“The new White House Press Secretary is a hoot!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m pretty sure this craziness with our neighbors to the north is more tap dancing to get our minds off the Epstein files, the failed Israeli/US war on Iran, and basic affordability. Look at dat! Look at dat! Look over there with jazz hands isn’t flying with most of us. Who the hell still believes all this? But it tends to distract the mainstream media, which is really bad. Very bad stuff is hiding behind all of this. Let me show you today.
If you’ve known me long enough, you know I have a serious love affair with our nation’s National Parks. I’ve camped and hiked around more than I can remember, but that’s only because some of the big ones are so amazing they took this little girl’s heart to the point she still reminds me what it means to see wild animals in the wild and breathtaking views. As I got older, my sketchbook filled with every place we camped and explored. They also remind you of our indigenous peoples and the glory of endless wilderness.
That’s why my blood pressure took off when I read this. “Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer. The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.” The article can be found atNOTUS and is written by Anna Kramer. Yosemite is one of the nations’ oldest and most glorious examples of American landscapes. He’s totally dedicated to the idea of selling stuff off to support his Trumpify every historical place in the District.
For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.
National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.
Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to a company that, through a web of limited-liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. Officials are proposing the Park Service give up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, and in return receive land of equal value somewhere in California that has yet to be decided.
The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves. Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests.
The property’s current access road is more than 10 miles from an entrance to the park, and much further from Yosemite’s most iconic sights. Without a new road, visitors to the property — whether it be developed into a hotel, resort or private residence — would need to drive an hour and a half in a circuitous route to reach the popular Yosemite Valley.
This is an unprecedented move and a dangerous one.
If the deal goes through, the Trump administration would be breaking with 150 years of American precedent at the birthplace of the national park system. The federal government has historically strived to expand the crown-jewel national parks, not give up land within them.
“The national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias,” said Cicely Muldoon, a 40-year veteran of the Park Service who served as Yosemite’s superintendent for about five years. Muldoon retired from Yosemite shortly after President Donald Trump took office in 2025.
“Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit,” she said Interior’s advocacy for the deal is a significant reversal of a pledge Secretary Doug Burgum made in his 2025 confirmation hearing: “The national parks, absolutely we need to support and protect every single inch of those,” he said.It also contravenes the presidential message Trump shared on Aug. 24 of this year, to announce the beginning of National Park Week: “My Administration is committed to protecting every acre of our lands and preserving the cleanest air and water in the world.”And it goes against the agency’s past position on this specific piece of land. The Park Service has received this privatization request before, and it has rejected it repeatedly for over two decades.
Don’t even get me started on Trump trying to rename Lake Ontario. But you don’t have to take my word on it try this at Business Insider. The internet has gone into full meme mode over Trump’s Lake Ontario name change. The story is reported by Joshua Nelken-Zitser.
President Donald Trump renamed Lake Ontario as Lake America, and it’s making waves on the internet.
After tense trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed and the US imposed new 50% tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, Trump turned to another tool in his arsenal: rebranding.
On Thursday, Trump issued an executive order to rename Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes that straddles the US-Canada border, as Lake America. As the Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney wrote on X, the name predates the Confederation of Canada and the US Declaration of Independence. “The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘”the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’,” he wrote.
The name change follows a similar move Trump made last year when he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, a change that Mexico and other countries, including the UK and China, have refused to adopt.
After Thursday’s executive order, it didn’t take long for the internet to respond with memes. Here are the 10 best.
Go check them out!
Trump tries over and over again to remove all the settled cases against him. Most courts remain firmly on the side of the settled case based on settled law. Here’s yet another Trump failure to ditch responsibility for all his crimes. This is from local TV station Spectrum News NY1. “Trump loses again in bid to erase his N.Y. hush money conviction.” You may remember that this is the payment to Stormy Daniels.
A federal judge on Friday once again spurned Donald Trump’s effort to erase his hush money conviction, rejecting the president’s bid to move the state court case to federal court and have it dismissed on presidential immunity grounds.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein reiterated his earlier finding against Trump, saying that the reasons Trump cited for renewing his request were “neither new nor legally sufficient.”
The judge added: “He has failed to show good cause and diligence.”
It is the third time Hellerstein has blocked Trump from having the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize control of the case from the New York court where he was tried and convicted.
And, like before, Trump will appeal, according to a spokesperson for his legal team who called Hellerstein’s ruling “baseless and lawless.”
“The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan DA be removed to federal court, and immediately overturned and dismissed,” a statement issued on behalf of the legal team said. “President Trump will be filing a powerful appeal, and will continue defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn.”
The guilty verdict, reached in May 2024 while Trump was between terms, made him the first former — and now current — U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. Trump is also challenging his conviction through the state court appellate process, which is pending.
Hellerstein’s decision came after a federal appeals court last year ordered him to reconsider his prior denial. The judge previewed his ruling during oral arguments in February, slamming Trump’s lawyers for legal maneuvers that amounted to taking “two bites at the apple.”
State prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Stormy and E. Jean are high on my list of tough and amazing women for see these cases through. We can only hope we get the Epstein files released and we see more women damaged by Trump receive justice and compensation. And speaking of the Stormy case, this headline yesterday from Raw Storyis an eye opener. There most be a line as wide as big as the country itself of co-criminals waiting for Trump Pardons. “Explosive motive unmasked by DOJ insiders as Michael Cohen crawls back to Trump: report.” Travis Gettys has the story.
The Department of Justice has discussed using former attorney Michael Cohen – who has seemingly come crawling back – as a witness to build new criminal cases against President Donald Trump’s legal adversaries, according to a new report.
Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng, who has a personal history with Cohen, the president’s longtime personal attorney and fixer, reported that Trump administration officials are hoping to leverage his testimony to bring criminal prosecutions against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – both of whom successfully battled Trump in court.
“Bragg’s case, of course, is the reason Trump became America’s first felon president, a label Trump bitterly resents,” Suebsaeng wrote.
That’s why the president wants revenge against them both, Suebsaeng said, and he’s apparently dangling a pardon to Cohen as leverage for his testimony.
“Cohen had previously posted on Substack that he felt ‘pressured and coerced’ to be those prosecutors’ star witness against Trump, though Cohen has been publicly very coy about claiming whether he was ‘coerced’ to give false testimony,” Suebsaeng wrote.
DOJ does have the authority to charge prosecutors with coercing false testimony, although that almost never happens, but Trump officials are considering it now.
The headlines from independent media sources never fail to amaze. Even local government officials have trouble with Trump’s ignorance of how things are done in American. He abuses his position and ignores well-settled law over and over.This is from the New York Times. “Wyoming Governor Objects to ‘Very Odd’ D.O.J. Election Monitoring. Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, said he was concerned by the behavior of election observers who visited a polling station in Cheyenne.” This story comes from the keyboard of Tim Balk.
Mr. Trump has often returned to such conspiracy theories in his second term, arguing that widespread fraud could affect this year’s elections. As president, he has deployed the resources of the federal government, notably the Justice Department’s, to investigate his unsubstantiated claims, sowing more doubt in the nation’s elections and raising alarm among state officials about whether he will try to intervene if Republicans lose their congressional majorities in November.
Governor Gordon, a low-key, term-limited Republican who leads one of the country’s most conservative states, said at a meeting with state election officials on Wednesday that he had been concerned by the behavior of the election observers.
“I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns — I don’t like that,” Mr. Gordon said at the meeting. “And I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either.”
The monitors ultimately visited six polling places, showing their credentials only when asked for them, Mr. Gordon said in the interview, describing their behavior as “very odd.” He said he had asked the state attorney general, Keith Kautz, to investigate the matter.
The observers had cited statutes related to the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act, Mr. Gordon said.
This year, the Justice Department’s observers have visited polling places in other states, including politically tense regions such as the Minneapolis area. The agency said on Tuesday that it had sent 80 monitors to seven states during primary season.
But the requests to interview voters and gain access to machines in Wyoming were unusual. And they come at a moment when the Justice Department has been locked in an intense legal battle with roughly 30 states, demanding their private, unredacted voter rolls in a hunt for evidence of noncitizen voting.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump is still convinced that noncitizens vote. Most allegations turn out to be baseless. There has to be something sketchier in Trump’s election interference. It’s more likely he’s trying to ‘monitor’ polls to intimidate certain classes of voters not known to vote Republican. He is hot for voter suppression.
This is my favorite headline for the day. It comes via from Public Notice. “Are voters finally realizing GOP presidents are disasters? Michael Tomasky makes the case that they are.” I could make the case easily for their economic policy. I’m pretty certain that others in other areas could do that as well. Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson share the lede.
