Wednesday Reads: What a Mess Trump Has Made of Our Beloved Country!

Posted: May 27, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Good Day!!

We’re moving closer to the midterm elections. Yesterday, there were some important primaries in Texas. Another of Trump’s enemies–John Cornyn–went down in flames, and now he’ll join other losers like Bill Cassidy who are now free to criticize his policies. Is it possible that Texas could turn purple in 2026? Here’s the latest:

Shane Goldmacher at The New York Times (gift article): Cornyn Crushed: 7 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Runoffs in Texas.

Ken Paxton, the Trump-endorsed and MAGA-backed insurgent, ousted Senator John Cornyn in a runoff on Tuesday, becoming the second primary challenger to knock out an incumbent Republican senator in less than two weeks in a raw display of President Trump’s powerful hold on the party base.

Texas Senator John Cornyn

The contest was the most expensive primary in American history — and Mr. Paxton prevailed despite being outspent on advertising by pro-Cornyn forces by roughly $80 million.

Now, Republicans are bracing for a potentially competitive general election in Texas, where Democrats have not won statewide in a generation. Democratic donors nationwide have swooned for their nominee, James Talarico, a smooth-talking 37-year-old seminarian and state legislator, in the hopes he will realize their long-dashed dreams of turning Texas blue.

National Republicans have warned for months that Mr. Paxton’s scandal-riddled past could put the Republican-held seat in jeopardy. But G.O.P. primary voters proved on Tuesday that they were in no mood for political guidance from Mr. Cornyn or a much-reviled party establishment.

The scope of his defeat was staggering. Mr. Cornyn, once the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, was trailing in nearly all of Texas’ 254 counties.

Here are Goldmacher’s takeways from the election. You can read more details on each with the gift link above.

Read more details at the link.

Commentary on the Texas elections:

Matthew Choi at The Washington Post (gift article): Why some Republicans are worried about Ken Paxton as a Senate nominee.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the Republican Senate primary in his state Tuesday night, ousting incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.

Paxton excited President Trump and his MAGA base. But many Republican leaders and strategists are worried.

Few politicians have garnered as much scandal in Texas as Paxton. He was impeached by the Republican-controlled state House on multiple charges of abuse of office. His own senior staffers reported him to the FBI, alleging he illegally used his position to help a prominent donor. His wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year on “biblical grounds,” citing adultery.

Ken Paxton

And yet, Paxton has repeatedly come out on top. The state Senate acquitted him on all charges, and the FBI dropped its investigation. Paxton won reelection for his current job twice and defeated Cornyn, one of the best-funded Republicans in the country, with a fraction of the resources and institutional support.

Senate Republicans are now nervous they’ll have to pour boatloads of cash into the race to prop up Paxton against state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic candidate in the race. Talarico has blown past fundraising records for a contest that is likely to break spending records.

Why is Paxton so controversial?

The state House impeached Paxton in 2023 on overwhelmingly bipartisan grounds, with 60 Republicans joining 61 Democrats. Only 21 Republicans voted against impeachment charges.

The charges stemmed from his relationship with Nate Paul, a real estate developer and political donor. Paxton allegedly ordered his employees to improperly intervene in Paul’s legal troubles. Paul allegedly provided Paxton free services including a home renovation and a job for a woman with whom Paxton was allegedly having an extramarital affair. Paxton was also charged with retaliating against whistleblowers on his staff who had reported his conduct to the FBI in 2020.

Paxton was tried on 16 charges in the Senate, which acquitted him on all of them. His wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, was part of the Senate jury, though she was not allowed to vote.

The Justice Department continued investigating the allegations made by his senior staff to the FBI but closed its investigation at the end of the Biden administration.

Paxton was also indicted on felony securities fraud charges just after becoming attorney general in 2015. He was charged, as a state senator, with defrauding his fellow lawmakers by encouraging them to invest in Servergy, a tech company where he was secretly making a commission on their investments. He agreed to settle the case in 2024, paying $300,000 in restitution, though he never admitted to any wrongdoing. That case was unrelated to his impeachment.

It’s hard to believe this guy is still in office. But Trump likes him, and I guess that’s enough for Texas Republican voters.

Karen Tumulty at The Washington Post (gift article): Trump is liberating his Republican critics in Congress.

President Donald Trump proved once again that his endorsement is, as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton put it in his primary runoff victory speech Tuesday night, “the most powerful force in politics.”

One by one, Trump is putting an end to the political careers of lawmakers in his party that he deems, for reasons more personal than policy-oriented, to be apostates. But in doing so, he may also be liberating them as they serve out their remaining seven months in Congress. They now have nothing to lose if they stand up against him.

By giving belated independence to a handful of incumbents he vanquished at the ballot box or forced into retirement, the president is creating a growingly noxious dynamic between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Thom Tillis

“It’s hard for me to see how the president is going to get his agenda through the Senate in the next seven months if he keeps purging Republican senators who support him,” former senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) told CBS News last week. “… I think Republican senators will find they can say what they think and the country will be better off if they do.”

