“It’s now safe to go out to dinner in The Nation’s Capital!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The chaos surrounding voting rights continues to play out across many southern states. I’ve shared the craziness going on down here in Lousyana. Today’s news on voting rights and gerrymandering shenanigans was handled by judges in Virginia’s Supreme Court. It’s looking like Orange Caligula and his Republican enablers will be getting the Midterm Election chaos they seek. Our primary election is coming up in 8 days. Our U.S. Congressional representatives are not on the ballot as they should be.
Will the Virginia Supreme Court Decision impact more than just Virginia? That seems to be the question being asked in the national conversation. David A. Lieb and Geoff Mulvihill report the story for the AP. “Virginia Supreme Court strikes down Democrats’ redrawn US House maps, giving Republicans a win.” It’s difficult to believe that so much disruption can happen in modern times.
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.
The court ruled 4-3 that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.
Writing for the majority, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote that the legislature submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to voters “in an unprecedented manner.”
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” he wrote.
Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn U.S. House map as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting done elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. That ruling, combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.
Redistricting could change the House Map. This is the next question the article addresses.
Mid-decade redistricting so far has resulted in 14 more congressional seats that Republicans believe they could win and six more seats that Democrats think they could win, putting the GOP up by eight. But some of those seats could be competitive in the November election, making the results uncertain. Redistricting is still being litigated in several states.
There is a map showing the general changes that have occurred following the Supreme Court decision, which has disrupted the entire concept of gerrymandering and its illegality. The Guardian reports today on the situation in Tennessee, which could eliminate its one black majority Congressional seat. We worry about that here in Louisiana. “Tennessee Republicans redraw maps to erase last Democratic, Black-majority district. Move comes days after supreme court ruling weakened Voting Rights Act protections against racial gerrymandering.” George Chidi has the analysis.
Tennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature passed redistricting maps on Thursday, eliminating the state’s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district a week after the US supreme court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act.
The move cracks Tennessee’s ninth congressional district, which covers Memphis, into three pieces, each of which contains almost exactly a third of the city’s Black voters. The new maps mean that all nine of Tennessee’s congressional districts are Republican-leaning.
The district had closely occupied the south-west corner of the state. Now three districts snake out from Memphis’ dense center, with two crossing the Tennessee River to reach Nashville’s suburbs 200 miles away.
“If Republican policies are so great, why are we changing the lines to rig elections?” asked Vincent Dixie, a state representative from Nashville, during debate on Thursday, pleading for Republicans to refrain. “Where is your humanity in this?”
As Democratic lawmakers spoke, the house speaker directed state troopers to remove a section of the audience in the gallery, which had begun shouting.
Justin Jones, a state Democratic representative, described Cameron Sexton, the Tennessee house speaker, as the “grand wizard in chief”, and handed a Republican lawmaker a Confederate flag. Jones offered amendments to the bill, which the speaker ruled had been submitted in an untimely manner. Jones described that as a “Jim Crow process”.
The redistricting comes eight days after the supreme court’s landmark Callais v Landry decision, which invalidated swaths of the Voting Rights Act which had restrained state governments from drawing congressional districts that left Black voters at a political disadvantage.
Despite demands from Donald Trump for conservative states to conduct mid-decade redistricting, Tennessee had refrained from taking action before the court’s ruling. But Sexton said the redraw will “ensure the state’s representation in Washington reflects its conservative values”.
Khaya Himmelman has more information about the Virginia situation in Talking Points Memo. “Virginia State Supreme Court Strikes Down Dem Redistricting Proposal.”
In a major loss for Democrats on Friday, the Virginia state Supreme Court rejected, in a 4-3 decision, the state’s recently approved redistricting proposal, which could have given Democrats four additional congressional seats, improving their chances of taking control of the U.S. House this year.
The proposal, which was introduced as a way to offset the impact of the Trump administration’s mid-cycle gerrymandering blitz, was narrowly approved by voters in a special election earlier this month.
The Supreme Court ruled that the process by which lawmakers moved forward the redistricting proposal violated the state’s constitution.
“In this case, the Commonwealth submitted a proposed constitutional amendment to Virginia voters in an unprecedented manner that violated the intervening-election requirement in Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia,” the state Supreme Court’s majority opinion read.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” it continued. “For this reason, the congressional district maps issued by this Court in 2021 pursuant to Article II, Section 6-A of the Constitution of Virginia remain the governing maps for the upcoming 2026 congressional elections.”
Election analysts underscored that this is a major victory for Republicans, though the political environment could still be a considerable drag on their midterms changes.
G. Elliott Morris has an analysis up today that breaks down the statistical assumptions the Supreme Court used. This comes from his site Strength in Numbers. “The simple statistical error Republican Supreme Court justices used to gut the VRA. The Court says vote dilution can be proven only after controlling for “controlling” racial polarization rather than partisan polarization. This is a nonsensical and impossible test.” For a kid who hated her algebra classes, I sure live in the realm of statistical and econometric analysis now. It helps to understand the numbers, believe me.
The six Republican-appointed justices on the United States Supreme Court have found a magical solution to political polarization. All you have to do is take a partisan election result and subtract out the effects of party loyalty on the result.
That, more or less, is what the Court wrote when it invalidated the Voting Rights Act last week. In Louisiana v. Callais, decided 6-3 on April 29, 2026, the conservative majority told voting-rights plaintiffs they must now “control for party affiliation” before their evidence of racial bloc voting will count under Section 2.
That sounds like a neutral statistical fix, but in reality, it’s a bad control — an error called “conditioning on a mediator variable“ that would get your paper sent back to you with lots of red ink in statistics 101. The problem is that in modern America, party isn’t a variable that operates independently of race. Rather, political party is largely downstream of one’s race. If you subtract the effects of political party from the analysis of polarization, you are subtracting away the very evidence of polarization you are trying to study!
This is important (not just a piece for nerds) because Republican legislatures are already moving ahead with new partisan and racial gerrymanders based on SCOTUS’s new theory. Tennessee passed a 9-0 GOP map this week that splits Memphis’s majority-Black and solidly Democratic 9th District into three majority-white, Republican-leaning seats. Mississippi’s governor has called a special session for May 20. Louisiana is losing at least one of its majority-Black districts. And Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina could be next. (On this week’s podcast, David and I recap these new gerrymandering efforts that are unfolding with unprecedented haste.)
This week’s Chart of the Week is: a simple table (and one causal diagram) that shows how the Court’s new test makes racial polarization vanish on paper, while it is very much still alive in real life.
This is the decision that will dilute the vote of New Orleans and every black citizen of Louisiana. Again, here’s the link to the Governor’s site announcing the decision to gerrymander the state prior to voting for our Congressional Representatives. “Governor Jeff Landry Suspends Only U.S. House Primary Elections Following Supreme Court Ruling.” My mind boggles every time I read anything on this.
Governor Jeff Landry issued an executive order suspending Louisiana’s closed party primary elections only for offices of U.S. Representative in response to the recent decision by the United States Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais. EO attached.
“The best way to end race-based discrimination is to stop making decisions based on race,” said Governor Jeff Landry. “Here in Louisiana, we’re proud to lead the nation on this charge. Allowing elections to proceed under an unconstitutional map would undermine the integrity of our system and violate the rights of our voters. This executive order ensures we uphold the rule of law while giving the Legislature the time it needs to pass a fair and lawful congressional map. I would like to thank Attorney General Liz Murrill for her hard work throughout this process”
The ruling issued on April 29 found Louisiana’s current congressional district map, enacted under SB 8 during the 2024 First Extraordinary Session, to be an unconstitutional gerrymander. The decision effectively reinstates a lower court injunction prohibiting the state from conducting congressional elections under the invalidated map.
As a result, the state’s closed party primary elections for U.S. House seats, previously scheduled for May 16, 2026, and the second primary set for June 27, 2026, are suspended. Early voting for the May election was set to begin May 2. Other offices and ballot measures scheduled for May 16 will continue as planned. This suspension will only apply to the U.S. House races.