“Trusting the Republicans more on the economy at this point is like trusting Sean Combs to be your babysitter,” writes Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, in his recent piece headlined, “At Long Last, Americans Are Starting to See the Truth About the GOP.”
“For decades now, the Republican Party has built its electoral success on myths and lies,” Tomasky adds. “Ronald Reagan was the last Republican president who your average person would say left the country better off than he found it.”
One could quibble about the legacy of George H.W. Bush, but it’s hard to dispute that the last two Republican presidents easily rank among the worst in American history. Their successors have each been handed a flaming bag of economic and cultural ruin and did commendable jobs putting out the fire, only to hand the reins to the man who will unequivocally go down as our worst president of all time (so far!), Donald J. Trump — whose second term is shaping up to be even more disastrous than the one that ended with mass death amid a pandemic he badly mismanaged.
Tomasky argues Democrats are missing a golden opportunity by not campaigning more aggressively on the obvious truth that from the presidency on down, the Republican Party has a cataclysmic record when it has power, especially in the 21st century. But messaging aside, he says he’s heartened by recent polling showing voters may finally be seeing the light.
“Jobs are just one factor. The performance of the stock market under Democrats is much, much stronger than under Republicans. The increases in median household income and amount by which they’ve reduced the deficit are much greater,” Tomasky told Public Notice. “The comparisons aren’t close, but you never hear any Democrats talk about it.”
“Why this is changing now is really simple and straightforward: The economy is bad, and there’s a Republican president,” he added.
Trump has basically wrecked the idea that Republicans are better at foreign policy and wars. There’s no way any of his health policies via the nuts he put in Health and Human Services can be seen as anything but charlatans. And, the DOJ is a laugh. So much for law and order. Since the Republic party continues to enable all of this mess, I can’t understand that anyone other that a member of the Orange Caligula Cult could tolerate what’s going on these days.
Okay, this is my last suggested read for the day. It comes from Balls and Strikes and is written by Jay Willis. “The Trump DOJ Is Running Out of Ways to Humiliate Itself In Public. Another week, another argument from your federal government that would be kind of embarrassing if a high school sophomore tried to make it.” Sounds about right.
For some time now, I have been tracking the Justice Department’s alarminglyrapidtransformation from one of the legal profession’s most prestigious employers into a clubhouse for semiliterate dunces whose primary qualification for the job is a willingness to sign their names to legal filings that resemble lightly edited Truth Social posts. This week’s addition to the canon comes in the course of President Donald Trump’s relentless pursuit of what is somehow among the highest-priority items on his second-term policy agenda: slapping his name on the Kennedy Center before his time in office runs out.
The legal fight began back in December 2025, when the Kennedy Center’s Trump-aligned board of trustees first tried to shoehorn the words “THE DONALD J. TRUMP AND” above existing Kennedy Center signage. A federal court ordered the removal of Trump’s name in June, but the board remains committed to fulfilling the president’s wishes. Its latest proposal would append a “RENOVATED AND RESTORED BY PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP” inscription to the side of the building, beneath the Kennedy Center signage this time around. The board also wants to name the grounds on which the Kennedy Center sits the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” like an enterprising NFL team selling a secondary set of stadium naming rights to whichever corporate behemoth is desperate enough to pay for it.
In a new court filing, the Trump Justice Department is warning about what might happen if its client does not get his way: According to Brantley T. Mayers, a lawyer in the Civil Division, prospective donors will not open their wallets unless the renovation plans include “prominent recognition” of Trump’s involvement. And without those renovations, Brantley says, the “dilapidated” and “crumbling” Kennedy Center will “deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure,” and may even have to be “taken down” in order to avoid “collapse or calamity.” In other words, the Justice Department’s official position is that without the addition of an (apparently load-bearing) “RENOVATED AND RESTORED” inscription, the Kennedy Center will be at risk of falling down and killing everyone inside.
“The Board recognizes that President Trump’s efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal,” Brantley writes. “The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.” (All weird comma placements in original.)
How is this even a legal issue? Anyway, this country is so fucked-up under Trump that it’s hard to recognize. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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Vice President Kamala Harris has secured enough votes from delegates to become her party’s nominee for president, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said Friday.
The announcement was made before the online voting process ends on Monday, reflecting the breakneck speed of a campaign that is eager to maintain momentum after President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed Harris as his successor less than two weeks ago.
Harris is poised to be the first woman of color at the top of a major party’s ticket, and she joined a call with supporters to say she is “honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee.”
“It’s not going to be easy. But we’re going to get this done,” she added. “As your future president, I know we are up to this fight.”
Harrison pledged that Democrats “will rally around Vice President Kamala Harris and demonstrate the strength of our party” during their convention in Chicago later this month.
The Democratic National Committee did not provide details of the delegate vote count, including a number or state-by-state breakdowns, during a virtual event that had the flavor of a telethon, with campaign officials keeping tabs on a delegate-counting process whose result is a foregone conclusion.
No other candidate challenged Harris for the nomination, and she swiftly solidified Democratic support in the days after Biden endorsed her.
Democrats still plan a state-by-state roll call during the party’s convention, the traditional way that a nominee is chosen. However, that will be purely ceremonial because of the online voting.
Multiple former senior campaign staffers for former President Obama are joining Vice President Harris’s campaign as she reshapes the organization following President Biden’s decision to end his candidacy.
The Harris campaign said it is retaining the leadership that ran Biden’s campaign until he dropped out roughly two weeks ago, with Jen O’Malley Dillon continuing to serve as the campaign chair and reporting directly to Harris. But there are several new hires and others who are getting expanded portfolios that reflect how Harris is making her election bid her own as she becomes the party’s nominee.
David Plouffe, who worked as a strategist on Obama’s 2008 and 2012 bids, will join the Harris campaign as a senior adviser. A source familiar with the matter said Plouffe would end his consulting work with TikTok and his podcast he’d started with former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway as he joins the Harris campaign.
Stephanie Cutter, who served as Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2012, will join the Harris campaign as a strategic adviser.
Others joining or taking on expanded roles in the Harris campaign include Mitch Stewart, who led Obama’s grassroots efforts, and David Binder, who oversaw Obama’s public research operation.
Jennifer Palmieri, who did a stint as communications director in the Obama White House and worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, will join the Harris campaign as a senior adviser to second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
The campaign said Julie Chavez Rodriguez will continue in her role as campaign manager, and she will focus more on the sun belt states of Arizona and Nevada, as well as Latino voters. Polling has shown Harris is more competitive in those states than Biden was against Trump.
Woodcut by Kyoshi Saito
Harris has been challenging Trump to show up for the scheduled debate on ABC on September 10. Now Trump is pretending that the plans have changed and the debate will be on September 4 on Fox News, with Fox moderators, no fact-checking, and a large audience. But of course, didn’t bother asking Harris what she thinks. Here’s the latest:
Vice President Harris’s campaign painted former President Trump as too scared to debate her after his latest remarks questioning why he should participate in a debate.
Trump told Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo this week that he wants to debate his likely Democratic opponent, but added, “I mean right now I say, why should I do a debate? I’m leading in the polls. And, everybody knows her, everybody knows me.”
Harris for President co-Chair Cedric Richmond responded to the comments, saying Trump “needs to man up.”
“He’s got no problem spreading lies and hateful garbage at his rallies or in interviews with right-wing commentators. But he’s apparently too scared to do it standing across the stage from the Vice President of the United States,” Richmond said. “Since he talks the talk, he should walk the walk and – as Vice President Harris said earlier this week – say it to her face on September 10. She’ll be there waiting to see if he’ll show up.”
Harris remarked that Trump should “say it to my face” during a rally in Atlanta on Tuesday. She has been ramping up the pressure for Trump to debate, exchanging barbs with him over the past week about the prospects of a general election debate.
The Democratic National Committee announced it is launching a digital homepage takeover starting Saturday to slam Trump for being “afraid to debate.” The takeover will start in Atlanta and continue with newspapers across battleground states.
So now Trump is trying to change the ground rules without discussing them with Harris. He posted on Truth Social that he has “agreed to” a completely different debate. The New York Times reported this in their headline as if it were a fait accompli. I’m so glad I cancelled my subscription. Here’s a better headline and story from HuffPost: Trump Says He’s Agreed To Fox News Debate, In Apparent Attempt To Avoid Harris On ABC.
Former President Donald Trump said on social media late Friday that he’s agreed with Fox News to take part in a Sept. 4 presidential debate against Democrat Kamala Harris, before suggesting that the vice president hasn’t OK’d such a faceoff.