In his Trump-engineered defeat, Sen. John Cornyn joins a club of two other Republicans in the chamber, where their party holds a 53-47 majority. The other two are already expressing resistance to the president’s dictates.

One is Thom Tillis (North Carolina). Under a barrage of Trump attacks for opposing parts of the president’s agenda — including the sprawling One Big Beautiful Bill that was its domestic centerpiece — Tillis announced his retirement last year rather than making what was deemed to be a hopeless bid for a third term.

Tillis has since become a regular Trump critic. He has criticized the Justice Department’s recently announced “anti-weaponization fund,” which could allow the Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to receive taxpayer dollars, as “stupid on stilts” and said: “These people don’t deserve restitution. Many of them deserve to be in prison.”

Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), who failed to even make the runoff in his party’s May 16 primary, voted for the first time a few days later to advance a resolution to block Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran without congressional authorization.

If you want to read more, you can use the gift link above. I’m using up my gift articles because it’s close to the end of the month.

Paxton will now face Democrat James Talarico in November.

Adam Wren and Irie Sentner at Politico: James Talarico’s theory of victory in Texas.

In the end, James Talarico and Democrats got the matchup they had been salivating over for months.

Within two hours of Ken Paxton’s GOP primary win on Tuesday, Talarico had hauled in $600,000 — the strongest two hours of his entire campaign. Recent internal polling from a pro-Talarico PAC shows the Democrat has a 7-point lead against Paxton. Both figures were shared first with POLITICO.

In an interview, Talarico said he’s confident about his chances.

But Talarico faces a Texas-sized challenge to finally deliver on Democrats’ long-held fantasy of flipping the state, just two years after Trump won it by 14 points….

James Talarico

Talarico said Tuesday night that to win in November, he must convert supporters of Sen. John Cornyn — a conservative by almost any metric, except Trump’s. After Cornyn conceded, Talarico thanked the four-term incumbent for his service and told his supporters “you have a place in our campaign.”

It’s all part of his general election pitch, which Talarico outlined in the interview following Paxton’s primary win.

“I have a legislative record that I think has a lot to offer supporters of Senator Cornyn. Ken Paxton has a criminal record. I have a legislative record,” Talarico told POLITICO (Paxton struck a deal in 2024 where he paid restitution and securities fraud felony charges were dropped). He emphasized his history reaching across the aisle “to cut property taxes and raise teacher pay and lower the cost of housing and child care and prescription drugs,” and touted his willingness to break with Democrats on issues including energy and the border that are important in Texas.

“I’ve called out the extremes in both parties, on the right and left, and as you know, called out President Biden for failing to secure our southern border,” he said. “I’ve pushed back against national Democrats who want to hurt the Texas oil and gas industry and so I think that Texans are looking for a senator who is going to be independent, who’s not going to serve a political party, not going to serve any special interests or megadonors, but who’s going to serve people of Texas.”

We’ll have to wait and see. The dream of Texas going blue again has been with us for a long time, but so far it hasn’t come close to happening.

New York Times elections expert Nate Cohn thinks it could happen (gift article): A Blue Texas May Be More Than a Dream for Democrats.

Could Texas really turn blue in 2026?

While it’s tempting to be skeptical, a blue Texas is increasingly easy to imagine. It’s even easier to imagine after Ken Paxton’s victory over John Cornyn, the incumbent senator, in the Republican primary runoff on Tuesday night.

That’s partly because Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general, has distinct political liabilities. He’s faced investigation, indictment, impeachment and a messy public divorce.

But there’s another reason Democrats might pull off a statewide win for the first time in three decades: demographics. Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country, and national polls show Democrats surging back in support among young and nonwhite voters — and especially Hispanic voters.

On paper, these national demographic trends ought to send Texas racing toward the left and into contention. Add in Mr. Paxton’s nomination and you can start to see how Democrats could flip Texas this fall.

After a decade of big talk from Democrats about Texas, it’s understandable that people could harbor some doubt about flipping the nation’s largest red state. Judging by presidential election results, Democrats barely made any progress at all: President Trump won Texas by almost 14 percentage points in 2024.

But beneath the state’s stable Republican voting record, extraordinary demographic shifts have put Texas Republicans in a much more vulnerable position. To an extent few would have imagined a decade ago, Texas’ status as a reliably Republican state now depends on elevated levels of support among Hispanic voters.

Read more at the gift link.

Let’s face it. Democrats have to take back the House if we are to have any hope of impeaching Trump. They need to take the Senate too, but even if that happens, they won’t have the votes to remove him. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to impeach him. Democrats need to do everything in their power to weaken Trump, because he obviously has no plans to leave the White House unless he is dragged out or carried out on a stretcher.

Iran war news:

The Trump administration and the Iran government disagree about what is in their supposed peace agreement.

Erika Solomon, Sanam Mahoozi, and Leo Sands: What Iranian State Media Says Is in Outline of ‘Unofficial’ Deal With U.S.