I do feel like I’ve been disenfranchised. And again, please remember the impact the SAVE Act will have on Women and Transexual individuals. Democracy Dockethas this analysis of the Tennessee situation. “‘Jim Crow on steroids’: Tennessee gerrymander included nixing rule that voters must be notified about new districts.” The analysis is provided by Jacob Knutson.
In the aggressive congressional gerrymander they adopted Thursday, Tennessee Republicans also removed a provision in state law requiring the government to alert voters about changes to their designated polling places when electoral lines are redrawn.
Transparency groups and state lawmakers have warned that the change is likely to exacerbate voter confusion caused by state Republicans’ abrupt adoption of new congressional maps just months before the 2026 midterm elections.
One leading democracy advocate called it “Jim Crow on steroids.”
Before Thursday, state law required county election commissions to “immediately” notify voters by mail when their polling place or precinct changed because of redistricting. Among other notices, alerts also had to be published in newspapers. The law was meant to ensure that voters know where to cast their ballots during early voting or on election day.
But in their bill repealing a five-decade prohibition on mid-decade redistricting, Republicans included an amendment that only requires county election commissions to post a notice about redrawn congressional districts on their “official website, if one exists.”
Under the repeal, which is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee (R), the secretary of state also has to publish a notice, but mail and newspaper notices are no longer required to inform voters about changed boundaries.
Deborah Fisher, the executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG), a nonpartisan transparency group, said in a release Thursday that the change was likely meant to reduce costs, though she warned that the voting public will be harmed when it takes effect.
“When polling places or precincts are changed, more effort should be made to reach affected voters, not less,” Fisher said.
Republicans had to repeal the prohibition on mid-decade redistricting before they pushed through their new congressional map, which cracks the state’s only majority-Black district between three separate districts.
Because of the new map, several local voting areas were shifted into new congressional districts. That means polling places likely changed for hundreds of voters across the state.
While debating the map in the Tennessee Senate Thursday, Sen. Heidi Campbell, a Democrat who represents Nashville, accused Republicans of intentionally misleading voters through the notice change.
“We’re not just redrawing the map. We’re making sure people don’t have to be told the map changed,” Campbell said.
Reacting to the notice change Thursday, Norman Ornstein, a prominent political scientist formerly with the American Enterprise Institute, called it “Jim Crow on steroids” in a social media post.
It’s clear to me that we really have something to worry about. We’re busy here in Greater New Orleans with actions. Please consider how you can help improve our country’s voting system.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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Trump is struggling to deal with his losing war in Iran. He is supposed to give a speech to the nation about it tonight, something he should have done before he started dropping bombs. He is also threatening to pull the U.S. out of NATO. Here’s the latest.
Donald Trump has told The Telegraph he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of Nato after it failed to join his war on Iran.
The US president labelled the alliance a “paper tiger” and said removing America from the defence treaty was now “beyond reconsideration”.
It is the strongest sign yet that the White House no longer regards Europe as a reliable defence partner following the rejection of Mr Trump’s demand that allies send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr Trump was asked if he would reconsider the US’s membership of Nato after the conflict.
He replied: “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.” [….]
Mr Trump added: “Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic.
He is single-handedly wrecking the international alliances that have maintained relative peace since the end of WWII. The rest of the interview consisted mostly of insults to the UK and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”
“You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work,” he said, referring to the state of Britain’s fleet of warships.
Asked whether the Prime Minister should spend more on defence, Mr Trump added: “I’m not going to tell him what to do. He can do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter. All Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof.”
After speaking to The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr Trump had raised the issue of withdrawing from Nato with White House aides.
The newspaper said he had made comments to Mr Rubio and others in private but had made no final decision on the future of the alliance.
No one seems to know what Trump is going to say tonight in his overdue “speech to the nation.” It seems likely he will try to bring an end to U.S. involvement, and leave the mess he created for other countries to clean up In addition to the threat to pull out of Nato, according to the AP:
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has confirmed direct contact with
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the Strait of Hormuz falls under the territorial control of Iran and Oman File, Khaled Elfiqi AP Photo
Araghchi confirmed that he had held conversations with Witkoff, Trump’s trusted envoy for peace negotiations around the world, during the current conflict.
But the Iranian foreign minister downplayed that contact.
“I receive messages from Witkoff directly, as before, and this does not mean that we are in negotiations,” he said.
“There is no truth to the claim of negotiations with any party in Iran. All messages are conveyed through the Foreign Ministry or received by it, and there are communications between security agencies,” he added.
Araghchi explained that they have never had a “good experience” negotiating with the US, referring to Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Barack Obama-era nuclear deal during Trump’s first term. The US has also twice attacked Iran during negotiations over the past nine months — in June 2025 and with the current war, which began on February 28, at a time when Oman, the mediator between the two sides, had said they were on the cusp of a breakthrough over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
“We do not have any faith that negotiations with the US will yield any results. The trust level is at zero,” Araghchi said, adding: “We don’t see honesty.”
Sounds about right. On the Strait of Hormuz:
In the interview, Araghchi argued that the waters of the Strait of Hormuz fall under the territorial control of Iran and Oman, and that once the war is over, it is these two countries who would decide the future of the waterway.
But he added that the strait should be a “peaceful waterway”.
Gulf nations, including Qatar, have, however, insisted that they be included in any talks to decide the future of the strait.
Araghchi also insisted in the interview that, from Iran’s perspective, the strait is open for ships from most nations.
“Only for the ships of those who are at war with us, this strait is closed. That is normal during war – we cannot let our enemies use our territorial waters for commerce,” he explained.
Read more at the link.
But what about Netanyahu? Will he be OK with Trump wimping out of their war?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel and the United States are “beyond the halfway point in terms of success” in their war against Iran, saying that the joint strikes are focusing on the country’s nuclear material.
He added that he doesn’t want to “put a schedule on” the timeline for ending the war with Iran.
In an interview with the right-wing American media outlet Newsmax, Netanyahu said the Iranian regime is “pursuing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to American cities,” adding, “That’s what this war is about – preventing that outcome.”
The Israeli prime minister also said that the attacks have “already degraded their missile capabilities, destroyed factories, and eliminated key nuclear scientists.”
He appeared to be sending messages to Trump in the interview:
Iran “killed and maimed more Americans than any other force in recent decades,” Netanyahu told Newsmax, saying Tehran also tried to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump. “Thousands and thousands killed and maimed in Afghanistan by Iranian IEDs. They bombed our embassies. They tried to kill President Trump twice. They’re still trying to kill him.”
According to Netanyahu, Iran has openly shown it is a threat to the West. “Most importantly, is they they chant ‘Death to America.’ They also say ‘Death to Israel.’ But they say America is the Great Satan. They’re religious zealots, and they have to wipe out Western culture led by America,” he said.
Netanyahu also said Iran is more dangerous to the United States than North Korea, China and Russia. “I don’t hear North Korea chanting ‘Death to America.’ I don’t hear China chanting … I don’t hear Russia,” he said.
I guess we’ll find out something about Trump’s plans tonight in his speech–if he makes any sense, which is unlikely.
President Trump isn’t just befuddling foreign leaders and financial markets with his mixed signals on Iran. Advisers who speak regularly with the president tell Axios they’re just as uncertain.
Why it matters: Trump’s off-the-cuff musings and Truth Social postings can have life-or-death consequences for the war, and massive implications for the market. Then the cycle restarts without any lasting clarity.
Between the lines: Some Trump aides and allies say he’s mostly improvising rather than following any clear plan.
He likes to keep his options open, spitball with different audiences, then capitalize if he thinks he sees an opportunity, they say.
Aides have been convinced at various points that Trump was leaning toward a major escalation, and at others that he was eager for a swift resolution. “Nobody knows in the end what he’s really thinking,” a senior adviser said.
“They had a plan for the first week and since then, they are making the plan up as they go along,” a former U.S. official said.
Others claim it’s all by design. “That’s the plan — for you to not have a clue,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who spoke to Trump on Monday, told Axios.
The UK will convene 35 countries – excluding the US – to explore ways to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route for oil and gas that has been blocked by Iran.
