“I think White House Goebbels cracked a smile.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s another record-breaking heat and humidity day in the Big Easy. I’m doing my part of taking it easy by hanging out under a ceiling fan and a tower fan. I always feel like I should be growing gills on days like this as an evolutionary measure. It’s hard to be in climate change denial down here, but I still see folks thinking it’s just a bit of odd weather. Summers are always hot, you know. While checking for other headlines, I found this one at The Guardian. I wanted to put it up top here before I get carried away by the L.A. protests. “Trump’s EP to claim power-plant emissions ‘not significant’ – but study says otherwise, US power sector would be world’s sixth largest emitter of planet-heating greenhouse gas if it were a country – study.”
Donald Trump’s administration is set to claim planet-heating pollution spewing from US power plants is so globally insignificant it should be spared any sort of climate regulation.
But, in fact, the volume of these emissions is stark – if the US power sector were a country, it would be the sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reportedly drafted a plan to delete all restrictions on greenhouse gases coming from coal and gas-fired power plants in the US because they “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” and are a tiny and shrinking share of the overall global emissions that are driving the climate crisis.
However, a new analysis shows that the emissions from American fossil-fuel plants are prominent on a global scale, having contributed 5% of all planet-heating pollution since 1990. If it were a country, the US power sector would be the sixth largest emitter in the world, eclipsing the annual emissions from all sources in Japan, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Canada, among other nations.
“That seems rather significant to me,” said Jason Schwartz, co-author of the report from New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “If this administration wants to argue only China has significant emissions they can try to do that, but a court will review that, and under any reasonable interpretation will find that US power plant emissions are significant too.”
Fossil fuel-derived electricity is responsible for the second largest source of emissions in the US, behind transportation. No country in history has caused more carbon pollution than America, and while its power sector’s emissions have declined somewhat in recent years, largely through a market-based decline in heavily-polluting coal, it remains a major driver of the climate crisis.
The cocktail of toxins emitted by power plants have a range of impacts, the NYU analysis points out. A single year of emissions in 2022 will cause 5,300 deaths in the US from air pollution over many decades, along with climate impacts that will result in global damages of $370bn, including $225bn in global health damages and $75bn in lost labor productivity.
“We were surprised when we ran the numbers just how quickly these deaths start tallying up,” said Schwartz. “All of these harms stack up on top of each other. Climate change will be the most important public health issue this century and we can’t just ignore the US power sector’s contribution to that public health crisis.”
Last night, I watched BBC Live again for decent coverage of the L.A. Riots. I haven’t been this reliant on UK-based media since the Nixon Days. I woke up to lots of complaints on social media posts about the coverage of the Cable News presentation. I luckily found BBC Live after seeing reruns of old news programs on both MSNBC and CNN. The main channels had sporadic coverage. It was old-fashioned style coverage where the reporter at the scene reported, and the guy or girl in the chair asked questions. Reporters from the UK (Nick Stern), Xinhua, China, and Australia were hit. Australian Reporter Lauren Thompson from 9News was on air when a police officer aimed and fired at her legs.
US correspondent Lauren Tomasi was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet fired by a police officer who was standing guard in the city’s downtown district.
It happened on the third day of violent protests that erupted in the US’s second-most populous city in response to sweeping arrests of alleged illegal immigrants.
Tomasi was struck as she reported live near the front line of the protests surrounding the city’s metropolitan detention centre.
Just seconds after she wrapped up a live cross to Australia, one of the officers turned his gun towards Tomasi and fired at her from close range.
She yelled in pain before the camera turned away. Tomasi was left sore but otherwise unharmed.
You may watch their footage at the link. Several reporters at the scene have complained that the L.A. Police had targeted them even though they were clearly wearing clothing and helmets identifying them as press. Yam Tits sent the California National Guard to the scene even though neither Mayor Bass or Governor Newsome had asked for the Guard to be activated. There are clear legal problems with this, and the Governor is acting on them.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a Monday post that California will sue President Trump, saying he “illegally acted” to federalize the National Guard during protests against federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
The big picture: Trump on Saturday signed a memorandum calling in the National Guard — despite opposition from the state’s and the city’s Democratic leadership.
Driving the news: Newsom, after saying Sunday that the Golden State would be taking Trump to court, wrote in a Monday X post that the president had “flamed the fires.”
He added, “The order he signed doesn’t just apply to CA. It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing. We’re suing him.”
Trump’s order cited “[n]umerous incidents of violence and disorder” and “violent protests” but did not specifically mention California or the Los Angeles area.
The other side: “Gavin Newsom’s feckless leadership is directly responsible for the lawless riots and violent attacks on law enforcement in Los Angeles,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement provided to Axios.
Jackson continued, “Instead of filing baseless lawsuits meant to score political points with his left-wing base, Newsom should focus on protecting Americans by restoring law and order to his state.”
Friction point: Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other Democrats have argued Trump’s deployment of the National Guard was an unnecessary escalation, while Trump administration officials have railed against their leadership.
Border czar Tom Homan did not rule out arrests for Democratic officials in the state should they impede law enforcement or harbor undocumented immigrants in a Saturday interview with NBC News, but said he does not believe Bass had “crossed the line yet.”
“Come and get me, tough guy,” Newsom wrote in response.
Homan, in a Monday morning interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” argued the NBC report was “dishonest.”
“I was clear they haven’t crossed the line,” Homan said Monday. “But they’re not above the law either.”
“I was clear they haven’t crossed the line,” Homan said Monday. “But they’re not above the law either.”
Zoom in: Hegseth in his Monday post included a clip from an interview with commentator Brian Tyler Cohen in which the governor described Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as “a joke” and characterized Trump as “unhinged.”
“This is a preview for things to come,” he said. “This isn’t about LA, per se. It’s about us today, it’s about you, everyone watching, tomorrow.”
Context: Trump’s Saturday memorandum, which called into federal service some 2,000 National Guard personnel for 60 days, cited rarely used federal powers and sidestepped Newsom.
“That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,” Newsom said in a statement.
David R Lurie–writing at the Substack Public Notice–has this headline this morning. “A felon in the White House is making crime legal. Meanwhile, he’s creating fake crimes to punish the law-abiding.”
Trumpists have resorted to inventing new offenses so as to transform law-abiding immigrants into criminals. For example, Trump has declared slivers of land along the border to be “military zones” for the sole purpose of charging migrants with trespassing. The administration has also declared that undocumented immigrants have an obligation to “register” with the government so they can be indicted for failing to do so. They’re jailing immigrants who legally entered the United States under a Biden-era asylum law by retroactively declaring the program to be “illegal.”
Most tellingly, and insidiously, ICE agents desperate to meet the increasing quotas the White House has set for deporting “illegals” have taken to targeting the most vulnerable immigrants: Those intent on following the law and engaging in productive work.
As Sen. Markwayne Mullin put it on CNN yesterday, “regardless of what they may be doing right now” — including whether they are abiding by the law and are gainfully employed — undocumented persons “are illegal and they are criminals.”
It’s become routine for gangs of ICE goons to gather at immigration courts and arrest immigrants who are following the law by showing up for hearings. Immigration judges, cowed into facilitating Trump’s mass deportation schemes, have been dutifully dismissing cases so as to allow the immigrants to be immediately jailed as “illegals.” In one recent case, armed thugs dragged into an elevator an immigrant who had fainted after they had swooped in to grab her while her attorney was in the restroom.
State courts have also become favored hunting zones for ICE. Judges who have the temerity to point out that this tactic discourages immigrants from complying with court orders, and thus the law, are being threatened. Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, for example, was jailed and indicted on the flimsiest of criminal charges for allegedly helping a man evade ICE. Her indictment has been decried by other jurists as a “threat [to] public trust in the judicial system and the ability of the public to avail themselves of courthouses without fear of reprisal.”
ICE gangs are also now routinely assembling in restaurants and other places of work, often bearing submachine guns, cuffing everyone in sight, and jailing some, simply on suspicion of being “illegals.” Recently, a gang of armed and masked ICE officers terrified patrons and workers in a San Diego restaurant, and even cuffed the manager. The rifle-toting “law enforcement” officers retreated from the scene by shooting flash bang grenades into a crowd of citizens distressed by their misconduct. (They only managed to arrest two “illegals.”)
