“No one knows immoral more.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today is the day that the Nation pays tribute to many Americans who gave their lives in wars to support our Country. That is, everyone but #FARTUS. He’s ranting about how much our country sucks. This is from Alternet. “‘This is a disgrace’: Trump ripped for ‘outrageous’ and ‘divisive’ Memorial Day diatribe.” This comes on the back of one of the most bizarre and uninspiring graduation speeches ever given to the graduating cadets at West Point. I cannot believe this deranged monster was elected President. It’s beyond embarrassing.
Trump, writing in all caps, posted, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THE BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTAO INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDERERS, AND RAPE AGAIN, PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL.”
But Trump, according to Mediaite, later deleted that post and replaced it with a much shorter post that read simply, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from Reuters. “Kremlin on Trump’s remark about Putin being ‘crazy’: there is some emotional overload.” Trump must be still pissed Obama got that Nobel Peace Prize when all he can get is a wink, wink, nod, nod of respect from Putin.
The Kremlin on Monday said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Vladimir Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” might be due to emotional overload, but thanked the U.S. leader for his assistance in launching Ukraine peace negotiations.
Trump said Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” by unleashing the largest aerial attack of the war on Ukraine and said he was weighing new sanctions on Moscow, though he also scolded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organising and launching this negotiation process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the Trump remarks about Putin.
“Of course, at the same time, this is a very crucial moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reactions.”
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
The Federal Reserve just bought $43.6 billion in US treasuries in the span of a week, sparking concerns that a quiet quantitative easing operation is underway.
New documents show the Fed purchased $8.8 billion in 30-year bonds on May 8th via its System Open Market Account (SOMA) – a move that followed a $34.8 billion purchase earlier that same week.
The move has triggered allegations that “stealth QE” has arrived, with a MarketWatch op-ed by Charlie Garcia calling the move “monetary policy on tiptoes.”
The Fed has long stated such purchases are routine reinvestments of maturing securities to adjust the money supply and influence interest rates to meet its targets.
The Fed’s buying spree follows a major Treasury sell-off from China.
New numbers from the Treasury Department show China sold $18.9 billion in US bonds in March, while most other countries increased their holdings.
China now holds $765.4 billion in US Treasuries and is in third place behind the UK and Japan, which hold $779 billion and $1.13 trillion, respectively.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from CNN. “Trump delays 50% EU tariffs until July 9.” I guess he thinks blowing up the markets over the Independence Holiday may cause a silversmith to jump a horse and ride into the countryside. Looks better to do it after.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has agreed to delay a 50% tariff on European Union imports until July 9, the latest instance of Trump declaring an impending tariff and throwing markets into confusion only to later walk back the threatened levies.
Trump said he and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had a “very nice call” that led to the delay.
“(Von der Leyen) said she wants to get down to serious negotiation,” Trump told reporters at Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey. “July 9 would be the day, that was the date she requested. Could we move it from June 1 to July 9? I agreed to do that.”
“She said we will rapidly get together and see if we can work something out,” he added.
As recently as Friday, Trump said he was “not looking for a deal” with the EU, and that their tariff rate was set at 50% and would go into effect on June 1. That rate would have come after he had imposed a 20% reciprocal tariff on the EU in April — which itself was also delayed, as were other so-called reciprocal tariffs.
Minutes after speaking with reporters, Trump posted on Truth Social that “talks will begin rapidly.”
Earlier in the day, von der Leyen had posted on X that there was a “good call” with Trump.
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at Public Notice.
Last Thursday evening, the Supreme Court all but demolished the legal basis for the independent agencies that are part of the modern administrative state.
In a brisk four paragraphs, only two of which contained any attempt at legal reasoning, the Court’s six Republican justices allowed the president to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) in violation of federal law. The decision highlights the lawlessness of the Court and is likely to further embolden a president who is very keen to place himself above the law.
The Court’s order in Trump v. Wilcox allows the president to violate the federal laws that prohibited him from removing NLRB and MSPB members without cause for doing so. Laws that insulate the heads of multimember commissions such as the NLRB are a common feature of the administrative state. The Supreme Court upheld one such law almost a century ago in Humphrey’s Executor v. Federal Trade Commission, the case that now undergirds modern independent agencies.
It was therefore a little surprising to read the Supreme Court’s order in Wilcox, which permits the president’s statutorily prohibited removal of officers on multi-member commissions, and see no mention of Humphrey’s Executor, the decision upholding statutes that prohibited such removals. Humphrey’s didn’t appear until the dissent.
But this dismissal of important precedents structuring modern society and government has become a hallmark of the Roberts Court. In a decision few years ago, the Court confidently declared that an earlier precedent on the Establishment Clause had been “abandoned.” Did that mean overruled? Unclear, but it at least meant the Court didn’t have to follow it!
Last term, the Court formally overruled the Chevron doctrine that had allows agencies to interpret ambiguous statutes they administer, as the Republican Justices turned tail on a a precedent they had previously embraced. The year before that, the Court announced that the time had come to end affirmative action programs in higher education, as if it was just closing up shop on the precedents upholding such programs.
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is still hobbling its way through the Senate. Politico has this story on the man with the smallest gavel in the world. “Mike Johnson urges Senate not to make major changes to megabill. “We’ve got to deal within the realm of what’s possible,” the House speaker said Sunday.” After all, once you’ve blown up democracy, the Constitution, and the economy, what’s left but to hand the remainders over to the Kleptocracy?
House Speaker Mike Johnson is urging GOP senators to exercise caution in making changes to the sweeping megabill passed through the House last week.
“I encourage them to do their work, of course, as we all anticipate,” Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday on “State of the Union.” “But to make as few modifications to this package as possible, because remembering that we’ve got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House. And I have a very delicate balance here, very delicate equilibrium that we’ve reached over a long period of time. And it’s best not to meddle with it too much.”
But key senators are already looking to make modifications, with different factions holding that the bill goes too far in its approach to Medicaid and clean-energy tax credit cuts. Others, such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), say it doesn’t move the ball far enough. Johnson wants to cut spending by roughly $6 trillion.
“This is our only chance to reset that to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending,” Ron Johnson told Tapper, also on Sunday. “And again, I think you can do it in the spending that we would eliminate, people wouldn’t even notice. But you have to do the work, which takes time.”
“The problem is the math doesn’t add up,” Paul told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “They’re going to explode the debt by the House says $4 trillion, the Senate’s actually been talking about exploding the debt $5 trillion.”