“If for any reason Kamala is unwilling or unable to debate on that date, I have agreed with Fox to do a major Town Hall on the same September 4th evening,” the Republican presidential nominee wrote in a since-deleted post on his Truth Social platform.
Trump — who has pushed for the next debate to take place on Fox News after Harris took President Joe Biden’s spot at the top of the Democratic ticket — later reposted his debate message on Truth Social, but without the talk of a town hall-style event….
The Republican nominee wrote on Friday that the ABC News debate has been “terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant.” He also cited an ongoing lawsuit against the network as a reason for the change, despite the fact that Trump was already engaged in litigation with ABC News in May when he agreed to the faceoff.
UPDATE, with Harris campaign comment: Donald Trump says he will do a Sept. 4 debate on Fox News, albeit at a different date than the network publicly proposed, while he’s declared ABC News’ plans for a Sept. 10 face off with Kamala Harris “terminated.” [….]
Fox News and ABC News have yet to comment on Trump’s post. The Fox News debate, Trump wrote, would be an arena event and held in Pennsylvania, a key swing state….
Harris has confirmed that she would participate in a Sept. 10 debate on ABC News, plans that Trump originally agreed to when Joe Biden was the nominee. But Trump has yet to recommit to that date, and Harris has hammered him on it.
“If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face,” Harris said this week, shortly after Trump had questioned whether she was really Black.
This morning, Harris’ campaign said in a statement that Trump was “running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out.” The campaign said that Harris “will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime time national audience.”
In April, Trump called for Biden to debate “anytime, anyplace.” “We’ll do it anywhere you want, Joe,’ he said.
That’s where it stands for now.
Yesterday, The Washington Post reported on a story that has been around for years–that Donald Trump may have received $10 million from Egypt to help his 2016 campaign. According to the WaPo, there was a secret DOJ/FBI investigation and it was shut down by Bill Barr.
According to the Post, five days before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, an organisation linked to Egyptian intelligence services withdrew $10m from a Cairo bank.
“Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt,” the Post said, “employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags.”
Four men “carried away the bags, which US officials later described in sealed court filings as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of US currency”.
According to the Post, US federal investigators learned of the withdrawal in 2019, by which time they had spent two years investigating CIA intelligence that indicated Sisi sought to give Trump $10m.
Such a contribution would potentially have violated federal law regarding foreign donations….
Woodcut by Fumi Yanagimoto
According to the Post, US investigators who discovered the $10m Cairo withdrawal “also sought to learn if money from Sisi might have factored into Trump’s decision in the final days of his run for the White House toinject his campaign with $10m of his own money”….
While in office, Trump repeatedly praised Sisi, over objections from US politicians concerned about the Egyptian’s authoritarian rule.
As described by the Post, the US investigation which uncovered the Cairo withdrawal was questioned by William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general. Ultimately, a prosecutor appointed by Barr closed the inquiry without criminal charges being filed.
Later, as the 2020 election approached, CNN reported that a mysterious DC courthouse hearing in 2018 – involving prosecutors working for Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election – concerned an Egyptian bank….
An anonymous government source told the Post: “Every American should be concerned about how this case ended. The justice department is supposed to follow evidence wherever it leads – it does so all the time to determine if a crime occurred or not.”
If it involved any other politician, this story would be a bombshell. For Trump, it’s just another scandal to add to the hundreds of others.
A new report on mistakes by the Secret Service related to January 6, 2001, has become available and some powerful folks are not happy.
An internal watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security accused department leadership of attempting to suppress a highly anticipated report focused on the Secret Service’s response during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Inspector General Joseph Cuffari’s accusation drew a sharp response from DHS’ top lawyer, Jonathan Meyer, who aggressively rejected the allegation, according to a previously unreported June 25 letter reviewed by POLITICO.
In the letter to Cuffari, Meyer wrote that the DHS watchdog “misread” their intentions. The department does not want to withhold the entire report from Congress but does intend to redact “security sensitive” information that might reveal aspects of the Secret Service’s operations, Meyer wrote.
Meyer also rejected the suggestion that there has been an internal clash between the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security’s leadership.
It’s the latest twist in the long-running effort by the inspector general’s office to release a comprehensive report on efforts by the department — and specifically the Secret Service — to prevent violence on Jan. 6 and respond during the attack. The department played a role in intelligence gathering, security and overseeing the movements of then-President Donald Trump and his vice president, Mike Pence, on the day of the riot.
Other investigations, including by Congress’ Jan. 6 select committee, have raised significant questions about whether the Secret Service had adequately disseminated evidence of threats in Trump’s Jan. 6 rally crowd.
The dispute over the release of the report to lawmakers is another example of friction between Cuffari and DHS leadership amid intense scrutiny of the Secret Service’s handling of the Jan. 6 attack and other sensitive matters. That tension reemerged just as the Secret Service has faced a new and far more intense round of public examination following failures that led to the near-assassination of Donald Trump. Cuffari has also faced allegations of ethical lapses that he has strenuously denied.
More on the controversy at the link.
Woodcut by Kyoshi Saito
One very significant finding that I have heard about previously is that Vice President Kamala Harris could have been in mortal danger that day because of Secret Service failings.
The U.S. Secret Service faced an array of challenges — and made some potentially dangerous mistakes — while trying to protect the president, vice president and vice president-elect on Jan. 6, 2021, the day a mob supporting then-President Donald Trump violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, according to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by ABC News, offers an official and detailed account of how Kamala Harris, then the incoming vice president, ended up within feet of a “viable” pipe bomb that had been planted in the bushes right outside the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters.
“The pipe bomb had been placed near the building the night before, but … [a]dvance security sweeps by the Secret Service at the DNC building did not include the outside area where a pipe bomb had been placed,” says the report from inspector general Joseph Cuffari, which was shared with members of Congress on Thursday.
The report describes how two Secret Service canine teams assigned to sweep the building were “surprised” to learn the morning of Jan. 6 that more assets weren’t being provided to help with the sweep — but the report also notes that Secret Service policies and procedures at the time required fewer assets for protectees who had been elected to an office but not yet sworn in.
“[Harris], traveling in an armored vehicle with her motorcade, entered the DNC building via a ramp within 20 feet of the pipe bomb,” the report said.
According to the report, the pipe bomb was found an hour and 40 minutes after Harris arrived at the DNC building. The report suggests it took the Secret Service 10 minutes to evacuate her, saying that she spent a total of about one hour and 50 minutes inside the building.
The Secret Service has since updated its policies to include more assets for “‘elect’ protectees,” according to the report, which is heavily redacted.
Read the more about the pipe bombs and efforts to find the perpetrator at ABC News.
Trump’s January 6 election interference case is back with Judge Tanya Chutkan in DC. Maybe we will see some movement in the case now.
Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein, and Erica Orden at Politico:
The stalled criminal case against Donald Trump for seeking to subvert the 2020 election is starting to move.
The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity — a breathtaking legal victory for Trump’s bid to sideline his criminal prosecutions — had kept the election-subversion case on ice for months. Even after the July 1 ruling, the high court’s rules required a one-month delay to give prosecutors the chance to ask the justices to reconsider the outcome.
Patience,, by Iwao Akiyama
On Friday, that window closed. The case was returned to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which took just minutes to send the matter back to the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been in a holding pattern since December awaiting the outcome of the immunity fight.
On Saturday, Chutkan took her first steps in the case in months, setting an August 16 hearing to consider setting a new schedule. She has asked for prosecutors and Trump to offer their own thinking on the matter in writing by August 9. The court session won’t force Trump off the campaign trail, since Chutkan said she won’t require him to be present.
Still, the flurry of actions signals new life for the gravest of the four criminal cases against Trump — and it comes at a time when other Trump cases have stalled. Special counsel Jack Smith charged the former president in August 2023 with four counts, alleging a sweeping conspiracy to disenfranchise millions of voters and pressure government officials to overturn the legitimate 2020 election results.
There appears to be no real prospect of a trial in the case before the November election, but some Trump critics have been eagerly awaiting the Supreme Court’s ministerial action of returning the case to the trial court, hoping that it results in a series of swift decisions from Chutkan that could again put Trump on the defensive.
The Supreme Court ruled that former presidents have immunity from prosecution for many of their “officials acts,” and it said that some of Smith’s allegations in the election case must be tossed out. But it’s not yet clear how, or whether, the special counsel can proceed with other portions of his indictment.
Some Trump critics have urged Chutkan to hold a hearing to assess the effect of the immunity ruling on the evidence Smith intends to present. That proceeding could feature witness testimony from key figures in the case.