Despite the fact that Trump has had to resort to fabricating new crimes to turn law-abiding immigrants into targets for deportation, the GOP is now about to make ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” includes over $150 billion for immigration enforcement and seeks to make ICE the most highly funded law enforcement agency in the United States.
And as Trump’s threats about a military invasion of Los Angeles County, which appeared to be commencing through the use of federalized National Guard units as this piece was being prepared for publication Sunday evening, demonstrate that his administration is intent on using its growing immigration “law enforcement” apparatus to wreak havoc in America’s cities, and to threaten to make peaceful protest a crime.
Brian Stelter from CNN has this odd headline. “Dr. Phil was embedded with ICE during controversial Los Angeles immigration raids.” What the actual Hell is this? This is absolutely the “reality” show administration!
As federal agents prepared to fan out in Los Angeles for a controversial immigration crackdown, the officers were greeted by a familiar face: Dr. Phil McGraw.
The television personality and his camera crew were on hand before and after the raids that took place on Friday and triggered several days of street protests.
McGraw was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations,” according to his conservative TV channel, MeritTV.
McGraw also had “exclusive” access to Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, a spokesperson for the channel said. The two men sat down for taped conversations about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts both “the day before and day after the LA operation.”
The TV personality and Homan were also together at the Homeland Security Investigations field office in L.A. on the morning the raids began.
McGraw’s presence on the ground in L.A. reinforces the made-for-TV nature of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The former daytime talk show host was embedded with ICE officials in Chicago back in January, when some federal agents were told to be camera-ready for a show of force at the very start of President Trump’s second term.
A MeritTV spokesperson said this time was different, however. “In order to not escalate any situation, Dr. Phil McGraw did not join and was not embedded” during the L.A. raids, the channel spokesperson said.
Instead, he hung out at the field office and had face time with Homan. The conversations will air on “Dr. Phil Primetime” on Monday and Tuesday night.
Evidently, The New Republic and I are sympatico. “What the Hell Was Dr. Phil Doing at the ICE Raids in Los Angeles? As if things weren’t already bad enough, Trump’s pseudo-doctor lackey is fanning the flames in California.” They’re evidently going on a full-scale propaganda pogrom. The New York Times‘ Billy Witz remembers a different protest in 1992. “When the National Guard Went to L.A. in 1992, the Situation Was Far Different. The skirmishes with immigration agents of the past few days are dwarfed by the widespread rioting, vandalism, and violence that engulfed whole neighborhoods in 1992.” Republicans have been displaying selective memory all day. I’ve read assertions that it was Nancy Pelosi’s fault that the National Guard wasn’t called during J6. And that Trump had called up like 2000 troops. As I demonstrated in the top link, these things are on film and debunked all over the place but it doesn’t stop Yam Tits’ Cult and their low information mindsets.
Some Republicans have drawn parallels between President Trump’s dispatching of National Guard troops to Los Angeles on Saturday and what happened in 1992, when soldiers and Marines were sent to the Los Angeles area to restore order after the Rodney King riots.
But that was a far different situation.
In contrast with the isolated skirmishes seen in Los Angeles County over the past few days, there were neighborhoods in 1992 that had devolved into something resembling a lawless dystopia. Drivers were pulled from cars and beaten. Buildings were burned. Businesses were looted. In all, 63 people died during the riots, including nine who were shot by the police.
The mayhem, which went on for six days, was rooted in Black residents’ anger over years of police brutality. It ignited after four officers were found not guilty of using excessive force against Mr. King, a Black motorist who had been pulled over after a high-speed chase, even though videotape evidence clearly showed the officers brutally beating him. That anger had erupted before, notably in the Watts riots of 1965.
The violence in 1992 was also fueled by tensions between the Black and Korean American communities in the area, and by the shooting death of a Black girl by a Korean American shopkeeper. It got so far out of control that major-league sports events were postponed or moved to safer locations, dusk-to-dawn curfews were imposed, schools were closed and mail delivery was withheld in some neighborhoods.
On the third day of the violence, President George H.W. Bush activated the National Guard at the request of Gov. Pete Wilson and Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles. Thousands of Army and Marine troops were sent into Los Angeles as well. Caravans including Humvees and other armored vehicles rolled into the city along the freeways.
The protests of 2025 bear little if any comparison to the widespread upheaval and violence of 1992. The protesters have directed their anger mainly at ICE agents, not at fellow residents, and the demonstrations have so far done relatively little damage to buildings or businesses.
I agree with Robert Reich writing for The Guardian. “We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state. The national guard’s deployment in Los Angeles sets the US on a familiar authoritarian pathway. History shows the results.” We have nationwide protests coming up this Saturday, the 14th. I’m sure the world will be watching.
Now that Donald Trump’s tariffs have been halted, his big, beautiful bill has been stymied, and his multi-billionaire tech bro has turned on him, how does he demonstrate his power?
On Friday morning, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conductedraids across Los Angeles – including at two Home Depots and a clothing wholesaler – in search of workers who they suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
Though figures vary, they reportedly arrested 121 people.
They were met with protesters who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed by police wearing riot gear, holding shields, and using batons, guns that shoot pepper balls, rubber bullets, teargas, and flash-bang grenades.
On Saturday, Trump escalated the confrontations, ordering at least 2,000 national guard troops to be deployed in Los Angeles county to help quell the protests.
He said that any demonstration that got in the way of immigration officials would be considered a “form of rebellion.” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, called the protests an “insurrection”.
On Saturday evening, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, threatened to deploy active-duty marines, saying: “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil. A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK. Under President Trump, violence and destruction against federal agents and federal facilities will NOT be tolerated.”
We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state.
Last week, raids in San Diego, in Martha’s Vineyard and in the Berkshires led to standoffs as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody.
Trump’s dragnet also includes federal courthouses. Ice officers are mobilizing outside courtrooms across the US and immediately arresting people – including migrants whose cases have been dismissed by judges.
History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes the infrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone.
Trump and his regime are rapidly creating such an infrastructure, in five steps:
(1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion”, “insurrection”, or “invasion”;
(2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly on the use of force (Ice, the FBI, DEA, and the national guard) against civilians inside the country;
(3) allowing those militarized agents to make dragnet abductions and warrantless arrests, and detain people without due process;
(4) creating additional prison space and detention camps for those detained, and
(5) eventually, as the situation escalates, declaring martial law.
We are not at martial law yet, thankfully. But once in place, the infrastructure of a police state can build on itself.
Those who are given authority over aspects of it – the internal militia, dragnets, detention camps, and martial law – seek other opportunities to invoke their authority.
Rebecca Solnit has this to add at her Meditations in an Emergency Blog. “Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence.”
I think maybe it’s begun, the bigger fiercer backlash against the Trump Administration which is itself a violent backlash against every good thing that’s happened over the past several decades – the advance of rights for nature, women, children, indigenous peoples, BIPOC and immigrants/refugees, queer people, trans people, people with disabilities, workers, the right of us all to be free from being poisoned by food, water, air. It began in Los Angeles, the city of angels, a city of almost four million people, almost half of them Latino, in a region of almost twelve million that two thousand California National Guards cannot and will not subjugate. All they can do is punish and incite, and I hope that some of the protesters are telling them they’re violating their mission and maybe the law. In the nonwhite-majority state of California, which recently advanced to become the fourth-largest economy in the world.
We are escalating because they are escalating. But as a smart guy on BlueSky noted, he’s “seeing a massive divide online between Angelenos of all political stripes who understand that the protests in LA yesterday were mostly peaceful and any violence was ICE-initiated and East Coast establishment liberals lecturing ‘the left’ on how riots just amplify right wing talking points.” This is familiar ground, the idea that no matter what the right does, however much the systematic violence harms us, however horrible a police murder or another violation of human rights such as ICE’s grabbing people off the street, we have the responsibility to remain not just peaceful but peaceful in a way that pleases our enemies. It becomes collective responsibility and collective guilt because even if a few people in a few places torch something or break something, it’s supposed to indict the whole movement, and has often been used to justify more institutional violence.