The speaker pointed to Republicans’ tiny majority in the House, with margins that may make sweeping changes unrealistic.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
So, I will close with that horrid West Point graduation speech. It’s really time for someone to question Trump’s mental health and send him to Walter Reed for a real test or 10. This is from US Today. James Powel has the analysis. “Trump tells West Point grads to avoid ‘trophy wives’ in commencement speech.” I’m not sure you’ve ever seen the average salary of a soldier, but I’m certain trophy wives and yachts are not likely to be in their future.
President Donald Trump told graduates to avoid “trophy wives” during his commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 24.
“He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife,” Trump said, referring to real estate developer Bill Levitt. “But that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t it work.”
“The job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures (and) spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun,” he said. “The military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime and any place.”
The military academy shut down a slew of on-campus organizations, including the Corbin Forum, a leadership club for female cadets, and Spectrum, a gay-straight alliance, in February following an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government, according to Military.com.
“We’ve liberated our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings,” Trump said. “There will be no more critical race theory or transgender for everybody forced onto our brave men and women in uniform — or on anybody else for that matter, in this country.”
Trump, wearing his campaign’s red MAGA hat, also pulled a common campaign reference in the speech, saying, “I went through a very tough time with some very radicalized sick, people. I say I was investigated more than the great, late Alphonse Capone.”
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at Rolling Stone.
Following Donald Trump‘s bizarre speech to West Point graduates, where the president opined on topics ranging from yachts and trophy wives to drag shows and golf, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is calling on Republicans to “start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally.”
“I don’t think that those who have gone through West Point expected to have their commander in chief address them and start talking about trophy wives or start talking how he has so many investigations,” she said. “What a great reminder that you are not qualified to be the person that potentially will command troops to go into war. That is not instilling confidence whatsoever.”
“It is time for Republicans to start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally,” Crockett added. “We know when it comes down to his criminality, he is not qualified to serve, but this is just absolutely deplorable.”
Okay, so I know you have better things to do today than worry about the sanity of the President and the state of our democracy and economy. Please remember the people who died fighting for our democracy instead of the ones fighting to destroy it in your activities today.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Pope Francis has been eulogised as “a pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone” during a funeral mass that brought 400,000 mourners to Rome, from pilgrims and refugees to powerful world leaders and royalty.
Francis, 88, died on Monday after a stroke and subsequent heart failure, setting into motion a series of centuries-old rituals and a huge, meticulously planned logistical and security operation not seen in Italy since the funeral of John Paul II in April 2005.
The crowd erupted into applause as the late pontiff’s wooden coffin was carried from the altar of the 16th-century St Peter’s Basilica, where it had laid in state for three days, by 14 white-gloved pallbearers and into the square for the open-air ceremony.
Applause also rang out when the Italian cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who presided over the funeral mass, spoke of Francis’s care for immigrants, his constant pleas for peace, the need for negotiations to end wars and the importance of the climate.
Under a blue sky, crowds stretched along Via della Conciliazione, the road connecting the Italian capital with the Vatican.
Among the pilgrims were Rosa Cirielli and her friend Pina Sanarico, who left their homes in Taranto, in southern Italy, at 5am, and managed to secure themselves a decent position in front of a huge TV screen. “When Pope Francis was alive, he gave us hope. Now we have this huge hole,” said Cirielli. “He left us during a very ugly period for the world. He was the only one who loudly called for peace.”
The pilgrims were joined by leaders from more than 150 countries, including the US president, Donald Trump, who had repeatedly clashed with Francis over immigration, and his wife Melania. A White House official said Trump had a “very productive” meeting before the ceremony with Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. A photo showed the pair sitting opposite each other on chairs inside St Peter’s Basilica. Another image showed them together with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and French president, Emmanuel Macron. Trump and Zelenskyy were also expected to meet after the mass.
Other guests included the former US president Joe Biden, who last met Francis at the G7 summit in Puglia in June 2024, the Argentinian president, Javier Milei, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and Prince William.
More than 2,000 journalists from around the world travelled to Rome to cover the event.
The 90-minute mass was celebrated by 220 cardinals, 750 bishops and more than 4,000 priests.
Trump did not belong at the funeral of Pope Francis, but he bulled his way in and demanded special treatment. Can you believe didn’t even wear black?
President Donald Trump, wearing a blue suit in a sea of black, was seated in a prized front-row seat for the funeral of Pope Francis.
The seating location will likely be a source of great satisfaction for the famously thin-skinned president, who mercilessly mocked Joe Biden after he was seated in the 14th row at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in 2022.
By Jos Rian
Based on precedent, Trump was expected to have been seated in the third row, behind anointed monarchs.
In the end, however, he and Melania were seated in the front row, along with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, whose appearance triggered a spontaneous outburst of applause from the assembled crowds.
Vatican sources told Sky News that Trump met with Zelensky before the ceremony, just hours after the president talked up a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.
The controversy over Trump’s seating would doubtless have prompted a wry reaction from the overtly humble Pope Francis, who dedicated considerable political capital to confronting Trump, denouncing his immigration policy as “un-Christian” and schooling his minion JD Vance on the issue in his final hours.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, previously told the Telegraph the ceremony would be a “masterpiece of stage management when you consider those state leaders who have high opinions of their importance.”
“They’ve been doing it since the emperors ruled Rome—they know how to deal with big egos. And I think every leader of a nation that comes here on Saturday will go home reasonably content,” he added.
President Trump met privately with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Saturday in Vatican City, the first time the two leaders have met since their televised argument in late February in the Oval Office exacerbated the deep breach between the two countries.
The meeting took place in St. Peter’s Basilica, the two men perched on metal chairs, deep in conversation for several minutes as they waited for the funeral for Pope Francis to begin. A White House spokesman, Stephen Cheung, called it a “very productive discussion,” but gave no details.
It came at a critical moment. The United States has presented Ukraine with a plan for a cease-fire in its war with Russia, leading to a postwar plan that would give Russia de facto control over all of the lands it has illegally seized since the invasion began three years ago. The proposal also includes a major reversal of American policy: a formal recognition by the United States that Crimea, seized by Moscow in 2014, is now Russian territory.
Mr. Zelensky said this past week that Ukraine would never make that concession, noting that it would violate Ukraine’s Constitution; most of the other nations in Europe would almost agree with Mr. Zelensky’s view. But the Ukrainian leader has a counterproposal of his own, Ukrainian officials said, one that would end the conflict on far less generous terms for Russia, and would include billions of dollars in reparations for Ukraine, paid by Russia.
The White House did not respond to queries about the specifics of the meeting in Vatican City. But it was a remarkable scene: an impromptu meeting between two men who have made no secret of their deep dislike and distrust for each other. In the minutes after they last saw each other, Mr. Zelensky was essentially evicted from the White House, a lunch for the two men left uneaten and an economic accord allowing the United States to help exploit much of Ukraine’s minerals left unsigned.
