract basis. “It’s a great honor being here. It’s a great company,” Trump said, appearing alongside CEO Marc Casper. “You have done a fantastic job and I’d like to congratulate you.”
Later, Trump asked another Thermo Fisher executive to share “some great information about this incredible company.” The executive talked about how Thermo Fisher is producing drugs for Merck and others at the facility. Trump then explicitly encouraged other pharmaceutical companies to contract with Thermo Fisher to “on-shore” more jobs. He claimed that some pharmaceutical companies were building their own U.S. manufacturing facilities but said “they can get here a lot faster by using this great company.”
Trump did not mention that, the same day of the tour, March 11, he purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 of Thermo Fisher stock. (Federal disclosure rules only require filers to list their transactions in broad ranges.) Trump did not publicly disclose the purchase until May 14. It was listed on page 38 of a 113-page document cataloging Trump’s stock purchases in 2026.
Trump also purchased between $51,000 and $115,000 worth of Thermo Fisher stock about one month before his visit on February 12. He made another purchase of Thermo Fisher valued between $15,000 and $50,000 on March 2. So at the time of Trump’s effusive remarks about Thermo Fisher, he had purchased as much as $215,000 worth of the company’s stock over the previous month.
The fact that Trump visited a Thermo Fisher facility on the same day he purchased the company’s stock — and bought Thermo Fisher stock repeatedly in the weeks before his visit — has not previously been reported.
The disclosures reveal that Trump has been a highly active trader in 2026, executing thousands of transactions — many in individual stocks impacted by his administration’s policies. In response to criticism, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization claimed that the trades were completely separate from Trump’s official duties and managed by an independent outside financial advisor. “President Trump’s investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions,” the spokesperson said. “Trades are executed and portfolios are balanced through automated investment processes and systems administered by those institutions.”
The fact that Trump purchased stock in Thermo Fisher the same day that he toured its facility undercuts this claim. Further, the March 11 purchase of Thermo Fisher stock was marked “UNSOLICITED” in the document. An “unsolicited” trade is one that is not recommended by a broker, but initiated by the customer.
At least three immigrant children were taken into custody and restrained with zip ties at the San Antonio Immigration Court. The children were between the ages of 9 and 12.www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/a…
Brookings reminds us that there are still thousands of families with children experiencing horrible detentions and deportations because of the MAGA obsession with keeping America as white as possible. “The administration has detained 400,000 immigrants: What do we know about their children?” Is this really the kind of country you want to live in and that you thought you grew up in?
The Trump administration has made detention and deportation the centerpieces of its immigration policy. Around 60,000 people are being held in detention currently, and around 400,000 people have been booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention from an interior arrest since the administration began. Detention capacity is likely to expand, with $45 billion allocated to expanding detention facilities in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Though it is mostly adults who are detained and deported, many children are impacted by separation from their parents. However, there are no reliable data on how many detainees or deportees have children in the U.S., nor on what happens to them once their parent is taken into custody. Here we focus on detainees, about whom we have better information than deportees. Even a short separation from a parent is likely traumatic for a child, but a majority of detentions are not short-lived separations. A ProPublica study following ICE arrests of mothers of U.S. citizen children over the first seven months of the administration found that 60% had been removed and 17% remained in custody at the study’s conclusion.
To estimate the number of children affected by parental detention, we rely on demographic characteristics of detainees matched with likely unauthorized immigrants in the American Community Survey. Our analysis (detailed below) suggests that more than 145,000 U.S. citizen children have likely experienced a parent booked into detention since the administration began, with more than 22,000 of those experiencing detention of all their co-resident parents. In the accompanying interactive, we allow users to explore how the estimates change when the underlying assumptions are varied. Regardless of the assumptions used, it is clear that tens of thousands of children have faced parental detention since January 2025.