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the next phase of discussions in the joint British and French efforts to secure the waterway would be held on Thursday, with Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, alongside international leaders….
Starmer said on Wednesday the meeting would bring together 35 countries to “assess all viable diplomatic and political measures we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and to resume the movement of vital commodities”.
In other news, Trump attended the Supreme Court session his morning on his efforts to end birthright citizenship. No other president has done that.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. The justices questioned the attorneys about the definition of “domicile,” core to the government’s argument that only children of immigrants who are domiciled in the United States should receive birthright citizenship. In an indication of the political stakes in the case, Trump attended the hearing while Solicitor General D. John Sauer made his arguments, the first time a sitting president is known to have done so. Arguments concluded after Sauer made his rebuttal.
American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Cecillia Wang argued for the plaintiffs, immigrants using pseudonyms. The ACLU and other groups challenged Trump’s order, saying it violates the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to “all persons” born or naturalized in the United States.
In the hearing, Sauer argued that children born to parents without permanent immigration status should not be granted citizenship, upending the long-settled principle that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen.
A ruling upholding Trump’s order could have sweeping political, economic and social ramifications….
ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang said the 14th Amendment does not allow Congress to add more exceptions to the birthright citizenship rule.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh replied: “I guess the answer you just gave means they don’t have any authority to look at this, even if they passed it 435 to 0 in the House and 100 to 0 in the Senate. Your point is, no, they’re closed. They’re frozen forever.”
“Correct,” Wang said….
Arguments concluded after Solicitor General John D. Sauer made his rebuttal.
Congress “in 1866 had a very, very clear understanding that the children of the newly freed slaves have the requisite allegiance to the United States,” he said in his closing remarks. “This was all about overruling the grave injustice of Dred Scott and making sure that allegiance was granted to the children of slaves.”
“Thank you, counsel, general. The case is submitted,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said, as he does when arguments end in every case.
The Supreme Court is casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship in a consequential case that was magnified by Trump’s unparalleled presence in the courtroom.
Conservative and liberal justices on Wednesday questioned whether Trump’s order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens comports with either the Constitution or federal law.
Trump, the first sitting president to attend arguments at the nation’s highest court, spent just over an hour inside the courtroom for arguments made by the Republican administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer. The president departed shortly after lawyer Cecillia Wang began her presentation in defense of broad birthright citizenship.
Trump heard Sauer face one skeptical question after another. Justices asked about the legal basis for the order and voiced more practical concerns.
“Is this happening in the delivery room?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked, drilling down into the logistics of how the government would actually figure out who’s entitled to citizenship and who’s not….
“How much of the debates around the 14th Amendment had anything to do with immigration?” Thomas asked, pointing out that the purpose of the amendment was to grant citizenship to Black people, including freed slaves.
The justices are hearing Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.
The case frames another test of Trump’s assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court that has largely ruled in the president’s favor — but with some notable exceptions that Trump has responded to with starkly personal criticisms of the justices. A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.
Yesterday the Supreme Court voted 8-1 that conversion therapy cannot be banned in Colorado.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday held, on an 8-1 vote, that Colorado’s law banning therapists from engaging in conversion therapy with minor patients is presumptively unconstitutional as to talk therapy, deeming the law “an egregious form“ of speech regulation that almost always violates the First Amendment.
Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s decision — warning that the court might have made talk therapy “effectively unregulatable” and that the “fallout could be catastrophic.“ Taking the rare step of announcing her dissent from the bench, Jackson declared that the majority got it “wrong as a matter of precedent, first principles, and history.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s majority opinion, holding that lower courts had applied the wrong standard for addressing Kaley Chiles’s First Amendment challenge to the state’s ban on conversion therapy — efforts to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
As with his opinion in the wedding website case in 2023, 303 Creative v. Elenis, Gorsuch waved broadly at his purpose being to protect free speech and to stop, as he wrote on Tuesday, “censorious governments.“
The proper standard to be applied in Chiles’s case, the court held, is a particularly skeptical form of strict scrutiny because the law is a content-based regulation and, further, includes “viewpoint restrictions” by banning efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity and allowing efforts to affirm a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Gorsuch wrote that Chiles’s challenge would likely succeed when the case goes back to the lower courts because “Ms. Chiles seeks to engage only in speech, and as applied to her the law regulates what she may say.“
I guess the solution is public education about the research that shows conversion therapy doesn’t work. But that might not protect children in right wing religious families, especially if they are home schooled.
A few more stores of possible interest:
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander, from left, Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot, Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist, right, in a group photograph as they visit NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)
Tensions were high as hydrogen fuel started flowing into the rocket hours ahead of the planned launch. Dangerous hydrogen leaks erupted during a countdown test earlier this year, forcing a lengthy flight delay.
By mid-morning, no leaks had been reported.
The launch team needs to load more than 700,000 gallons of fuel (2.6 million liters) into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket on the pad before the Artemis II crew can board.
Read more at the link. I had no idea this was happening until I got a message from JJ this moring.
The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday.
The government’s investigation had united Penn leaders with Jewish students and faculty members as they opposed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s subpoena. Many on campus drew parallels between the government’s approach and methods deployed in Nazi Germany.
But the Trump administration has said that its request was typical for discrimination investigations to seek potential victims and witnesses, and Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court agreed on Tuesday. He gave Penn until May 1 to comply with the administration’s subpoena, though the ruling appeared unlikely to quell the debates around how the administration has pressured top American universities.
Judge Pappert, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, appeared to hint at the discomfort that the government’s subpoena had prompted and at the accusations that the E.E.O.C. had gone too far with its tactics, especially a demand for information tied to groups “related to the Jewish religion.”
“Though ineptly worded, the request had an understandable purpose — to obtain in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees, information on individuals in Penn’s Jewish community who could have experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the workplace,” Judge Pappert wrote in his 32-page opinion, issued three weeks after he heard oral arguments.
The cartoonishly large breasts. The pink spandex. The come-hither stare.
Byron Noem
“Must be A.I.,” a burly cattle rancher named Kevin Ruesink said as he inspected pictures of his neighbor Bryon Noem that had been published by The Daily Mail on Tuesday morning. The rancher was playing pinochle in the back of a convenience store with five other men in the tiny town of Castlewood, S.D., not far from the Noem family farm.
These men all knew Bryon Noem as the nice, tall insurance salesman who married Kristi Arnold, the town beauty queen who grew up to be governor. But now there were these pictures.
The rancher squinted at them with a mixture of suspicion and pity. “I grew up playing ball with Bryon,” he said. “I’ve never known him to be part of stuff like that. I don’t believe that at all.”
The British tabloid report on Tuesday was the latest and most dramatic development in the saga of Kristi Noem, who was sacked as homeland security chief earlier this month, the first Trump cabinet member to get the old heave-ho this term. She quickly put out a statement saying that she was “devastated” by the images of her husband and that “the family was blindsided by this.”
In response to multiple requests for an interview, Mr. Noem wrote in a text message on Tuesday: “I will at some point. Today is not the day. I appreciate your heart.”
While the pictures of Ms. Noem’s husband with what appear to be enormous inflated balloons under his spandex shirt ricocheted across the internet, becoming a political punchline for her many, many enemies, the reaction back on the proverbial ranch was a little more … tenderhearted.
That’s kind of a refreshing response from the townsfolk. Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
Those are the stories that caught my attention this morning. What stories have you been following?
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Glancing through the headlines in traditional and social media reminds us that there is nothing normal about life in the United States these days. Economic news is surreal, as historical, economic, and constitutional mistakes like tariffs are back in the headlines. Plans for a potential war with Iran sit on the resolute desk somewhere. Don’t even get me started on jaw-dropping weirdness still happening among the jerks and incompetents sitting in Cabinet offices. I guess it’s just another normal yet insane week in Trumplandia.
It may be hard to choose the read to start out with, but the rest will be equally shocking today, believe me. Just minutes ago, the Supreme Court made the obvious decision to strike down most of Trump’s tariffs in a 6-3 vote. This is from the New York Times.Live Updates: Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Sweeping Tariffs. In a major setback for President Trump’s economic agenda, the court ruled that he could not invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to set tariffs on imports. (I’ve gifted the full article for you to read.)