Some very sad news: Virginia Giuffre had died by suicide.
Her family issued a statement on Saturday confirming she took her own life at her farm in Western Australia, where she had lived for several years.
“It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia. She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking,” the statement read.
By Nicolai Tonitza
“In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.”
Giuffre was one of the most vocal victims of Epstein, alleging she had been groomed and sexually abused by him and his longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, beginning in her teens.
The family described her as a “fierce warrior” against sexual abuse and sex trafficking and a “light that lifted so many survivors”.
“Despite all the adversity she faced in her life, she shone so bright. She will be missed beyond measure,” they said.
Giuffre is survived by her three children, Christian, Noah and Emily, who her family said were the “light of her life”.
“It was when she held her newborn daughter in her arms that Virginia realised she had to fight back against those who had abused her and so many others,” they said.
“There are no words that can express the grave loss we feel today with the passing of our sweet Virginia. She was heroic and will always be remembered for her incredible courage and loving spirit.”
Giuffre, 41, died in Neergabby, Australia, where she had been living for several years.
Giuffre was one of the earliest and loudest voices calling for criminal charges against Epstein and his enablers. Other Epstein abuse survivors later credited her with giving them the courage to speak out.
She also provided critical information to law enforcement that contributed to the investigation into and later the conviction of Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as other investigations by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York….
Raised primarily in Florida, Giuffre had a troubled childhood. She said she was abused by a family friend, triggering a downward spiral that led to her living on the streets for a time as a teenager.
She was attempting to rebuild her life when she met Maxwell, Epstein’s close confidant. Maxwell groomed her to be sexually abused by Epstein, and that abuse continued from 1999 to 2002, according to Giuffre. Giuffre also alleged that Epstein trafficked her to his powerful friends, including Prince Andrew and French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel.
Epstein, a wealthy financier, died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell, a former British socialite, was found guilty on five counts of sex trafficking in 2021 for her role in recruiting young girls to be abused by Epstein.
Giuffre filed a federal lawsuit against Andrew in 2021, alleging that he sexually abused her when she was 17. Andrew, who stepped back from his duties as an active royal as controversy related to Epstein swirled around him, agreed to settle the case for an undisclosed amount in 2022. He has denied having sex with her.
Brunel, who headed several modeling agencies, was charged with sexual harassment and the rape of at least one minor in December 2020. He denied wrongdoing and died by suicide in his jail cell in February 2022.
Several months prior, Giuffre testified against Brunel in a Paris courtroom in June 2021. In an interview after her daylong closed-door testimony, Giuffre said she appeared in court to be a voice for the victims and to make sure Brunel was brought to justice.
“I wanted Brunel to know that he no longer has the power over me,” Giuffre said, “that I am a grown woman now and I’ve decided to hold him accountable for what he did to me and so many others.”
Giuffre moved to Australia with her husband before Epstein’s 2019 arrest. The couple has three children.
There was quite a bit of immigration news yesterday.
The federal government used brazen, heavy-handed tactics on Friday to arrest a Wisconsin state judge on obstruction charges related to an immigration case.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan received the distinction of being arrested at her courthouse. She does not appear to have been given the opportunity to surrender to law enforcement.
By Nicola Slattery
Instead, Trump administration officials immediately used the arrest to create a spectacle and broadcast to the country that state officials — including sitting judges — must cooperate with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign or else face overbearing actions from federal law enforcement.
A U.S. Marshals Service spokesman told TPM that FBI agents arrested Dugan at around 8:30 a.m. Milwaukee time. They made the arrest, Marshals spokesman Brady McCarron told TPM, as she arrived for work on the state courthouse grounds, detaining her outside of the building.
Around half an hour after, FBI Director Kash Patel posted a tweet announcing the arrest.
“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse,” he wrote. Patel deleted the tweet minutes later, though he would later repost it.
Contrast the brazenness of Dugan’s arrest, and Patel’s efforts to manufacture publicity around it, with how a somewhat similar case proceeded during Trump’s first term. In 2019, a Massachusetts state judge was indicted on obstruction charges over allegations of blocking ICE officials from taking custody of an undocumented citizen of the Dominican Republic. In that case, itself an extremely rare federal prosecution of a state judge over a decision related to the use of her office, the defendant was allowed to surrender. The DOJ dropped the charges in September 2022.
Read the rest at TPM. This will be an important case to watch. I suspect this isn’t the last judge who will be targeted by Trump goons.
Over the course of the past three days, the Trump administration took a two-year-old U.S. citizen into custody, along with her mother and sister, and deported the child to Honduras with little to no individualized process, prompting sharp concern from a conservative federal judge on Friday.
The Justice Department does not appear to dispute the underlying facts, given its position in a filing faxed to the court about 3:45 a.m. CT Friday in response to a habeas petition filed on behalf of the child, referred to as V.M.L., on Thursday evening.
Instead, the Justice Department’s entire argument was simply that, once in custody and told she was going to be deported, V.M.L.’s mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, wrote a note stating that she would bring her two-year-old daughter with her to Honduras.
By Jos Rian
As the habeas petition made clear, however, many federal officials knew that both V.M.L.’s father, Adiel Mendez Sagastume, and provisional custodian, Trish Mack, were desperately trying to get in touch with Jenny and/or get V.M.L. released to them throughout the 70 hours between when the two of them and Jenny’s other child were taken into custody and flown to Texas before Friday’s flight to Honduras.
On Friday, in the wake of all of this information, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty issued an order setting a hearing “[i]n the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.” The order was first reported by Politico.
That the order came from Doughty, a far-right Trump appointee known for his harsh criticism of the Biden administration in a case about social media that was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, was yet another reminder of how alarming the Trump administration’s actions are being seen by judges of all backgrounds.
Of the deportation of a two-year-old U.S. citizen, Doughty wrote on Friday, “The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the Court doesn’t know that.“
New Orleans, LA – Today, in the early hours of the morning, the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office deported at least two families, including two mothers and their minor children – three of whom are U.S. citizen children aged 2, 4, and 7. One of the mothers is currently pregnant. The families, who had lived in the United States for years and had deep ties to their communities, were deported from the U.S. under deeply troubling circumstances that raise serious due process concerns.
ICE detained the first family on Tuesday, April 22, and the second family on Thursday, April 24. In both cases, ICE held the families incommunicado, refusing or failing to respond to multiple attempts by attorneys and family members to contact them. In one instance, a mother was granted less than one minute on the phone before the call was abruptly terminated when her spouse tried to provide legal counsel’s phone number.