Please use the link to read the details. The time and research it took to find out all this was amazing and hard to believe.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
I can’t even explain what kind of crush I had on Cat Stevens in ninth grade. I could basically play his entire songbook. He’s an amazing songwriter and musician.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
An interesting take on this, Trump’s growing unpopularity, is provided by outgoing Senator John Cornyn from Texas. “After Senate Loss, Cornyn Predicts ‘Miserable’ Final Two Years for Trump. In his first extensive interview since his defeat by a Trump-backed challenger, the Texas Republican said the Senate was in for a “bumpy ride” as he and others flex new political freedom.” The interview is reported today in the New York Times by Carl Hulse.
At least most of the Judges on the federal benches have held the line. Michael Kunzelman has this headline for the AP. “Judge extends block on Trump’s $1.8 billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’.”
This next attempt to twist rulings and laws is simply astounding. I’m not shocked, but wow, how obviously corrupt and butt-hurt can one old man be? This is from Lawyers, Guns, and Money. “Trump trying to “void” his first two impeachments.” Paul Campos has the analysis.
Carol Leonnig of MS NOW reports that “FBI raids Ohio voting rights organization. Sources tell MS NOW that agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at staff members’ homes.” Shouldn’t they be working on something real, like the victims and perpetrators listed in the Epstein Files?
Here’s another horrifying action by RFK jr to turn health care into just another way to kill people. This is from the Guardian and reported by Ed Pilkington. “Autistic children being injected with unapproved stem cell treatments supported by RFK Jr. Desperate US parents paying up to $20,000 a session for a procedure scientists say could be bogus.”
You may read his rationale at the link. The funniest thing is that the regime in Iran just will not let Trump tell lies about their situation. This is from NBC News. “Iran says no deal ‘imminent’ despite progress in talks with U.S. Secretary of State. Marco Rubio said earlier Monday that an agreement could be finalized ‘today,’ though he cautioned that if talks fail, Washington would find ‘another way’ to resolve the situation.” Yuliya Talmazan has the story.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Orange Caligula is basically ill and beyond incompetent. Tom Nichols has this analysis at The Atlantic. “Trump’s War Is Staggering to an Incoherent Defeat. Even the president’s supporters are alarmed.” The Presidential Venn Diagram over there sums it up nicely. The buzz has really gotten to him. It’s obvious he can’t make a decent deal. It completely blows his image
There’s definitely a pattern here. The smell of failure is everywhere. This is from The Hill. Steff Danielle Thomas has the lede. “Trump urges Gulf allies to join Abraham Accords amid US-Iran talks.
Meanwhile, Trump’s still trying to kill us by not allowing our doctors and researchers to take part in any sort of international collaboration on any potential global health issue. This story comes from Sarah Owermohle, reporting for CNN. “Exclusive: Trump admin shutting key US researchers out of global virus response talks, documents and sources reveal.”
Trump has once again tried to make a presidential-sounding speech on Memorial Day. I’m running late on everything today, and I’m lucky I missed it. However, the news reports are coming in. Here’s the take from Lee Moran at HuffPost. “Donald Trump Marks Memorial Day With Early-Morning Online Rampage At
There’s more at the link. My question is, what the hell can the rest of us who don’t support him do? I voted Saturday morning, wondering which candidate I had voted for would even have a chance under the new gerrymandering. That doesn’t even consider that we couldn’t even vote for our Congressional representatives, given the Supreme Court decision and the quick fix redraw of our map to ensure maybe one black person will retain their seat. The only good news to come out of the election was that all five constitutional amendments proposed by Governor Klandry were voted down.
My friend Robert Mann, a former Journalism Professor at LSU, has something poignant to say about the loss. This is from his SubStack. “Enjoy your tarnished legacy, Bill Cassidy. You earned it.” It’s a good lesson: while all politics is local, it can be influenced by a cult of personality.
Speaking of Mafia-like behavior, here’s a little something on the Don’s Greenland Grab. This is from the New York Times. “In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland. Greenlandic officials worry about the direction of the negotiations aimed at defusing President Trump’s threats to seize their island. But they have little leverage.” The story has a number of contributing reporters.
There’s a lot more at that gifted link. Jeer Heeter has this description of our Grifter-in-Chief in his article in The Nation. “Trump Gloats About “Making a Fortune” While Americans Suffer. As his war in Iran wreaks havoc, Trump is fixated on personal glory and enrichment.”
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