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on imports fromnearly every U.S. trading partner, a major setback for his administration’s second-term agenda.
The court’s 6-3 decision has significant implications for the U.S. economy, consumers and the president’s trade policy. The Trump administration had said that a loss at the Supreme Court could force the government to unwind trade deals with other countries and potentially pay hefty refunds to importers.
Mr. Trump is the first president to claim that a 1970s emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the statute does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.
“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” the chief justice wrote.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Brett M. Kavanaugh dissented, with Justice Kavanaugh warning that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”
The United States “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid” the tariffs, he wrote, “even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.”
The court’s ruling, backed by justices from across the ideological spectrum, was a rare and significant example of the Supreme Court pushing back on Mr. Trump’s agenda. Since he returned to the White House, the court’s conservative majority had overwhelmingly issued emergency orders allowing the president to carry out his policies on a temporary basis. But the decision on Friday will have a more lasting impact.
Early last year, Mr. Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to set tariffs on imported goods from more than 100 countries. He said his goal was to reduce the trade deficit and spur more manufacturing in the United States. Since then, he has used the tariffs to raise revenue and to pressure other countries in trade negotiations.
A dozen states and a group of small businesses, including an educational toy manufacturer and a wine importer, sued over the tariffs, saying the president had unlawfully infringed on Congress’s power under the Constitution to impose taxes. The businesses, which rely on imported goods, argued in court filings that the tariffs had disrupted their operations and led to higher prices for consumers and cutbacks in staffing.
In court filings and social media posts, the president and his advisers cast the outcome of the Supreme Court case as critical to his trade and foreign policies, making clear he would see defeat as a personal rebuke. Without the emergency power, the solicitor general had warned the justices, there would be economic ruin akin to the Great Depression, in addition to an interruption of trade negotiations and diplomatic embarrassment.
The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s signature economic and foreign policy Friday morning in a fractured 6-3 split decision.
Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to override Congress’s power of the purse, using the emergency declaration to levy widespread global tariffs, the majority held. The decision will now likely require an end to those tariffs, and could trigger the return of tariff revenue collected by Customs and Border Protection and deposited into the U.S. Treasury.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined in part by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan filed a concurring opinion, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, while Jackson filed her own concurring opinion. Gorsuch and Barrett also filed concurring opinions.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito dissented, with Thomas filing one dissenting opinion and Kavanaugh filing another, joined by Thomas and Alito.
“Based on two words separated by 16 others in [a section of] of IEEPA — ‘regulate’ and ‘importation’ — the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” Roberts wrote. “Those words cannot bear such weight.”
The majority opinion ultimately agrees with the main argument of the plaintiffs, a slate of small businesses suing the government on the grounds that Trump’s IEEPA tariffs are illegal. Tariffs are a tax, the plaintiffs had argued, and taxing authority rests solely with Congress.
Speaking of authorities that rest solely with Congress, Trump is still brooding about declaring War on Iran. This is from Michelle Goldberg writing for the New York Times. “This Is How an Autocrat Goes to War.”
On Wednesday, Axios’s well-sourced reporter Barak Ravid warned, “The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon.” America has undertaken the largest air power buildup in the region since the Iraq war. Outlets including The New York Times have reported that the military has given Trump the option to strike as soon as this weekend.
Not only has Congress not authorized such a war, it has barely even debated it. The administration has not bothered to explain, either to Congress or the American people, why it might bomb Iran or what it hopes to achieve. “There haven’t been any briefings about a military strategy,” said the Democratic representative Ro Khanna, who is working with his Republican colleague Thomas Massie to force a vote on an antiwar measure.
Most reporting indicates that the White House is planning for a campaign far more intense and sustained than last year’s bombing of Iran or the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But we don’t know if Trump and his team are after regime change, and if they are, what they think comes next. This is how an autocracy goes to war, without even a pretense that the consent of the governed matters.
At the center of the conflict between America and Iran is Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump claims he destroyed eight months ago, at the close of Israel’s 12-day war. Back then, a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that America’s bombing campaign set Iran’s program back by less than six months. But to this day, a page on the White House website proclaims, “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise Are Fake News.” The administration apparently feels no need to justify a potential war to end a program that it claims it already eliminated.
The administration is also reportedly demanding that Iran curtail its ballistic missile program and end its support for regional proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. It is unclear whether these demands are serious or simply a negotiating tactic, but they seem to be red lines for Iran.
“I don’t know whether it’s pretextual or genuine,” Rob Malley, Joe Biden’s special envoy for Iran, said of the Trump administration’s conditions. Given that Iran was probably bound to refuse, he said, the Trump team’s position could be “simply part of a Kabuki game to be able to say, ‘We tried diplomacy.’”
So far, the administration has scarcely bothered to elaborate the reasoning behind these demands. After all, Iran’s missiles, and the militias it supports, threaten Israel far more than they do the United States. If you take the administration’s stance at face value, it’s hard to square it with Trump’s America First campaign rhetoric.
If Trump isn’t bad enough, he has a cabinet that’s equally incompetent and dangerous. This is yet another New York Times headline. “Labor Secretary’s Husband Barred From the Department After Sexual Assault Reports. At least two female staff members said Dr. Shawn DeRemer had touched them inappropriately at the agency in Washington.”
The husband of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has been barred from the department’s headquarters after at least two female staff members told officials that he had sexually assaulted them, according to people familiar with the decision and a police report obtained by The New York Times.
The women said Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, had touched them inappropriately at the Labor Department’s building on Constitution Avenue. One of the incidents, during working hours on the morning of Dec. 18, was recorded on office security cameras, the people said. The video showed Dr. DeRemer giving one of the women an extended embrace, and was reviewed as part of a criminal investigation, one of the people said.
In January, the women’s concerns about Dr. DeRemer, 57, were raised as part of an internal investigation by the department’s inspector general into alleged misconduct by Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and her senior staff, one of the people said.
On Jan. 24, Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department filed a report about forced sexual contact in December at the Labor Department, according to their report, which was viewed by The Times.
The police report is the only one from the last three months associated with the Labor Department’s address, a police spokesman said, adding that the Police Department’s sexual assault unit is investigating.
After the women described the incidents to investigators, Dr. DeRemer was barred from entering the Labor Department’s premises, according to people familiar with the decision, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the allegations and ongoing investigations surrounding the department.
“If Mr. DeRemer attempts to enter, he is to be asked to leave,” a building restriction notice viewed by The Times said.
Mika reacts
Then there is this embarrassing, let me rephrase that to gross, televised moment from the HHS Secretary. This is from The Independent. “Even Fox News hosts struggling to make sense of RFK Jr’s and Kid Rock’s workout video, ‘Listen, somebody needs to tell RFK Jr. it’s okay to wear shorts. I mean, bro, don’t be upset about your legs,’ Fox News military analyst Johnny Jones said.” This is reported by Graig Graziosi.
During an episode of The Five on Wednesday, the panel members were left scratching their heads during a discussion of the bizarre video.
In a clip posted to X, Kennedy and Kid Rock, both shirtless, take turns riding on a stationary bike and doing pushups in what looks like a sauna. At one point, Kid Rock flips the middle finger to the camera. A title screen, inexplicably featuring a great white shark, tells us this is Kennedy and Kid Rock’s “Rock Out Work Out.”
The video is apparently intended to promote the DHHS secretary’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.
Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld watched the video and asked his co-panelists, “This raises a question: who rubs off on who?”
“You would think, ‘Oh, my God. RFK Jr is hanging out with Kid Rock. Oh, poor RFK Jr. is going to end up drinking. He’s going to be drinking again. He’s going to be womanizing again.’ And then what happens? You see Kid Rock at the gym,” Gutfeld said. “He’s like, you know, working out and cold plunge—it’s like RFK was a bad influence on Kid Rock. Who would have seen that coming?”
Fox News military analyst Johnny Jones pointed out that the DHHS secretary wore blue jeans throughout his entire workout.