As a result, the families were completely isolated during critical moments when decisions were being made about the welfare of their minor children. This included decisions with serious implications for the health, safety, and legal rights of the children involved–without any opportunity to coordinate with caretakers or consult with legal representatives.
New Orleans, LA – Today, in the early hours of the morning, the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office deported at least two families, including two mothers and their minor children – three of whom are U.S. citizen children aged 2, 4, and 7. One of the mothers is currently pregnant. The families, who had lived in the United States for years and had deep ties to their communities, were deported from the U.S. under deeply troubling circumstances that raise serious due process concerns.
By Alberto Morrocco
ICE detained the first family on Tuesday, April 22, and the second family on Thursday, April 24. In both cases, ICE held the families incommunicado, refusing or failing to respond to multiple attempts by attorneys and family members to contact them. In one instance, a mother was granted less than one minute on the phone before the call was abruptly terminated when her spouse tried to provide legal counsel’s phone number.
As a result, the families were completely isolated during critical moments when decisions were being made about the welfare of their minor children. This included decisions with serious implications for the health, safety, and legal rights of the children involved–without any opportunity to coordinate with caretakers or consult with legal representatives.
These actions stand in direct violation of ICE’s own written and informal directives, which mandate coordination for the care of minor children with willing caretakers–regardless of immigration status–when deportations are being carried out.
Both families have possible immigration relief, but because ICE denied them access to their attorneys, legal counsel was unable to assist and advise them in time. With one family, government attorneys had assured legal counsel that a legal call would be arranged within 24-48 hours, as well as a call with a family member. Instead, just after close of business and after courts closed for the day, ICE suddenly reversed course and informed counsel that the family would be deported at 6am the next morning–before the court reopened.
The Justice Department quietly invoked the Alien Enemies act last month to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents the power to conduct warrantless searches of people’s homes as long as they suspect them to be an “alien enemy.” USA Today obtained the memo that contained this order on Friday.
“As much as practicable, officers should follow the proactive procedures above—and have an executed Warrant of Apprehension and Removal—before contacting an Alien Enemy,” the memo reads. “However, that will not always be realistic or effective in swiftly identifying and removing Alien Enemies.… An officer may encounter a suspected Alien Enemy in the natural course of the officer’s enforcement activity, such as when apprehending other validated members of Tren de Aragua. Given the dynamic nature of enforcement operations, officers in the field are authorized to apprehend aliens upon a reasonable belief that the alien meets all four requirements to be validated as an Alien Enemy. This authority includes entering an Alien Enemy’s residence to make an AEA apprehension where circumstances render it impracticable to first obtain a signed Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal” (emphasis added).
In the memo, the Justice Department defined an “alien enemy” as anyone who is 14 years of age or older, not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, a citizen of Venezuela, and “a member of the hostile enemy Tren de Aragua,” per the Alien Enemy Validation Guide, a document that has already been slammed by immigration experts.
A Treasury Department inspector general is probing efforts by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to obtain private taxpayer data and other sensitive information, internal communications reviewed by ProPublica show.
The office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has sought a wide swath of information from IRS employees. In particular, the office is seeking any requests for taxpayer data from the president, the Executive Office of the President, DOGE or the president’s Office of Management and Budget.
The request, spelled out in a mid-April email obtained by ProPublica, comes as watchdogs and leading Democrats question whether DOGE has overstepped its bounds in seeking information about taxpayers, public employees or federal agencies that is typically highly restricted.
By Arthur Io
The review appears to be in its early stages — one document describes staffers as “beginning preplanning” — but the email directs the IRS to turn over specific documents by Thursday, April 24. It’s not clear if that happened.
The inspector general is seeking, for instance, “All requests for taxpayer or other protected information from the President or Executive Office of the President, OMB, or DOGE. Include any information on how the requestor plans to use the information requested, the IRS’s response to the request, and the legal basis for the IRS’s response,” the email says.
The inquiry also asks for information about requests for access to IRS systems from any agency in the executive branch, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration and DOGE.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration office, known as TIGTA, is led by acting Inspector General Heather M. Hill. When Trump fired 17 inspectors general across a range of federal agencies in January, those working for the Treasury Department were not among the ones axed.
Elon Musk, as a yet-unproven entrepreneur in his mid-twenties, declared himself the “reincarnation” of ancient Greek conqueror Alexander the Great, a new book on the billionaire has revealed.
Musk, now 53, made the comment around 30 years ago to a partner at one of the firms that bankrolled his first start-up, Zip2, which aimed to bring the Yellow Pages online, Washington Post reporter Faiz Siddiqui writes in Hubris Maximus, published Tuesday.
Derek Proudian, then at Mohr Davidow Ventures, recalled grabbing lunch with the young Musk to discuss how to make the company viable on a small scale.
Musk, however, insisted that he think bigger: Zip2 was “going to be the biggest company ever,” Proudian recalled him saying.
When Proudian tried to change the subject, Musk doubled down.
“No—you don’t understand,” he said. “I’m the reincarnation of the spirit of Alexander the Great.”
Incredulous, Proudian pushed back that he might not reach that level of success. Musk wasn’t willing to hear it.
“I’ve got the samurai spirit,” he said. “I’d rather commit seppuku than fail.”
Those are my recommended reads for today. What’s on your mind?
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My natural optimism is beginning to wear thin. Our country is on a fast track to autocracy, and our Congressional “leaders” don’t seem to be doing much to slow it down. I’m afraid that Trump and Musk will actually try to steal the money from Social Security and Medicare that Americans have contributed through our payroll taxes. I know if it happens, there will be a massive pushback from the American people, but will Democrats actually begin to fight back then? I’m not sure.
I know some elected Democrats are working hard to slow down what’s happening, but so far their actions aren’t visible enough. They don’t seem to be working as a group to educate the public about what is happening to our country. Meanwhile, Trump and Musk are blundering their way through the government, shutting down vital programs and firing employees indiscriminately. The courts are our only hope, and they move very slowly.
There is so much awful stuff happening, and there are endless stories I could share about it; so I’ll just share the ones that hit me hardest this morning.
Yesterday, Trump had the nerve to claim that Ukraine started the war with Russia.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Donald Trump of repeating disinformation, a day after the US president falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.
Zelensky’s outspoken comments were part of what is shaping up to be far the most public exchange of accusations between Kyiv and Washington since the full-scale war started nearly three years ago.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, Zelensky pushed back on several unfounded claims the US president made on Tuesday, while reinforcing Ukraine’s position that a deal to end the war needed its involvement.
“Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky said.