Iranian state television on Wednesday released what it said were details of “an initial, unofficial document” outlining the framework for an agreement between Iran and the United States that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic.

The White House immediately dismissed the report as a “complete fabrication,” and it was not clear whether the United States and Iran were any closer to an agreement.

Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB, said that under the framework, Iran would allow shipping to resume through the strait in return for an end to the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports. For days, the two sides have been alternating between renewing hostilities and issuing positive signals.

In its framing of the draft, the broadcaster presented it as a broad victory for Iran while cautioning that it was not final.

The report said that, under the agreement, commercial marine traffic would return to prewar levels within a month of the framework’s implementation. It also said that Iran would handle the strait’s management in cooperation with the Gulf state of Oman, a U.S. ally.

A bit more:

The reopening of the strait was the only one of the five main sticking points in negotiations that was mentioned in the brief report. The waterway is a crucial route for the world’s oil and gas that Iran has effectively closed since March. There was no reference to the future of Iran’s nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium

The report said the framework included a U.S. pledge to “withdraw its military forces from the areas surrounding Iran” without specifying the geographic area included. The United States has a number of military sites in neighboring Iraq and nearby Gulf countries.

“Whether this includes forces newly deployed to the region or only permanent base personnel remains subject to negotiation,” the report said.

Trump called a cabinet meeting to discuss the situation.

Iranian state television said Wednesday that it had obtained a draft of a preliminary deal with the United States, which the White House quickly dismissed as untrue, calling the described memorandum a “complete fabrication” amid tense negotiations.

Trump speaks at cabinet meeting he called to discuss the Iran a proposed agreement with Iran.

According to the reported draft, Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial marine traffic in return for the United States lifting its naval blockade. Iran’s broadcaster projected the “initial, unofficial” 14-point agreement as one in which Iran “cemented its power in the Strait,” while laying out a potential path to peace with the United States.

President Trump dismissed the idea of letting Russia or China take control of Iran’s nuclear stockpiles.

“No, that would not make me comfortable,” he said, when asked if he could accept that step….

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sitting next to the president at the cabinet meeting, also did not offer details on the negotiations with Iran. “I think there’s been some progress and some interest, and we’ll see over the next few hours and days whether progress could be made,” he said. Rubio said that diplomacy was the administration’s preference but added, “You have other options available to you if that doesn’t work.”

What a mess Trump has created!

Some of the current messes:

AP: ICE detainees are dying by suicide at an ‘alarming’ rate, an AP investigation finds.

Brayan Rayo Garzon was distraught. Detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was on his fourth day of isolation in a Missouri jail as he battled the fevers and chills of COVID-19.

His request for mental health treatment had been put off, records show, and staff had forbidden Rayo from making his nightly call to his mother as a precaution intended to prevent the spread of illness.

This photo provided by the Missouri State Highway Patrol shows a note written in Spanish by Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee Brayan Rayo Garzon asking for a phone call with his mother before he committed suicide.

He pleaded with his jailers in handwritten notes to arrange a conversation with her. “I feel in my heart that she’s very worried about me,” he wrote in Spanish.

A guard collected the note and walked away. Within an hour, jail records show, he was found unconscious in his cell. An autopsy determined he killed himself.

Rayo’s April 2025 death was the first suicide in a spike among ICE detainees that has alarmed public health officials and jail experts. They said the unprecedented number of suicide deaths is an indication that authorities are failing to properly oversee the detention of tens of thousands of immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy.

The Daily Beast: Snubbed Trump’s Petty Revenge Plot Is Revealed.

Donald Trump is pulling out bombers and warships set aside to help NATO, according to a report.

The president is also planning to withdraw fighter jets and refueling aircraft, after becoming incensed by European allies’ refusal to back his war in Iran, Der Spiegel reported.

An envoy of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Alexander Velez-Green, informed senior officials from NATO member states of the withdrawal at a meeting last week in Brussels, Belgium, according to the German outlet.

The number of fighter jets will reduced by a third and the number of strategic bombers halved, Der Spiegel reported.

All submarines will be pulled out, and the destroyer count will also be reduced.

Putin must be thrilled.

The New York Times: Trump Administration to Send Americans Exposed to Ebola to Kenya.

The Trump administration plans to send to Kenya U.S. citizens exposed to the Ebola virus rather than bring them home for observation and treatment, according to three people with knowledge of the plans.

The approach is a stark contrast to the way previous administrations responded to outbreaks, during which health care workers and other U.S. citizens exposed to the virus were brought home to be treated at specialized medical units. The administration this month flew an American doctor who developed symptoms to a hospital in Germany, and transported six other Americans for monitoring in Germany and the Czech Republic.

Ebola virus

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is estimated to have ballooned to more than 1,000 cases and more than 200 deaths in just the 11 days since it was first announced, making it the third largest on record already. Aid cuts by the Trump administration shut down crucial disease surveillance networks and medical supply chains that might have detected and contained the epidemic sooner.