“Listen, somebody needs to tell RFK Jr. it’s okay to wear shorts. I mean, bro, don’t be upset about your legs. I don’t care what they look like. Take it from me, nobody needs impressive legs. You look great with your shirt off. Throw the shorts on so we don’t all go, ‘Wow, that’s weird.’”
Esquire’s coverage was brutal. “The Republican Party Is So Tacky Now. The party of Lincoln has been reduced to RFK Jr. and Kid Rock’s “workout” video. Are they really okay with that?” This analysis was written by Dave Holmes.
As you know by now, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got together with Woodstock ’99 standout Kid Rock to produce a short video promoting nutrition, exercise, and bathing with your pants on. The “Rock Out WORK OUT” video was filmed at Kid Rock’s home gym and sauna, and it is scored to his 1998 single “Bawitdaba,” so just when you start to realize that your tax dollars funded this video, you have to face the fact that some of your tax dollars have gone directly to Kid Rock, which is a lot to sit with. Like you, I spent much of yesterday trying not to see it. But it turns out to be a pretty good barometer of where we are as a country and a culture in February 2026, and if I have to lose 90 seconds to this goddamn thing, then so do you. Pour yourself a glass of whole milk and let’s dive in.
The video opens with Kennedy and Kid, shirtless and flexing, in front of the taxidermic bear you were already sure existed in Kid Rock’s home gym. A quick camera pan reveals that this bear is wearing a checkered fedora, suggesting that it was shot while onstage with its ska band, which hardly seems sporting. From there is a montage that includes an American flag, a shark, a fighter jet, a bald eagle, and an explosion, so what we know right off the bat is two things: One, they’re going to be throwing everything at the wall here, and two, NFTs must really be over, because this would be the perfect place to slide one in.
A highlight reel shows Secretary Kennedy and American Bad Calves running through some basic exercises in the workout room, and then it’s right to the sauna, where Kennedy keeps his jeans on and Rock does a set of push-ups so comically weak it awakens the sadistic gym teacher inside us all. Seriously: I want to bully him, and I own Liza with a Z on Blu-ray. What is happening here? As if anticipating this response, Kid Rock flips off the camera. That’s the message of American public health in 2026: Get active, eat real food, and fuck you.
Kennedy dips himself in the cold plunge, in the jeans which you have to imagine are sodden with sweat from the Assault bike session he just did in the sauna. The hygienic ramifications are too hideous to consider, so you focus your attention on the decor of Kid Rock’s home fitness center, which is identical to what you’d see in one of those Hammer & Nails salons for men, where they surround you with rough-hewn wood and tables made out of wagon wheels so you can get a pedicure and it won’t make you gay.
Kennedy gets out of the cold plunge and walks his wet ass through a sitting area, dripping his Kennedy juice all over the Navajo rug. “Where’s Kid?” he asks, a valid question only after we have answered the question “Why is Kid?” Well, Kid is in some kind of hot-tub room, flexing his biceps with a look on his face that is unmistakably 10 percent apologetic. Kennedy shakes his head. Kid, in his own hot tub? He can’t believe it!
The economy remains sluggish, with high prices. This is from CNBC. Jeff Cox reports that “Fourth-quarter U.S. GDP up just 1.4%, badly missing estimate; inflation firms at 3%.”
U.S. growth slowed more than expected near the end of 2025 as the government shutdown impacted spending and investment, while a key inflation metric showed high prices are still a factor for the economy, according to data released Friday.
Gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4%, according to the Commerce Department, well below the Dow Jones estimate for a 2.5% gain.
Consumer spending increased at a slower pace for the period while government spending tumbled sharply in a quarter marked by the record-length shutdown. The department estimated that the shutdown subtracted about 1 percentage point from growth, though it added that the exact impacts “cannot be quantified.”
For the full year in 2025, the U.S. economy grew at a 2.2% pace, down from the 2.8% increase in 2024.
“The Federal government shutdown clearly sent the economy careening off its strong growth path in the fourth quarter which is a one-off that won’t be repeated in early 2026,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.
It doesn’t take an economist to know that Trump and his lackeys have no idea what they are doing.
Anyway, I hate being the bearer of bad news, but other than the SCOTUS decisions, that’s what’s out there.
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It seems there’s no end in sight for the government shutdown. The House is on a long paid vacation, and the Senate keeps voting again and again on the House Republican plan.
The government shutdown, which started on October 1, is entering its third week. As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) explained this morning, the Senate is in session, and it keeps voting on two bills to reopen the government. Majority leader John Thune (R-SD) keeps having the Senate vote on the measure passed by Republicans in the House. That measure funds the government until November 21. It has failed repeatedly to get past the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster. The Democrats have offered an alternative measure, which extends the healthcare premium tax credit—without which health insurance costs on the Affordable Care Act market will skyrocket—and restores nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. That measure, too, has repeatedly failed to pass.
Murphy notes that normally the two sides would negotiate. But, he says, President Donald J. Trump is telling Republican senators to “BOYCOTT NEGOTIATING,” and they are “following orders.”
The House of Representatives is even more dysfunctional. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) pushed the continuing resolution through the chamber on September 19, the Friday before leaving town for a week. Then Johnson canceled the House sessions on Monday and Tuesday, September 29 and 30, both to jam the Senate into having to accept the House measure and to avoid swearing in Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who was elected on September 23. Grijalva will provide the 218th signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on the release of the files collected during the federal investigation into the crimes of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump and his officials promised to release those files, but have tried to avoid doing so since news broke that Trump, who was a close friend of Epstein, is named in them.
I really think the Epstein issue is the reason for the Republican resistance to compromise. Trump really really doesn’t want the Epstein files to be released. There must be some terrible stuff about him in those records.
Emily Brooks of The Hill notes that jamming the Senate as Johnson tried to do was a tactic employed by the far-right Freedom Caucus, and they are cheering him on. But Democratic senators refused to vote in favor of the House measure, standing firm on extending the premium tax credits before their loss decimates the healthcare markets. Now, although Democrats are in Washington, D.C., ready to negotiate, Johnson says he will not call House members back to work until the Senate passes the House measure.
Brooks notes that not all Republicans are keen on the optics of staying out of session during a shutdown. Mike Lillis of The Hill reported on Sunday that the cancellation of all House votes since late September has some Republicans warning that the tactic will backfire. In addition to the question of healthcare premiums, there is the issue of military pay stalled by the shutdown, and the fact that, by law, Congress was supposed to deliver its 2026 budget by September 30.
Over the weekend, the administration tried to ratchet up the pressure on Democratic senators to cave when it announced it would fire about 4,200 federal employees. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo notes that the threat seemed at least in part to be designed to follow through on a threat Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought had made to pressure Democrats before the shutdown. When those layoffs didn’t happen, the administration then suggested it would not pay furloughed workers after the shutdown ends. After backlash, they walked that threat back. The new announcement seemed in part an attempt to prove they would do something.
I’m glad the Democrats are standing firm on their insistence that the cuts to health care be restored. Read more from Richardson at the substack link.
Today the Supreme Court is going to hear a case that could allow John Roberts to achieve his lifelong goal of completely destroy the Voting Rights Act.
The conservative-majority Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider whether to eviscerate a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act in a congressional redistricting case from Louisiana.
The justices, who expanded the scope of the case over the summer, will hear oral arguments on whether states can ever consider race in drawing new districts while seeking to comply with Section 2 of the 1965 law, which was enacted against a backdrop of historic racial discrimination to protect minority voters.
The long-running dispute concerns the congressional map that Louisiana was required to redraw last year after being sued under the Voting Rights Act to ensure that there were two majority-Black districts. The original map only had one such district in a state where a third of the population is Black.
The Supreme Court originally heard the case earlier this year on a narrower set of legal issues but, in a rare move, it asked in June for the parties to reargue it. The court then raised the stakes by asking the lawyers to focus on a larger constitutional issue.
Now, the justices will be deciding whether drawing a map to ensure there are majority-Black districts violates the Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments, which were both enacted after the Civil War to ensure equal rights for former slaves, including the right to vote.