Trump opponents hope this “mini-trial” would showcase Trump’s ties to the violence that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, and remind voters of the most chaotic day of Trump’s presidency, even if it doesn’t carry the same stakes as a jury trial.
“Now he’s going after the Grey Vote.” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s tough to understand why the rapist, racist, Orange Fraudster continues to be supported by anyone other than the insane right wing of this country. Trump’s speeches and social media posts are that of a madman with advanced dementia. It’s even more challenging to understand why so much of the media still can’t figure out how to report about him. This is from Stephen Robinson, who wrote in Public Notice. “The media is still selling a fantasy version of Trump. We should all know better by now.”
Yes, major news outlets, including the New York Times, are now more likely to acknowledge that Trump outright lies than simply makes “false” statements, but the press still resists definitively calling him out for the terrible and dangerous person he is. Because their baseline assumption is that Trump is erratic and malevolent, it’s not generally regarded as big news when Trump does awful things, such as mocking Biden’s speech impediment during a speech over the weekend. (Watch the footage below, though it should be mentioned that the NYT published an article noting that Trump mocked Biden’s stutter.)
Implicit in the media’s ongoing coverage of Trump is the idea that he might suddenly stop behaving like Donald Trump. Case in point was an absurd article Axios ran last week from national politics reporter Sophia Cai with the headline, “Top Trump advisers try to steer him off personal drama.” The top of the article is bad enough, as it presents Trump’s unhinged vendettas like a “Sex and the City” brunch scene, but the low point is Cai’s suggestion that Trump is “toning down” his rhetoric as he attempts to woo college-educated voters.
On what was once Twitter, the caption above Axios’s article read, “Looking to November, Trump tempers his claims about the 2020 election — a little.” (An earlier version of the tweet that didn’t hedge as much and was widely criticized was deleted — see it at top of the post.) Cai wrote, “In some recent speeches, Trump has used different terms in describing his typical complaint that the 2020 election he lost was ‘stolen’ — saying, ‘We were interrupted,’ or ‘something very bad happened.’”
These are obvious euphemisms for Trump’s ongoing election lies, but Cai’s assertion isn’t even true. He told supporters at a North Carolina rally just days before the Axios article that “what happened at that last election is a disgrace, and we’re not going to let it happen again. Did you ever notice they go after the people that want to find out where the cheating was — and, by the way, 82 percent of the country understands that it was a rigged election, OK? You can’t have a country with that.” (Surprise! Trump’s “82 percent” claim is a lie.)
I don’t have much hope for the New York Times, but maybe the Washington Post is coming around. This analysis popped up on the Memorandum feed. “Trump’s freewheeling speeches offer a dark vision of a second term. A close examination of one appearance in Rock Hill, S.C., offers an anatomy of a signature rally by the former president.” Three authors share the byline; Ashley Parker, Marianne LeVine, and Ross Godwin.
A Donald Trump rally is a freewheeling extravaganza. A festival of grievance and retribution. A dystopian vision of darkness and despair. A political rock show. A bacchanalia of lies and mistruths. A pitch to voters.
Since bursting onto the presidential scene in 2015, Trump has transformed the American public’s conception of a political rally, taking the stage after hours ofeardrum-shattering decibels of a self-curated playlist and offering a spectacle that changes depending on the place, the news cycle and the former president’s mood.
On the last Friday in February, the day before the South Carolina primary, Trump took the stage in Rock Hill, S.C., where he spoke for just over an hour and a half. A close examination of his remarks that day offers an anatomy of a Trump rally speech.
Like many of his recent speeches, it was long and laden with resentments, offering a dark vision for the nation that terrifies Democrats and animates his Republican base. It touched on recurring themes, including his election denialism, his promise of a sudden transformation in another Trump term and his claims of persecution and martyrdom.
Perhaps more importantly, Trump’s stump speech provides a road map of what a second Trump term might look like — fulfilling his promises to root out the so-called “deep state” of civil servants, harshly cracking down on illegal immigration and crime, and pulling back from the world stage. It also reveals many of his weaknesses as a candidate, such as sometimes slurring his words, confusing names of world leaders and attacking minorities in offensive ways.
At times, Trump hews to a teleprompter, while at others he careens gleefully off script. He can channel both comedy and rage,charisma and revenge.
Over time, his stump speech has evolved, though certain hallmarks remain. One constantis that it is certain to contain a slew of falsehoods and mistruths, ranging from hyperbole to outright lies, like his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
The one specific prop at any Trump rally is the assortment of disheveled, obviously low-education, wipipo misfits behind him, with the occasional black man who is either a paid prop or seriously deluded. Well, this is South Carolina, the state of perpetual revolt. But Trump voters don’t have their wits about them, and that’s if they possess any. I am very tired of getting way too much information on cult behavior. But seriously, how do you explain this analysis from the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump last week? “A fifth of Trump supporters think he committed a serious crime.”
Juries will — or, perhaps, may — decide whether former president Donald Trump committed serious federal crimes. He faces trial in Washington, D.C., and Florida on felony charges, and, unless he’s reelected to the presidency or cuts a deal with prosecutors, those will result in verdicts adjudicating his guilt.
Most Americans, though, already think he has committed serious federal crimes. A poll conducted by Siena College for the New York Times found that more than half of registered voters thought he’d done so. That includes more independents, nearly all Democrats and even a fifth of Republicans.
It also includes a fifth of people who say they plan to vote for him in November.
In other words, a fifth of Trump’s support in a general election rematch against President Biden thinks their preferred candidate committed a serious crime.
He goes on ad infinitum about the same damn things. The one thing you think he would shut up about is E. Jean Carol. But he doesn’t, he isn’t, and he won’t. This is from CNBC. “E. Jean Carroll lawyer suggests third Trump defamation lawsuit possible after new comments.” The story is reported by Kevin Breuninger.
Carroll’s attorney quickly responded that they are closely monitoring Trump’s latest remarks about her — and suggested that a third defamation lawsuit could be in store for the former president.
Trump in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” claimed that several civil court judgments against him in New York — two of them in Carroll’s favor — will cause companies to leave the state.
“People aren’t moving into New York, because of the kind of crap they’re pulling on me,” he said.
They’re “the most ridiculous decisions,” Trump said, “including the ‘Ms. Bergdorf Goodman,’ a person I’d never met.”
Carroll has said Trump raped her in a dressing room in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.
“I have no idea who she is, except one thing, I got sued,” he said in Monday’s interview. “From that point on I said, ‘Wow, that’s crazy, what this is.’”
“I got charged, I was given a false accusation and had to post a $91 million bond on a false accusation,” Trump added, referring to the bond he secured in recent days to guarantee a judgment in Carroll’s favor.
The interview echoed remarks Trump made about Carroll over the weekend at a campaign rally in Georgia, where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee accused her of making “false accusations.”
After the CNBC interview aired, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan in a statement obtained by NBC News said, “The statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years.”
“As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client, E. Jean Carroll,” Kaplan said.
So, we know from the moment that Trump started down that escalator and the first words out of his mouth that Trump has no shame. The Atlantic‘s John Hendrickson has this to say on Trump’s second mocking of a disabled person. “Trump Finds Another Line to Cross. The former president used to exercise a modicum of restraint around Joe Biden’s stutter. No longer.”
Former president Donald Trump, perhaps threatened by President Joe Biden’s well-received State of the Union address, mocked his opponent’s lifelong stutter at a rally in Georgia yesterday. “Wasn’t it—didn’t it bring us together?” Trump asked sarcastically. He kept the bit going, slipping into a Biden caricature. “‘I’m gonna bring the country tuh-tuh-tuh-together,’” Trump said, straining and narrowing his mouth for comedic effect.
Trump has made a new habit of this. “‘He’s a threat to d-d-democracy,’” Trump said in his vaudeville Biden character at a January rally in Iowa. That jibe was also a response to a big Biden speech—one tied to the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. (Guess who the he was in that sentence.)
More than Trump’s ugly taunt, one thing stands out to me about these moments: the sound of Trump’s supporters laughing right along with him. This is a building block of Trumpism. The man at the top gives his followers permission to be the worst version of themselves.
Those who are used to somewhat civil discourse continually feel beaten down by all this nastiness. What is it about the Trump Cult that digs it? Here are some strong statements from analysts in the media that are finally coming to print. This first report is from Chauncey DeVega at Salon. He argues that the only way we defang the Trump Cut and the Fascist Christian Right is to kill the Republican Party. “The GOP can’t leave MAGA — “Americans must electorally mercy-kill the Republican Party”. An ex-MAGA activist warns “no civic savior is coming” as Donald Trump’s cognitive decline becomes undeniable.”