Her,e it’s also useful to make a distinction between property damage (which protesters in the USA in our era have done from time to time) and harming living beings (which is largely something done by law enforcement in these demonstrations). Property destruction can be dramatic theater (suffragists in early twentieth-century London broke all the plate glass windows on a stretch of shopping street; no living beings were at risk), can be actual protection (the firefighters taking an axe to the door to rescue the people from the blaze), or acts of intimidation (the husband breaking the furniture to convey to his wife he can break her too). All I’ve read about so far in L.A. is property damage by protesters, while we’ve seen many kinds of violence and intimidation from the heavily armored and armed thugs serving the Trump Administration’s war on immigrants.”
These are indeed Dark Times.
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“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.
The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity. The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.
Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery. This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description. I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.
I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet. Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe. They governed during Watergate. Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits? Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder.
Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.
The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.
We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.
ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”
Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.
Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”
Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”
It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.
ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.
The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.
Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.
Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this.
However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother. (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”
The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.
Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.
“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”
How’s this for government efficiency? The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance. That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people. Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.” Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines? They fucked up folks! Let’s bury the lede!
Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.
Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.
Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.
Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found
The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson. “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.
A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.
The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.
Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.
In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”
It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.
Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.
But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.
CBSshows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.
President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.
The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.
As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.
Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.
In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.
Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up
Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery. Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.” Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf! What a surprise!
A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.
The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”
She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”
Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.
He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.
The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.
In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.
This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.
In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.
As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.
As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.
The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government. How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”
The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.
At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.
In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.
Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.
The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.
The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”
Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.
It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.
One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.
On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.
Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.
Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.
Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.
This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.
And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.
Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.
It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh, up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.
As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day. There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.” I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.
“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.
Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles. We have allies. At least at this moment. This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.
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Modern Day Moses has been busy selling the Big Beautiful Boner,” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m starting with something different today. Again, this is the direct byproduct of the Dark Times we find ourselves in. Never before has pay-for-play by an American President been so obvious. Never before have we seen a President who seriously believes that if the President does it, it isn’t illegal, no matter what it is. Even Richard Nixon backed off eventually because he had more respect for the country and its Constitution, and knew he’d been caught on tape. But not the Taconater. This is Chris Murphy’s report from the Senate floor last night. It’s here because he’s asked everyone to post it to their walls. I copied it from the public Facebook page, Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger Against Trump.
Last night in the Senate, something really important happened. Republicans forced us to debate their billionaire bailout budget framework. We started voting at 6 PM because they knew doing it in the dark of night would minimize media coverage. And they do not want the American people to see how blatant their handover of our government to the billionaire class is.
So I want to explain what happened last night and what we did to fight back. The apex of Republicans’ plan to turn over our government to their wealthy cronies is a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations. And they plan to pay for it with cuts to programs that working people rely on. Popular and necessary programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, are all being targeted. In order to pass the tax cut, Republicans have to go through a series of procedural steps. Last night, they took the first step which requires them to pass an outline of their plan, but with it, any senator can offer as many amendments as we want. So my Democratic colleagues and I did just that.
Now, we knew that Republicans would largely unanimously oppose them, but we had two objectives here. One, Republicans were forced to put their opinion on record — many for the first time — on the most corrupt parts of Trump and Musk’s agenda. Two, as I’ve been saying, I am going to make every process and procedure as slow and painful as possible for as long as my colleagues choose to ignore the constitutional crisis happening before our eyes.
So what did we propose? We proposed no tax cuts for anyone who makes a billion dollars a year. We made them vote on whether or not Elon Musk and DOGE should have limitless access to Americans’ personal data. We made them vote on whether to protect IVF and require insurers to cover it. Every single amendment Democrats proposed was shot down. On almost every single amendment, Republicans universally opposed it. Every Republican voted against our proposal to prevent more tax cuts for billionaires. The corruption and theft is happening in the open here.
The whole game for Republicans is taking your money and giving it to the wealthiest corporations and billionaires — even if it means kicking your parents out of a nursing home or turning off Medicaid for the poorest children. They know what they are doing is deeply unpopular. They are offering a tax cut to the most wealthy that is 850 times larger than what they are offering working people. Oh and by the way, any tax cuts for working people are going to be washed out by higher costs for basic necessities, like health care and food. It’s a fundamental injustice.
Thanks to your pressure and support, many of my Democratic colleagues have joined my effort to do everything we can to make sure they cannot destroy democracy and steal your money in the dark of the night. We are being loud about what is happening. I’m going to continue to grind the gears of Congress down as much as possible to make it that much harder and slower to get away with this corruption. That’s why the votes lasted until nearly 5 AM.
DO NOT PRESS SHARE. JUST COPY THE ENTIRE POST AND PASTE IT ON YOUR OWN WALL.
This is a five-alarm fire. I don’t think we have two years to plan and fight back. I think we have months. It’s still in our power to stop the destruction of our democracy with mass mobilization and effective opposition from elected officials. So we can’t miss any opportunity to take advantage of opportunities to put Republicans on the record and shine a light on what is happening.
Politicohas coverage on last night and the Big Budget Busting Bill that kills. “A surprising coalition of GOP senators holds all the megabill leverage. An ideologically diverse clutch of Republicans has found rare alignment — and significant power.” Let’s see how this goes. It would be amazing if Republicans actually took on the responsibility of governing instead of appeasing Trump and living in fear of MAGA terrorists.
The Senate’s deficit hawks might be raising the loudest hue and cry over the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill.” But another group of Republicans is poised to have a bigger impact on the final legislative product.
Call them the “Medicaid moderates.”
They’re actually an ideologically diverse bunch — ranging from conservative Josh Hawley of Missouri to centrist Susan Collins of Maine. Yet they have found rare alignment over concerns about what the House-passed version of the GOP domestic-policy megabill does to the national safety-net health program, and they have the leverage to force significant changes in the Senate.
“I would hope that we would elect not to do anything that would endanger Medicaid benefits as a conference,” Hawley said in an interview. “I’ve made that clear to my leadership. I think others share that perspective.”
Besides Hawley and Collins, other GOP senators including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Jim Justice of West Virginia have also drawn public red lines over health care — and they have some rhetorical backing from President Donald Trump, who has urged congressional Republicans to spare the program as much as possible.
Based on early estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, 10.3 million people would lose coverage under Medicaid if the House-passed bill were to become law — many, if not most, in red states. That could spell trouble for Majority Leader John Thune’s whip count: He can only lose three GOP senators on the expected party-line vote and still have Vice President JD Vance break a tie.
Republicans already have one all-but-guaranteed opponent in Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky so long as they stick to their plan to raise the debt limit as part of the bill. They also view Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson as increasingly likely to oppose the package after spending weeks blasting the bill on fiscal grounds.
Meeting either senator’s demands could be enormously difficult given the tight fiscal parameters through which House leaders have to squeeze the bill to advance it in their own chamber. That in turn is empowering the senators elsewhere in the GOP conference to make changes — and the Medicaid group is emerging as the key bloc to watch because of its size and its overlapping, relatively workable demands.
Heeding those asks won’t be easy. Republicans are counting on savings from Medicaid changes to offset hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, and rolling that back is likely to create political pain elsewhere for Thune & Co., who already want to cut more than the House to assuage a sizable group of spending hawks. At the same time, Speaker Mike Johnson is insisting the Senate make only minor changes to the bill so as to maintain the delicate balance in his own narrowly divided chamber.
Thune and Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) have already acknowledged that Medicaid, covering nearly 80 million low-income Americans, will be one of the biggest sticking points as they embark this month on a rewrite of the megabill. They are talking with key members in anticipation of difficult negotiations and being careful not to draw red lines publicly.
“We want to do things that are meaningful in terms of reforming programs, strengthening programs, without affecting beneficiaries,” Thune said, echoing language used by some of the concerned senators.
They’ve disappointed us before, so I’m holding back any enthusiasm and riding on the wings of hope right now. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is one of the most outspoken of the bunch, according to the New York Times. “Lisa Murkowski Isn’t Using ‘Nice Words’ About Life Under Trump. The Alaska Republican senator has no qualms about criticizing the president. She could play a make-or-break role in pushing back on the legislation carrying his agenda.”
Senator Lisa Murkowski was listing all the ways that President Trump’s efforts to slash the federal government had harmed Alaska, from the funding freezes on programs the state depends on to the layoffs of federal workers who live there, when she delivered something of an understatement.
“It’s a challenging time right now,” she recently told a crowd at a state infrastructure conference here in the state’s largest city. “I could use nice words about it — but I don’t.”
