Nothing is normal in the U.S. anymore. The government is run by incompetent and corrupt people. Most concerning of all is that the “president is not only ignorant and incompetent, but also physically and mentally unstable. In addition, he lacks any sense of morality or empathy for other people.
In the months since, the evidence has only grown that something serious is afflicting Trump.
And then last night happened.
Overnight, the President of the United States went on what can only be described as an unhinged social media fever dream. He posted on his social media site Truth Social hundreds of times in a short span — somewhere north of 150 times overnight, a wild mix of conspiracy theories, videos, and memes. It was extreme even for him.
During that end-of-August episode, the major questions were about the president’s physical health — his bruised hands and his swollen ankles — and in the months since, there have been more reasons and evidence that some part of the president is not well:
He is stumbling, physically, through more of his events. Since August, he appears to be regularly dragging the right side of his body and struggles to walk in a straight line. Just watch this recent video of Trump boarding Marine One, where he appears to be leaning heavily on Melania Trump to stand. And then there was Trump’s Asia trip, where he seemed so lost, wandering aimlessly through a Japanese press event, that the late night shows set it to music.
He appears to have fallen asleep in meetings on multiple recent occasions, including at an Oval Office meeting.
And then there’s the MRI. In October, he went to Walter Reed for his “annual medical exam,” even though it was barely six months after his last “annual medical exam” at Walter Reed, and had a wide range of tests done, including an MRI. In recent days, Trump has gotten into a high-profile tiff with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who pressed him to release the results of that MRI. When asked, Trump couldn’t explain why he had the test. Finally, yesterday the White House released information saying it was a chest MRI for his cardiovascular and abdominal systems and that, as the White House always says he is, the tests showed everything was “perfectly normal” and in “excellent health.” (Gavin Newsom mocked Trump about the results.)
But that’s not the reason worth having a conversation about Trump’s health today.
Today, we should be having a conversation about Trump’s increasingly clear diminished mental capacity. This is a man, after all, with the sole launch authority for the nation’s nuclear weapons who, on a daily basis, seems increasingly more disconnected from reality, beholden to conspiracy thinking, and — most simply — absent-minded. It is not a recipe for global stability — and deserves more serious conversation than its getting.
Please go read Graff’s specific arguments in support of his claims. It’s not long.
Yesterday Trump held a cabinet meeting on video. He could barely stay awake most of the time. Of course, he had been up most of the night posting insane garbage on Truth Social, but still…
President Trump appeared to be fighting sleep on Tuesday during a cabinet meeting at the White House, closing his eyes and at times seeming to nod off, after he criticized media coverage about him facing the realities of aging in office.
Over the course of two hours and 18 minutes, the president, who is 79, sometimes appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open as cabinet officials went around the room describing their work and heaping praise on him….
Mr. Trump does appear frequently before the news media, and he takes questions far more often than his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., did. He is a regular, outsize presence in public life.
But Mr. Trump also appeared to have had a late night. He shared or posted dozens of times on social media on Monday night until nearly midnight.
Early in the meeting, Mr. Trump had complained that he was getting unfair scrutiny compared to Mr. Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race last year amid concerns in his own party about his age, mental acuity and ability to beat Mr. Trump.
“I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong. There will be someday,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s going to happen to all of us. But right now I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago. But who the hell knows?”
A bit more:
Mr. Trump then claimed he got “all A’s” on his physical.
But as Tuesday’s meeting went on, Mr. Trump seemed to grow tired.
About 50 minutes in, as Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, spoke, Mr. Trump struggled to keep his eyes open before he leaned back and forth in his chair. More than an hour and a half into the meeting, while Linda McMahon, the education secretary, spoke, he closed his eyes for five seconds before leaning back and looking at the ceiling. Roughly 20 minutes later, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke, the president leaned forward and appeared to close his eyes again.
It was the second time in less than a month that Mr. Trump appeared to doze off in public. During an Oval Office event on Nov. 6, the president’s eyes grew heavy and closed for several seconds.
Trump recently announced that he had had an MRI scan at his latest physical exam, but claimed he had no idea what it was for. Experts have questioned that, and finally his doctor released some confusing details.
The White House released a letter from President Trump’s physician on Monday about the results of “advanced imaging tests.” The statement, by Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the tests on his cardiovascular system and abdominal region showed the president “remains in excellent overall health.”
Trump in yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Some medical experts said it was unclear what tests doctors conducted, why they were done or what the results mean. And, they said, a person without symptoms would not have imaging tests as part of a routine medical exam under ordinary medical circumstances.
Mr. Trump, the oldest president ever sworn into his office, had M.R.I. scans in October as part of a semiannual physical exam. His annual physical was done in April.
On Sunday, during an appearance on “Meet the Press” on NBC News, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota called on the president to release the results after Mr. Trump had impugned Mr. Walz’s intelligence. Asked by a reporter on Sunday what part of his body was scanned, Mr. Trump said aboard Air Force One, “I have no idea — it was just an M.R.I.” He then said it was not a scan of his brain.
But Dr. Barbabella’s memo did not specify that Mr. Trump had a M.R.I. scan, which uses a magnetic field to produce images of soft tissues that do not show up on X-rays. Instead, the memo describes “advanced imaging” that it said was carried out “because men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health.”
The imaging was part of Mr. Trump’s “comprehensive executive physical,” Dr. Barbabella explained, referring to a detailed medical exam often offered to executives. Such exams can include tests that are not normally done when people have no symptoms of disease.
The memo said Mr. Trump’s cardiovascular imaging is “perfectly normal” with no signs that his arteries are narrowed. His “cardiovascular system shows excellent health,” the statement said.
It added that, “his abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,” and said, “this level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age and confirms that he remains in excellent overall health.”
Medical experts are questioning the White House’s explanation for President Donald Trump’s MRI tests as “preventive.”
A Monday memo released by presidential physician Sean Barbabella described the results of “a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health” as normal. “This level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age,” Barbabella said.
Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, Trump’s doctor
But imaging experts who spoke to Scientific American expressed doubts as to Barbabella’s assertion that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening is typical preventive care. American Heart Association guidelines, for example, note that a cardiac MRI is usually requested because of existing heart conditions and often only after other tests.
“No, it is certainly not standard medical practice to perform screening MRIs of the heart and abdomen,” says radiologist and MRI expert Thomas Kwee of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Such imaging is typically only performed in the case of underlying disease, he says, or if there is suspicion of an underlying disease based on the patient’s medical history and physical examination. Barbabella’s memo said the imaging showed Trump was in “excellent health.”
Kwee’s comment echoed those of Medpage Today’s editor in chief, physician Jeremy Faust, who told CNN on Monday that “there’s really no such thing as routine prevention using an MRI.” Faust on Tuesday told Scientific American that the White House memo reference to “advanced imaging” left open questions as to exactly what tests Trump underwent. It could even possibly refer to a CT scan, for example, which is different than MRI. “If we knew exactly what imaging he received, it would give us a better idea of what conditions they are worried about,” Faust says.
More opinions:
“An assessment of a heart MRI and abdominal MRI is not ‘standard for an executive physical,’” says former White House physician Jeffrey Kuhlman, author of the book Transforming Presidential Healthcare. Though it’s not uncommon for physicians who have concierge-type practices to use total or partial body scans on their clients, “this is not evidence-based,” he adds….
Questions around Trump’s health have surfaced repeatedly in recent months. In July the White House reported that the president has chronic venous insufficiency, a blood vessel disease that affects circulation and can cause ankle swelling. And noticeable bruises on the back of Trump’s hands seen in February were attributed to “shaking hands all day” by Leavitt.
There is no solid evidence that executive MRI scans help people, Kwee says, either by diagnosing disease or extending their lifespan. “These scans can also lead to unexpected incidental findings and give false reassurance that there is no underlying disease.”
At least big media is beginning to talk about Trump’s obvious mental and physical health issues. We need them to start focusing on Trump’s age as much as they did Biden’s.
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has been traveling the world to participate in high-stakes foreign policy negotiations on behalf of the president. On Tuesday, Kushner traveled to Moscow and sat across the table from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. The entire United States delegation consisted only of Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kushner and Witkoff were joined at the table by an interpreter.
Kushner’s participation in the Moscow meeting — and the similar role he played in the Gaza negotiations — likely violates the law.
Representing the Trump administration in high-level foreign policy negotiations makes Kushner, at a minimum, a Special Government Employee (SGE). Under the law, an SGE is someone “who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform, with or without compensation, for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days, temporary duties either on a full-time or intermittent basis.”
Trump has not named Kushner an SGE. But a seminal 1977 opinion by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) found “an identifiable act of appointment may not be absolutely essential for an individual to be regarded as an officer or employee in a particular case where the parties omitted it for the purpose of avoiding the application of the conflict-of-interest laws.” In that opinion, the OLC considered the status of an individual who had not been named to any role by the president but “assumed considerable responsibility for coordinating the Administration’s activities in [a] particular area.” The OLC concluded that since the individual was “quite clearly engaging in a governmental function” and is “working under the direction or supervision of the President,” he should be considered an SGE.
Here, Kushner is engaged in activities that can only be conducted by government officials. The Logan Act bars private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments without authorization. Kushner is acting in an authorized capacity, under Trump’s direction, and that creates a host of legal issues.