Last week, the Trump administration invoked a public health law known as Title 42 to bar immigrants and legal permanent residents who had been in Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the previous 21 days from entering the United States.

The administration’s new plan would also keep U.S. citizens who might have been exposed to Ebola out of the country, according to two of the people with knowledge of the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

A few dozen Public Health Service officers are now being trained to deploy to Kenya to provide medical care to Americans who are deemed at high risk of developing Ebola. The initial plan was to monitor those Americans in Kenya, but to move anyone who started to show symptoms for treatment in Europe.

Because we no longer have a real CDC, and Trump, Musk, and RFK, Jr. fired all the disease experts.

The administration is looking for volunteers (!) to screen for Ebola cases at airports. Reuters: US CDC seeks staff for Ebola screening as outbreak response expands.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has asked staff to volunteer for urgent deployment to support Ebola screening at ​the country’s entry points, according to an email seen by ‌Reuters on Tuesday.

CDC Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya said in the email that the agency had activated a Level 2 emergency response on May 18 to an ​outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus in the ​Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and was ⁠expanding recruitment beyond its usual emergency responder pool as screening of ​selected international arrivals ramps up.

Level 2 is an intermediate level of emergency ​response. It indicates a need for substantial additional staffing to meet response demands, according to the CDC’s website.

The CDC said enhanced screening operations are already under way ​at several port health stations and will require additional personnel. Staff ​across roles, including public health advisers, emergency specialists and licensed medical providers, are being ‌asked ⁠to support the effort, subject to supervisor approval.

Volunteers could be tasked with monitoring incoming travelers for signs of illness, checking temperatures and referring suspected cases for further assessment, according to the email.

Unbelievable. Ebola remains dormant for weeks after exposure. What if people don’t report exposures or don’t realize they’ve been exposed? We’re going to have a lot of Ebola cases here, aren’t we?

One more from The Guardian: UFC arena under construction on White House lawn to mark Trump’s 80th birthday.

Construction is under way on the White House lawn for an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) arena that will host a cage match next month to mark the US’s 250th anniversary and Donald Trump’s 80th birthday.

The mixed martial arts fight is planned for 14 June.

Photos of cranes and other construction equipment on the White House lawn on Tuesday showed the beginnings of the temporary construction. Trump has said that the finished project will feature “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House”.

Online renderings depict what the completed, wire-mesh-fence-ringed fight space is expected to look like. The octagon-shaped cage will be ringed by a red, white and blue stage under a towering arch featuring stars and stripes patterns and two large screens carrying the action live.

The cage and stage will themselves be surrounded by thousands of temporary seats, including ringside space for a full marching band that can set the entire scene to blaring music.

In December, Trump said the White House event would host “eight or nine championship fights – the biggest fights they’ve ever had”. But like the size of the crowd, the number of fights expected to be held on the White House

lawn has shrunk. The fight card includes two title fights: a lightweight championship fight between Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje in the main event, and an interim heavyweight title fight between Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane.

This is beyond disgusting. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

I’ll end there, even though there are plenty more Trump messes that someone will have to clean up. Hang in there everyone. We can and will survive!

Wednesday Reads

Posted: March 4, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Good Day!!

Where to begin? Once again, there’s just too much news to deal with in a blog post. Today’s top stories, as I see it: Trump’s Iran war continues and threatens to spin out of control; Hegseth and some military leaders are pushing an appalling Christian nationalist agenda to our troops; there were important primary elections yesterday in Texas, North Carolina, and Arkansas; and the Epstein files story is still alive and well. I can’t get to everything, but here are the stories that caught my attention this morning.

The Shuaiba Port in Al-Shu’aybah, Kuwait on Nov. 4, 2022. (Spc. Ryan Scribner, U.S. Army National Guard)

The six U.S. Soldiers who were killed in Kuwait were in a makeshift building that was not fortified against aerial attacks. The latest on that from The Washington Post: U.S. troops had little protection from drone strike that killed 6, imagery shows.

The six U.S. service members killed in an Iranian drone attack over the weekend were working in a tactical operations center in Kuwait that offered little protection from overhead strikes, according to imagery, experts and officials….

The slain troops were part of a logistical support unit working at the Shuaiba port, a civilian port on the Persian Gulf. The attack occurred on Sunday, officials said. By 11 a.m. that morning, thick smoke was spewing from a building in a complex east of the waterfront, satellite imagery shows.

The building that was struck — a prefabricated, triple-wide trailer-style structure — was flanked by tall concrete barriers to protect against ground threats, said Sean O’Connor, a satellite imagery analyst with Janes. But it “possessed limited defenses able to protect it from a ballistic missile or drone strike,” lacking overhead protection to defend against the main threats to U.S. bases in the Middle East, he said.