At a time when the Republican Congress has grown increasingly deferential to Mr. Trump, Ms. Murkowski has veered in the opposite direction from her party, using sharp words and her vote on the Senate floor to push back on him and his administration time and again.
She opposed the confirmations of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director. She has voted repeatedly to block Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners. She has publicly lamented Republicans’ obeisance to Mr. Trump as he tramples on legislative prerogatives, saying that it is “time for Congress to reassert itself.” She said Mr. Trump’s Oval Office dressing-down of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine left her “sick to my stomach,” and recently called his decision to end deportation protections for Afghan refugees “a historic betrayal.”
And she has been frank about the dilemma faced by Republicans like her who are dismayed about the president’s policies and pronouncements but worried that speaking out about them could bring death threats or worse.
“We are all afraid,” she told constituents in April, adding: “I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
Now, as Senate Republicans take up sprawling legislation carrying Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda, Ms. Murkowski is poised to become one of the most influential voices demanding changes to her party’s signature bill.
She has already indicated that there are at least two major provisions in the measure that she does not support: adding stringent new work requirements to Medicaid, and the termination of clean energy tax credits established under the Biden administration, a repeal that Speaker Mike Johnson accelerated to help win the support of conservatives to muscle the legislation through the House.
“There are provisions in there that are very, very, very challenging, if not impossible, for us to implement,” Ms. Murkowski said of the work requirements the day after the House passed its bill.
May 28, 2025: Trump Budget Bill
The Club For Growth (aka Less Taxes at any Cost) has targeted her in an ad campaign. That should be a badge of honor. Meanwhile, the attack on immigrants and generally, on people of color in this country is reaching the same low as the rights of women to have bodily autonomy. The treatment has turned the issue into a negative with #FARTUS, but he continues to get more and more sadistic and less and less lawful. This is from The New Republic. ” Trump Arrest of Immigrant Triggers Shock and Regret in Small MAGA Town. It’s part of the Daily Blast podcast by Greg Sargent. “An immigrant’s pending deportation has stunned Trump-supporting Missouri locals who have come to know and love her. Speaking to us on our podcast straight from jail, she makes a tearful, wrenching appeal.”
Ming Li Hui, who goes by the name of “Carol,” has lived for 20 years in the town of Kennett, Missouri, after coming here from Hong Kong. She has been raising a family there and works as a waitress—and as The New York Timesreports in a piece featuring quotes from Carol and many locals, she’s well-liked in the community. But Carol was recently arrested and now faces potential deportation. This has shocked and dismayed many of the town’s residents, even though the area went overwhelmingly for Trump. Carol talked to us on the podcast straight from jail, where she is awaiting her fate. At times the conversation was difficult: She broke down in tears about her ordeal, was emotionally overwhelmed at the support she’s received from the Trump-backing town, and offers wrenching thoughts about Trump’s effort to deport countless others just like her. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
Yes, it’s time for all good Brown Shirts wearing Red Trucker hats to narc on their neighbors. I think we should blast the hotline with the 5 names listed below.
Immigrants ICE should be notified of:Thiel. Musk. Melania. The parents of Usha. The Murdochs.
Everyone should be worried about Health Care in America. Walker Bragman tells this story on Important Content. “Out of His Depth,” “Sold His Soul,” “Clueless”: NIH Staffers Speak Out About Director Bhattacharya. Widespread dissatisfaction over the NIH’s “continuous free fall” has people speaking out.” What we need are fewer informants and more whistleblowers. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely law that protects whistleblowers will be enforced.
Jay Bhattacharya’s stint as director of the National Institutes of Health is off to a rocky start. At his first town hall last month, the former Stanford University health economist, who became known during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic for evangelizing mass infection as the path to herd immunity, was greeted by a largely stone-faced audience.
Things did not get much better from there. A joke in his opening remarks about the difficulty of the job turning his hair grayer did not land. Later, dozens walked out after he expressed support for the speculative lab leak explanation of COVID’s origins, which is disfavored by experts. During the Q&A session, he was heckled about cuts to research impacting minority communities.
”It’s good to have free speech,” Bhattacharya remarked during the walkout. “Welcome, you guys.”
But inside NIH, many are feeling unwelcome—and ready to be heard. Important Context spoke with a dozen people working at the agency in various roles and institutes, on both the intramural (internally funded) and extramural (grants) side. All painted a grim picture of an institution plagued by chaos, an unclear leadership structure, mismanagement, and widespread fear and demoralization due to capricious rule changes, restrictions, and research cuts.
One man they blamed? Jay Bhattacharya.
Due to clear personal and professional risks associated with whistleblowing and speaking out, we have kept the identities of these individuals anonymous, allowing each to decide how they are identified in this article. One staffer wished to be identified as a program officer and is quoted multiple times throughout this article. They are initially referred to as “a program officer” and subsequently as “the program officer.” A staffer who asked to be identified as extramural is also quoted in multiple places—first as “an extramural staffer,” then as “the extramural staffer.”
“It’s a total shit show,” one agency staffer told Important Context, explaining that Bhattacharya seemed unaware of how NIH operated when he arrived. They said he had been promising reforms that were already part of the agency’s work.
“His attitude coming in has just been so condescending, and so like, ‘Oh, we’re going to make NIH great’…and ‘we’re going to make…science transparent, and we’re going to introduce all of these programs’ that, mind you, already exist,” the staffer said. “Like, these are things we actively do…You fired people that do those things that you say you want to do.”
Others we spoke to questioned Bhattacharya’s intentions, suggesting he had a dubious personal agenda. An extramural staffer described the current NIH leadership as “people settling grudges.” A scientist inside the agency said, “It’s very clear he has a vendetta against the NIH.”
Another NIH scientist told Important Context that Bhattacharya was “basically just trying to create an environment where lies can be treated the same as scientific truth and he and his cronies can like, jam through bullshit studies and then he can try to scream academic freedom.” They said that the way things were going, it looked like the NIH was “going to collapse on itself at some point,” adding that the current administration was “trying to kill most of what we do.”
“It is catastrophic,” they said. “The public should understand that [President Donald] Trump wants to kill U.S. science. And is succeeding.”
Jenifer Rubin has a straightforward headline today in her piece at The Contrarian. “Trump and his crew are nuts. It’s time to stop rationalizing the craziness.”
While Musk was the most unstable, wacked-out member of the Trump team, we should consider the full array of misfits, cranks, neo-Nazi sympathizers, demagogues, anti-constitutionalists, and habitual liars who populate the Trump team. In a single administration, there have never been so many intellectually shortchanged figures, ethically compromised lawyers, and emotionally unhinged conspiratorialists (from Kash Patel to Ed Martin to Paul Ingrassia to Emil Bove to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to Pete Hegseth to Stephen Miller). Given all that, the coverage of the Trump crew has been bizarrely inexact and feeble. Continuing to treat them as simply “conservatives” or “right-wing” figures rather than unwell and part of a cabal of nuttery serves to normalize a dangerous, bizarre regime, unlike anything we have seen in modern American history.
It is no coincidence that Trump chose them. “Authoritarianism is the conversion of rule of law into rule by the lawless. He needs the people with those skill sets on his side,” historian Ruth Ben Ghiat explained. If a narcissistic, amoral, unhinged, and vengeful criminal (convicted of 34 counts) wants his wishes executed, he is going to surround himself with people as bonkers as he is. It’s the other side of the coin of Trump’s disdain for experts—those who grasp and adhere to evidence and would object to his moral and intellectual deconstructionism. Put differently, Trump insists that those around him be as demented (or willing to pretend they are) as their boss.
Without fully exploring the mental, moral, and emotional condition of Trump and his coterie of kooks, corporate and billionaire media outlets treat each new revelation (e.g., a fraudulent MAHA report, the State Department’s embrace of the Nazified term “remigration,” attacks on judges, threats to prosecute political enemies, defiance of court orders, appointment of unfit officials, etc.) as a discrete episode rather than part of a pattern of crackpottery symptomatic of late-stage authoritarianism. The failure to convey the enormity of the problem has serious ramifications.
First, Republican senators who have rubber-stamped many of these figures are not held accountable for abdication of their constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent and (along with the House) to perform oversight. If their manifestness was a given, the fecklessness of the Republican House and Senate members in confirming them would be more scandalous. The deference lawmakers normally extend to presidents might evaporate, and Republicans might face demands to examine every nominee with a fine-toothed comb. (When someone like Ed Martin’s record finally broke through the media noise, Republicans eventually relented and refused to confirm him. Imagine if they felt the same heat about every nominee.)