This is interesting:
Conservatives argue that both constitutional amendments prohibit consideration of race at any time. The Supreme Court has previously embraced this “colorblind” interpretation of the Constitution, most notably in its 2023 ruling that ended the consideration of race in college admissions.
Louisiana, which initially defended its new map, has switched sides and joined a group of self-identified “non-African-American” voters who sued to block it on constitutional grounds. The Trump administration also backs the state’s new position.
The map is being defended by civil rights groups that challenged the original map.
A major redistricting case returning to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday could not only determine the fate of the federal Voting Rights Act, but also unlock a path for Republicans to pick up a slew of additional congressional seats.
If the high court overturns the act’s Section 2 — a provision that bans racial discrimination in voting — GOP-controlled states could redraw at least 19 more voting districts for the House of Representatives in favor of Republicans, according to a recent report by the voting rights advocacy groups Black Voters Matter Fund and Fair Fight Action.
And depending on when the court rules in the case, known as Louisiana v. Callais, some number of the seats could be redistricted prior to next year’s midterm election.
The analysis comes as President Trump continues to lead a GOP push for new maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and other states that could help Republicans preserve their slim House majority after the 2026 election.
The GOP effort could be bolstered by a Supreme Court ruling that eliminates longstanding Section 2 protections against the dilution of the collective power of racial minority voters.
Many of the landmark law’s supporters fear such an outcome after the conservative-majority court didn’t rule last term on the Louisiana case, and instead scheduled a rare second round of oral arguments, which is expected to focus on the constitutionality of Section 2’s redistricting requirements.
A ruling gutting Section 2 could have a cascading effect on congressional maps in mostly Southern states where Republicans either control both legislative chambers and the governor’s office or have a veto-proof majority in the legislature — and where voting is racially polarized, with Black voters tending to vote Democratic and white voters tending to vote Republican.
On Monday, Dakinikat posted a story about a 13-year-old Massachusetts boy who was arrested and then taken by ICE to a facility in Virginia. After many people reacted in shock, ICE claimed the boy had a knife and a gun when he was arrested. The local police say he had a knife but no gun.
A vigil was held outside City Hall Tuesday night for a 13-year-old boy who is being held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Virginia after police arrested the armed teen at a bus stop last week while following up on a credible tip about a violent threat against another student.
Officers recovered a 6- to 7-inch, double-sided knife, Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria said at a news conference earlier Tuesday. He said, however, that the teenager did not have a gun, contradicting a report by a Department of Homeland Security official.
In response to questions about how the teenager was handed over to ICE, the mayor also said the Everett Police Department did not contact ICE about the juvenile’s arrest.
“Everett police does not make arrests based on immigration status,” DeMaria said.
Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, posted on social media Monday that the juvenile posed a “public safety threat” and was in possession of a firearm and a large knife when arrested. Everett Police Chief Paul Strong said Tuesday that no firearm was recovered….
The juvenile was booked at the police station on Thursday and then was detained by ICE at the station. He is now being held at the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., according to his family.
A 13-year-old Massachusetts boy is in ICE custody hundreds of miles from home, and trying to figure out how this was allowed to happen has been challenging. A local news story about the ordeal went viral on Sunday, prompting more questions than answers about the conduct of local police, their relationship to federal immigration enforcement and whether the boy’s family even knew he was being taken out of state. While we have some new information, the cloud of confusion remains.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia. (Photo from The Boston Globe)
Here’s what we know at this point: Last Thursday, police in Everett, Massachusetts say the boy made a credible threat of violence against another student in the school district. When officers picked him up at a bus stop outside his school, they allegedly found a knife in his possession. Once the boy was fingerprinted, ICE became aware of the case. According to the Boston Globe, the boy’s mother was called to pick him up after he was arrested, waited for about an hour and a half, and was then told her son was taken by ICE. He was held overnight in a Massachusetts ICE facility and then taken Friday to one in Virginia. We know he came to the US from Brazil and, along with his family, has a pending asylum case.
“I’ve never done a bond or a habeas for a kid this young, ever,” US District Judge Richard G. Stearns said during an emergency habeas corpus hearing Friday filed by a lawyer on behalf of the boy. “This is the youngest.”
Everett is a city of nearly 50,000 people that borders Boston directly to the north. According to the 2010 Census, 33% of residents were born outside of the US. Per the 2020 Census, the city is a little more than 50% white, with a big Hispanic and Latino community, as well as large Italian and Brazilian populations. As people at a city council meeting testified Tuesday night, ICE has had a bombastic presence in the community since the start of the second Trump administration.
Here’s what Kabas was told by a DHS spokesperson:
After I reached out to ICE spokesperson Casey Latimer on Monday regarding the boy taken from Everett, I received a reply from a different spokesperson named James Covington. He wrote “Please see the below from DHS on the 13-year-old alien. Please feel free to direct any questions to them.”
The “below” Covington was referring to was—and bear with me here—a screenshot of an X post from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin who had quote posted Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. Reichlin-Melnick had posted about the story, writing “This makes NO SENSE. A 13-year-old was arrested by local police for unknown reasons, and then turned over to ICE, which is detaining him far away from his mother — who is going through immigration court, has an asylum application on file, and is legally authorized to work.”
Latimer went on to accuse the boy of “an extensive rap sheet” and possessing a gun,” which the local authorities say is not true. So maybe this is a troubled kid, but the local police should be dealing with that, not DHS, especially since his family has an active asylum case.
The Young Republicans are in the news and not in a good way.
Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”
Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.
“Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued.
Two more members of a Young Republican group chat strewn with racist epithets and hateful jokes stepped down from their jobs Tuesday after POLITICO published an exclusive report on the Telegram exchanges.
Bobby Walker and other young Republicans who took part in an epithet-filled Telegram chat are out of jobs after POLITICO began asking questions about their statements.
Peter Giunta’s time working with New York Assemblymember Mike Reilly “has ended,” the Republican lawmaker said. Giunta served as chair of the New York State Young Republicans when the chat took place. Joseph Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for that group, is no longer an employee of the New York State Unified Court System, a courts spokesperson confirmed.
Another chat member, Vermont state Senator Sam Douglass, faced mounting calls for his resignation as well, including from the state’s Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, and Douglass’ fellow Republican lawmakers, who called his statements “deeply disturbing.”
POLITICO’s in-depth look into how one group of Young Republicans spoke privately was met Tuesday with widespread condemnation in New York, Washington and beyond. The members of the chat — 2,900 pages of which were leaked and reviewed by POLITICO — called Black people monkeys, repeatedly used slurs for gay, Black, Latino and Asian people, and jokingly celebrated Adolf Hitler.
In a bipartisan outcry, members of Congress and other political leaders from around the country said they were appalled by the contents of the group chat. The board of directors of the National Young Republicans said every member of the chat “must immediately resign” their state organization.
Trump is destroying the White House. The mess in the oval office can be fixed by a new president and the giant flagpoles could be removed, but what about the huge ballroom he’s building and the proposed Nazi-style victory arch? What about the ruined rose garden? He’s turning the people’s house into Mar-a-Lago north.
Donald Trump is obsessing over remodeling the White House like no other president.
— He has gilded the Oval Office, replaced trees, paved the Rose Garden lawn,hung art and mirrors all over, erected flagpoles and begun work on a $250 million ballroom.
— He’s not done: Trump has had models and dioramas built for other projects he’s considering, and even directed how and where new marble-tiled floors are laid….
Long after Trump has exited the presidency, his imprint will be on the executive mansion in an unprecedented scope and scale — even if a successor removes the Oval Office gold leaf.
What’s next: The president’s wandering architectural eye is now gazing southwest from the White House to land around the Memorial Bridge. He wants to erect a giant arch as a grand entrance into Washington from Arlington National Cemetery.
— “Let’s build something like the Arc de Triomphe in that space, it would be beautiful when you drive or fly in,” Trump told a White House visitor a few weeks ago.
— Trump has three differently sized models of the “Arc de Trump” that he’s been positioning on a map of D.C. to determine the right scale.