A the same time, Kushner is receiving payments from foreign governments.
Since leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner has raised at least $4.8 billion for Affinity Partners, his private equity firm. Nearly 99% of Affinity Partners’ funding comes from foreign sources. The largest investment, $2 billion, came from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF).
The Saudi government pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million annually. Other investors, including the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pay annual fees of up to 2%. As of September 2024, Affinity Partners had collected $157 million in fees, mainly from Middle Eastern governments.
Kushner is continuing to collect these fees as he serves in a top foreign policy role for the Trump administration. This is precisely the kind of behavior the Foreign Emoluments Clause was designed to prevent. Kushner was one of two Americans on Tuesday engaged in high-stakes negotiations with Putin. But as the private equity manager for billions of foreign capital, Kushner has a fiduciary duty to advance the financial interests of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other foreign governments.
Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted by a U.S. court last year on charges that he ran the Central American nation as a “narco-state” that helped send South American cocaine to the United States, has been released from federal prison after receiving a “full and unconditional” pardon from President Donald Trump.
Hernández, 57, was released Monday from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website and a BOP spokesperson.
Hernández, who was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was serving 45 years in prison on importation and weapons charges. U.S. prosecutors said he built his political career on millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers in Honduras and Mexico, and as president helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine to the United States while protecting traffickers from extradition and prosecution.
Juan Orlando Hernández
The Trump administration is waging what it says is a counternarcotics campaign off Venezuela. U.S. forces have destroyed at least 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing more than 80 people, that officials say were carrying drugs to the U.S., and U.S. troops and warships are massing in the region. Trump has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of sending violent criminals and drugs to the U.S.
But on Friday, Trump said that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” and that he would grant him a “Full and Complete Pardon.”
“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump’s decision to pardon an official who, a federal court found, helped flood the United States with cocaine angered congressional Democrats.
“Hernandez’s conviction last year finally held him accountable for all the Honduran and American blood on his hands and sent an unequivocal message: No drug trafficker is above the law, not even former presidents,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That is precisely why all Americans should be outraged by President Trump’s pardoning of former president Hernandez.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday was given a final copy of the completed Defense Department Inspector General report that examined his sharing sensitive military information on a Signal group chat back in March, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
The much-anticipated report is expected to become public as early as this week, these people said.
Pete Hegseth
The report outlines the findings of a more than eight-month investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal, an encrypted but unclassified messaging app, to share details of planned U.S. military strikes in Yemen before they had begun.
Hegseth has maintained that he shared no classified information on the group chat….
The two people familiar with the inspector general investigation would not say what its conclusions are. The report was requested by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on March 27.
The group chat, which included other top members of President Donald Trump’s national security team, became public after an editor for The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently added.
A family in Colombia filed a petition on Tuesday with the Washington DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the Colombian citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in a US airstrike on 15 September.
The petition marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.
Alejandro Carranza Medina and his son. Photograph Courtesy of Carranza family
The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is designed to “promote and protect human rights in the Western Hemisphere”. The US is a member, and in March the Trump administration’s state department wrote: “The United States is pleased to be a strong supporter of the IACHR and is committed to continuing support for the Commission’s work and its independence. Preserving the IACHR’s autonomy is a pillar of our human rights policy in the region.”
The complaint was filed by Pittsburgh-based human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik. “On September 15, 2025, the United States military bombed the boat of Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina,” the filing says, “which Mr Carranza was sailing in the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia. Mr Carranza was killed in the process of this bombing.”
Kovalik identified Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, as the perpetrator, based on Hegseth’s own statements. “From numerous news reports, we know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats. Secretary Hegseth has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings,” the filing goes on.
The complaint adds: “US President Donald Trump has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein.”
The Trump administration on Tuesday halted immigration applications submitted by nationals from 19 countries that already faced restrictions on travel to the United States, according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo.
“USCIS has considered that this direction may result in delay to the adjudication of some pending applications and has weighed that consequence against the urgent need for the agency to ensure that applicants are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” the agency said in a four-page policy memo.
“Ultimately, USCIS has determined that the burden of processing delays that will fall on some applicants is necessary and appropriate in this instance, when weighed against the agency’s obligation to protect and preserve national security,” it added.
The New York Times first reported the immigration pause, which applies to both green card and citizenship applicants.
Federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the planning.
The move comes as President Donald Trump again on Tuesday escalated rhetoric about Minnesota’s sizable Somali community, saying he did not want immigrants from the east African country in the U.S. because “they contribute nothing.”
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
The enforcement operation could begin in the coming days and is expected to focus on the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and people with final orders of deportation, the person said. Teams of immigration agents would spread across the Twin Cities in what the person described as a directed, high-priority sweep, though the plans remain subject to change.
The prospect of a crackdown is likely to deepen tensions in Minnesota — home to the nation’s largest Somali community. They’ve been coming since the 1990s, fleeing their country’s long civil war and drawn by Minnesota’s generous social programs.
An estimated 260,000 people of Somalian descent were living in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The largest population is in the Minneapolis area, home to about 84,000 residents, most of whom are American citizens. Ohio, Washington and California also have significant populations.
President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.
Even for Mr. Trump — who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries — his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.
“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Mr. Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House, during which he sometimes appeared to be fighting sleep. But when the subject turned to immigration, Mr. Trump made a point of lashing out.
“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.
He said Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”
“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”
Mr. Trump has used this kind of rhetoric throughout his rise in politics, including in his first term as president, when he demanded to know why the United States would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as “shithole countries,” rather than, say, Norway.
But he has long been especially fixated on Somalis in the United States, and on Ms. Omar in particular.
“His obsession with me is creepy,” Ms. Omar wrote in a post shortly after the cabinet meeting. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
Trump is garbage and he should be in prison.
Those are my recommended reads for you today. What’s on your mind?
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Yesterday was another wild and crazy day in Trump’s U.S.A. I’m sure no one will be surprised to see me say this: the “president” is not well. He may be suffering from dementia and/or may be certifiably insane. He is also stupid, evil, and corrupt. Trump’s one consistent behavior is his willingness to to anything for money. This is the man who runs our foreign policy and controls our nuclear weapons.
Yesterday Trump met in the oval office with New York City mayor elect Zohran Mamdani. I had a feeling that Mamdani would be able to charm Trump, and that’s exactly what happened.
Trump has been screaming for months that Mamdani is a communist, and Republican have centered their plans for the midterms around attacks on Mamdani and his support from Democrats. Now that has been blown out of the water.
Dana Rubinstein and Benjamin Oreskes at The New York Times:
There were smiles and more than a few laughs. Compliments, ranging from genuine to diplomatic, were abundant.
And when reporters tried to interrupt the unexpected buddy movie that emerged in the White House on Friday, President Trump warmly placed his hand on Zohran Mamdani’s arm and gently advised him to keep it simple in response to a question about whether Mr. Mamdani considered him a fascist.
“You can just say yes,” the president said. “It’s easier.”
It was an astonishingly affectionate performance that sent heads spinning, as New Yorkers confronted the once-unthinkable possibility that Mr. Mamdani, the democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York City, and the president actually got along.
“I mean, it did seem like a little bit of a bromance,” said Nicole Malliotakis, the Republican congresswoman from the conservative stronghold of Staten Island. “Based on the election results, we knew Mamdani was charming, but who thought he’d be able to charm the president?”
I thought he would. Mamdani is quite charming and popular and Trump is weak and unpopular. His polls are terrible, and continuing to drop. He has wrecked the economy, sent troops into American cities for no reason, pardoned thousands of convicted criminals, blown up fishing boats in the Caribbean for no reason, torn down part of the White House, and his tariffs have increased the cost of everything.
Back to the NYT story:
For weeks, New York leaders have been bracing for the likelihood of a devastating confrontation between the Trump administration and a City Hall led by Mr. Mamdani. They have gamed out what, precisely, it might look like if Mr. Trump sends federal troops or a surge of immigration enforcement agents into New York City. They have fretted about more funding cuts. They have formed rapid-response groups and enlisted the help of business leaders.
They have had reason to worry. Not only has Mr. Trump threatened New York City, but he also personally tried to prevent Mr. Mamdani from winning the mayoral election, even going so far as to urge Republicans to abandon their party nominee in favor of Andrew M. Cuomo, the Democratic former governor.
But then the cameras went live on Friday from the Oval Office. There was Mr. Mamdani, standing with a quiet smile by Mr. Trump’s side as the president lavished him with praise; commended his decision to keep the current police commissioner; applauded his pro-housing, pro-affordability inclinations; and helped him swat away unfriendly questions from the conservative press.
To hear Mr. Trump tell it, the two men, who occupy starkly opposing positions on Israel and Gaza, even found common ground there.
Casting himself as the consummate peacemaker, Mr. Trump said Mr. Mamdani, too, “feels very strongly” about “peace in the Middle East.”
… Zohran Mamdani visited Trump today at the WH, and it did not go the way most Republicans thought it would. Trump has always recognized and fawned over star power, and that is exactly the way he treated Mamdani. Fox reporter to Mamdani: “You referred to Trump as despot… Trump interrupts: I’ve been called much worse than a despot. So it’s not that insulting.”
… I was laughing hysterically during this entire meeting with Trump praising Mamdani. I was a one-way love fest from Trump to Mamdani, with Zohran playing it cool the entire time.