Trump has made it clear he wants the war to end as soon as possible – even if it means further territorial losses for Ukraine. And much to the horror of Kyiv and its allies, Trump has at times adopted Kremlin’s narrative and blamed Ukraine and NATO for the conflict, even saying that Ukraine “may be Russian some day.”
But Trump’s boosting of Russia goes well beyond rhetoric. The president raised many eyebrows last week when opting to hold a 90-minute phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin before speaking to Zelensky.
Then on Tuesday, US and Russian officials held high-level talks on ending the war in Ukraine in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, excluding Kyiv from the meeting.
Putin praised this new US attitude towards his country. Speaking about the talks in Riyadh, Putin said he was told the atmosphere was “friendly.”
“There were completely different people on the American side, who were open to the negotiation process without any bias, without any condemnation of what had been done in the past,” Putin added.
The US and Russia agreed in Riyadh to appoint high-level teams to negotiate the end of the war and said
they were working to reestablish diplomatic channels.
Trump wants to further dumb down the State Department.
The State Department has ordered the cancellation of all news subscriptions deemed “non-mission critical,” according to internal email guidance viewed by The Washington Post. The move aligns with the Trump administration’s crackdown on media companies that count the U.S. government as paying customers.
A Feb. 11 memo sent to embassies and consulates in Europe described the mandateas part of an effort to reduce spending. The email read, in part,“Considering this priority, posts are asked to immediately place Stop Work Orders on all non-mission critical contracts/purchase orders for media subscriptions (publications, periodicals, and newspaper subscriptions) that are not academic or professional journals.”
The mandate applies globally,to hundreds of U.S. embassies and consulates, according to a State Department official who spoke with The Post on Tuesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. Embassy security teams rely on news coverage to prepare for diplomatic travel in conflict zones. Cancellation of subscriptions — including to local news outlets — could hinder their assessment of threats, the official said….
A Feb. 14 memo directed procurement teams at embassies and consulates to prioritize the termination of contracts with six news organizations in particular: the Economist, the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, the Associated Press and Reuters.
State Department personnel were told that they could submit a request to maintain a news subscription but that it “must be done within 1 sentence.” The guidance laid out possible justifications — if the subscription affects the safety of U.S. personnel or facilities, or if it is required by treaty or law, or if it yields an affirmative answer to one of the following questions: “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
A State Department employee who received the memos, and shared them with The Post, expressed concern that terminating news subscriptions — particularly to local outlets —would deprive embassies and consulates of information necessary to complete their mission. “This will endanger American lives overseas because we are being cut off from news sources that are needed on a daily basis,” said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment to the press.
Opinion pieces on Trump-Musk-DOGE’s destruction of our government.
A month into the second Trump administration, I think it is fair to conclude that the American empire in its current form is collapsing. The post-1945 global order, with the United States at its apex, is no more. America itself is not going anywhere—at least not yet—but the foundation of the empire, namely its structure of alliances and partnerships, has been dealt irreparable damage. Western Europe, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and especially Canada now view America with suspicion if not outright hostility, and they are right to do so.
Now, the history of empires is the story of their rise and inevitable fall. As Herodotus wrote about Greek city-states, “most of those which were great once are small today; and those which used to be small were great in my own time.” But nobody has matched this current downfall for sheer egregious stupidity.
Indeed, it’s hard to think of even a single competitor for that title. There have been, to be sure, many idiotic imperial leaders throughout history who helped blow up their empires through bungling and mistakes. Tsar Nicholas II was an incompetent boob whose closest adviser was a charlatan mystic, and he personally led the failed military effort during the First World War that eventually destroyed his regime. Yet Russia bore only a small share of the blame for starting the war in the first place, and other much better-governed empires like Germany and Austria-Hungary, which shared much of that blame, also collapsed because of the war’s strains.
The eventual collapse of the Western Roman Empire began when a large Roman army was heavily defeated by Goths, who had adopted many Roman military tactics. The Eastern European Empire persisted for another thousand years, but it too eventually collapsed following military defeat at the hands of the Ottomans.
That is how empires tend to fall. Either they are defeated in battle, and are conquered or collapse, or they suffer a succession crisis and fall apart (both often enabled by corruption and mismanagement). Or they are simply eclipsed by another power, as happened when the British Empire fell short and the U.S. succeeded it.
What Trump inherited and what he has done so far:
President Trump, by contrast, was handed an empire in splendid condition. The core alliance of NATO was stronger than it had been in decades, as Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine pushed Sweden and Finland to join. Thanks to President Biden’s policies, the American economy was the envy of the world, with a post-pandemic recovery that outstripped any peer nation. The dollar was still by far the most important reserve currency, and the U.S. still had control over global financial pipelines.
No serious threats were on the horizon, either. In its war with Ukraine, Russia has burned through most of its gigantic stockpile of Soviet-era military hardware, taken perhaps 800,000 casualties, and put its economy under terrific pressure. China, while the only peer competitor the U.S. has faced since 1991, is saddled with deep economic difficulties and looking down the barrel of population collapse.
But Trump and Musk are blowing America’s imperial foundations to kingdom come. Take USAID, which as the largest distributor of humanitarian aid in the world, has both done a tremendous amount of good work and also served as a carrot for America’s global predominance—until now. The agency has been all but dismantled, unleashing havoc all over the globe. HIV and drug-resistant tuberculosis are now spreading unchecked in many countries reliant on USAID medication, both proving America cannot be trusted and threatening outbreaks of those diseases in the U.S. itself.
Both Trump and Musk have attacked NATO; Trump has reportedly said he wants to withdraw from the alliance, while Musk has said it “needs an overhaul” and he wonders why it “continued to exist.” More importantly, Trump has repeatedly suggested annexing Canada, a NATO member. The enormous implications of this threat are clearly not getting through to many American elites. At The New York Times, Peter Baker has a column blithely speculating about which way Canadians might vote should they be annexed, concluding that Democrats would likely benefit.
But this is not a political parlor game for Canadians. They are incandescently furious, and they are right to be. Canada stood shoulder to shoulder by America through the great bloodbaths of the 20th century. Since then, it has been a quietly loyal neighbor, making not a peep of trouble along the world’s longest land border, and providing a vast supply of energy, mineral, timber, and other exports to fuel the American economy. And this is the thanks they get: A senile fascist American president who suggests a war of conquest—and make no mistake, that is what it would take—because he wants to make America look big but doesn’t understand how the Mercator projection exaggerates the size of northern land masses—which, it’s been reported, is one reason for his coveting Greenland, too.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” President Trump posted last week on his social media platform.