The Army’s counter-drone manual, updated last year, makes clear that troops and commanders should assess which sites are likely to be attacked and build overhead protection, which often includes steel reinforced roofs and coverings. Protecting important structures like operations centers helps shield from enemy observation and limits “the damaging effects of an aerial attack,” the manual says. Images show that the building struck in the attack was not protected by such structures.

A 2021 photo of the building struck Sunday shows it had what looks like a thin metal rooftop. It is unclear what if any additional layers of materials or reinforcement existed underneath. The building does not appear to have meaningfully changed since at least 2009, and no additional fortifications appear to have been added after President Donald Trump announced in January that he intended to send U.S. forces to the region, according to a Post review of archival imagery and analysts.

More from The Daily Beast:  U.S. Troops Died in Triple-Wide Trailer Pentagon Pete Called ‘Fortified.’

The six U.S. service members confirmed dead in the U.S.-Iran conflict were killed while inside a triple-wide trailer that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had described as “fortified.”

This undated photo provided by Joey Amor shows Nicole Amor, left, and Joey Amor smiling for a photo. (Joey Amor via AP) Nicole was one of the sex soldiers killed in the drone strike.

The trailer, which served as a makeshift operations center, took a direct hit amid Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Kuwait just after 9 a.m. local time Sunday morning, CNN reported. U.S. Central Command said 18 troops have also been seriously wounded, with others suffering minor shrapnel wounds and concussions.

Military officials had questioned the safety of the operations center even before the strike, according to CBS News. The fortifications used to protect the facility only covered the walls but did nothing to shield the top of the building from an overhead strike, which is what apparently killed the six service members.

A source told CNN there was no warning of the attack that struck the port in Kuwait, and no siren was activated to alert troops to evacuate amid the incoming projectile. There were dozens of people inside the building at the time.

The walls of the building were blown outwards in the blast, according to pictures of the site, with a fire still burning hours afterward.

Early on Monday, before the bodies of two service members were recovered, Hegseth had said that “one” projectile made it through air defenses and hit a “tactical operation center that was fortified.”

This makes me sick. Trump doesn’t care about our troops,  and I guess Hegseth doesn’t either.

The UK has been flying their people out of the Middle East, but the U.S. government helping it’s citizens.

Business Insider: Multiple US embassies are telling Americans they cannot evacuate or help them get out of the Middle East.

American citizens across the Middle East are attempting to follow official advice and evacuate as conflict escalates in the region following US and Israeli attacks on Iran on Saturday.

But multiple US embassies have said they are unable to help citizens trying to leave.

“The US Embassy is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel,” the US Embassy in Jerusalem said in a post on X on Tuesday.

The embassy shared that the Israeli Ministry of Tourism was operating shuttles to a border crossing between Egypt and Israel at the town of Taba.”If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the US government cannot guarantee your safety,” said the US embassy, adding that they were sharing the information “as a courtesy to those wishing to leave Israel.”President Donald Trump was asked in the Oval Office on Tuesday why evacuations hadn’t been planned beforehand, and whether he would charter planes to evacuate Americans from the region.Trump largely didn’t address the question, other than to note how quickly the conflict broke out.”It happened all very quickly,” Trump said. “I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked.”
They’ve been preparing for this war for months, with a huge military buildup in the region. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for DOGE to fire all those people from the State Department.

Dakinikat called my attention to this story. JJ also posted about it in a comment yesterday. I knew that the military has been infected with right wing Christian propaganda, I still found this shocking.

This is  from Jonathan Larson’s Substack: U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus.

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.

From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

Iran war and Christian nationalist armageddon?

The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.

The MRFF is keeping the complainants anonymous to prevent retribution by the Defense Department. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to my request for comment.

One complainant identified themselves as a non-commissioned officer (NCO) in a unit currently outside the Iran combat zone but in Ready-Support status, deployable at any time. The NCO said they were Christian and emailed the MRFF on behalf of 15 troops, including at least 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew. (Full email printed below.)

The NCO wrote to the MRFF that their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

One complainant identified themselves as a non-commissioned officer (NCO) in a unit currently outside the Iran combat zone but in Ready-Support status, deployable at any time. The NCO said they were Christian and emailed the MRFF on behalf of 15 troops, including at least 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew. (Full email printed below.)

The NCO wrote to the MRFF that their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

I hope you’ll go read the rest at the link. I noticed this story is beginning to show up in mainstream news outlets. This was published in The Guardian today: US troops were told war on Iran was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’, watchdog alleges.

US military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical “end times” to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) says it has received more than 200 complaints from service members across all branches of the armed forces, including the marines, air force and space force.

One complainant, identified as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in a unit that could be deployed “at any moment to join” operations against Iran, told MRFF in a complaint viewed by the Guardian that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ”.

“He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal “He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’”, the NCO added.

The Guardian credited the story by Jonathan Larson above.

Two more Iran stories:

Politico: Europe braces as Iran threatens to attack.

LONDON — The Iranian regime is warning it will attack European cities in any country that joins Donald Trump’s military operation and governments across the region are stepping up security in response.