… Trump: “I tell you, the press has eaten this thing up. I have had a lot of meetings with the heads of major countries, nobody cared. The biggest people come over from other countries and nobody cares but they did care about this meeting, and it was a great meeting.”
… Q to Trump – “Would you feel comfortable living in NYC under a Mamdani admin? Trump: Yeah, I would.”
… Republican campaign consultants built their entire midterm strategy around making Mamdani into the devil incarnate and the face of Democratic Party, then Trump slobbers all over him today in the Oval!
… Trump then proceeded to end Elise Stefanik’s campaign for governor: Q – “Stefanik has campaigned on calling Mamdani a jihadist. Do you think you’re standing next to a jihadist? Trump: No… but she’s out there campaigning. You say things sometimes in a campaign. You’d have to ask her about that. I met with a man who is a rational person.”
… I’m dying!!! I soooo wish I could see her face right now. (First time I’ve ever said that).
… Mamdani: “I told the president that, you know, so much of the focus of our campaign has been on the cost of living crisis and when we asked those New Yorkers who had voted for the president, when we saw an increase in his numbers in NYC, that came back to the same issue: Cost of living, cost of living, cost of living. Trump: We have to get Con Edison to start lowering their rates. Mamdani: Absolutely.”
… I just pissed my pants laughing. I’m crying!
… Trump: “He has a chance to do something great for NY and he does need the help from the fed govt. And we will be helping him. But he’s different than your average candidate. He came out of nowhere.”
… Love is love. There’s no point in fighting it.
By Eduard Zentsik, 1975
I’m really starting to feel more hopeful for the future of our country. Trump is getting weaker by the day and it hasn’t even been a year yet. If the Democrats can manage to take over the House in the midterms, he will be a lame duck in danger of impeachment.
Since Jan. 20, this column and The Contrarian have been clear-eyed that Donald Trump is not merely a rhetorical autocrat; he actually wants to be a dictator. But if all dimensions of our society wake up and assert peaceful, lawful, vigorous pro-democracy power in opposition, his autocratic push can be defeated and democracy reinforced. This week’s events culminating in Trump’s Oval Office U-turn on Mamdani were an inflection point in that opposition. They were a sign that we are headed for a democracy U-turn of the kind that many nations have achieved in ousting authoritarianism.
The most dramatic evidence of democracy’s resilience and Trump’s dictatorial frustration was his getting steamrolled on the bill requiring the release of the government’s Epstein files, including those relating to Trump. He has for months fought the disclosure of these files and the remainder of his administration’s materials about the child rape and sex trafficking ring run by his long-time associate Jeffrey Epstein. Trump went so far as to privately lobby or publicly attack the handful of Republicans who originally joined all Democrats in the House in forcing a vote on a bill to release the files.
He ultimately failed—and abysmally so, with the bill passing both houses of Congress with just one vote against it (the execrable Rep. Clay Higgins). It was a sign of just how potent the Epstein scandal is and how politically shaky the president is at the moment.
Trump’s lack of strongman cred was further revealed when, in the span of 24 hours, we went from wondering whether Trump’s allies would block consideration of the bill in the Senate to unanimous consent to pass the legislation as soon as it arrived from the House. That was an indication of Trump’s weakness, sure, but credit where credit is due: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer read the room and pounced on the opportunity to move the bill….
But the signs of Trump’s weakness did not stop there. We saw an unhinged tantrum from him that can be explained by his own feelings of inadequacy. It came after members of Congress cut a video telling service members that they should not follow illegal orders.
Trump went haywire threatening the six members of the House and Senate who cut the video, all veterans: Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, Rep. Chris DeLuzio of Pennsylvania, Rep. Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania. He called the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL” and called the lawmakers “traitors” who “should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL.”
A video by members of Congress urging that the law be followed hardly amounts to sedition. But, given Trump’s other bizarre and baseless criminal investigations, we need to take his threats seriously. This whole controversy shows just how unhinged he has become with his continued losses. And it appears that more defeats are ahead for Trump in his wave of unfounded revenge prosecutions.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Georgia Republican, said on Friday night that she would resign from Congress in January.
Her announcement came days after President Trump branded her a “traitor” for breaking with him and helping compel the Justice Department to release its files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender.
By Gina Litherland
Ms. Greene, who was elected in 2020 and positioned herself as a die-hard Trump supporter until a series of recent ruptures with the president on a variety of issues, made the abrupt announcement in a video and statement she posted online, filmed from her home in Georgia, her Christmas tree on display behind her.
“Loyalty should be a two-way street, and we should be able to vote our conscience and represent our district’s interest,” Ms. Greene wrote in a long post. She said that if she had been cast aside by “MAGA Inc,” it was indicative that “many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.” [….]
It is extremely unusual for a member of Congress to up and leave in the middle of a term, barring an illness or some extenuating circumstance that makes it impossible to carry on.
But Ms. Greene said she had made the decision to leave because she did not want to endure a “hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms.”
She added: “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”
Her impending departure will shrink the already slim Republican House majority, bringing it down to 218 members until her seat in a deep-red district can be filled.
There are rumors that Greene may run for Georgia governor or senator.
KYIV, Nov 21 (Reuters) – The United States has threatened to cut intelligence sharing and weapons supplies for Ukraine to press it into agreeing to the framework of a U.S.-brokered peace deal, two people familiar with the matter said.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Kyiv was under greater pressure from Washington than during any previous peace discussions, and that the U.S. wanted Ukraine to sign a framework of the deal by next Thursday.
“They want to stop the war and want Ukraine to pay the price,” one of the sources said.
Washington has presented Ukraine with a 28-point plan, which endorses some of Russia’s principal demands in the war, including that Kyiv cede additional territory, curb the size of its military and be barred from joining NATO.
A delegation of senior U.S. military officials met with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Thursday to discuss a path to peace.
The U.S. ambassador in Ukraine and the army public affairs chief travelling with the delegation described the meeting as a success and said Washington sought an “aggressive timeline” for the signature of a document between the U.S. and Ukraine.
After veering wildly this year over how to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, President Trump appeared in recent weeks to have settled into a strategy of suggesting he was willing to put long-term pressure on Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
He imposed new sanctions on oil sales, though not as strong as many in Congress would have liked. He agreed to provide arms to Ukraine’s forces as long as they were purchased by the Europeans, bringing billions of dollars to American defense contractors. At one point, he even floated the notion that he would provide Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, only to back away from offering the long-range weapons after a conversation with Mr. Putin appeared to convince him it could escalate into a direct American conflict with Russia.
Then he blew the whole thing up — yet again.
Many of the 28 points in the proposed Russia-Ukraine peace plan offered by the White House read like they had been drafted in the Kremlin. They reflect almost all Mr. Putin’s maximalist demands: Ukraine would have to cede to Russia all of the lands that Moscow has declared for itself in Donetsk and Luhansk. The United States would recognize that as Russian territory. No NATO forces could be based inside Ukraine that might prevent the Russians from regrouping and taking the whole country. The Ukrainian military would be limited to 600,000 troops, a 25 percent cut from current levels, and it would be barred from possessing long-range weapons that could reach into Russia.
In return, all sanctions on Russia would be lifted, and the country would be “reintegrated into the global economy,” — Mr. Putin’s most critical objective at a time when Russia is reeling from the long-term costs of a war he thought would be over in a week or two.
To add to the pressure, Mr. Trump set a short deadline, Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the United States, for Ukraine to decide whether to give up not only part of its territory, but also its ability to defend itself with a fully staffed military and an arsenal of long-range weapons.
It is unclear what would happen if President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine were to refuse to surrender both his territory and Ukraine’s freedom to defend itself and form alliances with other nations, especially in Europe. But the implicit threat is a loss of military support — and critical intelligence — from the United States, especially if Mr. Trump decides to wash his hands of the conflict, no matter what the risk to European allies.
The 28-point peace plan that the United States and Russia want to impose on Ukraine and Europe is misnamed. It is not a peace plan. It is a proposal that weakens Ukraine and divides America from Europe, preparing the way for a larger war in the future. In the meantime, it benefits unnamed Russian and American investors, at the expense of everyone else.
By Tokuhiro Kawai
The plan was negotiated by Steve Witkoff, a real-estate developer with no historical, geographical, or cultural knowledge of Russia or Ukraine, and Kirill Dmitriev, who heads Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and spends most of his time making business deals. The revelation of their plan this week shocked European leaders, who are now paying almost all of the military costs of the war, as well as the Ukrainians, who were not sure whether to take this latest plan seriously until they were told to agree to it by Thanksgiving or lose all further U.S. support. Even if the plan falls apart, this arrogant and confusing ultimatum, coming only days after the State Department authorized the sale of anti-missile technology to Ukraine, will do permanent damage to America’s reputation as a reliable ally, not only in Europe but around the world.
The central points of the plan reflect long-standing Russian demands. The United States would recognize Russian rule over Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk—all of which are part of Ukraine. Russia would, in practice, be allowed to keep territory it has conquered in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. In all of these occupation zones, Russian forces have carried out arrests, torture, and mass repression of Ukrainian citizens, and because Russia would not be held accountable for war crimes, they could continue to do so with impunity. Ukraine would withdraw from the part of Donetsk that it still controls—a heavily reinforced and mined territory whose loss would open up central Ukraine to a future attack.