What if Donald Trump defeats President Biden and takes control of the White House in 2025? He has already announced his plans to become the country’s first dictator, and to launch a reign of terror and revenge against his so-called enemies. As detailed in documents such as Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere, the infrastructure is being created right now to put Trump’s neofascist plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy in effect on “day one.” The so-called resistance will not have the courtesy of ramping up or mobilizing to stop Dictator Trump’s onslaught. It will be a “shock and awe” campaign visited upon the American people.
Dictator Trump’s reign of terror will be made even worse by the fact that as shown during recent speeches, interviews, and at other events he appears to be encountering severe difficulties in cognition, language, and memory.
In a series of recent conversations with me here at Salon, Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” has issued this warning: “Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.”
If Dr. Gartner and the other medical professionals I have spoken to, both here at Salon and off the record, about Trump’s apparent mental and emotional challenges are in fact correct about how the corrupt ex-president will only get worse and not better, the American people will then be confronted by a horrible reality where Donald Trump will be both a dictator and a mad king. In total, there will be a horrific synergy between an American pathocracy and how the worst people seek political power and a leader who appears to have a diseased mind – which makes Trump easily manipulated by individuals and forces who are even more malevolent and dangerous than he is.
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban. He’s fantastic,” Trump said during a reception Friday evening. “He does a great job. He’s a noncontroversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it. Right? He’s the boss.”
This sort of rhetoric is exactly what President Biden and others warn about with Trump’s elevation to his party’s presidential nomination. The former president has repeatedly made obvious his support for centralized, hard-line executive power in the United States and elsewhere, something that is clearly at odds with American democracy and divided government.
Because Trump has effectively framed Biden as behaving as an autocrat to his supporters and because modern autocrats don’t necessarily look like those in the past, many Americans are likely to consider those warnings hollow.
“Starved for attention, that one.” John Buss @repeat1968, Me: “Truck Stop Tart”
Chris Lehmann of The Nationadds this. “The MAGA Aesthetic Is Beginning to Rot. The stable of imagery associated with the far-right insurgency no longer seems as fresh as it did when Trump first donned his red cap.” It was rotten from the beginning, but at least more of the media is pointing at it.
For headline writers and Beltway pundits, the takeaway from last week’s State of the Union address was clear: Despite ongoing speculation about President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, he delivered a pugnacious, energetic, and policy-driven speech, which served as the unofficial debut of his 2024 reelection pitch. But beyond the forensic attention devoted to Biden’s delivery from the podium, there was another pronounced theme amid the SOTU pageantry: the corresponding enfeeblement of the MAGA aesthetic, which played such a central role in Donald Trump’s surprise election to the presidency in 2016.
The MAGA brand crisis was telegraphed most dramatically in the immediate run-up to the speech, as Biden did the traditional presidential slow-walk toward the podium, greeting assembled lawmakers along the way. Georgia GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene approached Biden wearing a red MAGA hat and handed the president a badge commemorating Laken Riley, the Georgia nurse allegedly murdered by a suspect who entered the country illegally. Greene also sported a “Say Her Name” T-shirt, again in reference to Riley. When Biden espied Greene’s ensemble, he delivered an astonished double take as eloquent as any line in his speech.
Biden’s shock no doubt stemmed in part from the knowledge that such overt electioneering is illegal in the Capitol. More than that, though, it registered a broader truth: The stable of imagery associated with the right-wing Trump insurgency is showing signs of wear and tear. Where Trump-branded messaging and merchandise once had the power to upend establishment mores and expectations, they now feel like the political equivalent of a rock ensemble’s county fair tour: a purely formalist effort to satisfy the nostalgic longings of a diminishing fan base.
What was most telling about Greene’s stunt wardrobe was the date on the hat: Instead of being minted for the looming 2024 general election, it came from Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, which—despite the lies of Trump, Greene, and other MAGA leaders— he lost decisively. And make no mistake: Greene, a perfect specimen of do-nothing right-wing congressional service, lives for these camera-ready moments of political theater. She certainly didn’t descend to the same level of sartorial carelessness back when she dressed as a Chinese spy balloon.
Amazingly, Greene’s get-up wasn’t even the most outlandish clothes-themed show of MAGA sympathies in the chamber. That honor fell to Texas Representative Troy Nehls, who wore a “Never Surrender” T-shirt featuring Trump’s mugshot and displayed a Laken Riley badge of his own on his lapel. To pull the look together, he sported an American flag bow tie. The outfit didn’t evoke a fearless mustering of Real American patriots so much as a Chippendale dancer gone to seed.
CNN’s Jim Sciutto has a new book out. Josephine Harvey at HuffPost has this to say about that. “John Kelly Shares His ‘Theory’ On Why Trump Likes Dictators So Much: New Book. The book by CNN’s Jim Sciutto also contains quotes about the former president’s reported “admiration” of Hitler.”
John Kelly,Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, discussed the former president’s apparent dictatorial aspirations for a new book by CNN’s Jim Sciutto.
“My theory on why he likes the dictators so much is that’s who he is,” Kelly said, according to an article published Monday about the forthcoming book by the CNN anchor and chief national security analyst.
Kelly told Sciutto, “Every incoming president is shocked that they actually have so little power without going to the Congress, which is a good thing. It’s Civics 101, separation of powers, three equal branches of government.”
“But in his case, he was shocked that he didn’t have dictatorial-type powers to send U.S. forces places or to move money around within the budget,” the quote continued. “And he looked at Putin and Xi and that nutcase in North Korea as people who were like him in terms of being a tough guy.”
Kelly was one of several former Trump administration officials who spoke to Sciutto for his book, “The Return of Great Powers,” reportedly warning that Trump is ill-prepared to lead the country in the current global climate, and that “they believe that the root of his admiration for these figures is that he envies their power.”
The book also revisits previously reported allegations that Trump praised Adolf Hitler, including Kelly’s claim that the former president lamented that his senior staff were not as loyal to him as the Nazi leader’s officers were.
“He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal — that we would do anything he wanted us to do,” Kelly told Sciutto.
Sciutto writes this at CNN. “Former advisers sound the alarm that Trump praises despots in private and on the campaign trail.” I’d like to think this might get into the thick skulls of some people but then I’ve become quite jaded over the last decade or so.
To Donald Trump, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán is “fantastic,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping is “brilliant,” North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is “an OK guy,” and, most alarmingly, he allegedly said Adolf Hitler “did some good things,” a worldview that would reverse decades-old US foreign policy in a second term should he win November’s presidential election, multiple former senior advisers told CNN.
“He thought Putin was an OK guy and Kim was an OK guy — that we had pushed North Korea into a corner,” retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, told me. “To him, it was like we were goading these guys. ‘If we didn’t have NATO, then Putin wouldn’t be doing these things.’”
Trump’s lavish praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán while hosting him at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, just days after all but sealing the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday, shows it’s a worldview he’s doubling down on.
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán,” Trump said, adding, “He’s the boss and he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”
The former president’s admiration for autocrats has been reported on before, but in comments by Trump recounted to me for my new book, “The Return of Great Powers,” out Tuesday, Kelly and others who served under Trump give new insight into why they warn that a man who consistently praises autocratic leaders opposed to US interests is ill-suited to lead the country in the Great Power clashes that could be coming, telling me they believe that the root of his admiration for these figures is that he envies their power.
“He views himself as a big guy,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser under Trump, told me. “He likes dealing with other big guys, and big guys like Erdogan in Turkey get to put people in jail and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. He kind of likes that.”
“He’s not a tough guy by any means, but in fact quite the opposite,” Kelly said. “But that’s how he envisions himself.”
I just hope it’s not too late but it feels less toothy now then it would’ve had they done something when he was still in office. So this is my first post on my new PC and I’ve advanced to the bigger screen, bigger key board part of aging. It feels great! Now, I just gotta pay for it.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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“We are the United States of Amnesia; we learn nothing because we remember nothing.”
Gore Vidal
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
There are some alarming headlines in the News today. Most of them are related to messes made by Donald Trump or his Republican enablers. The Republican-appointed judges on the Supreme Court continue to be the focus of alarm. Their continued efforts to reshape policy continue to kill people and give concentrated power to the Federalist billionaires that brought them there.
The economy is good, but corporations are taking advantage of the recent spate of inflation to line their pockets. Prices are higher than they should be. Again, this is because of a decades-effort by billionaires to rig policy. I’ve been horrified at Trump whining about being Herbert Hoover but simultaneously hoping the stock market crashes. Rather than focus on dealing with the budget, that same group of crazies in Congress are turning committees into bedlam. What on earth possesses people to send folks uninterested in solving problems but quite interested in creating drama where there should be none?