So far, Iranian drones have already targeted Cyprus, with one striking a British Royal Air Force base on the island, and others shot down before they could hit. That prompted the U.K., France and Greece to send jets, warships and helicopters to Cyprus to protect the country from further drone attacks.

A UK Ministry of Defence handout of an RAF F-35B Typhoon preparing for operations from Akrotiri, Cyprus. Tehran has threatened its retaliation for action in the Middle East could be attacks on European soil. via Getty Ima

But with the British, French and German leaders saying they are ready to launch defensive military action in the Middle East, Tehran threatened to retaliate against these countries with attacks on European soil.

“It would be an act of war. Any such act against Iran would be regarded as complicity with the aggressors. It would be regarded as an act of war against Iran,” Esmail Baghaei, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, told Iranian state media.

Mark Rutte, the former Dutch Prime Minister who now leads NATO, warned on Tuesday that Tehran posed a threat that reached deep into Europe.

“Let’s be absolutely clear-eyed to what’s happening here,” Rutte said. “Iran is close to getting its hands on a nuclear capability and on a ballistic missile capability, which is posing a threat not only to the region — the Middle East, including posing an existential threat to Israel — it is also posing a huge threat to us here in Europe.” Iran is “an exporter of chaos” responsible over decades for terrorist plots and assassination attempts, including against people living on European soil, he said.

The New York Times: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Son Emerges as Leading Choice to Be His Successor.

The senior clerics responsible for selecting Iran’s next supreme leader met on Tuesday to deliberate, and the son of the slain former leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, emerged as the clear front-runner, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the deliberations.

Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the leader of Iran, in Tehran in 2019.Credit…Morteza Nikoubazl NurPhoto, via Associated Press

The officials said that the clerics were considering announcing that the son, Mojtaba Khamenei, would be his father’s successor as early as Wednesday morning but that some had expressed reservations, fearing that it could expose him as a target for the United States and Israel. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

The clerics, known as the Assembly of Experts, held two virtual meetings, one in the morning and one in the evening, according to the officials. Israel struck a building in Qum, one of Shiite Islam’s main seats of power, where the assembly was scheduled to meet and elect the new supreme leader, but the building was empty, according to the Fars News agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Vali Nasr, an expert of Iran and Shiite Islam at Johns Hopkins University, said that Mr. Khamenei would be a surprising choice — and a potentially telling one.

“He was slated to become the successor for a long time,” Mr. Nasr said, “but for the past two years, it seemed to have dropped off from the radar. If he is elected, it suggests it is a much more hard-line Revolutionary Guard side of the regime that is now in charge.”

That doesn’t sound good.

In other news, Democrats did well in the primary elections last night.

Mia McCarthy at Politico: Democrats get their Texas dream scenario.

Maybe, just maybe, this is the year Texas really matters.

While the outcome wasn’t shocking, the confirmation of a May 26 runoff between Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and state Attorney General Ken Paxton confirmed the fears of many Republicans who now face a likely scorched-earth campaign that could seriously hobble the victor in November’s general election and drain resources from tough races in places like North Carolina and Maine.

Democrats, meanwhile, are seeing their dream scenario play out: State Rep. James Talarico has defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett outright in the Democratic primary, giving the candidate many strategists see as the party’s best chance to finally turn the Lone Star State blue a clear path to November.

Tuesday’s results showed some surprising strength for Cornyn after he trailed Paxton, a MAGA firebrand, in most polls. The veteran senator is about a point ahead of the AG in the latest returns.

But for national Republicans, keeping Cornyn afloat will be expensive and will risk damaging Paxton if he ends up being their nominee. In the absence of a Trump endorsement for any candidate, Cornyn and his allies have already spent more than $100 million to take out Paxton….

Cornyn-Paxton wasn’t the only high-stakes drama in the Lone Star State. A quick round-up of the latest results from other races:

— Embattled GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales was forced into a runoff against gun influencer Brandon Herrera.

— State Rep. Steve Toth ousted GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw from the seat he’s held for four terms.

— GOP Rep. Chip Roy is heading into a runoff with state Sen. Mayes Middleton for attorney general.

— Rep. Christian Menefee is less than 2,000 votes ahead in his uncalled race against Rep. Al Green, who has served in Congress for more than 20 years.

— Former Rep. Colin Allred is more than 10 points ahead against incumbent Democrat Julie Johnson in another uncalled Dallas-area race.

In North Carolina, Roy Cooper won the Senate primary easily. Same with Tom Cotton in Arkansas.

There is some Epstein files news, even though the Iran war has pushed it from the fron pages. The Wall Street Journal broke another story on the Epstein files. It’s behind the paywall, but here are some articles based on the WSJ piece.

Alex Woodward at The Independent: DOJ admits 47,635 Epstein files — including Trump allegations — were removed.