Not only would this plan cede territory, people, and assets to Russia; it also seems deliberately designed to weaken Ukraine, politically and militarily, so that Russia would find it easier to invade again a year from now, or 10 years from now. According to a version of the text that appeared in the Financial Times yesterday, the plan does state that “Ukraine’s sovereignty would be confirmed.” But it then imposes severe restrictions on Ukrainian sovereignty: Ukraine must “enshrine in its constitution” a promise to never join NATO. Ukraine must shrink the size of its armed forces to 600,000, down from 900,000. Ukraine may not host foreign troops on its soil. Ukraine must hold new elections within 100 days, a demand not made of Russia, a dictatorship that has not held free elections for more than two decades.
In return, the plan states that Ukraine “would receive security guarantees.” But it does not describe what those guarantees would be, and there is no reason to believe that President Donald Trump would ever abide by them.
BRUSSELS — Donald Trump has hurled a wrench into one of the most sensitive negotiations currently under way in Europe, potentially derailing efforts to help fund Ukraine to stay in the fight against Russia.
For months European Union officials have been trying — and failing — to work out a way to use around €140 billion of immobilized Russian state assets held largely in Belgium to support Kyiv’s war effort. The cash is desperately needed as Ukraine is at risk of running out of money early next year.
Talks in Brussels are now at an extremely delicate stage, diplomats said, as top officials try to finesse a legal text that would enable the frozen funds to be used for a loan to the Ukrainian government.
By Tokuhiro Kawai
But the United States’ new 28-point blueprint for a ceasefire includes a rival idea for using those same assets for American-led reconstruction efforts once a truce has been agreed. The U.S. would take “50 percent” of the profit from this activity, the document said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the new Trump plan confronted his country with one of the most difficult moments in its history: a potential choice between losing its “dignity” and losing “a key partner.”
Multiple EU diplomats and officials said they feared the proposals, from Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, would wreck their chances of the loan proposal being agreed by the EU’s 27 governments. European leaders had been hoping to finalize the so-called “reparations loan” deal at a crunch summit next month.
A former French official, granted anonymity like others to discuss sensitive matters, said the Witkoff idea “is, of course, scandalous.”
“The Europeans are exhausting themselves trying to find a viable solution to use the assets for the benefit of Ukrainians and Trump wants to profit from them,” the person said. “This proposal is likely to be rejected by everyone.”
“Pfft… don’t tell me chemtrails aren’t real.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
All you have to do is to take a look at Orange Caligula’s response to the 7 million plus Americans letting them know how much he sucks to figure out how deeply we owned his thoughts on Saturday. He had no fake military birthday parade to distract him for this one. The headlines in the legacy media were so overtly blasé that you got a true sense of how deeply they’ve sucked the last decade. The problem is we might be living rentfree in his mind, but he’s still held up in the White House turning it into a mid-century modern whore house.
So, let’s go find the consensus among the public intellectuals who don’t worry about the threats of law suits and shutdowns to their bottom lines. Paul Waldman provides this analysis over at Public Notice. “No Kings was a huge success. Just look at Trump’s response. Turnout was enormous. There was no violence. And the wannabe king is triggered.”
There were some immediate attempts to simply dismiss the No Kings protests; White House spokespeople asked by journalists about the event responded “Who cares?” But President Trump cares very, very much.
The Republican Party has increasingly come to define itself by what and whom it hates. If some new issue bursts into public awareness, they won’t know what they think until they find out what position Democrats were taking so they can take the opposite one. They’re anti-anti-racism, and anti-anti-climate change, and all it takes to get them to denounce something is to tell them liberals like it. They’ll even get worked up about a corporate logo if a bunch of bots tell them it’s woke, apparently because the Founding Fathers would never have stood for sans serif fonts.
So calling this event (and the larger movement it seeks to create) “No Kings” turns out to have been a stroke of genius, because Trump’s response was to essentially say Yeah, I’m the king — and because I’m the king, I can poop on people!
After so many years one would think he had lost the ability to shock, but no — generative AI slop tools give Trump a whole new way to act like a petulant toddler:
Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping shit on America
Yes, the president of the United States posted a video showing him wearing a crown and pooping on crowds of Americans. Whether you think this is evidence of rapidly advancing dementia or just a new expression of the same vulgar and juvenile impulses Trump has always had, there is no universe in which posting a video like that one is politically beneficial for him.
“The rule of kings is bad and just what America was created to reject” is a pretty fundamental American idea. But in the world of today’s Republican Party, if Donald Trump says kings are good and it’s good that he’s a king, everyone else in the party is required to agree.
Economist and former NYT’s columnist Dr. Paul Krugman had similar thoughts. He freely writes them now on his SubStack. “Civil Resistance Confronts the Autocracy. While MAGA’s spin was both insane and revealing, the No Kings Day 2 Marches were a major step towards taking our country back.”
Last Saturday’s No Kings Day 2 was awesome to behold. The very best of America shone through. From coast to coast, in big cities and small, in red states as well as blue states, Americans peacefully marched to uphold our humanity as a country and to show our solidarity against autocracy and lawlessness.
And also awesome were the right-wing attacks on Kings Day 2 participants in the days before the rallies. They were so extreme and so unhinged, so utterly disconnected from reality, that they defeated their ostensible purpose of intimidating the marchers into silence. While the rest of us saw families, old people, young people, folks in funny costumes, many of them waving the Stars and Stripes, MAGA saw criminals and America-haters.
But I have a theory about the deeper purpose of the MAGA attacks on No Kings Day 2. America, I’d argue, is currently operating in a strange condition — what I would call a “bubble autocracy.” Donald Trump has not yet consolidated anything like absolute political power. But parts of our society — the Republican Party and a number of supposedly independent institutions like, say, CBS — are in effect living inside a bubble in which they operate as if he has. Within that bubble, a cult of personality around Trump has been built, a cult of personality worthy of Kim Jong Un. And to show their fealty to Dear Leader, Republicans must engage in bizarre rhetoric.
Before I explain my theory of how the right lost its mind, some personal observations.
I attended Saturday’s No Kings Day march in Manhattan, for several reasons. As a citizen, I felt it was my duty. As a journalist, I wanted to see with my own eyes the mood, and whether there was violence either by or, far more likely, against the protestors. And I was, to be honest, feeling some anxiety about crowd size: a disappointing turnout would have been a significant blow to our chances of saving American democracy. No surprise that Trump attempted to discourage participation by declaring in advance that “I hear that very few people are going to be there,” while his lackeys spouted insane conspiracy theories.
I needn’t have worried. The march I joined was immense. G. Elliott Morris and the independent science newsroom Xylon estimate that 320,000 people protested in New York, and their median estimate is that more than 5 million protested nationwide. As Morris says, Saturday’s events were very likely “the biggest single-day protest since 1970.” Furthermore, the event was completely nonviolent: The New York Police Department reported zero arrests.
As for me, I’ll stop wearing my No Kings T-shirt when some one pries it from my cold back or when Heather Cox Richardson tells me I can retire it. This is from her Sunday Substack, Letters from an American.”
A video of Trump in a bomber attacking American cities carries an implied threat that the disdain of throwing excrement doesn’t erase. This morning, Trump reinforced that threat when he reminded Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo: “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act. Fifty percent of the presidents almost have used that. And that’s unquestioned power. I choose not to, I’d rather do this, but I’m met constantly by fake politicians, politicians that think that, that you know they it’s not like a part of the radical left movement to have safety. These cities have to be safe.”
That “safety” apparently involves detaining U.S. citizens without due process. On Thursday, Nicole Foy of ProPublica reported that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents. She reports they “have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.”
On Friday, the Trump administration pushed its attempt to use the military in Democratic-led cities, asking the Supreme Court to let it deploy troops in Chicago immediately. Chris Geidner of Law Dork notes that four judges, two appointed by Democrats and two appointed by Republicans, have rejected the administration’s arguments for why they must send in troops. Now the Department of Justice has appealed to the Supreme Court, asking for a decision on the so-called shadow docket, which would provide a fast response, but one without any hearings or explanation.
The administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court warned that there was “pressing risk of violence” in Chicago—a premise the judges rejected—and said preventing Trump from going into the city “improperly impinges on the President’s authority.”
How much difference will the No Kings Day protests, even as big as they were, make in the face of the administration’s attempt to get rid of our democratic political system and replace it with authoritarianism? What good is an inflatable frog against federal agents?
Scholar of social movements Lisa Corrigan noted that large, fun marches full of art and music expand connections and make people more willing to take risks against growing state power. They build larger communities by creating new images that bring together recognizable images from the past in new ways, helping more people see themselves in such an opposition. The community and good feelings those gatherings develop help carry opposition through hard moments. Corrigan notes, too, that yesterday “every single rally (including in the small towns) was bigger than the surrounding police force available. That kind of image event is VERY IMPORTANT if you’re…demonstrating social coherence AGAINST a fascist government and its makeshift gestapo.”