The quote was widely attributed to French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and Trump, who fancies himself one of history’s great leaders, leaned into the monarchical fantasy. And lest there was any confusion, he explicitly linked it to a story about his administration defying a court order with respect to the federal budget.
The quote is an unmistakable echo of Richard Nixon, who insisted in 1977 that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
That wasn’t true for Nixon, of course, who by then had been out of office for three years. But last year the Supreme Court gutted the rulings that reined in Nixon, and now Trump and Elon Musk are running the government as if they are the only law in the land. They insist they are “saving” the country by burning down its institutions, and they claim a mandate of the people to do it….
When it comes to Twitter, Elon Musk is the “voice of god.” (And not for nothing, but he literally sued “the people” when they exercised their right to criticize him or not speak on his platform.)
But Musk and Trump make a similar false equivalency when it comes to governing, insisting that the results in November empower them to do whatever they like, law be damned.
“The beauty is that we won by so much. The mandate was massive,” Trump told Time Magazine in December, adding that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
In reality, Trump won by less than 1.5 percent and took less than 50 percent of all votes cast. His popular vote margin was one-third as large as Biden’s and the second-narrowest in 60 years. There was no “mandate,” let alone a “massive” one.
And yet Trump and Musk govern as if they won an overwhelming majority, and this gives them the right to ignore the law….
At the recent Oval Office press conference where Musk played with his toddler son, the saucer-eyed vizier delivered a manic defense of the DOGE committee’s “hostile takeover of the government.” (Video after the transcript.)
Well, first of all, you couldn’t ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted. We have a majority of the public vote voting for President Trump. We won the House, we won the Senate. The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that. That was on the campaign. The President spoke about that at every rally. The people voted for major government reform, and that’s what people are going to get. They’re going to get what they voted for. And a lot of times people that don’t get what they voted for, but in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for. And that’s what democracy is all about.
In reality, Trump announced the DOGE committee after he won in November, promising that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (remember him?) would “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.” He only brought DOGE inside the government by executive order on January 20.
Trump did not run on a promise to unleash an unelected billionaire to slash-and-burn through the government, firing tens of thousands of employees and arbitrarily canceling contracts and federal programs. And even if he had, that still wouldn’t make it legal….
The United States is a constitutional democracy. We must all abide by the Constitution, and we don’t get to override its provisions by popular referendum.
At least we were a constitutional democracy. Read the rest at Public Notice.
Andrew Egger at The Bulwark: Sadism for Its Own Sake.
The Trump White House is itching to ramp up its cartoonishly cruel immigration policy to industrial scale. But they’re finding the sledding frustratingly slow.
The Economist noted this week that “so far, mass deportation has been more rhetoric than reality.” Daily ICE arrests are just a tick up from the Biden years—from a few hundred a day to just over a thousand. “ICE stopped releasing a daily arrests number in early February,” the Economist notes, “which may be because the agency would rather nobody kept count.”
If you’re Trump, this is no good. He’d promised instant gratification: “the largest deportation operation in history,” beginning on Day One of his presidency. His fans, longing to see footage of migrants getting hustled into ICE vans by the thousands across the country, might be getting a little twitchy.
So the administration is taking a new tack: emphasizing quality over quantity. The White House is spotlighting the leering cruelty with which they carry out the deportations that are happening. Deporting former designees of temporary protected status back to countries where they face prosecution: check. Deporting migrants to countries they’ve never even visited: check. Holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay: check.
And yesterday, releasing the single most viscerally disturbing piece of deportation propaganda to date: A short video, posted to the official White House X account, titled “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.”
ASMR videos, which became popular on YouTube in the 2010s, use specific audio cues to stimulate feelings of relaxation and euphoria in the viewer. The White House video perversely mimics the style: lovingly lingering on the revving engine of an airplane waiting to take off; the jingling of chains as they are laid out in rows on the ground, then used to shackle deportees’ arms behind their backs; the shuffling of chained feet up into the plane. No faces are ever seen. The idea is not just that viewers should approve of the footage. It invites them to take sensual pleasure from it.
Plenty of Trump’s people were happy to oblige. The tweet quickly induced hooting replies—memes of American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman blissfully vibing on his headphones in a MAGA hat, exhortations to “let the clanging bar sounds of Guantanamo Bay whisk you away to your happy place,” speculation about when “some of our corrupt politicians” would be going the same way.
THREE DAYS AFTER the National Institutes of Health abruptly announced it would place a strict, low cap on the money it sends to universities and research institutions for the administrative costs of scientific research, the University of Iowa made an abrupt announcement of its own.
The school’s Office of the Vice President for Research declared that going forward, it would pause “the hiring of new Graduate Research Assistants unless they are already budgeted as a direct cost on a funded project.”
The announcement sent shockwaves through parts of academia, providing an alarming demonstration of the impact the NIH cap would have on aspiring scientists. “We were pretty stunned,” the chair of the biochemistry and molecular biology department at a top university told The Bulwark.
NIH’s so-called “indirect cost” cap has since been paused by the courts. And a University of Iowa spokesperson confirmed they’ve put a pause on their policy too. But the spokesman also noted that they were “actively monitoring the developments happening at the federal government level.”
And on that front, they are hardly alone. The prospect that the cap will return, combined with the dramatic cuts that the Trump administration is making at every scientific agency, has generated chaos and uncertainty in the scientific community. The aforementioned department chair noted that his own school had decided to stop bringing on any new faculty. A cellular biology professor at a separate, prominent state university said that they’d reduced the number of graduate school offers by 75 percent and were weighing whether to continue a program to provide summer research opportunities for undergraduate students from smaller colleges, including HBCUs.
“One might ask, ‘Why are they trying to destroy the science training pipeline?’” that professor said. “To what end?”
In the first month of the second Trump administration, the world’s richest man—underinformed, chronically online, and staffed by a coterie of teenaged and twentysomethingformer engineering interns—has been moving at warp speed to reshape, reduce, and even dismantle the United States government. But while Musk’s rampage has been feverishly covered, the scope of its impact remains largely underappreciated. Experts say it can’t be measured in weeks or months or even in government services affected. Rather, it will be felt over the span of decades and defined in metrics like intellectual talent lost.
A relative of mine—an older gent with a penchant for salty language—yelled over the phone at me in frustration, “Where are the damn cojones in the Democratic Party?”
His use of language aside, this argument—that the Democrats are not raising nearly enough hell as Apartheid’s Chestburster, Elon Musk, vivisects the government from the inside—is all over the liberal left. The phrase going around is, “The Democrats have brought a lectern to a social media war.” Masses of enraged, terrified people are looking at the analog, slow-motion leadership of Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer and the zero-calorie rhetoric of House leader Hakeem Jeffries and want them replaced by people who know how to fight. As The Nation has reported, when Democratic politicians have shown up to protests, people aren’t cheering their presence. They are howling at them to do more.