You’ll notice that my paintings today come from another difficult time in US history. Please enjoy the paintings by the CCC artists who painted the workers rebuilding the American dream in the 1930s. Maybe some of the Infrastructure Money landing around the country will turn into these kinds of good jobs. Here’s an interesting tidbit. You know all that inflation that’s still hanging around? The reason is pretty disgusting. This is from The Guardian and was written by Tom Perkins. “Half of recent US inflation due to high corporate profits, report finds. Thinktank report says ‘resounding evidence’ shows companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.”
A new report claims “resounding evidence” shows that high corporate profits are a main driver of ongoing inflation, and companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.
The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative thinktank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report.
Prices for consumers rose by 3.4% over the past year, but input costs for producers increased by just 1%, according to the authors’ calculations which were based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and National Income and Products Accounts.
“Costs have come down substantially, and while corporations were quick to pass on their increased costs to consumers, they are surprisingly less quick to pass on their savings to consumers,” Liz Pancotti, a Groundwork strategic advisor and paper co-author, told the Guardian.
Since pandemic inflation spiked in 2021, a high-stakes debate has played out about its sources. Many progressive economists pointed to corporate profits – or “greedflation” – and supply chain issues as a driver of high prices, while their more conservative counterparts singled out government stimulus cash and high wages.
The report’s authors scoured corporate earnings calls and found executives bragging to shareholders about keeping prices high and widening profit margins as input costs come down.
The findings come as the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates to their highest point in 20 years. The report casts serious doubt on the need for further interest rate hikes, and instead calls for stronger policies to rein in “corporate profiteering”.
Ellie Mystal, writing for The Nationwrites that “We Are Witnessing the Biggest Judicial Power Grab Since 1803. During a major hearing this week, the conservative justices made clear they’re about to gut the federal government’s power to regulate—and take that power for themselves.” They would be going after a case that even Scalia found well-decided.
The Supreme Court heard two consolidated cases yesterday that could reshape the legal landscape and, with them, the country. The cases take on Chevron deference—the idea that courts should defer to executive agencies when applying regulations passed by Congress. They’re the most important cases about democracy on the court’s docket this year, and I say that knowing full well that the court is also set to decide whether a raving, orange criminal can run again for president, and whether former presidents are immune from prosecution for their crimes in the first place.
That’s because what conservatives on the court are quietly trying to do is pull off the biggest judicial power grab since 1803, when it elevated itself to be the final arbiter of the Constitution in Marbury v. Madison. They’re trying to place their unelected, unaccountable policy preferences ahead of the laws made by the elected members of Congress or rules instituted by the president. If conservatives get their way, elections won’t really matter, because courts will be able to limit the scope of congressional regulation and the ability of presidents to enforce those regulations effectively. And the dumbest justice of all, alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh, basically said so during oral arguments.
I’m contractually obligated to tell you that the cases were technically about fees that fisheries are required to pay to federal observers. But all the justices talked about was Chevron deference. Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor even bothered to mention the fish, three hours and 20 minutes into a three-and-a-half-hour hearing.
The term “Chevron deference” comes from a 1984 case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Counsel. At issue was a provision of the Clean Air Act that required manufacturing plants to get permits before increasing toxic emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency made a rule, pursuant to the Clean Air Act, that allowed some of these industrial plants to increase emissions in certain cases without a permit, and environmental groups sued. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled (albeit with three justices recusing themselves) that the EPA had the authority to make the rule and that the courts should “defer” to the judgment of executive agencies when acts of Congress are ambiguous or plausibly allow the agencies to make additional regulations.
There are a couple of important subplots to the initial case. First: The Ronald Reagan–era EPA was against stricter environmental regulations; the reason environmentalists sued the agency was that it wanted to make it easier for industrial plants to increase emissions—and the court agreed with the agency. In fact, for most of its history, Chevron deference was lauded by conservatives (including Federalist Society svengali Antonin Scalia), who thought that deferring to executive agencies put power back into the hands of elected officials and took power away from “liberal” “activist” judges who might otherwise do things like demand additional environmental regulations. Conservatives have flip-flopped in recent years, largely because it’s easier now for them to control policymaking through the unelected courts than it is to keep control of the executive branch and its agencies. Liberals, for their part, have generally been in favor of Chevron deference this whole time, because it places power with experts instead of with judges.
Greg Sargent takes on the “Presidential Immunity” defense at The New Republic. “Trump’s Angry Rant About His Legal Mess Reveals an Ugly MAGA Truth. His immunity defense isn’t merely a legal argument. He’s priming his base to back wanton lawbreaking if he wins back the White House.”
Donald Trump’s lawyers have been arguing in court that he should have immunity from prosecution for crimes related to his insurrection because they constituted official acts committed while he was president. Special counsel Jack Smith has countered that this is tantamount to saying presidents should “operate in a realm without law.”
Now Trump has effectively confirmed it: A presidential realm without law is exactly what I want, Jack. In an angry, all-caps social media rant, Trump declared that “A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY” in order to “PROPERLY FUNCTION.” As observers quickly noted, this is best seen as a threat and a promise: A second Trump term, if voters give him one, will certainly include an untold amount of presidential lawbreaking.
But there’s more. What if this openly telegraphed intention to strain the boundaries of the law in office—or even to commit crimes—is not merely an incidental by-product of Trump’s legal defense but has become a key feature of his political appeal? There are strong indications that Trump is intentionally trying to raise expectations among his core supporters for just that—a presidency unbound by the law. And there are even signs it’s having exactly that effect.
To be clear, Trump’s demand for immunity—which is being decided by a federal appeals court—is weak and likely to fail, as I recently detailed. Indeed, this is exactly why Trump is loudly calling on the Supreme Court to rescue him from accountability by enshrining the notion that post-presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed in office:
ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, OR THE AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS OF A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER. HOPEFULLY THIS WILL BE AN EASY DECISION. GOD BLESS THE SUPREME COURT!
Trump also declared that even presidential acts that “CROSS THE LINE” must be given “TOTAL IMMUNITY” from prosecution. The Justice Department has a long-standing rule against prosecuting sitting presidents. But here Trump insists (inflating his lawyers’ arguments into something even more grotesquely absurd) that for presidents to be effective, they must be free to cross legal lines with immunity from future prosecution that is absolute.
Isn’t this the sort of thing that caused the colonists to overthrow the king in 1776? At least Trump’s enablers are beginning to face the music. “U.S. seeks jail for Trump adviser Navarro in Jan. 6 contempt case. The former Trump White House trade adviser acted without a lawyer in defying a House subpoena and failed to substantiate a claim that Trump asserted executive privilege to bar his testimony.” This is from Spencer S. Hsu, reporting for the Washington Post. Six months in jail is for contempt, not that crime.
Federal prosecutors asked a judge Thursday to sentence former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro to six months behind bars for contempt of Congress, saying he put allegiance to former president Donald Trump over the rule of law in refusing to cooperate with a House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Navarro, 74, was found guilty in September of two contempt charges for refusing to produce documents or testify after receiving a House subpoena in February 2022. A former trade and pandemic adviser who served throughout Trump’s term in office, Navarro claimed credit for hatching a scheme with longtime Trump political adviser Stephen K. Bannon to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race.
In a 20-page sentencing request, prosecutors said Navarro’s “bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt” deserved severe punishment. Like the rioters, Navarro “put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation” even after learning that his claim of executive privilege would not excuse his actions, the prosecutors said.
Ever since then, Trump and a growing group of allies have started to look more closely at Stefanik as a running mate, according to eight people familiar with the matter, including people in Trump’s orbit, Stefanik fundraising bundlers and former Trump administration officials.
At the time, the 39-year-old congresswoman was at the crest of a wave of national publicity after taking on the top leaders of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their answers to the question, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your college’s] rules on bullying and harassment?” eventually resulted in two of them resigning and brought a firestorm of criticism on the schools.
But Stefanik was on Trump’s radar long before that hearing, because she possesses one of the key attributes he’s looking for in a 2024 running mate: loyalty. That, mixed with her ability to drive the news on key issues, may be an irresistible mix for a vice presidential pick.
“Stefanik is at the top,” said Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s chief strategist in the White House and the architect of his 2016 campaign strategy.
“If you’re Trump, you want someone who’s loyal above all else,” a Republican campaign operative said. “Particularly because he sees Mike Pence as having made a fatal sin.”
Once a moderate Republican who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, Stefanik shifted to the right and rebranded herself as one of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill after he won the White House in 2016.