It’s funny how that AI-generated Trump video had nothing intelligent but everything artificial in it. Notice that he gets to reach altitude with nothing covering his face,nose, and barely his mouth. He managed to look like a toddly with a sippy cup urinal. Alan Elrod–writing for Liberal Currents–has this to say about the increasingly isolated Republican Party. He presents an analsyis of what we’ve learned about those gross Young Republican chat logs. We always knew the incels would be the last to leave and failures with the lead. “Sex Is Gay, Rape Is Epic, No Fatties: Young Right-Wing Men Are Obsessed With Male Power and Male Bodies. The group chat leak reveals what over a decade of incel messaging and Bronze Age Pervert have done to Young Republicans.”
It’s tempting to shrug off the language in the Young Republicans’ group chat as the pathetic humor of pasty losers. But the danger is real. As Bates stresses, we have seen incel ideology drive heinous acts of public violence, most notably in the cases of Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista and the Toronto van attack committed by Alek Minassian. As Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an expert on right-wing extremism and terroristic violence, argues in her new bookMan Up: The New Misogyny & The Rise of Violent Extremism:
Such violence is also fueled by the constant dehumanization of women online, along with the casual celebration of violence and harassment directed toward them. One of the neo-Nazi men arrested for plotting an antisemitic attack in New York City in 2022 had previously shared online that he had violently attacked a transgender person and described himself as “most proud of being ‘good at raping women,’ ” according to an assistant district attorney on the case.
In other cases, women are not just targeted with rage as a means of punishment; they are attacked violently as a strategy of elimination. The six Asian women and two others gunned down in a rampage at three Atlanta massage parlors in the spring of 2021 were killed because the 21-year-old gunman believed he deserved to live in a world without the sexual temptation he believed they created for him. It’s hard to think of a clearer example of how mass violence can be generated from a sense of entitlement and male supremacist reasoning. Violent attacks against women in cases like these—as well as in domestic and intimate partner violence and misogynist incel attacks—are not only or even primarily about sex. Rather, they are rooted in what Kate Manne describes as “some men’s toxic sense of entitlement to have people look up to them steadfastly, with a loving gaze, admiringly-and to target and even destroy those who fail, or refuse, to do so.”Supremacy is an all-consuming logic on the MAGA right today. Christian supremacy, white supremacy, male supremacy, almost every corner of MAGA is marked by one or some combination of supremacist logic and a desire to subjugate some other group. This fixation on domination is precisely why I argued back in March that Andrew Tate has natural appeal to many younger Republicans and that rape as an ordering principle defines MAGA politics.
The federal agency responsible for overseeing and modernizing the US nuclear stockpile will furlough the vast majority of its staff Monday as the government shutdown drags on, according to the Department of Energy.
About 1,400 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, will receive furlough notices Monday, while fewer than 400 employees will remain on the job to safeguard the stockpile, Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told CNN.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright will speak about the shutdown’s impact on the US’ nuclear deterrent efforts Monday while visiting the Nevada National Security Site.
The NNSA Office of Secure Transportation, which oversees the transportation of nuclear weapons around the country, will be funded through October 27.
And remember all that talk of Peace before some one else got the Nobel Prize? This is from the Washington Post. “In tense meeting, Trump told Zelensky to concede land, meet Putin’s demands. Following the trip to Washington, Zelensky has set up a series of calls and meetings with his main European backers.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is rallying the support of his European partners after a bruising meeting with President Donald Trump, in which he was told to make concessions to end the war or risk facing destruction at the hands of Russia.
In a tense meeting at the White House on Friday, Trump tossed aside maps of the front line and urged Kyiv to concede its entire Donbas region to Russia to clinch a deal, according to people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive diplomacy.
“He said [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will destroy you if you don’t agree now,” one of the people said. “Zelensky had his maps and everything, and he was explaining it to him but [Trump] wanted nothing to do with it.”
Trump listened but was not responsive to the Ukrainian message, the person said. “It was pretty much like ‘No, look guys, you can’t possibly win back any territory. … There is nothing we can do to save you. You should try to give diplomacy another chance.’”
So much success! So much winning! How can we even wrap our minds around it? And what about this story on Justice Bondi-style? This is from CBS’ Scott Pelley. The interview came from Sixty Minutes last night.
Erez Reuveni, a fired Department of Justice lawyer who’s now blowing the whistle, says he witnessed a disregard of due process and for the rule of law at the DOJ.
Reuveni previously won commendations for his work and was so effective defending President Trump’s first-term immigration policy that he was promoted quickly in Mr. Trump’s second term. But he says he was put on leave and then fired after refusing to sign a brief in the mistaken deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Reuveni’s whistleblower disclosure helped highlight a growing concern in many courts across the country that the Justice Department is allegedly abusing the limits of the law.
“I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And my view of that oath is that I need to speak up and draw attention to what has happened to the department, what is happening to the rule of law,” Reuveni said. “I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now.”
…
When more facts were known about the weekend flights, it turned out a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported by mistake.
While people deported in error are normally returned, Reuveni said that in a phone call from a superior, he was ordered to argue that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 member and a terrorist to prevent his return.
“I respond up the chain of command, no way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is, that is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief,” Reuveni said.
Reuveni said what was important was not whether or not Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 or a terrorist, but whether or not he received due process.
“What’s to stop them if they decide they don’t like you anymore, to say you’re a criminal, you’re a member of MS-13, you’re a terrorist,” Reuveni said. “What’s to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie? And now that’s you gone and your liberties changed.”
Reuveni was fired after refusing to sign a brief that called Abrego Garcia a terrorist. In June, he filed a whistleblower complaint with the help of attorneys from the Government Accountability Project.
While, the news still doesn’t feel like we’re living in America, the streets are begining to fill with enough Americans dedicated to truth, justice, and our evolving society, I have hope.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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A couple of Caturdays ago, I posted illustrations from a 1950s children’s book called Space Cat and the Kittens. My brother had shared them with me after he bought the book at a used bookstore. This week, he came across the first book in the four-part series, and I’m going to post some of the illustrations from that book today. I think they are really cute. The story:
A little gray kitten with a taste for adventure stows away on an airplane, and the daring stunt turns out to be his first step toward becoming … Space Cat! The plane’s pilot, Captain Fred Stone, names his fuzzy new friend Flyball and welcomes him to an experimental station set up in the middle of the desert. Flyball enjoys supervising the station’s workers and takes particular interest in the big rocket ship that he’s not allowed to explore. Regardless of the rules, the kitty is determined to hitch another ride, and before you know it, Flyball’s wearing a custom-made pressurized suit and headed for the Moon.
As for the news, everything is awful as usual today. We’re dealing with a “president” who is well on the way of becoming a dictator. He plans to meet with fellow dictator Vladimir Putin to hand over territory in Ukraine; He is allowing his HHS secretary RFK Jr. to endanger Americans with anti-vaccine policies; and he is deliberately damaging American higher education.
President Trump said he would meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia next Friday in Alaska, as he tries to secure a deal to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Mr. Trump announced the meeting Friday shortly after he suggested that a peace deal between the two countries could include “some swapping of territories,” signaling that the United States may join Russia in trying to compel Ukraine to permanently cede some of its land.
“We’re going to get some back, and we’re going to get some switched,” Mr. Trump said while hosting the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for a peace summit at the White House. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later, or tomorrow.”
The meeting, the first in-person summit between an American and Russian president since President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with Mr. Putin in June 2021, reflects Mr. Trump’s confidence in his ability to persuade Mr. Putin in a face-to-face encounter, a goal that has eluded Mr. Trump and his predecessors. For Mr. Putin, the meeting itself is a victory after he spent the past several months largely isolated from the international community, with NATO leaders — other than Mr. Trump — refusing to communicate directly with him.
Carrying cat to the rocket
At least he didn’t invite Putin to the White House, but will Putin try to get him to give Alaska back to Russia while they are swapping land in Ukraine?
The meeting also presents a host of challenges. Ukrainian leaders have adamantly opposed relinquishing any of their land to Russia, and the country’s constitution bars President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine from ceding any territory.
There would also be numerous political and military hurdles for Ukraine in turning over land to Russia, as well as questions including security guarantees for Ukraine and the future of frozen Russian assets. And many diplomats have suggested that Mr. Putin may be more interested in dragging out diplomacy to give him time to pummel Ukraine than in securing a peace deal.
White House officials declined to say exactly where in Alaska the two leaders would meet or why Mr. Trump decided to hold the meeting there, though it is the closest U.S. state to Russia. In 2021, the Biden administration held talks with China in Anchorage, Alaska.
Mr. Trump also provided little additional detail about the meeting, what territory could be swapped or the broader contours of a peace deal, saying earlier Friday that he did not want to overshadow the peace pledge between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But he told European leaders earlier this week that he planned to follow up his session with Mr. Putin with a meeting with Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Saturday flatly rejected the idea that Ukraine could cede land to Russia after President Trump suggested that a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia could include “some swapping of territories.”
“Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video address from his office in Kyiv, several hours after Mr. Trump’s remarks, which appeared to overlook Ukraine’s role in the negotiations.
“Any decisions made against us, any decisions made without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace,” Mr. Zelensky said. “They will bring nothing. These are dead decisions; they will never work.”
His blunt rejection risks angering Mr. Trump, who has made a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia one of his signature foreign policy goals, even if it means accepting terms that are unfavorable to Kyiv. In the past, Mr. Trump has criticized Ukraine for clinging to what he suggested were stubborn cease-fire demands and for being “not ready for peace.”