Second, refusal to acknowledge Trump and his minions’ irrationality leads to constant rationalization of unhinged behavior as part of some grandiose, ingenious strategy. Ed Kilgore wrote last month: “This rationalization of the 47th president’s worst impulses is especially dangerous since it reinforces his own belief that he is never wrong.” Kilgore argued that if Trump “is encouraged to behave more erratically than ever, he will continue to reward destructive nihilism in his subordinates, and we’ll all go a bit mad just trying to keep up.”
The corporate and billionaire-owned media serve up jokey TACO memes, but deliver little comprehensive analysis of Trump’s underlying instability, contradictory impulses, and reversals on policy matters ranging from tariffs to Ukraine, all aided and abetted by hand-picked stooges.
In sum, pretending this crew is stable only puts our democracy and national security at greater risk. It may be too scary to contemplate (and too daring for captive, timorous corporate media to recognize) that Trump is nuts and that his advisers prove that the fish rots from the head. But the evidence is all around us. The Trump regime’s endemic nuttery should provoke fearless, aggressive reporting to convey the enormity of the problem. It should lend urgency to the task of consolidating a forceful, uncompromising coalition of sane, decent, and normal Americans to combat MAGA’s reign of crazy.
Today, we have the NACHO Queen (Noem Always Chickens the Hell OUT). This is from the Daily Beast. It’s one thing to chase criminals. It’s another to run a high-priced kidnapping ring to chase down children and their hard-working parents. “ICE Barbie’s List of ‘Sanctuary’ Cities Yanked After Furious Backlash. The pro-Trump National Sheriffs’ Association had called the list “arbitrary” and a betrayal.”
Janna Brancolini has the story,
Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security has taken down a list of dozens of “sanctuary” cities and counties accused of hampering the administration’s mass-deportation efforts after even a pro-Trump law enforcement group denounced the list.
Homeland Security Secretary Noem announced the list last week in a blustering statement accusing the cities of obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
“These sanctuary cities are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,” Noem said.
The jurisdictions listed would be receiving “formal notice of non-compliance and all potential violations of federal criminal statutes,” DHS warned in the statement.
In sanctuary cities, local law enforcement officers don’t routinely collect information about people’s immigration status, though they do turn undocumented people over to federal immigration agents if a federal arrest warrant has been issued, or if the person has been convicted of a serious crime.
Supporters say the policies reduce crime by fostering trust between police and the community.
In an April executive order, though, President Donald Trump called the practice “a lawless insurrection” against the federal government and ordered the Department of Justice and DHS to publish a list of sanctuary jurisdictions.
The published list included cities like Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Denver, whose mayors have defended the policy during congressional hearings, Reuters reported. But it also included a number of jurisdictions that had never adopted a sanctuary policy.
In a statement Saturday, the National Sheriffs’ Association—whose leadership has typically supported Trump—called the list “arbitrary,” while doing its best to distance Trump from his own policy.
“DHS has done a terrible disservice to President Trump and the Sheriffs of this country. The President’s goals to reduce crime, secure the Borders, and make America safer have taken a step backward,” said the group’s president, Sheriff Kieran Donahue of Canyon County, Idaho. “The sheriffs of this country feel betrayed.”
The statement said the list was “created without any input, criteria for compliance, or mechanism for how to object to the designation,” meaning sheriffs had no way of knowing what they needed to do to avoid being tagged with the “arbitrary” label.
“When you owe almost a billion dollars in legal judgments, not to mention lawyer fees, and you’re a convicted felon, the whole No Tax On Tips thingy makes sense as he dances around the country.” John Buss, @repeat 1968
We’re all just refugees in MAGAland.
Hope you have a good week. I’ve taken on more hours in order to avoid any reality beyond my lovely neighborhood and cast of characters. As usual, I walked Temple and made sure I fed the Rooster, checked on the feral cats and gave them food and water, and noticed the spare loaf of bread that mistakenly came with my grocery order disappeared from the railing of my porch as was intended. Why can’t we live together?
I would like to end here with the deep sadness I feel about the firebombing of peaceful protesters on the streets of Boulder who simply wanted action on bringing the Hamas hostages back to their families. The marchers were primarily Jewish, and this was an act of Anti-Semitism. Acts of Violence are never a way to bring good to any cause. More killing is never the solution.
In light of that tragic event, I have two suggested reads.
Eight people marching in support of Israeli hostages held in Gaza were burned Sunday by a man wielding what authorities called a “makeshift flamethrower” and an incendiary device.
The attack happened at 1:26 p.m. on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall, during a weekly walk organized by the city’s chapter of Run for Their Lives, which calls for the release of hostages held by the terrorist group Hamas.
Mark Michalek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver field office, characterized the incident as a “targeted act of violence” and said in a Sunday evening news briefing that it’s under investigation as terrorism, echoing a statement from FBI Director Kash Patel earlier in the day.
Police arrested Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, of El Paso County, after bystanders pointed him out to police officers outside the Boulder County Courthouse, Michalek said.
Soliman used a makeshift flamethrower and threw an incendiary device into the crowd gathered outside the courthouse to harm them, Michalek said, adding that the suspect yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack.
Videos showed people rushing to pour water on one victim while others lay collapsed nearby.
“It’s almost like it was a gun of fire,” said Lynn Segal, who witnessed the attack. “It’s like a line of fire.”
Violence begets more Violence. It is never the solution to a problem. These were not soldiers. These were Americans. These were not the problem or the solution to the Israeli-Hamas War.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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“The most transparent administration ever..” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m hoping we’re entering a Golden Age of Journalism because the number of stories floating around out there today indicates that we need more investigative journalists than ever before. Because of that, I cannot seem to play the Wake Forest Commencement by Sixty Minutes‘ Scott Pelley enough. His first statement rang true throughout the world. “Our sacred Rule of Law is under attack.” The Speech was entitled “The Meaning of You.”
The path to self-discovery starts with finding what kind of person you are when times get dark. As I’ve said before, these times are very dark. Do you shy away from speaking out? Do you take fighting action on whatever level you can? Do you melt away? Do you just go along or cheer it? I’ve come back to this speech this week because the headlines today show how important the press can be in exposing the dark times and the dark ones and their actions to light. It is then up to us to do something about it and to get our elected officials on it.
The New Republic’s Parker Molloy briefly discusses the importance of the Pelley Speech and the evil MAGA’s response. “Scott Pelley Warns Graduates About the Threats to American Democracy. The “60 Minutes” correspondent never mentioned Trump by name, but his call to defend democratic institutions was apparently too much for the MAGA crowd to handle.”
Earlier this month, journalist Scott Pelley delivered what should have been a fairly standard commencement address at Wake Forest University. The 60 Minutes correspondent spoke about seeking truth, defending democracy, and the importance of courage in difficult times—the kind of boilerplate inspiration you’d expect from a veteran journalist addressing graduates.
But because we live in very normal times, the speech went viral over Memorial Day weekend and triggered a conservative meltdown that’s been fascinating to watch unfold.
What did Pelley say that sent the right into such a tizzy? Well, he had the audacity to suggest that “our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.” He warned of “insidious fear … reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts, the fear to speak in America.”
And perhaps most provocatively, Pelley criticized the administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, saying, “Diversity is now described as ‘illegal.’ Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends.” He also referenced “masked agents” who “abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana charged with nothing.”
Pelley’s speech comes as Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion over alleged “election interference” and CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon abruptly resigned, citing disagreements with the company amid the legal pressure.
What’s remarkable is how a fairly conventional call for civic engagement and democratic values could generate such hysteria. But then again, when you’re running an administration built on exactly the kind of authoritarian playbook Pelley described, I suppose any critique—no matter how measured—feels like an existential threat.
Reading the speech in full, it’s hard to see what’s so “unhinged” about urging graduates to be engaged citizens and defend democratic institutions. Unless, of course, you’re deeply invested in attacking those very institutions.
A complete transcript of the speech follows. Also, you may listen to and watch Paley’s address here. The headlines today may be bleak, but the important thing is that reporters and the people supporting the work investigate and can find unbelievable corruption, stark depravity, and many examples of bad human conduct, demeanor, and actions. Then expose it!