— On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social a rendition of the arch by Washington architect Nicolas Leo Charbonneau.
The models for the arch were 3D printed on Trump’s orders by the architects involved in designing the new ballroom. He says it’d be privately funded, along with some of the other projects. The total cost is unclear.
There’s much more horrifying stuff to read at Axios, if you stomach it.
Look inside the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 (from The Palm Beach Post)
Eric Trump is sharing how renovations to the White House are a nod to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump gave a tour to Fox News anchor Steve Doocy of his family’s Florida golf club as he promotes his new book, “Under Siege,” which is out Tuesday. It offers an unfiltered look into the Trump world and criticism against his father, according to the memoir’s synopsis.
Moving throughout the patio and home of the Palm Beach estate, Doocy later admired the “fantastic view” of the beach, while pointing to how the resort displays the same umbrellas from the new Rose Garden.
“Exact same umbrellas as the Rose Garden,” Trump responded on “Fox & Friends.”
He added: “And by the way, that beautiful flag pole right there — the exact same flag pole that we have at the White House. I got a call from my father. He goes, “Honey, I need two great flag poles. I want to donate them to the White House.”
Trump went on to say that “we’re very happy to have the same Mar-a-Lago flagpole on the south and north grounds now.”
The U.S. has lost its last triple-A credit rating.
Moody’s Ratings downgraded the U.S. government on Friday, citing large fiscal deficits and rising interest costs.
Expanding budget deficits mean U.S. government borrowing will rise at an accelerating rate, pushing interest rates up over the long term, Moody’s said. The firm said Friday that it didn’t believe that any current budget proposals under consideration by lawmakers would do anything significant to reduce the persistent gap between government spending and revenues.
The move strips the U.S. of its last remaining triple-A credit rating from a major ratings firm, following similar cuts by Fitch Ratings in 2023 and S&P Global Ratings in 2011. Moody’s downgraded the U.S. to Aa1, a rating also held by Austria and Finland.
“Successive U.S. administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,” Moody’s wrote in a statement….
The Moody’s downgrade comes as Republicans in Congress are trying to fashion a giant tax-and-spending bill that would extend expiring tax cuts, add some new tax cuts, reduce spending on Medicaid and nutrition assistance and boost border enforcement and national defense. It is expected to increase budget deficits by about $3 trillion over the next decade, compared with a scenario where the tax cuts expire as scheduled Dec. 31.
House Republican spending hawks blocked the bill on Friday, trying to accelerate spending cuts and hasten the end of clean-energy tax breaks.
A bit more:
At the margin, the Moody’s downgrade could put pressure on the market for U.S. Treasurys, which has already been hit by expectations for greater borrowing and stubbornly high inflation.
Treasurys, however, rallied after S&P’s 2011 downgrade, in part because the economy was weak, demonstrating that investors still considered the U.S. the world’s safest bet. Few expect the Moody’s downgrade to spur market turmoil this time. The U.S. remains the world’s largest economy and the benchmark against which other countries are measured.
But some investors said the downgrade could exacerbate the damage the recent trade war has done to that exceptional position. And that might compel global investors to lift the premium they demand to buy U.S. debt, which could drive benchmark yields beyond their recent level around 4.5%, likely stressing growth and market sentiment.
“That could generate an even bigger deficit because the cost of servicing our debt would also go up,” said Michael Goosay, global head of fixed income at Principal Asset Management.
Obviously, Trump couldn’t care less about what happens to the U.S. credit rating. He’s just going to bleed the country dry and grab as much has he can while doing it.
Ultra right wing members of the House budget committee voted against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” yesterday.
The GOP-led House Budget Committee voted to reject a sweeping package for President Donald Trump’s agenda on Friday, dealing an embarrassing setback to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Republican leaders.
A glass of milk, Nataliya Bagatskaya, (Ucraina, b.1967)
The vote in the Budget Committee was 16-21, with a band of conservative hard-liners who are pushing for steeper spending cuts joining all Democrats in voting against the multitrillion-dollar legislation, leaving its fate uncertain.
The Republicans who voted “no” were Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma. Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania changed his vote from “yes” to “no,” he said, as a procedural move to allow Republicans to call the bill up again.
During the hearing, Roy fired a warning shot at Republican leaders, saying he opposes the bill as written because it will increase the deficit.
“I have to now admonish my colleagues on this side of the aisle. This bill falls profoundly short. It does not do what we say it does with respect to deficits,” Roy said. “That’s the truth. Deficits will go up in the first half of the 10-year budget window and we all know it’s true. And we shouldn’t do that. We shouldn’t say that we’re doing something we’re not doing.”
“This bill has back-loaded savings and has front-loaded spending,” Roy added. “I am a no on this bill unless serious reforms are made today, tomorrow, Sunday. Something needs to change or you’re not gonna get my support.”
After the vote tally was read, Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the committee chair, adjourned the hearing and told members they would not be meeting again this weekend.
President Donald Trump blasted Walmart on Saturday after the retailer warned this week that it will raise prices because of tariffs.
“Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS,” and not charge valued customers ANYTHING,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”
Walmart CFO John David Rainey said in an interview on Thursday that “We have not seen price increases at this magnitude, in the speed in which they’re coming at us before, and so it makes for a challenging environment.”
Rainey said he is “pleased with the progress that’s been made by the [Trump] administration on tariffs from the levels that were announced in early April, but they’re still too high.”
He said the company will “try to work with suppliers to keep prices as low as we can.”
Yesterday the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Trump administration’s deportation plans.
The Supreme Court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump from moving forward with deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act for a group of immigrants in northern Texas, siding with Venezuelans who feared they were poised for imminent removal under the sweeping wartime authority.
The decision is a significant loss for Trump, who wants to use the law to speed deportations – and avoid the kind of review normally required before removing people from the country. But the decision is also temporary and the underlying legal fight over the president’s invocation will continue in multiple federal courts across the country.
By Sandra Batoni
The justices sent the case at issue back to an appeals court to decide the underlying questions in the case, including whether the president’s move is legal and, if it is, how much notice the migrants targeted under the act should receive….
The court’s unsigned opinion was notably pointed about how the government was attempting to handle the removals and also how US District Judge James Hendrix had dealt with the case at an earlier stage.
The court referenced another case that had reached it previously, that of the Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly removed to El Salvador. The court noted that the Trump administration has represented that it is “unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador.”
Given that, the court said, “the detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty.” In other words, the court was saying it is important to get the legal questions correct before people are removed, potentially, forever.
Way back on <checks notes> Wednesday, I wrote a long post updating the state of play in the (many) cases challenging President Trump’s attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove from the United States, on a mass, summary basis, individuals the government claims to be Venezuelan members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA)….
As I noted then, the Supreme Court had yet to decide the ACLU’s pending emergency application in the case from the Northern District of Texas—with the unhelpful caption “A.A.R.P. v. Trump.” That’s the case in which the Court had temporarily blocked further removals in its after-midnight ruling early on Saturday, April 19 (which I covered here). But a full ruling on the application has been pending ever since.
Well, around 3:45 on Friday afternoon, that ruling came down. And the decision—in “A.A.R.P. II”—is a pretty big deal. So I thought I’d put together this quick post that walks through what happened—and why it matters….
What Did the Court … Hold? There’s a lot of technical stuff in the eight-page, unsigned majority opinion.1 What’s especially important are, by my count, three different holdings: First, that the Fifth Circuit did have jurisdiction to hear the plaintiffs’ appeal of the district court’s refusal to block their removal (it had concluded otherwise). Second, that the plaintiffs were entitled to more notice than they had received as of April 18. And third—and this is the quiet bombshell in the ruling—that “this Court may properly issue temporary injunctive relief to the putative class in order to preserve our jurisdiction pending appeal,” even without resolving whether full class certification is likely….
The post is pretty technical, so if you want the details, read the whole thing at the link. I’ll just quote one more section:
Is It Me, Or is the Majority Opinion … Unusually Pointed? It’s not you. There are at different passages in which the majority openly seems to be expressing … frustration … with the government; the lower courts; and Justice Alito (who wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justice Thomas), respectively.