Cat in a hammock on spacecraft
What doesn’t anger Trump? Anything except blind loyalty and obedience.
A recent poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that more than three-quarters of Ukrainians are against transferring Ukrainian-controlled territory to Russia. When it comes to ceding land that includes territory already under Russian control, opposition drops slightly, with a little more than half of Ukrainians against it, “even if this makes the war last longer and threatens the preservation of independence,” the poll says.
But support for land concessions has grown since Ukraine’s failed 2023 counteroffensive, which underscored its inability to retake substantial territory. About 38 percent of the population thinks ceding land is acceptable now, according to the poll, up from only 10 percent about two years ago.
Russia has long demanded that Ukraine give up four regions in the east and south that Moscow claims to have annexed in late 2022, even though some of that territory remains under Ukrainian control. The Kremlin is particularly intent on seizing full control of the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, which it has long sought to capture with relentless assaults.
But ceding Luhansk and Donetsk, which are part of an area commonly known as the Donbas region, would create a host of issues for Ukraine. It would mean giving up a region rich in cities and industrial centers that Russia could use as a launchpad to reignite the war.
And Ukraine would have to abandon its main fortified defensive line in northern Donetsk, stretching between the cities of Sloviansk and Kostiantynivka, which has so far withstood Russian assaults.
Location matters, former real estate mogul US President Donald Trump said. Moments later he announced Alaska, a place sold by Russia to the United States 158 years ago for $7.2 million, would be where Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to sell his land deal of the century, getting Kyiv to hand over chunks of land he’s not yet been able to occupy.
The conditions around Friday’s summit so wildly favor Moscow, it is obvious why Putin leapt at the chance, after months of fake negotiation, and it is hard to see how a deal emerges from the bilateral that does not eviscerate Ukraine. Kyiv and its European allies have reacted with understandable horror at the early ideas of Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, that Ukraine cede the remainders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in exchange for a ceasefire.
Naturally, the Kremlin head has promoted the idea of taking ground without a fight, and found a willing recipient in the form of Witkoff, who has in the past exhibited a relaxed grasp of Ukrainian sovereignty and the complexity of asking a country, in the fourth year of its invasion, to simply walk out of towns it’s lost thousands of men defending.
Space cat in freefall
It is worth pausing and reflecting on what Witkoff’s proposal would look like. Russia is close to encircling two key Donetsk towns, Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, and may effectively put Ukrainian troops defending these two hubs under siege in the coming weeks. Ceding these two towns might be something Kyiv does anyway to conserve manpower in the months ahead.
The rest of Donetsk – principally the towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – is a much nastier prospect. Thousands of civilians live there now, and Moscow would delight at scenes where the towns evacuate, and Russian troops walk in without a shot fired.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s rejection of ceding land early Saturday reflects the real dilemma of a commander in chief trying to manage the anger of his military and the deep-seated distrust of the Ukrainian people towards their neighbor, who continues to bombard their cities nightly.
What could Ukraine get back in the “swapping” Trump referred to? Perhaps the tiny slivers of border areas occupied by Russia in Sumy and Kharkiv regions – part of Putin’s purported “buffer zone” – but not much else, realistically.
The main goal is a ceasefire, and that itself is a stretch. Putin has long held that the immediate ceasefire demanded by the United States, Europe and Ukraine for months, is impossible as technical work about monitoring and logistics must take place first. He is unlikely to have changed his mind now his troops are in the ascendancy across the eastern frontline.
Read more analysis at the CNN link.
RFK Jr. is doing untold damage to the health of Americans.
During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020, President Trump was warned by medical officials that the development of a vaccine that could turn the tide against Covid could be over a year away.
For Mr. Trump, that timeline was not good enough.
He demanded a faster program. The creation of that program, Operation Warp Speed, led to lifesaving vaccines that contained messenger RNA, or mRNA, a synthetic form of a genetic molecule that helps stimulate the immune system. Those vaccines are widely regarded in the scientific community as the quickest way to protect Americans against future threats, including viruses that could mushroom into a pandemic, or man-made menaces, like a bioweapons attack.
Time has marched on and, apparently, so has Mr. Trump in his second term.
This week, the president all but shrugged off an announcement by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary and a longtime critic of vaccines, that a research division of his department had slashed $500 million in grants and contracts for work on mRNA vaccines.
“That was now a long time ago, and we’re onto other things,” the president told reporters on Wednesday. Mr. Trump added that his administration is now “looking for other answers to other problems, to other sicknesses and diseases.” He said he was planning to meet with Mr. Kennedy on Thursday to discuss the decision, but by Friday, White House officials did not say whether that meeting took place.
Space cat is first to land on the Moon.
A bit more:
Mr. Trump’s willingness to give Mr. Kennedy the space to impose his views is notable, given that the vaccines were once seen as legacy achievement during Mr. Trump’s first term. But his laissez-faire posture also leaves room for Mr. Trump to position himself in line with the portion of his base that has grown deeply skeptical about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Adm. Brett Giroir, an assistant health secretary in the first Trump administration who was involved in the development of the Covid vaccines, recalled that the president had been “very pro-vaccine,” particularly on matters involving flu preparedness. In 2019, Mr. Trump signed an executive order calling for the modernization of flu vaccines, because “he knew we weren’t as well prepared as we should be.”
Now it’s different. Trump would rather sacrifice millions more American lives than confront his conspiracy-minded followers.
As a record number of people in the U.S. are sickened with measles, researchers are resurrecting the search for something long-deemed redundant: treatments for the viral disease.
After the measles vaccine was introduced in the 1960s, cases of the disease plummeted. By 2000, federal officials had declared measles eliminated from the U.S. This success led to little interest in the development of treatments. But now, as vaccination rates fall and infections rise, scientists are racing to develop drugs they say could prevent or treat the disease in vulnerable and unvaccinated people.
“In America, we don’t like being told what to do, but we like to have options for our medicine chest,” said Marc Elia, chairman of the board of Invivyd, a Massachusetts-based drugmaker that started working on a monoclonal antibody for measles this spring.
Scientists across the country including at biotechs Invivyd and Saravir Biopharma—and institutions such as Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Georgia State University—are in the early stages of measles-treatment development. The drugs are still a ways from becoming available to patients but could offer alternatives to people who are immunocompromised, don’t respond to the measles vaccine or are vaccine skeptics.
Space cat saves astronaut’s life by plugging a hole in his helmet.
Some doctors and researchers warn that measles treatments could further drive the drop in vaccination. Nationally, 92.5% of kindergartners received the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, shot in the 2024-25 school year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. In 2019-20, the vaccination rate was over 95%, which is the rate encouraged by health authorities to prevent community transmission of measles.
More than 1,300 people, most of them unvaccinated, have been diagnosed with measles this year—a 33-year high.
“One of the motivations of getting the vaccine right now is that there are no treatments,” said Dr. Joel Warsh, a pediatrician who says more research is needed into immunization safety.
Still, Invivyd is betting its measles monoclonal antibody could help curb infections and outbreaks. Unlike the MMR vaccine, which is designed to train the body to make its own antibodies—proteins that help defeat specific pathogens—monoclonal antibodies are lab-made versions that can be delivered intravenously or as an injection and boost immunity immediately.
Antibody treatments could treat someone who is sick or help prevent measles in people recently exposed to the virus. They could benefit newborns and immunocompromised people who can’t be vaccinated, as well as the minority of people who don’t respond to the vaccine or whose immunity has waned. The treatments could offer weeks or months of protection against measles, researchers said.
“Think of it like antivenom after a snake bite,” said Erica Ollmann Saphire, chief executive of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, whose lab is developing its own monoclonal antibodies for measles. “Even people unsure about vaccines, if they are already sick with measles, getting an antibody treatment could be palatable.”
There’s much more at the link. I got past the paywall by clicking the link at Memeorandum.
As an infectious disease physician who cared for dozens of critically ill Covid patients in December 2020, I witnessed a remarkable shift in the months that followed. As mRNA vaccines became available in early 2021, severe cases among vaccinated individuals became extremely rare. Deaths were almost exclusively among those who declined vaccination, which was tragic given how preventable these outcomes had become.
Space cat in the moon cave
No vaccine for respiratory viruses has ever provided complete, lasting protection against all infections. Not the flu vaccine. Not RSV vaccines. That never should have been the expectation. Some vaccines, like those for measles or polio, can effectively prevent infection and transmission, but these target fundamentally different viruses that don’t constantly mutate and reinfect the respiratory tract. The purpose of respiratory virus vaccines is to prevent severe disease, hospitalization and death. By that measure, mRNA vaccines have been revolutionary.
The data confirms what I witnessed firsthand. According to research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unvaccinated individuals had 53 times the risk of death compared to those who had been fully vaccinated during the Delta wave in 2021. A New England Journal of Medicine study analyzing over 6 million Covid cases found that protection against death remained above 90% and remarkably durable, even as protection against infection declined.
In winter 2020, my hospital’s ICU overflowed with COVID patients. Like many colleagues worldwide, I watched patient after patient die despite our best efforts. It was unlike anything any of us had ever seen. By summer 2021, after vaccines rolled out widely, the change was undeniable. Far fewer patients arrived with respiratory failure. Nursing homes saw deaths plummet.