The Department of Justice has withheld from the public nearly 48,000 files stemming from investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, after publishing more than 2 million pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

The initial legally mandated releases of documents comprised more than 3 million pages, though that figure is now roughly 2.7 million, according to an analysis of the files by CBS News and The Wall Street Journal.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department told the outlets that “47,635 files were offline for further review and should be ready for re-production by the end of the week.”

Those offline files include materials connected to unverified allegations against President Donald Trump, The Independent previously reported.

“Our team is working around the clock to address victim concerns, redact personally identifiable information and any images of a sexual nature,” according to Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre. “All responsive documents will be repopulated online once proper redactions are made.” [….]

DOJ told The Independent last week that it is “currently reviewing” documents that detail unverified allegations against the president. Those documents include summaries of FBI interviews stemming from unverified claims made by a woman who came forward after Epstein’s arrest in 2019, who alleged, according to the files released by the DOJ, that she was sexually assaulted by both Epstein and Trump decades earlier, when she was a minor.

In a statement in January, the Justice Department noted that “some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.

Those claims are “unfounded and false,” the statement said.

Read the rest at the link.

This is from “The Epstein Files” Substack, authored by Julie K. Brown, the reporter whose work for The Miami Herald led to Epstein’s prosecution: The Epstein Files are Now Offline.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that tens of thousands of the Justice Department’s Epstein files are now offline for review.

This comes as more mainstream media confirms earlier reports by independent journalists that some of the files concerning allegations against President Trump have been withheld.

Julie K. Brown

From the WSJ: “The withheld files included Federal Bureau of Investigation notes documenting a series of interviews the woman gave to agents in 2019 in which she alleged sexual misconduct by Trump and Jeffrey Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s, according to copies of the documents reviewed by the Journal. Trump has denied wrongdoing and said the Epstein files ‘totally exonerated’ him.”

I have written about this woman’s unverified allegation over the past two weeks, as have other journalists.

I have questioned why the Justice Department didn’t reveal whether it had investigated claims by this woman — as well as another woman who filed a lawsuit against Trump and Epstein in 2016.

The latest allegation involves a Vancouver woman who is named in a lawsuit as Jane Doe #4. She was interviewed by the FBI four times. Yet three of those reports have not been made public. To be clear, it’s not known what the FBI concluded from their interviews.

The other woman, who filed a lawsuit in 2016 against Trump and Epstein under the name “Katie Johnson” and later, “Jane Doe,” told a somewhat similar story about Trump. She abruptly withdrew her lawsuit days before the 2016 election. One of her lawyers, however, did file a report with the FBI in 2016. It’s not known whether the DOJ ever investigated her story. The lawyer’s report is in the Epstein Files. Her account has also not been substantiated.

 Again, there’s more at the link.
I’m going to end there, because it’s getting late. I’ll add a couple more stories in the comment thread. Take care everyone.

Thursday Reads: Trump Wants to Arm Teachers, and Other News

Posted: February 22, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

President Trump holds a card with talking points during a listening session with high school students and teachers on gun violence on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

Good Morning!!

Yesterday afternoon, Trump held a “listening session” for victims of school shootings. (He was invited to the CNN town hall, but chose not to attend.) The Washington Post: This photo of Trump’s notes captures his empathy deficit better than anything.

President Trump held a worthwhile listening session Wednesday featuring a range of views on how to combat gun violence in schools. And while Trump’s at-times-meandering comments about arming teachers will certainly raise eyebrows, for the most part he did listen.

Thanks in part, it seems, to a helpful little reminder.

Washington Post photographer Ricky Carioti captured [an] image of Trump’s notes [see photo above].

Yep, right there at No. 5 is a talking point about telling those present that he was actually listening to them. After what appear to be four questions he planned to ask those assembled, No. 5 is an apparent reminder for Trump to tell people, “I hear you.”

Even No. 1 is basically a reminder that Trump should empathize. “What would you most want me to know about your experience?” the card reads.

Activists and students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School attended a rally at the state Capitol in Tallahassee, Fl on Wednesday. Don Juan Moore Getty Images

I was surprised that the people at Trump’s White House meeting were permitted to speak honestly about their experiences. But when Trump himself spoke, it was clear he wasn’t really listening to their pain. You know who wouldn’t have needed those notes? Hillary Clinton.

After teenagers cried about losing friends and being terrorized by a person with an AR-15, after angry, heartbroken parents spoke of losing their children to senseless gun violence, Trump’s brilliant solution was to give teachers with handguns and expect them to kill suicidal shooters with semi-automatic weapons.

Trump must have seen some of the media reaction to this insane suggestion, because this morning he was on twitter claiming he never said it–but then he said it again.

And would these armed teachers be paid extra for this dangerous duty? Would the government pay for training them? Wouldn’t all this time spent training take away from their actual job of classroom teaching, which requires plenty of preparation and time spend grading papers? Trump isn’t concerned about all that: “far more assets at much less cost.” Trump sees teachers as slave labor!