When I was born, and as I grew up and my family moved into the middle class, I was instilled with the importance of reading magazines and watching the news. My Grandfather on my mother’s side always sent me books for my birthday and Christmas. My Nana on my mother’s side sent my sister and me subscriptions to National Geographic and The Christian Science Monitor. We read the local newspapers and the Des Moines Register every morning and evening. When I asked my Dad while I was in high school if I could get a subscription to The Manchester Guardian and to Paris Match, he didn’t even hesitate. I can tell you my show and tell performance, as well as my reports from newspapers, were altogether different from my Council Bluffs and Omaha friends.
When I hit university, all the foreign students whom I continually sought out for all dorm meals originally thought I was from Canada. When my family travelled to Europe, I tried to blend in as much as possible and just observe. It is perhaps this that makes me blog today, even though the only journalism classes I took were in high school. I wrote for the school newspaper, an underground newspaper, and the junior high newspaper. I always assumed everyone was as news-hungry as I was growing up in some of the most boring and inane places on the planet. I couldn’t live with oatmeal after reading about Belgian waffles. Can you imagine what happened when I got my first bite of one?
Knowledge of news is important for good citizenship, it’s important for making decisions that impact your household, and it’s important just because things are moving faster than ever. So let me get down to my first suggested reads today.
One of the things I find most threatening these days is seeing my students, my university, and many places leave their brains behind and try to make things easy using AI. It may have a future, but presently, any good professor worth their salt can tell when someone uses it. You should get good at spotting it on the internet, and you will be annoyed when you’re making an important call about something or chatting with some company, and even when it’s given a name, you can tell by the idiosyncrasies and the lack of niceties of American English, this thing ain’t human.
I’ve noticed that the grammar check my University uses completely breaks down when dealing with nuances and colloquialisms. It seems to excel mostly at filling my writing with commas and catching typos. That’s okay by me and easy, but believe me, I can tell when a student overuses AI. We’re being trained at spotting it as well as teaching students how to use it correctly. However, someone who knows what they are doing from years of doing it can make a better decision about its use than those still on the learning curve.
This phenomenon played out yesterday as one of RFK Jr.’s prodigal research adventures turned into something I wouldn’t even expect from an undergrad or, actually, even someone sitting in my high school or university composition class. He was, of course, a legacy student there because of his father. We also know he was the dorm’s drug dealer from my fellow Westside High School journalism classmate, Kurt Anderson. One thing Westside always turned out was students who knew how to write. That skill got me through all the rest of my degrees because, damn I could write a good paper. Evidently, RFK Jr. did not get that skill.
It’s rather interesting given the difficult times Harvard is facing in protecting its foreign students. Now granted, I helped many a colleague from distant lands to get their excellent research into prime American English form. Everyone always sent them to me before they were sent to a journal for publishing, which bought me a cheap pub. But, every one of them took me farther down the path of being a numbers and stats guru. Did you know kids in India start their calculus classes in like 5th grade? It was also easier for me to actually come up with a sweet hypothesis to test because I was taught to be both analytical and creative. That’s what a good public school can do for you. A good university exposes you to what’s possible and exposes you to all kinds of interesting thinkers. But, again, I guess RFK Jr. was too busy with drugs to take advantage of anything like that. That’s why he’s likely never going to be part of a blog community, a book club, or a group that goes to the Saturday Night Midnight movies.
Okay, I really am getting to the read now. At his advanced age, with his unlimited educational opportunities and his money, he cannot write a research paper. And yet, it showed up in the public sphere because he was trying to prove his very wrong hypotheses at any cost. He didn’t prove anything. He turned to all manner of things to argue his hypothesis. None of his antics were academically sound. At first, the White House’s dumbest Press Secretary announced there were “formatting” errors. But, how could that be when, after investigating sources, reporters found them either made up or seriously in error? The Make America Healthy Again report was just embarrassing.
MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki derided White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s defense of a “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report filled with errors and broken links.
NOTUS reported the paper, released under the administration of President Donald Trump and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cited at least seven sources that do not appear to exist. The news publication contacted epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who the MAHA report lists as the first author of a study it cited on adolescent anxiety, and discovered Keyes didn’t write the paper.
“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”
NOTUS also reported two other studies pertaining to direct-to-consumer drug advertisements for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids appear nowhere “to be found.” Reporters also could not validate another section claiming 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. Additionally, the author of a corticosteroids study’s the MAHA report cited to support its arguments denied writing the study.
NOTUS reporter Jasmine Wright was in the White House briefing room Thursday and asked Leavitt: “does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted?”
“Yes, we have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS,” Leavitt responded. “I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed.”
Psaki, a former White House press secretary herself, did not contain her scorn.
Well, the nation’s biggest and most disappointing media of record investigated and found some interesting things in the MAHA report. Let’s start with the Washington Post. “White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say. The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.” Well, that’s typical of a lot of students. If they can’t do it, they pay someone who can. You can always tell this, though, because if you’ve seen any previous work, you recognize their voice and you know when something is different. AI is the most recent example of buying a paper online, but with a lower cost and perhaps a lower chance of getting caught because you won’t find a cheat paper by searching it verbatim with your student’s work. Believe me, the discussion on this in teacher lounges and faculty clubs is de rigueur these days. Evidently, RFK Jr. didn’t even know the most tell-tale of the signs.
Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.
Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.
Some references include “oaicite” attached to URLs — a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of “oaicite” is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company.
A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate — as well as the tendency to “hallucinate” studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real.
So, our Secretary of Health and Human Services is so bereft of research skills that he can’t even avoid the number one Rookie mistake. Does he have anyone around him who knew better and could catch this? I can tell you that a team of peers that checks every research paper headed to publication in an academically sound journal would never let this go through to print. If you’re the main author, you try to avoid any humiliating mistakes for serious journals.
AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report.
“Frankly, that’s shoddy work,” he said. “We deserve better.”
“The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,” which addressed the root causes of America’s lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The New York Times published the first media review pointing out made-up sources. “White House Health Report Included Fake Citations, ‘A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.” Now, I’m not a scientist, but I lived with a Yale-educated Doctorate in Microbiology who published a lot of things on RNA transcription, ran a lab at a public university, and wound up with the NSF. I have no idea if he’s retired or if he went with the current purge of scientists. I read many of his works pre-publication, and he got published in all the big ones. I think the science journals are more nerve-wracking to write for than the Economics and Finance. Usually, it’s based on lab data rather than the Federal Reserve Beige Book or World Book data, which gets a pass even though the methodology and the model itself get the eagle eye. This report was a hot mess on all accounts.
The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues.
But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.
“It makes me concerned about the rigor of the report, if these really basic citation practices aren’t being followed,” said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was listed as the author of a paper on mental health and substance use among adolescents. Dr. Keyes has not written any paper by the title the report cited, nor does one seem to exist by any author.
The news outlet NOTUS first reported the presence of false citations, and The New York Times identified additional faulty references. By midafternoon on Thursday, the White House had uploaded a new copy of the report with corrections.
Dr. Ivan Oransky — who teaches medical journalism at New York University and is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks retractions of scientific research — said the errors in the report were characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence, which has led to similar issues in legalfilings and more.
Dr. Oransky said that while he did not know whether the government had used A.I. in producing the report or the citations, “we’ve seen this particular movie before, and it’s unfortunately much more common in scientific literature than people would like or than really it should be.”
Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the report had relied on A.I., the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the department, did not answer a question about the source of the fabricated references and downplayed them as “minor citation and formatting errors.” She said that “the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic-disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”
The false references do not necessarily mean the underlying facts in the report are incorrect. But they indicate a lack of rigorous review and verification of the report and its bibliography before it was released, Dr. Oransky said.
“Scientific publishing is supposed to be about verification,” he said, adding: “There’s supposed to be a set of eyes, actually several sets of eyes. And so what that tells us is that there was no good set of eyes on this
So, after finding out about all of that, this should make you feel really at ease.
The Trump administration has quietly spread Palantir’s technology through U.S. agencies, paving the way to easily compile data on Americans. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since President Trump took office. nyti.ms/4dJfR0o
In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.
Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)
Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.
The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.
Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.
Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.