To be clear, people aren’t criticizing the efforts of individual Democrats trying to expose this deadly grand theft taking place in plain sight. The cry is, “Why aren’t the Democrats as unified and ruthless toward their enemies as Republicans?”
Why aren’t they taking the fired federal workers who are sharing their heartbreaking stories—the ones that Musk says were being paid to do nothing—and making them famous? The cancer researcher on the verge of a breakthrough? The park ranger in Yosemite who won’t be there to conduct rescues and save lives? The air traffic controller who can speak to the connection between understaffing and recent plane crashes? Is it even safe to fly in Trump’s America?
The Democrats should be amplifying these folks—writing op-eds about them, refusing to go on camera without sharing their spotlight, pressuring their IG influencers to raise them up—but instead, we learn their stories from Reddit. As Moira Donegan wrote in The Guardian, “Why are the Democrats so spineless?” The conventional wisdom is that they simply “don’t know how” to wage a social media and public-relations attack that can, to use one blaring example, define people like JD Vance as a Nazi-curious Manchurian Candidate.
I have been fascinated by politics ever since I was 12 years old in 1960. John Kennedy’s run for president was so inspiring to me that I just caught the fever. I became a politics junkie. There have been times when I tried to pay less attention–especially during the Reagan years and later when George W. Bush was pushing his wars. But I always kept in touch enough to know basically what was happening. Since Trump was elected again, I really wish I could ignore politics completely. I just want to get in bed, pull the covers over my head and deny the reality of what’s happening. Of course, I can’t do it.
This weekend, though, I have allowed myself to ignore current events. There usually isn’t a lot of breaking news on a long holiday weekend. So right now, I’m kind of catching up. Here’s what I’m seeing out there in the real world today.
Rebels had seized most of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, as of Saturday, according to a war monitoring group and to fighters who were combing the streets in search of any remaining pockets of government forces.
The antigovernment rebels said they had faced little resistance on the ground in Aleppo. But Syrian government warplanes responded with airstrikes on the city for the first time since 2016, according to the war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Aleppo came to a near standstill on Saturday, with many residents staying indoors for fear of what the sudden flip in control might mean, witnesses said. Others did venture out into the streets, welcoming the fighters and hugging them. Some rebels tried to reassure city residents and sent out at least one van to distribute bread.
The rapid advance on Aleppo came just days into a surprise rebel offensive launched on Wednesday against the autocratic regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The developments are both the most serious challenge to Mr. al-Assad’s rule and the most intense escalation in years in a civil war that had been mostly dormant.
The timing of the assault suggested that the rebels could be exploiting weaknesses across an alliance linking Iran to the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Assad regime in Syria and others….
Within hours from Friday into Saturday, Syrian government soldiers, security forces and police officers fled the city, according to the war monitoring group. They were replaced by the Islamist and Turkish-backed rebels sweeping through on foot, motorbikes or on trucks mounted with machine guns.
Thousands of Syrian insurgents fanned out inside Aleppo in vehicles with improvised armor and pickups, deploying to landmarks such as the old citadel on Saturday, a day after they entered Syria’s largest city facing little resistance from government troops, according to residents and fighters.
Witnesses said two airstrikes on the city’s edge late Friday targeted insurgent reinforcements and hit near residential areas. A war monitor said 20 fighters were killed.
Syria’s armed forces said in a statement Saturday that to absorb the large attack on Aleppo and save lives, it has redeployed and is preparing for a counterattack. The statement acknowledged that insurgents entered large parts of the city but said they have not established bases or checkpoints.
Insurgents were filmed outside police headquarters, in the city center, and outside the Aleppo Citadel. They tore down posters of Syrian President Bashar Assad, stepping on some and burning others.
The surprise takeover is a huge embarrassment for Assad, who managed to regain total control of the city in 2016, after expelling insurgents and thousands of civilians from its eastern neighborhoods following a grueling military campaign in which his forces were backed by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.
The Ukrainian president told Sky News’s chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay NATO membership would have to be offered to unoccupied parts of the country in order to end the “hot phase of the war”, as long as the NATO invitation itself recognises Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested a ceasefire deal could be struck if Ukrainian territory he controls could be taken “under the NATO umbrella” – allowing him to negotiate the return of the rest later “in a diplomatic way”.
By Bettina Baldassari
In an interview with Sky News’s chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay, the Ukrainian president was asked to respond to media reports saying one of US president-elect Donald Trump’s plans to end the war might be for Kyiv to cede the land Moscow has taken to Russia in exchange for Ukraine joining NATO.
Mr Zelenskyy said NATO membership would have to be offered to unoccupied parts of the country in order to end the “hot phase of the war”, as long as the NATO invitation itself recognises Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.
He appeared to accept occupied eastern parts of the country would fall outside of such a deal for the time being.
“If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” he said.
“We need to do it fast. And then on the [occupied] territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way.”
Mr Zelenskyy said a ceasefire was needed to “guarantee that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will not come back” to take more Ukrainian territory.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Keith Kellogg, a former national security adviser and decorated retired U.S. general, to be his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia has reassured a nervous Kyiv up to a point.
Ukrainian officials are familiar with Kellogg, a peace-through-strength advocate who’s argued publicly that any deal to end the nearly three-year-long war of attrition would have to include solid security guarantees for Ukraine to ensure there’s lasting peace and to preclude another Russian invasion. Kellogg is no supporter of just throwing in the towel and letting Russia’s Vladimir Putin get everything he wants.
“We tell the Ukrainians, ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up’,” Kellogg told Reuters in June. “And you tell Putin, ‘He’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field’,” he added.
And unlike others in Trump’s MAGA circle, Kellogg welcomed President Joe Biden’s decision to approve Ukraine’s use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia, saying it has given Trump “more leverage” and adding that “it gives President Trump more ability to pivot from that.”
Contrast that with the howls of protest over the missile approval from Donald Trump Jr., Mike Waltz, the president-elect’s choice to be national security adviser, and Richard Grenell, who was acting director of National Intelligence during Trump’s first term. “No one anticipated that Joe Biden would ESCALATE the war in Ukraine during the transition period. This is as if he is launching a whole new war,” Grenell posted on X. Trump’s son accused Biden of trying to spark World War III “before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.”