Trump must have heard from his supporters at the NRA, because he later tweeted this:

Trump learned absolutely nothing from his “listening session.” Last night Lawrence O’Donnell explain why Trump’s idea is utterly insane. Check it out if you didn’t see it.

More from @Lawrence:

Philip Bump at The Washington Post: The economics of arming America’s schools. Bump begins with Trump’s proposal:

“A lot of people are talking about it — it’s certainly a point that we’ll discuss,” Trump said. “But concealed-carry for teachers and for people of talent — of that type of talent — so let’s say you had 20 percent of your teaching force. Because that’s pretty much the number, and you said it — an attack has lasted, on average, about three minutes. It takes five to eight minutes for responders — for the police to come in. So the attack is over. If you had a teacher with — who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly.”

How would that work and how much would it cost?

Data from the Department of Education indicates that there are an estimated 3.1 million public school and 400,000 private-schoolteachers in the United States. In total, there are about 3.6 million teachers.

One-fifth of that total is 718,000 — a bit fewer than the number of people in the Army and the Navy combined as of last December. We’d essentially be adding 50 percent to the size of the military by mandating that three-quarters of a million people be trained and prepared to take up arms to defend civilians.

The first cost that needs to be considered is training. What sort of training would be required isn’t clear. Do we want to simply teach the teachers how to target an individual and fire a weapon? Or do we want something more expansive?

Let’s say we want the bare minimum, just enough to pass the safety requirement for gun ownership. In Maryland, there’s a company that will charge you $100 for that training. The cost, then, would be about $71.8 million for all of our teachers.

I’ll let you read the rest at the link. I think the proposal is idiotic. Would Trump expect teachers to pay for this training? It’s a good thing teachers have unions.

As an antidote to all this insanity, here’s a Tweet from Barack Obama:

In other news, Bernie Sanders is on the defensive after indictments from Robert Mueller made it clear that the Russians supported Sanders’ primary campaign against Hillary Clinton.

Politico: Bernie blames Hillary for allowing Russian interference.

Bernie Sanders on Wednesday blamed Hillary Clinton for not doing more to stop the Russian attack on the last presidential election. Then his 2016 campaign manager, in an interview with POLITICO, said he’s seen no evidence to support special counsel Robert Mueller’s assertion in an indictment last week that the Russian operation had backed Sanders’ campaign.

The remarks showed Sanders, running for a third term and currently considered a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, deeply defensive in response to questions posed to him about what was laid out in the indictment. He attempted to thread a response that blasts Donald Trump for refusing to acknowledge that Russians helped his campaign — but then holds himself harmless for a nearly identical denial.

In doing so, Sanders and his former campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, presented a series of self-serving statements that were not accurate, and that track with efforts by Trump and his supporters to undermine the credibility of the Mueller probe.“The real question to be asked is what was the Clinton campaign [doing about Russian interference]? They had more information about this than we did,” Sanders said in the interview with Vermont Public Radio.

Some Twitter reactions:

According to CNN, HR McMaster could be on the way out: McMaster could leave WH after months of tension with Trump.

With tensions flaring between President Donald Trump and national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the Pentagon is considering options that would allow the President to potentially move the three-star general out of his current role and back into the military, according to half a dozen defense and administration officials.

A search is quietly being conducted by the Pentagon to see if there is a four-star military job suited for McMaster, these officials said.

Several sources told CNN that the push for a replacement comes after months of personal tension between McMaster and Trump. The task of easing McMaster out of his role as national security adviser presents a unique challenge for the White House.

While administration officials have privately said the preference is to move McMaster into a position within the Army or Defense Department that qualifies as a promotion, some within the Pentagon feel he has become politicized in the White House and have expressed reservations about him returning to the military in a prominent role. Some defense officials caution that the President could also go as far as not to offer him a fourth star and force him to retire.

Read more at the CNN link.

I’ll end with a bit of positive news from the Dallas Morning News: Fueled by a Democratic surge, Texans turn out in force on first day of early voting.

AUSTIN — Of the 51,249 Texans who cast ballots Tuesday on the first day of early voting, more than half voted in the Democratic primary.

The total number of voters from the 15 counties with the most people registered is high for a midterm year. In 2016, a presidential election year, 55,931 Texans voted on the first day of early voting for the primary. But in the last midterm election in 2014, only 38,441 Texans voted on the first day.

Even more surprising is the turnout among Democrats. Since the last midterm election, the party saw a 51 percent increase in first-day early voting turnout, while Republicans saw a 16 percent increase….

Political experts attribute much of Texas’ increased voter turnout as a reaction to the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, as well as the state’s eight open congressional seats.

“In general, there seems to be more energy, largely stemming from people’s reactions to President Trump and a lot of Democrat-leaning groups trying to get people out and organized,” said Robert Lowry, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. “It’s maybe more Democrats than Republicans, but people who oppose him and don’t like the results of the election and can’t believe he won, [saying] ‘We obviously can’t vote against him this time but we can try to get more Democrats elected to respond to him.'”

What else is happening? What stories are you following today?