So, while all this is going on, we’re beginning to hear some interesting information on Elon Musk as he exists stage right. This is from Forbes Magazine. “Lucky” Susan Dorn got this assignment. “Musk Used Heavy Drugs Including Ketamine And Ecstasy While He Became Close To Trump, Report Says. Elon Musk used a copious amount of drugs—and travelled with a pill box that appeared to contain Adderall—last year as he ramped up his donations to President Donald Trump, according to a New York Times report that comes on his last official day at the White House.” He’s the Wolf of Austin, I guess.
Key Facts
Musk told confidants he was taking so much ketamine it affected his bladder, according to The Times, citing unnamed sources who said he also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.
The Times also reported it obtained a photo that showed a medication box Musk travelled with containing about 20 pills, including Adderall.
The alleged drug use overlapped with his campaign activity last year on behalf of Trump—with an endorsement in July followed by $250 million to help elect him.
The report comes as Musk is set to exit the White House Friday after announcing Wednesday his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency had come to an end.
Neither Musk nor his lawyer responded to The Times’ request for comment, but Musk has said previously he was prescribed ketamine for depression.
The New York Timeshas more details. “On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama. As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous, and his drug use was more intense than previously known.” Of course, they sent two women after this story, too. Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey were the assigned reporters.
As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according topeople familiar with his activities.
Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.
It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.
At the same time, Mr. Musk’s family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews.
I’m not about to go to the Gossip Rag road, but there are rumors about Mush and Steven Miller’s wife if you’re interested. This is from the Independent. “Stephen Miller’s wife leaves the White House to work for Elon Musk ‘full time’, Kate Miller was working as an adviser for Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency.” I should eat some lunch, and I really will not ruin it by going any deeper into these. BLECH.
So, we lose a clown and gain one. Seriously, none of these Trump men are strangers to make-up. This is from ABC News. “Trump taps former right-wing podcast host Paul Ingrassia for key watchdog post. Ingrassia would replace Hampton Dellinger, who opposed Trump’s mass firings.”
President Trump announced Thursday night that he was tapping Paul Ingrassia, a former far-right podcast host, to lead the Office of Special Counsel — an independent watchdog agency empowered to investigate federal employees and oversee complaints from whistleblowers.
The Trump administration has previously taken aim at the Office of Special Counsel, firing the head of the agency, Hampton Dellinger (a Biden appointee) in February. Dellinger expressed opposition to the Trump administration’s firing of federal employees under DOGE-led cuts, noting that many had been fired or laid off without notice or justification.
Dellinger challenged his firing in court and was briefly reinstated to the post until a federal appeals court allowed for his dismissal. Dellinger decided to drop the challenge.
ABC News exclusively reported in February about how Ingrassia, in his role as White House liaison to the Department of Justice, was pushing to hire candidates at the DOJ who exhibited what he called “exceptional loyalty” to Trump. His efforts at DOJ sparked clashes with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top aide, Chad Mizelle, leading Ingrassia to complain directly to President Trump, sources told ABC News.
Ingrassia was pushed out of DOJ and reassigned as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, where he was serving prior to Trump announcing his new role, according to a White House official familiar with the matter.
In a post on X, Ingrassia wrote in response to his nomination: “It’s the highest honor to have been nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel under President Trump! As Special Counsel, my team and I will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch — with priority on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce and revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement.”
For the Senate-confirmed five-year term, Ingrassia will likely face tough questions over his lengthy history of media appearances and posts on social media promoting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as his ties to far-right media figures.
He was previously spotted at a 2024 rally hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes and has publicly praised figures like Andrew Tate — who has faced criminal charges for alleged sexual assault (Tate denies all wrongdoing).
All the best people, folks, all the best. So, I know you just want to know the latest information on the American Soap Opera “As the Tarrifs and the TACO Turns.” This is from CNBC. “Trump accuses China of violating preliminary trade deal.” Dan Managan gets all the serious stories, you know.
President Donald Trump on Friday said that China has “totally violated its” preliminary trade agreement with the United States, and suggested he would take action in response.
“So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” Trump wrote in a social media post that said China had reneged on a deal that paused retaliatory tariffs between that country and the U.S.
Stock futures fell Friday morning on the heels of Trump’s statement.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a CNBC interview Friday morning, echoed Trump’s allegation, saying “we’re very concerned with” China’s purported non-compliance with the temporary trade deal.
The “United States did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance,” said Greer.
He called that “completely unacceptable and has to be addressed.”
CNBC has requested comment from China’s embassy in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. and China on May 12 agreed to a 90-day suspension on most tariffs imposed on each other’s imports.
The agreement was reached after Trump slapped sky-high tariffs on imports from China into the U.S., and China retaliated in kind.
“Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger!” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social on Friday.
“The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World,” Trump wrote. “We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, “civil unrest.” I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen.”
“Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!!” the president wrote.
“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”
Trump posted his screed two days after he lashed out at CNBC reporter Megan Cassella at the White House when she asked about the term “TACO trade,” which refers to the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
The term, coined by a Financial Times columnist, suggests that stock pickers can make money by buying shares after markets fall on news of new tariffs imposed by Trump, knowing that he invariably will pause or reduce the tariffs, sending markets higher.
You had to know he had to have a bully story to cover up all the Court sha-la-la about his on-again, off-again tariffs. Wow, my Grammarly got really dash happy there! Actually, I did it but wondered if it would notice anything and it did. One missing comma. I evidently have a thing against commas.
So, at least it’s the weekend! Hope y’all have a great one! I say TACO, they say TACO!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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“No one knows immoral more.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today is the day that the Nation pays tribute to many Americans who gave their lives in wars to support our Country. That is, everyone but #FARTUS. He’s ranting about how much our country sucks. This is from Alternet. “‘This is a disgrace’: Trump ripped for ‘outrageous’ and ‘divisive’ Memorial Day diatribe.” This comes on the back of one of the most bizarre and uninspiring graduation speeches ever given to the graduating cadets at West Point. I cannot believe this deranged monster was elected President. It’s beyond embarrassing.
Trump, writing in all caps, posted, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THE BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTAO INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDERERS, AND RAPE AGAIN, PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL.”
But Trump, according to Mediaite, later deleted that post and replaced it with a much shorter post that read simply, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from Reuters. “Kremlin on Trump’s remark about Putin being ‘crazy’: there is some emotional overload.” Trump must be still pissed Obama got that Nobel Peace Prize when all he can get is a wink, wink, nod, nod of respect from Putin.
The Kremlin on Monday said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Vladimir Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” might be due to emotional overload, but thanked the U.S. leader for his assistance in launching Ukraine peace negotiations.
Trump said Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” by unleashing the largest aerial attack of the war on Ukraine and said he was weighing new sanctions on Moscow, though he also scolded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organising and launching this negotiation process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the Trump remarks about Putin.
“Of course, at the same time, this is a very crucial moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reactions.”
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
The Federal Reserve just bought $43.6 billion in US treasuries in the span of a week, sparking concerns that a quiet quantitative easing operation is underway.
New documents show the Fed purchased $8.8 billion in 30-year bonds on May 8th via its System Open Market Account (SOMA) – a move that followed a $34.8 billion purchase earlier that same week.
The move has triggered allegations that “stealth QE” has arrived, with a MarketWatch op-ed by Charlie Garcia calling the move “monetary policy on tiptoes.”
The Fed has long stated such purchases are routine reinvestments of maturing securities to adjust the money supply and influence interest rates to meet its targets.
The Fed’s buying spree follows a major Treasury sell-off from China.
New numbers from the Treasury Department show China sold $18.9 billion in US bonds in March, while most other countries increased their holdings.
China now holds $765.4 billion in US Treasuries and is in third place behind the UK and Japan, which hold $779 billion and $1.13 trillion, respectively.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from CNN. “Trump delays 50% EU tariffs until July 9.” I guess he thinks blowing up the markets over the Independence Holiday may cause a silversmith to jump a horse and ride into the countryside. Looks better to do it after.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has agreed to delay a 50% tariff on European Union imports until July 9, the latest instance of Trump declaring an impending tariff and throwing markets into confusion only to later walk back the threatened levies.
Trump said he and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had a “very nice call” that led to the delay.