“She’s come a long way, and now she’s really, really with us,” Trump said during a lunch in the spring of 2022, according to a source familiar with his comments, adding, “She was kind of with us before, but she’s really with us now.”
Stefanik declined to comment on whether she would be interested in being Trump’s running mate, telling NBC News she was focused on her role in Congress.
“I’m not going to get into any of my conversations with President Trump. I’m honored to call him a friend. I’m proud to be the first member of Congress to have endorsed his re-election, and he had a huge win in Iowa. So we’re very excited about that,” she said.
We will also be dealing with an insane amount of propaganda and disinformation like this crazy one fact-checked by Reuters on Journalist Mehdi Hassan.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan was not arrested by the U.S. Navy’s legal branch for “treason,” as suggested by an article from a website that regularly publishes false claims about high-profile arrests.
The website Real Raw News published an article on Jan. 9 with a headline that reads: “JAG Arrests Mehdi Hasan.” Screenshots of the Real Raw News headline, “JAG Arrests Mehdi Hasan” surfaced on X, and Facebook.
The Jan. 9 article falsely claims that the MSNBC host was arrested by the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG Corps), the body that provides legal services to the Navy and Marines soldiers and the Army, for his coverage of COVID-19 vaccines after Hasan announced on Jan. 7 that he was leaving the U.S. TV news channel MSNBC, where he presented his own show.
All this stuff is so crazy you wish it wouldn’t take up valuable news space. For example, I’d like to hear more about what’s happening in Ukraine. But wow, we need to know how crazy and how far off normal the Republican party has gone. We’re still facing a possible government shutdown because the Republicans in Congress prefer performance art to governing. We are facing yet another threat of a government shutdown, and possibly another tossed Speaker of the House. This is from Newsweek. “Mike Johnson’s Problems Are Getting Worse.”
Despite Mike Johnson passing a Congressional funding deal on Thursday, the House speaker is still facing political pressure from within his party.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted for a short-term funding extension to avoid a government shutdown. It is a temporary fix while Congress decides on details of a $1.66 trillion deal that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who became House speaker in October, agreed to earlier this month.
However, more Republicans voted against the bill than voted against a similar bill to avoid a government shutdown in November, with 106 opposing Thursday’s continuing resolution and 93 opposing the November deal, meaning 13 more Republicans were against it than last time.
The Republican Party’s obsession with ensuring the USA maintains a white ruling majority is not only impact how the budget bill goes in the US Congress but pops up all over red states in some truly awful ways. This is from The Guardian. “Outrage as Oklahoma Republican’s bill labels Hispanic people ‘terrorists’. Lawmaker JJ Humphrey seeks punishments for ‘acts of terrorism’ and defines terrorist as ‘any person who is of Hispanic descent’.” MAGA Republicans continue to enable blatant racists.
An Oklahoma lawmaker is facing backlash for proposing a discriminatory bill that deems people of Hispanic descent as “terrorists”.
The Republican state representative JJ Humphrey introduced the bill, HB 3133, which seeks to combat problems in the state, such as drug and human trafficking, and lay out punishments to those who have committed these “acts of terrorism”.
The punishment for such a crime would be forfeiting all assets, including any and all property, vehicles and money.
In addition to “a member of a criminal street gang” and someone who “has been convicted of a gang-related offense”, the bill defines a terrorist as “any person who is of Hispanic descent living within the state of Oklahoma”.
You would think someone who spends time in Oklahoma City would know precisely who the terrorists have been there.
I can’t imagine any of these hijinx will improve over the year. The New Hampshire Primary is on Tuesday. I can’t imagine it being anything to follow on the news. That doesn’t seem right for a country that claims to be a democracy. Elections used to be like Baseball games to me. Now, they’re more like being hit by a baseball bat.
Former Trump WH aide Alyssa Farah Griffin: "Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. I believe that. I testified to the DOJ against him because I'm afraid of him. I'm afraid of what he will do to this country." pic.twitter.com/emMiJpMoZZ
The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because “we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.
Hansen, whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is cited as the first high-profile revelation of global heating, warned in a statement with two other scientists that the world was moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at any point over the past million years, bringing impacts such as stronger storms, heatwaves and droughts.
The world has already warmed by about 1.2C since mass industrialization, causing a 20% chance of having the sort of extreme summer temperatures currently seen in many parts of the northern hemisphere, up from a 1% chance 50 years ago, Hansen said.
“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts,” Hansen, who is 82, told the Guardian. “These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren. We are headed wittingly into the new reality – we knew it was coming.”
Hansen was a Nasa climate scientist when he warned lawmakers of growing global heating and has since taken part in protests alongside activists to decry the lack of action to reduce planet-heating emissions in the decades since.
He said the record heatwaves that have roiled the US, Europe, China and elsewhere in recent weeks have heightened “a sense of disappointment that we scientists did not communicate more clearly and that we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response”.
“It means we are damned fools,” Hansen said of humanity’s ponderous response to the climate crisis. “We have to taste it to believe it.”
This year looks likely to be the hottest ever recorded globally, with the summer already seeing the hottest June and, possibly, hottest week ever reliably measured. Conversely, 2023 may in time be considered an average or even mild year, as temperatures continue to climb. “Things will get worse before they get better,” Hansen said.
“This does not mean that the extreme heat at a particular place this year will recur and grow each year. Weather fluctuations move things around. But the global average temperature will go up and the climate dice will be more and more loaded, including more extreme events.”
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Now on to the Trump Crimes:
The news that Trump received a target letter from Jack Smith warning him he is about to be indicted in the January 6 case has pushed the stolen documents case in Florida into the background. Judge Cannon can dither about setting a date for the stolen documents trial all she wants; the January 6 case will be tried in Washington DC, will likely be on a fast track, and will be higher profile. Trump could be indicted for the third time as early as Friday.
Tao Fung Shan (2019), by Stephen Wong Chun Hei (Hong Kong b. 1986),
Special counsel Jack Smith has informed former President Donald Trump by letter that he is a target in his investigationSp into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
The target letter mentions three federal statutes: conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law, and tampering with a witness, victim or an informant, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
There are no additional details in the letter and it does not say how the special counsel’s office claims Trump may have violated the statutes listed, sources said.
Trump, appearing Tuesday night at a town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he received the letter on Sunday.
“It bothers me,” said the former president. “I got the letter on Sunday night. Think of it, I don’t think they’ve ever sent a letter on Sunday night. And they’re in a rush because they want to interfere, it’s election interference, never been done like this in the history of our country and it’s a disgrace what’s happening to our country.”
Target letters are typically given to subjects in a criminal investigation to put them on notice that they are facing the prospect of indictment.
The letter mentions three federal statutes: Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States; deprivation of rights under color of law; and tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant. It does not offer further details, nor does it detail how the special counsel believes Trump may have violated the statutes, the source tells Rolling Stone.
The letter does not mention statutes on sedition or insurrection, according to the source….
The source said the statutes listed likely refer to the prosecutor’s interest in charging Trump with obstructing the election certification process, including Trump efforts to pressure Mike Pence to stop the certification of President Biden’s 2020 victory.
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial in a civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, where a jury found the former U.S. president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5 million in damages.
In a 59-page decision, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said the jury did not reach a “seriously erroneous result,” and the May 9 verdict was not a “miscarriage of justice.”
Carroll had accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, and then branding the incident a hoax in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform.
Trump had argued that awarding Carroll $2 million in compensatory damages for sexual assault was “excessive” because the jury found he had not raped her, while the award for defamation was based on “pure speculation.”
The judge also found that Trump did rape Carroll, despite his claims of being exhonerated of that charge, according to the “common definition.”
JUST IN: Judge Kaplan rejects Trump's bid to throw out the verdict in the Carroll sexual assault lawsuit — and he says the Carroll jury did, in fact, find Trump raped her, based on the common definition of the word. https://t.co/3i62YnLA6Mpic.twitter.com/UqPd2VTFQE
Attorney General Dana Nessel is leveling felony charges against 16 Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Donald Trump won Michigan’s 2020 presidential election, launching criminal cases against top political figures inside the state GOP.
Each of the 16 electors, including former Michigan Republican Party Co-Chairwoman Meshawn Maddock and Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot, have been charged with eight felony counts, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election law forgery, according to Nessel’s office.
Moonlight Dance, by Paul Batch,, 1979
The revelation capped six months of investigation and produced the most serious allegations yet in Michigan over the campaign to overturn Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Biden won the state by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points, but Trump and his supporters maintained false and unproven claims that fraud swung the result.
As part of the push to undermine Biden’s victory, Trump supporters gathered inside the then-Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020, and signed a certificate, claiming to cast the state’s 16 electoral votes for Trump.