As vaccine expert Paul Offit stated in December 2020: “All you want to do is keep people out of the hospital and keep them out of the morgue and I think this vaccine can certainly do that.” Even then, before vaccines were widely available, experts understood the real goal.
The Trump administration is seeking a $1 billion settlement from the University of California, Los Angeles, a White House official said Friday, after the Department of Justice accused the school of antisemitism and other civil rights violations.
UCLA is the first public university to be targeted by a widespread funding freeze over allegations of civil rights violations related to antisemitism and affirmative action.
President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen or paused federal funding over similar allegations against elite private colleges. In recent weeks, the administration has struck deals with Brown University for $50 million and Columbia University for $221 million but has explored larger settlements, such as in its ongoing battle with Harvard University.
The White House official did not detail any additional demands the administration has made to UCLA or elaborate on the settlement amount. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The university had drawn widespread criticism for how it handled dispersing an encampment of Israel-Hamas war protesters in 2024. One night, counterprotesters attacked the encampment, throwing traffic cones and firing pepper spray, with fighting that continued for hours, injuring more than a dozen people, before police stepped in. The next day, after hundreds defied orders to leave, more than 200 people were arrested. Later, Jewish students said demonstrators in encampments blocked them from getting to class.
The Trump administration is warning Harvard University that it could take over its patents, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if a review finds the university hasn’t complied with federal law, an escalation of the continuing negotiations between the White House and America’s oldest university.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber on Friday, telling him the administration planned to do a thorough review of all patents held by the university.
General likes Space Cat.
“We believe that Harvard has failed to live up to its obligations to the American taxpayer and is in breach of the statutory, regulatory, and contractual requirements tied to Harvard’s federally funded research programs and intellectual property arising therefrom, including patents,” the letter says.
A Harvard spokesperson called the move “yet another retaliatory effort targeting Harvard for defending its rights and freedom.” The university’s technology and patents help save lives and redefine industries, and Harvard is committed to complying with all federal laws around the patenting of work from federally funded research, the spokesperson said.
The letter is another point of leverage for the Trump administration in its effort to punish the university for allegedly failing to stop antisemitism on campus. The administration has frozen billions of dollars in Harvard’s federal research money and cut the university off from future grants.
Lutnick told Garber that he had until Sept. 5 to respond with a list of all patents that have stemmed from federally funded research grants and to provide information showing it complied with federal regulations, including a 1980 act by Congress known as Bayh-Dole that allowed institutions to retain ownership of a patent even if the innovation used taxpayer dollars.
A bit more, because of the paywall:
Harvard has more than 5,800 patents, according to its website. In its fiscal year ended in June, the university was issued 159 patents. Startups from Harvard range from pharma and biotech companies to manufacturing.
Federal regulations under Bayh-Dole require a litany of disclosures for a patent, including how the American people benefit from an invention. If a patent holder fails to make these disclosures, the government has the right to take ownership of the invention.
Lisa Ouellette, a law professor at Stanford, said the Trump administration’s move appears to be unprecedented in the four and a half decades of the Bayh-Dole Act. “I have never seen the government step in to reclaim control of a university’s patents in any sense,” she said. The Biden administration considered using a provision of the act to try to lower pharmaceutical prices, but the proposal never came to pass, Ouellette said.
The Trump administration has been in talks with several universities, including the University of California, Los Angeles, Cornell and Northwestern, and sees striking a deal with Harvard as an essential mission. The White House has already reached a $200 million settlement with Columbia and a $50 million deal with Brown.
This is breathtaking.
That’s all I have for today. What’s on your mind?
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“Apparently, we are not better than this. An entire political party subservient to a crappy reality television personality. Trump’s Amerika. Shameful.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Happy Independence Day, Number 249, Sky Dancers!
What do we have? A democratic Republic, if we can keep it. I’m not sure it’s mostly gone. Convince me I’m wrong, please!
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday put on administrative leave 139 employees who signed a “declaration of dissent” with its policies, accusing them of “unlawfully undermining” the Trump administration’s agenda.
In a letter made public Monday, the employees wrote that the agency is no longer living up to its mission to protect human health and the environment. The letter represented rare public criticism from agency employees who knew they could face blowback for speaking out against a weakening of funding and federal support for climate, environmental and health science.
In a statement Thursday, the EPA said it has a “zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting” the Trump administration’s agenda.
Employees were notified that they had been placed in a “temporary, non-duty, paid status” for the next two weeks, pending an “administrative investigation,” according to a copy of the email obtained by The Associated Press. “It is important that you understand that this is not a disciplinary action,” the email read.
More than 170 EPA employees put their names to the document, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation, according to Jeremy Berg, a former editor-in-chief of Science magazine who is not an EPA employee but was among non-EPA scientists or academics to also sign.
Read more at the link. It’s hard to know what exactly to say about this bit of news from CNN. I guess we’ve known who he is since his “very fine people on both sides paraded past a Synagogue for a MAGA rally, shouting “Jews will not replace us” in the Charlottesville protests in 2017. His fascination with Hitler is one big, ugly clue. “Trump says he had ‘never heard’ Shylock as an anti-semitic term after using it at rally.”
President Donald Trump said early Friday that he wasn’t aware that some people view the word “Shylock” as antisemitic after using the term during a rally to decry amoral money lenders.
“I’ve never heard it that way. To me, Shylock is somebody that’s a money lender at high rates,” Trump told reporters after getting off Air Force One. “I’ve never heard it that way, you view it differently than me. I’ve never heard that.”
Trump was arriving back in Washington after an event in Iowa marking the kick-off to nationwide celebrations marking the country’s 250th anniversary next year.
In his speech, he used the word when touting aspects of the major domestic policy bill that had been approved by Congress a few hours earlier.
“Think of that: no death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowings from in some cases a fine banker. And in some cases, Shylocks and bad people,” he said during his event in Des Moines. “They took away a lot of, a lot of family. They destroyed a lot of families, but we did the opposite.”
The name “Shylock” derives from the name of the antagonist in William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” Shylock, a Jew, was a ruthless moneylender in the play, and he’s remembered for demanding a “pound of flesh” from the merchant Antonio if he failed to repay a loan.
The Anti-Defamation League condemned Trump’s use of the word Friday morning.
“The term ‘Shylock’ evokes a centuries-old antisemitic trope about Jews and greed that is extremely offensive and dangerous. President Trump’s use of the term is very troubling and irresponsible,” the organization wrote in a statement on X. “It underscores how lies and conspiracies about Jews remain deeply entrenched in our country. Words from our leaders matter and we expect more from the President of the United States.”
I learned this when we started studying Shakespeare in the 5th grade. I can’t imagine any person educated after World War 2 not knowing this. Trump’s maleducation is so obvious. Do you remember when we used to have these great Fourth of July celebrations to watch on PBS, like The Boston Pops orchestra playing in front of the giant fireworks display? Well, it’s a tacky Fourth of July for the MAGATs, with proceeds going to his friends. This is from AXIOS. “Trump to host UFC fight at White House as part of ‘America250’ celebrations.”
President Trump will host a UFC fight at the White House as part of celebrations marking 250 years since the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, he announced at a Thursday rally in Iowa.
The big picture: “Every one of our national park battlefields and historic sites are going to have special events in honor of ‘America250‘ and I even think we’re going to have a UFC fight,” Trump said on the eve of the July Fourth holiday during a speech at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines that kicked off yearlong 250th anniversary celebrations.
The president’s links to the Ultimate Fighting Championship date back to at least 2001, when the since-closed Trump Taj Mahal hosted the mixed martial arts enterprise.
Zoom in: Trump said White would organize the White House UFC event.
“It’s going to be a championship fight, full fight, like 20,000 to 25,000 people and we’re going to do that as part of ‘250’ also,” he said.
Other celebrations will include “the great American State Fair” that will “bring America250 programming for fairgrounds across the country, culminating in a giant patriotic festival next summer on the National Mall, featuring exhibits from all 50 states,” according to Trump.
What they’re saying: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump is “dead serious” about the UFC fight plans, per a White House pool report.
Temple and I started our own celebration of deposing Mad Kings this morning in the Bywater. Perhaps by our afternoon, we will have more than 2 people and 2 dogs.
If the dead part weren’t followed by the word serious, I might’ve planned a big celebration myself. Temple and I already had our parade this morning. The partner of Anti-Semitism was right there along Yam Tits at his rally in Iowa. This is from The Hill. “Trump goes after Mamdani at Iowa rally.” Islamaphobia is so on brand for him. Nothing says “Let Freedom Ring” like hating on religious minorities.
President Trump used Thursday remarks in Iowa ahead of Independence Day to take aim at Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor in New York City who has become a favorite target of criticism for Republicans.
“This guy is a communist at the highest level, and he wants to destroy New York. I love New York, and we’re not going to let him do that,” Trump said at an event in Des Moines.
“Generations of Americans before us did not shed their blood only so that we could surrender our country to Marxist lunatics on the eve of our 250th year,” Trump continued. “As president of the United States, I’m proclaiming here and now that America is never going to be communist in any way, shape or form, and that includes New York City.”
The comments marked the latest attack from Trump, a New York City native, against Mamdani, who earlier this week officially secured the Democratic nomination for November’s mayoral race and instantly became a lightning rod for GOP attacks.