It appears that at least some of the justices are getting sick and tired of the Trump administration’s dishonesty and refusal to obey the courts.
GREENBELT, Md. — In a contentious court hearing on Friday, Trump administration attorneys argued before a federal judge in Maryland that they should be allowed to withhold information regarding efforts to facilitate the return of a Salvadoran man to the United States.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains in the Salvadoran prison system despite orders from a federal judge and the Supreme Court calling for the government to facilitate his return to the United States.
Drawing of old woman with cat, Max Leibermann
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said the government’s refusal to provide certain information in the case has been “an exercise in utter frustration.” In a back-and-forth that has continued for weeks,Xinis has ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release and provide documentation on what steps it has taken, if any, to comply with that order.
Government lawyers said the administration has not been able to answer questions about Abrego Garcia’s case because that information would be considered protected under “state secrets” or “deliberative process” privileges that should not be shared with the public.
On Friday, Xinis said the administration has not made a good-faith effort to comply with the court order. She repeatedly called on the administration to show how turning over evidence of actions it has taken or will take to return Abrego Garcia would pose a reasonable danger to foreign affairs.
“There is simply no detail. This is basically, ‘Take my word for it,’” the judge said.
From Garcia’s attorneys:
Abrego Garcia’s team said the discovery they’ve received from the government thus far has been inadequate, and Xinis appeared to agree. The plaintiffs said they received 164 documents, and 132 of them were photocopies of court filings and their own discovery requests. Rossman said that of the remaining 32 new documents, half were related to Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s recent trip to El Salvador to see Abrego Garcia.
Rossman said the government logged 1,140 documents as “privileged,” in “every manner of privilege that I’ve ever heard of.”
“My head is spinning, your honor,” he said.
Rossman also said it was “deeply disturbing” that while the administration has claimed in court that it’s complying with the order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release, high-ranking officials including Trump himself have contradicted that in public.
The administration’s claims, Xinis says, have been hampering efforts to get to the bottom of whether the government has disobeyed the court order by not facilitating the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States.
When a Guatemalan man sued the Trump administration in March for deporting him to Mexico despite a fear of persecution, immigration officials had a response: The man told them himself he was not afraid to be sent there.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials now say they have no record of anyone being told by the man, identified only by the initials O.C.G. in court papers, that he was unafraid of going to Mexico. The error, they say, was attributable to a “software tool” known as ICE’s “ENFORCE alien removal module” that tracks individual deportation cases and allows staff to insert comments.
“Upon further investigation … ICE was unable to identify an officer or officers who asked O.C.G. if he feared a return to Mexico,” said Brian Ortega, assistant field office director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, in a sworn statement to the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit.
The mistake may have been costly: The judge overseeing the lawsuit said last month he did not order the administration to facilitate O.C.G.’s immediate return from Mexico in part because of the dispute. Instead, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, a Biden appointee based in Massachusetts, ordered expedited fact-finding, which helped unearth the mistake.
ICE’s acknowledgment is the latest in a string of errors that have led judges to fault the administration for attempting to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign at a breakneck pace — often at the expense of due process.
The U.S. DOGE Service arrived at the Social Security Administration this year determined to slash staff and root out what it claimed was widespread fraud and wasteful spending — a mission Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team has pursued across the government.
But as of this week, many of the major changes DOGE pushed at Social Security have been abandoned or are being reversed after proving ineffective, while others are yielding unintended consequences and badly damaging customer service and satisfaction. The problems come as the agency struggles to cope with a record surge of hundreds of thousands of retirement claims in recent months.
DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency but is not a Cabinet-level agency, had to cancela plan to cut phone service for retirement and disability claimsafter drawing outrage from lawmakers, seniors and advocates. Staff reductions and reassignments led by DOGE are slowing the pace of claims processingas field offices lose longtime staff and gain a smaller number of inexperienced replacements. DOGE-driven changes to the agency’s website are causing crashes almost every day, and phone customers complain about dropped calls and long wait times. A DOGE-imposed spending freeze is leading to shortages of basic office supplies, from printer cartridges to the phone headsets staff need to do their jobs.
And on Friday, Social Security leaders told employees that the agency was ending a security check, developed at DOGE’s request, that was meant to root out allegedly fraudulent claims filed over the phone, according to three employees familiar with the situation and an email obtained by The Washington Post. But the measure — which involved placing a three-day hold on all phone claims as other staffers checked into the caller’s background — had only identified a couple of potential fraud cases while causing significant delays in claims processing, two employees said.
Kathleen Romig, a former Social Security official who is now at the left-leaningCenter on Budget and Policy Priorities, said there were already safeguards in place to detect fraud through the agency’s phone service. DOGE’s efforts have only delayed claims processing and, like most of the team’s attempts to reshape Social Security, placed serious stress on the agency, she said.
“So much of this is self-inflicted wounds,” Romig said.
At the National Institutes of Health, six directors — from institutes focused on infectious disease, child health, nursing research and the human genome — are leaving or being forced out.
t the Federal Aviation Administration, nearly a dozen top leaders, including the chief air traffic officer, are retiring early.
Siesta, Irina Orazio Orazi (Italian, 1848-1912)
And at the Treasury Department, more than 200 experienced managers and highly skilled technical experts who help run the government’s financial systems chose to accept the Trump administration’s resignation offer earlier this year, according to a staffer and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Across the federal government, a push for early retirement and voluntary separation is fueling a voluntary exodus of experienced, knowledgeable staffers unlike anything in living memory, according to interviews with 18 employees across 10 agencies and records reviewed by The Post. Other leaders with decades of service are being dismissed as the administration eliminates full offices or divisions at a time.
The first resignation offer, sent in January, saw 75,000 workers across government agree to quit and keep drawing pay through September, the administration has said. But a second round, rolling out agency by agency through the spring, is seeing a sustained, swelling uptick that will dwarf the first, potentially climbing into the hundreds of thousands, the employees and the records show.
There’s no way I’m trusting anything this government has to say about health and safety.
I’ll wrap this up with a couple of ridiculous stories:
Former FBI Director James Comey was interviewed by US Secret Service agents at their Washington, DC, field office on Friday afternoon, according to law enforcement sources.
Comey was interviewed by agents investigating a social media post he posted Thursdayshowing shells in the sand on a beach spelling out “86 47,” which has become a popular social media code for removing Trump from the presidency.
Comey was not in custody and appeared voluntarily, a source said.
Trump and fellow Republicans have attacked Comey for the post, demanding an investigation.
Comey “knew exactly what that meant,” Trump said in a Fox News interview. “A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination.”
In explaining why he removed the post, Comey wrote on Instagram that he had “posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message.”
It was expected that Comey will be asked if he intended the message as a threat, or to inspire others who might consider an act of violence against Trump, the source said. Ultimately, a decision on whether the case is chargeable as a threat against the president may lie with the US attorney in Washington.
Funny how no Trumpers were interviewed by the FBI when they posted 86 46 when Biden was president.
Figure with Black Cat, 2020 by Mary Sauer (American, b. 1986)
“I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States,” Trump wrote, glossing over the fact that he, too, is currently in a foreign country speaking badly about someone.
Trump also called Springsteen “a pushy, obnoxious JERK” without a hint of self-awareness.
Springsteen opened the first show of his tour with an unambiguous rallying cry for democracy, warning that America “is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”
“Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us,” he said. “Raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
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Redistricting could change the House Map. This is the next question the article addresses.
Khaya Himmelman has more information about the Virginia situation in 
G. Elliott Morris has an analysis up today that breaks down the statistical assumptions the Supreme Court used. This comes from his site 
This is the decision that will dilute the vote of New Orleans and every black citizen of Louisiana. Again,
This is from 
Speaking of authorities that rest solely with Congress, Trump is still brooding about declaring War on Iran. This is from Michelle Goldberg writing for the 
If Trump isn’t bad enough, he has a cabinet that’s equally incompetent and dangerous. This is yet another 
Esquire’
The economy remains sluggish, with high prices. 
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