Eventually, the false certificate was sent to the National Archives and Congress. The document inaccurately claimed the Trump electors had met inside the Michigan Capitol. However, they hadn’t. Biden’s electors convened inside the Capitol, and the building was closed to others on Dec. 14, 2020.
“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” said Nessel, a Democrat, in a statement.
“My department has prosecuted numerous cases of election law violations throughout my tenure, and it would be malfeasance of the greatest magnitude if my department failed to act here in the face of overwhelming evidence of an organized effort to circumvent the lawfully cast ballots of millions of Michigan voters in a presidential election.”
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has contacted former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who Donald Trump pressured to overturn the 2020 election, a source familiar with the outreach confirmed first to CNN.
A spokesman for Ducey confirmed the outreach from Smith’s team, which has not been previously reported.
Phil Greenwood (UK ,Wales. b.1943), Moon Lights, etching and aquating
“Yes, he’s been contacted. He’s been responsive, and just as he’s done since the election, he will do the right thing,” Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato told CNN.
Trump narrowly lost Arizona to Joe Biden by less than 11,000 votes. Trump publicly attacked Ducey, a former ally, over the state’s certification of the results. As Ducey was certifying the election results in November 2020, Trump appeared to call the governor – with a “Hail to the Chief” ringtone heard playing on Ducey’s phone. Ducey did not take that call but later said he spoke with Trump, though he did not describe the specifics of the conversation.
Ducey, behind closed doors, said that the former president was pressuring him to find fraud in the presidential election in Arizona that would help him overturn the election, a source with knowledge told CNN earlier this month after The Washington Post first reported the news. There was no recording made of that call, a source familiar with the matter said.
Then-Vice President Mike Pence also spoke with Ducey in the wake of the 2020 election.
Federal prosecutors examining former President Donald Trump’s attempt to hold onto power following the 2020 election requested surveillance and other security footage recorded at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, according to a subpoena obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In a grand jury subpoena dated May 31, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office was directed to hand over “any and all security video or security footage, or any other video of any kind, depicting or taken at or near” State Farm and “any associated data.”
The subpoena, which was obtained by The AJC through an open records request and had not been previously reported, shows the widening interest in Georgia from Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who sent a so-called “target” letter to Trump on Sunday.
It also demonstrated the growing areas of overlap between the DOJ probe and the Fulton County investigation of interference in Georgia’s 2020 elections, which is expected to result in indictments against Trump and others next month.
Previous subpoenas and grand jury appearances show that Fulton and federal prosecutors are both interested in the appointment of a slate of “alternate” Trump electors in swing states like Georgia, as well as the pressure the former president placed on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case expressed skepticism on Tuesday about the government’s request to go to trial as early as December, but she also seemed disinclined to accede immediately to Mr. Trump’s desire to have the trial put off until after the 2024 election.
Appearing for the first time at a hearing in the case, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, came to no decision about when to schedule the trial, saying she would issue a written order “promptly.”
George Wesley Bellows (USA 1882-1925), A Fresh Breeze, 1913
The question of the trial’s timing could be hugely consequential, given that the legal proceeding is intertwined with the calendar of a presidential campaign in which Mr. Trump is now the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
For nearly two hours in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, peppered prosecutors and the former president’s lawyers with questions that suggested she was in command of her courtroom and well-versed in the facts of the case.
Her decision about when to schedule the trial will be an early test for the judge, who came under widespread criticism last year after she rendered some decisions in a related case that were favorable to Mr. Trump at an early stage of the investigation.
At one point, Judge Cannon directly asked one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Christopher Kise, if he wanted to put off the trial until after the election. When Mr. Kise said he did, Judge Cannon told him that she wanted to focus on near-term issues like the amount of discovery evidence the defense had to review and the types of motions the lawyers planned to file.
As the hearing came to end, Todd Blanche, another one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, asked Judge Cannon if the defense could return to court in November and reassess the trial schedule then. Appearing to pick up on the judge’s desire to create what she called “a road map” for the case, Mr. Blanche said that if a trial date absolutely had to be chosen, he would ask for one in mid-November 2024, after the election.
Timing is particularly important in this case because if the trial is delayed until after votes are cast and Mr. Trump wins the race, he could try to pardon himself or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely.
I imagine the Special Counsel would appeal to the 11th Circuit if Cannon has the nerve to schedule the trial after the election, as Trump wants.
Former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik is in talks to be interviewed by special counsel Jack Smith’s team investigating efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, Kerik’s attorney said Tuesday. Kerik worked with Rudy Giuliani after the election to find evidence of voter fraud and later provided documents about a plan to keep Donald Trump in power to the House Jan. 6 committee. Tim Parlatore, a lawyer who quit Trump’s legal team in May and who now represents Kerik, was asked by Kaitlan Collins on CNN if he expected the former commissioner to receive a letter like the one Trump received informing him that he was a target of Smith’s investigation. Parlatore said Kerik hasn’t received a target letter and does not expect him to at any point. But when asked if Parlatore is “in talks” about Kerik having an interview with the special counsel, the attorney said: “Yeah sure, absolutely. Mr. Kerik has nothing to hide. He’s happy to sit down and explain everything to them.”
Finally, news broke of another astonishing Trump crime yesterday–theft of valuable Israeli antiquities.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathrooms and ballrooms were not just filled with top secret government documents. He apparently has also been hoarding temporarily loaned Israeli antiquities there for four years.
Haaretzreports that Israel lent the Trump White House antiquities, including ancient ceramic lamps from its national treasures collection, for a Hanukkah candle-lighting event in 2019. Israel Hasson, the then-director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, approved the loan of the antiquities so long as they were returned within weeks.
Hasson told Haaretz that “we wanted our man to go and bring it back, but then Covid broke out, and everything got stuck.” So Hasson’s agency had asked Saul Fox, a major Jewish-American donor to the Antiquities Authority, to keep the items in tow until they could be brought back to Israel. But, Haaretz reports, Israeli authorities discovered several months ago that the antiquites instead ended up at Mar-a-Lago, “where they still remain.”
Eli Eskozido, the new Antiquities Authority head, has asked the Israeli government and Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to Israel to coordinate a return of the antiquities, but to no avail. One source told Haaretz that he wouldn’t be surprised if “the items Israel seeks are also eventually found in some bathroom.”
Republicans have bent over backward to show their inextinguishable support for Israel, but it’s unclear whether they will question why Trump has been harboring Israeli antiquities. After all, they had barely any criticism for his stealing of U.S. national security documents.
The extent of Trump criming is breathtaking, but his comeuppance is coming. As we say in the Midwest, he is up shit creek.
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That’s why my blood pressure took off when I read this. “Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer. The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.” The article can be found at
This is an unprecedented move and a dangerous one.
Don’t even get me started on Trump trying to rename Lake Ontario. But you don’t have to take my word on it try this at 
Stormy and E. Jean are high on my list of tough and amazing women for see these cases through. We can only hope we get the Epstein files released and we see more women damaged by Trump receive justice and compensation. And speaking of the Stormy case, this headline yesterday from 
Despite evidence to the contrary
Trump has basically wrecked the idea that Republicans are better at foreign policy and wars. There’s no way any of his health policies via the nuts he put in Health and Human Services can be seen as anything but charlatans. And, the DOJ is a laugh. So much for law and order. Since the Republic party continues to enable all of this mess, I can’t understand that anyone other that a member of the Orange Caligula Cult could tolerate what’s going on these days.
I don’t have much hope for the New York Times, but maybe the Washington Post is coming around. This analysis popped up on the Memorandum feed. “Trump’s freewheeling speeches offer a dark vision of a second term. A close examination of one appearance in Rock Hill, S.C., offers an anatomy of a signature rally by the former president.” 
The one specific prop at any Trump rally is the assortment of disheveled, obviously low-education, wipipo misfits behind him, with the occasional black man who is either a paid prop or seriously deluded. Well, this is South Carolina, the state of perpetual revolt. But Trump voters don’t have their wits about them, and that’s if they possess any. I am very tired of getting way too much information on cult behavior. But seriously, how do you explain this analysis from the 
He goes on ad infinitum about the same damn things. The one thing you think he would shut up about is E. Jean Carol. But he doesn’t, he isn’t, and he won’t. 
So, we know from the moment that Trump started down that escalator and the first words out of his mouth that Trump has no shame. 
Philip Bump gave this analysis at WAPO today. 
CNN’s Jim Sciutto has a new book out. Josephine Harvey at
Sciutto writes this at CNN.
Finally, news broke of another astonishing Trump crime yesterday–theft of valuable Israeli antiquities.
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