Trump earlier this week threatened to investigate Mamdani’s immigration status and arrest him if he stood in the way of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s raids in the city.
Generations of Americans did not shed their blood only to surrender our county to another Mad King, Plantation Slaveholder, and NAZI either. Mine were around everywhere since the Revolution. I’m pretty sure my great-uncle John Parke Custis didn’t die being an aide-de-camp to his stepfather, George Washington, at the Siege of Yorktown from camp fever, just for us to have another Mad King. Also, sure that all my great-great-grandfathers who fought for the Union didn’t expect to see an American President try to strip the rights away from the African-Americans freed from slavery. Also, sure my Dad who bombed NAZIs and my uncles who served in the navy and in army intelligence didn’t expect to have a fascist as president too. Yet, here we are.
More indications of his madness and warped view of the country’s form of government and rule of law are on display in Politico today. Rachel Blade has this interview and analysis. “What Trump Told Me About His Complete Domination of Congress. Demanding a bill by Independence Day was a telling flourish for someone with zero tolerance for independence in the legislative branch.” It’s obvious he didn’t care or probably even read what was in it. He just cares about the control and the photo op, signing the deaths of millions of Americans, including the elderly and children.
When I reached President Donald Trump by phone Tuesday night, with his “big, beautiful” bill on a clear track for passage, he seemed to be in a buoyant mood. And no wonder.
In a span of two weeks, he greenlit an unprecedented U.S. strike on Iran, then brokered an almost immediate cease-fire. He watched NATO allies bow to his decade-old demand to pony up more defense spending, then saw the Supreme Court curtail judges’ power to block his policies.
And when he picked up the phone, the president realized he was on the precipice of a major legislative achievement — cementing his campaign-trail promises of “no tax on tips,” increased border enforcement and more.
“It’s been an incredible two weeks,” he said. “Really — it’s been a great six months.”
Particularly on Capitol Hill, things could have gone much different. In fact, they did in his first term. Even with a much larger House majority, he struggled to corral lawmakers who had their own conceptions of what a unified Republican government ought to be doing. Early dreams of tossing Obamacare into the dustbin evaporated; so, too, did the GOP’s House majority.
Much felt similar this time around. You have fiscal hard-liners like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas groaning about deficits and moderates like Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska balking at health care cuts — to say nothing of the various parochial factions pulling the bill back and forth.
But this time, with the Republican Party almost entirely remade at Trump’s bidding, hardly any corralling was necessary. Yes, there were a pair of overnight vote-a-ramas and last-ditch negotiating standoffs. But it all felt awfully fait accompli — as those on Capitol Hill fully realized.
“If anybody’s griping, I can tell you right now, it’s the same actors, the same movie,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said Wednesday as Freedom Caucus holdouts made their final stand. “It’s gonna be the same ending.”
True to form, Trump did it while exhibiting only the lightest interest in the policy details. He was very invested in delivering on his campaign tax promises and boosting immigration enforcement, but rarely much beyond that.
I’m still worried about our economy.
Gee, I wonder what happened in January of this year to make the dollar lose its value so precipitously . . .
Now, I worry for poor Rooster and his girlfriends in the house 3 doors down from me. Oh, and everyone around here since our trees are full of them and many keep chickens in their backyards here.
RFK's proposal to let bird flu spread through poultry could set us up for a pandemic, experts warn->Live Science | #BirdFlu #Pandemic | More info from EcoSearch
Still, it’s that damnable Big Ugly Bill that may yet take this country down. This is from G. Elliott Morris writing at Strength in Numbers. “One Big Unpopular Bill. The Republican budget bill, which now heads to Trump’s desk, will be the most unpopular major law in at least 30 years.”
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (yes, that is its official government name) is a huge package of different policies, including tax cuts for the wealthy and the largest ever yearly increase (hundreds of billions of dollars) in funding for the Pentagon, ICE, and CBP. Republicans have “paid for” those tax cuts and spending increases by making the largest ever cuts to Medicaid and government food benefits, among other programs.
I place “paid for” in quotes because despite the claims from Trump’s White House advisors, the reduction in spending on various social programs does not come close to covering the cost of the tax cuts. The Republican budget bill is a historic shifting of taxpayer money previously allocated to government assistance to the needy, to rich people, and immigration enforcement. This chart from The Economist lays out the math:
The OBBBA is also historic in another way: It is likely the most unpopular budget ever, is the second most unpopular piece of key legislation since the 1990s, and the most unpopular key law, period, over the same period.
I have been an economist for about 50 years now, and it takes a lot to turn me into a Deficit Hawk. This did it. It’s fiscal policy gone deadly. Drunk Secretary Hegseth has turned me into a fan of bombs overnight. This is from NBC News. “Hegseth halted weapons for Ukraine despite military analysis that the aid wouldn’t jeopardize U.S. readiness. The move blindsided the State Department, Ukraine, European allies, and members of Congress, who demanded an explanation from the Pentagon.”
The Defense Department held up a shipment of U.S. weapons for Ukraine this week over what officials said were concerns about its low stockpiles. But an analysis by senior military officers found that the aid package would not jeopardize the American military’s own ammunition supplies, according to three U.S. officials.
The move to halt the weapons shipment blindsided the State Department, members of Congress, officials in Kyiv and European allies, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.
Critics of the decision included Republicans and Democrats who support aiding Ukraine’s fight against Russia. A leading House Democrat, Adam Smith of Washington, said it was disingenuous of the Pentagon to use military readiness to justify halting aid when the real reason appears to be simply to pursue an agenda of cutting off American aid to Ukraine.
“We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the 3½ years of the Ukraine conflict,” Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News.
Smith said that his staff has “seen the numbers” and, without going into detail, that there was no indication of a shortage that would justify suspending aid to Ukraine.
Suspending the shipment of military aid to Ukraine was a unilateral step by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to three congressional aides and a former U.S. official familiar with the matter. It was the third time Hegseth on his own has stopped shipments of aid to Ukraine, the sources said. In the two previous cases, in February and in May, his actions were reversed days later.
According to AXIOS,Trump might be providing more aid to Ukraine shortly. “Trump tells Zelensky he wants to help Ukraine with air defense, sources say.” Did Putin piss him off or is he that hell-bent on getting a Nobel Peace Prize?
Why it matters: Earlier this week the Pentagon paused a weapons shipment, including air defense interceptors and ammunition, to Ukraine’s army.
The decision caught Ukraine and many Trump administration officials surprise.
Behind the scenes: The two sources said the call between Trump and Zelensky lasted around 40 minutes, with a major focus on Ukraine’s air defense needs.
One source said Trump was aware of the recent Russia escalation, including both air strikes on Ukrainian cities and on the frontline.
“Trump said he wants to help with air defense and that he will check what was put on hold if anything,” the source said.
The Ukrainian official said Trump and Zelensky agreed that teams from the U.S. and Ukraine soon will meet to discuss air defense and other weapons supplies.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Okay, that’s enough. I’m going to play crazy cat lady and make sure my little feral girl is eating the food I put out today. Try to remember the sacrifice of all the people who worked hard to make this country a beacon of freedom. Then vow to do what you can to help keep it.
My friend in Miami called me in tears yesterday afternoon. She has been self-employed for over three years and is reliant on the Affordable Healthcare Act for her insurance. She has an incredible number of pre-existing conditions and is under the care of a neurologist for a motor neuron disease. She received a letter from Aetna yesterday that said she will lose her coverage on January 1 because they will no longer provide anything connected to the ACA that goes defunct after the next midterms. It seems businesses are not waiting until the last minute to bail from that and Medicaid. I can only imagine what this will do to Medicare.
But hey, one more billionaire can buy Venice for $25 million or even more for a wedding. Can you imagine how many starving children, or children with diseases, or children with special needs could benefit from that?
What’s on your Blogging and Reading list today?
I pulled Martina McBride’s Independence Day song and video off with the 8 men on the Diddy jury in mind. Women do not ask to be raped, assaulted, trafficked or slut slammed for what men do to them even when it may have started out as consensual. A lot of us in this country are still waiting for our independence.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Economist and former NYT’s columnist Dr. Paul Krugman had similar thoughts. He freely writes them now on his 
As for me, I’ll stop wearing my No Kings T-shirt when some one pries it from my cold back or when Heather Cox Richardson tells me I can retire it. This is from her Sunday 
It’s funny how that AI-generated Trump video had nothing intelligent but everything artificial in it. Notice that he gets to reach altitude with nothing covering his face,nose, and barely his mouth. He managed to look like a toddly with a sippy cup urinal. Alan Elrod–writing for 
Here’s something scary from CNN to think on with Halloween on the Horizon. 
So much success! So much winning! How can we even wrap our minds around it? And what about this story on Justice Bondi-style? This is from CBS’ Scott Pelley. The interview came from 
Read more at the link. It’s hard to know what exactly to say about this bit of news from CNN. I guess we’ve known who he is since his “very fine people on both sides paraded past a Synagogue for a MAGA rally, shouting “Jews will not replace us” in the 
More indications of his madness and warped view of the country’s form of government and rule of law are on display in 
I have been an economist for about 50 years now, and it takes a lot to turn me into a Deficit Hawk. This did it. It’s fiscal policy gone deadly. Drunk Secretary Hegseth has turned me into a fan of bombs overnight. This is from 
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