“(Von der Leyen) said she wants to get down to serious negotiation,” Trump told reporters at Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey. “July 9 would be the day, that was the date she requested. Could we move it from June 1 to July 9? I agreed to do that.”
“She said we will rapidly get together and see if we can work something out,” he added.
As recently as Friday, Trump said he was “not looking for a deal” with the EU, and that their tariff rate was set at 50% and would go into effect on June 1. That rate would have come after he had imposed a 20% reciprocal tariff on the EU in April — which itself was also delayed, as were other so-called reciprocal tariffs.
Minutes after speaking with reporters, Trump posted on Truth Social that “talks will begin rapidly.”
Earlier in the day, von der Leyen had posted on X that there was a “good call” with Trump.
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at Public Notice.
Last Thursday evening, the Supreme Court all but demolished the legal basis for the independent agencies that are part of the modern administrative state.
In a brisk four paragraphs, only two of which contained any attempt at legal reasoning, the Court’s six Republican justices allowed the president to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) in violation of federal law. The decision highlights the lawlessness of the Court and is likely to further embolden a president who is very keen to place himself above the law.
The Court’s order in Trump v. Wilcox allows the president to violate the federal laws that prohibited him from removing NLRB and MSPB members without cause for doing so. Laws that insulate the heads of multimember commissions such as the NLRB are a common feature of the administrative state. The Supreme Court upheld one such law almost a century ago in Humphrey’s Executor v. Federal Trade Commission, the case that now undergirds modern independent agencies.
It was therefore a little surprising to read the Supreme Court’s order in Wilcox, which permits the president’s statutorily prohibited removal of officers on multi-member commissions, and see no mention of Humphrey’s Executor, the decision upholding statutes that prohibited such removals. Humphrey’s didn’t appear until the dissent.
But this dismissal of important precedents structuring modern society and government has become a hallmark of the Roberts Court. In a decision few years ago, the Court confidently declared that an earlier precedent on the Establishment Clause had been “abandoned.” Did that mean overruled? Unclear, but it at least meant the Court didn’t have to follow it!
Last term, the Court formally overruled the Chevron doctrine that had allows agencies to interpret ambiguous statutes they administer, as the Republican Justices turned tail on a a precedent they had previously embraced. The year before that, the Court announced that the time had come to end affirmative action programs in higher education, as if it was just closing up shop on the precedents upholding such programs.
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is still hobbling its way through the Senate. Politico has this story on the man with the smallest gavel in the world. “Mike Johnson urges Senate not to make major changes to megabill. “We’ve got to deal within the realm of what’s possible,” the House speaker said Sunday.” After all, once you’ve blown up democracy, the Constitution, and the economy, what’s left but to hand the remainders over to the Kleptocracy?
House Speaker Mike Johnson is urging GOP senators to exercise caution in making changes to the sweeping megabill passed through the House last week.
“I encourage them to do their work, of course, as we all anticipate,” Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday on “State of the Union.” “But to make as few modifications to this package as possible, because remembering that we’ve got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House. And I have a very delicate balance here, very delicate equilibrium that we’ve reached over a long period of time. And it’s best not to meddle with it too much.”
But key senators are already looking to make modifications, with different factions holding that the bill goes too far in its approach to Medicaid and clean-energy tax credit cuts. Others, such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), say it doesn’t move the ball far enough. Johnson wants to cut spending by roughly $6 trillion.
“This is our only chance to reset that to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending,” Ron Johnson told Tapper, also on Sunday. “And again, I think you can do it in the spending that we would eliminate, people wouldn’t even notice. But you have to do the work, which takes time.”
“The problem is the math doesn’t add up,” Paul told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “They’re going to explode the debt by the House says $4 trillion, the Senate’s actually been talking about exploding the debt $5 trillion.”
The speaker pointed to Republicans’ tiny majority in the House, with margins that may make sweeping changes unrealistic.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
So, I will close with that horrid West Point graduation speech. It’s really time for someone to question Trump’s mental health and send him to Walter Reed for a real test or 10. This is from US Today. James Powel has the analysis. “Trump tells West Point grads to avoid ‘trophy wives’ in commencement speech.” I’m not sure you’ve ever seen the average salary of a soldier, but I’m certain trophy wives and yachts are not likely to be in their future.
President Donald Trump told graduates to avoid “trophy wives” during his commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 24.
“He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife,” Trump said, referring to real estate developer Bill Levitt. “But that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t it work.”
“The job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures (and) spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun,” he said. “The military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime and any place.”
The military academy shut down a slew of on-campus organizations, including the Corbin Forum, a leadership club for female cadets, and Spectrum, a gay-straight alliance, in February following an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government, according to Military.com.
“We’ve liberated our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings,” Trump said. “There will be no more critical race theory or transgender for everybody forced onto our brave men and women in uniform — or on anybody else for that matter, in this country.”
Trump, wearing his campaign’s red MAGA hat, also pulled a common campaign reference in the speech, saying, “I went through a very tough time with some very radicalized sick, people. I say I was investigated more than the great, late Alphonse Capone.”
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at Rolling Stone.
Following Donald Trump‘s bizarre speech to West Point graduates, where the president opined on topics ranging from yachts and trophy wives to drag shows and golf, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is calling on Republicans to “start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally.”
“I don’t think that those who have gone through West Point expected to have their commander in chief address them and start talking about trophy wives or start talking how he has so many investigations,” she said. “What a great reminder that you are not qualified to be the person that potentially will command troops to go into war. That is not instilling confidence whatsoever.”
“It is time for Republicans to start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally,” Crockett added. “We know when it comes down to his criminality, he is not qualified to serve, but this is just absolutely deplorable.”
Okay, so I know you have better things to do today than worry about the sanity of the President and the state of our democracy and economy. Please remember the people who died fighting for our democracy instead of the ones fighting to destroy it in your activities today.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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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.
Last night, I watched BBC Live again for decent coverage of the L.A. Riots. I haven’t been this reliant on UK-based media since the Nixon Days. I woke up to lots of complaints on social media posts about the coverage of the Cable News presentation. I luckily found BBC Live after seeing reruns of old news programs on both MSNBC and CNN. The main channels had sporadic coverage. It was old-fashioned style coverage where the reporter at the scene reported, and the guy or girl in the chair asked questions. Reporters from the 
You may watch their footage at the link. Several reporters at the scene have complained that the L.A. Police had targeted them even though they were clearly wearing clothing and helmets identifying them as press. Yam Tits sent the California National Guard to the scene even though neither Mayor Bass or Governor Newsome had asked for the Guard to be activated. There are clear legal problems with this, and the Governor is acting on them.
David R Lurie–
Evidently, 
I agree with Robert Reich writing for
Last week, raids in San Diego, in 
Rebecca Solnit has this to add at her 
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder. 
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at 
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the 
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from 
CBS 
They’ve disappointed us before, so I’m holding back any enthusiasm and riding on the wings of hope right now. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is one of the most outspoken of the bunch, according to the 
Everyone should be worried about Health Care in America. Walker Bragman tells this story on 
Jenifer Rubin has a straightforward headline today in her piece at
Today, we have the NACHO Queen (Noem Always Chickens the Hell OUT). This is from the
A complete transcript of the speech follows. Also, you may listen to and watch 
This phenomenon played out yesterday as one of RFK Jr.’s prodigal research adventures turned into something I wouldn’t even expect from an undergrad or, actually, even someone sitting in my high school or university composition class. He was, of course, a legacy student there because of his father. We also know he was the dorm’s drug dealer from 
Well, the nation’s biggest and most disappointing media of record investigated and found some interesting things in the MAHA report. Let’s start with the 
So, our Secretary of Health and Human Services is so bereft of research skills that he can’t even avoid the number one Rookie mistake. Does he have anyone around him who knew better and could catch this? I can tell you that a team of peers that checks every research paper headed to publication in an academically sound journal would never let this go through to print. If you’re the main author, you try to avoid any humiliating mistakes for serious journals.
So, while all this is going on, we’re beginning to hear some interesting information on Elon Musk as he exists stage right. This is from 
I’m not about to go to the Gossip Rag road, but there are rumors about Mush and Steven Miller’s wife if you’re interested. This is from the
All the best people, folks, all the best. So, I know you just want to know the latest information on the American Soap Opera “As the Tarrifs and the TACO Turns.” 
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from 
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at 
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