In short, Kellogg is someone Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his circle can work with, and Ukraine’s leader already is nimbly adapting to the changed politics in Washington — and to shifting political dynamics in Europe — by displaying a willingness to come to the table. That’s something his American advisers have urged him to do, leaving it to Putin to be Mr. Nyet, risking Trump’s wrath.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a president elect getting so involved in foreign affairs before. Trump is behaving as if he’s already POTUS. Last night, he met with Justin Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago.
Justin Trudeau made a surprise visit to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to have what he called an “excellent conversation”, making Canada’s prime minister the first G7 leader to meet with the US president-elect before his second term.
The meeting came amid widespread fears in Canada and many other parts of the world that Trump’s promised trade policy of imposing tariffs will cause widespread economic chaos.
By Marcella Cooper
Trudeau and a handful of top advisers flew to Florida amid expectations that Trump will impose a 25% surcharge on Canadian products that could have a devastating impact on Canadian energy, auto and manufacturing exports.
The meeting over dinner between Trudeau and Trump, their wives, US cabinet nominees and Canadian officials, lasted over three hours and was described by a senior Canadian official to the Toronto Star as a positive, wide-ranging discussion.
Leaving a Florida hotel in West Palm Beach on Saturday, Trudeau said: “It was an excellent conversation.”
The face-to-face meeting came at Trudeau’s suggestion, according to the Canadian official, and had not been disclosed to the Ottawa press corps, which only found out about Trudeau’s trip when flight-tracking software detected the prime minister’s plane was in the air.
The two leaders discussed trade; border security; fentanyl; defense matters, including Nato; and Ukraine, along with China, energy issues and pipelines, including those that feed Canadian oil and gas into the US.
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the threatening atmosphere for women that Trump’s election has ushered in. Rapist and sexual abuser Pete is still Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, and he’s in the news again today.
The mother of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, wrote him an email in 2018 saying he had routinely mistreated women for years and displayed a lack of character.
“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him.
She also wrote: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”
Sadly, his mom apologized later.
Mrs. Hegseth, in a phone interview with The New York Times on Friday, said that she had sent her son an immediate follow-up email at the time apologizing for what she had written. She said she had fired off the original email “in anger, with emotion” at a time when he and his wife were going through a very difficult divorce.
In the interview, she defended her son and disavowed the sentiments she had expressed in the initial email about his character and treatment of women. “It is not true. It has never been true,” she said. She added: “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She said that publishing the contents of the first email was “disgusting.”
Nevertheless, she wrote the email, and she probably meant it. Here’s more:
Mrs. Hegseth emailed her son on April 30, 2018, during a turbulent period in his life. He was in the middle of a contentious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, the mother of three of his children. Samantha Hegseth filed for divorce after her husband impregnated a co-worker, part of a pattern of adultery that dated back to his first marriage.
By Bettina Baldassari
Mr. Hegseth’s mother wrote in the email that she was upset about his treatment of Samantha, writing: “For you to try to label her as ‘unstable’ for your own advantage is despicable and abusive. Is there any sense of decency left in you?”
“She did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand,” she said. “Neither did Meredith,” Mrs. Hegseth added, referring to his first wife.
Mrs. Hegseth forwarded a copy of her email to Samantha the same night she sent it to her son, according to documents reviewed by The Times. The Times obtained a copy of the email from another person with ties to the Hegseth family. The email does not describe in detail the circumstances that prompted Mrs. Hegseth to write it.
I have tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior, but after listening to the way you made Samantha feel today, I cannot stay silent. And as a woman and your mother I feel I must speak out..
You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.
I am not a saint, far from it.. so don’t throw that in my face,. but your abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called out.
Sam is a good mother and a good person (under the circumstances that you created) and I know deep down you know that. For you to try to label her as “unstable” for your own advantage is despicable and abusive. Is there any sense of decency left in you? She did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand. Neither did Meredith.
I know you think this is one big competition and that we have taken her side… bunk… we are on the side of good and that is not you. (Go ahead and call me self-righteous, I dont’ care)
Don’t you dare run to her and cry foul that we shared with us… that’s what babies do. It’s time for someone (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women
We still love you, but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character. I don’t want to write emails like this and never thought I would. If it damages our relationship further, then so be it, but at least I have said my piece. [Redacted]
And yes, we are praying for you (and you don’t deserve to know how we are praying, so skip the snarky reply)
I don’t want an answer to this… I don’t want to debate with you. You twist and abuse everything I say anyway. But… On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself…
Mom
A decent man would have withdrawn his name from nomination by now, but not rapist and sexual abuse Pete Hegseth.
The Army veteran and Fox News Channel host who could be the country’s next defense secretary has strong views on a decade of women serving in combat positions in the U.S. military — strong and negative.
By Stephanie Lambourne
“I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles,” Pete Hegseth said on a podcast early this month, just days before President-elect Donald Trump nominated him for the crucial Cabinet post. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
That’s far different from how women who have filled such roles see their achievement. These are veterans who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during the wars there. Some were part of specialized female teams; at times, their gender enabled them to do searches and gather intelligence that their male counterparts couldn’t.
With thousands of women in combat units past and present, Hegseth’s “notions” — as one Army veteran recently labeled them — could affect many futures. The Washington Post spoke to numerous female veterans whose careers benefited from the Pentagon’s decision to expand the jobs they could do, including with the country’s most elite forces. While acknowledging that conversations about military readiness are always important, they called Hegseth’s views on what women in uniform contribute outdated, uninformed and inaccurate.
The NYT interviewed 3 women veterans. Here’s what one of them, Riane Donoho, 35, had to say:
I’ll just be candid with you, it’s a mixed bag in our community as far as how people feel. And I think that that’s okay. I mean, I want people to have their own opinions, and all these women have their own personal experiences that draw them to those opinions.
A lot of women, myself included, do not think that the readiness of America’s fighting force should be diminished. The standards certainly should not be diminished so we can say that women can [serve in combat positions]. I think our priority should be having a fighting force.
Not all men can meet the standards. It is very, very difficult. A lot of men won’t try for it; they don’t meet the qualifications. And a lot of men who try for it don’t make the cut. [But] the truth is, there are women who can meet those standards, and they should be celebrated. There are females who can complete infantry courses. I know women who would have been great at it if they had the opportunity 15 years ago.
A couple of weeks ago, I was at Fort Liberty and there was a woman who is still active duty and in the Army, who is the first to receive her ranger job. She’s a petite little thing — a total powerhouse. And there is a female Marine who graduated from infantry officer course in like 2017. There are chicks out there who can do it. I applaud them.
Our team had four female Navy corpsmen. Not only did they carry their own weight, they carried the weight of medical supplies — lifesaving supplies — that you would need in combat. One in particular wouldn’t just carry all her weight plus all her medical kit and everything else, but she would also carry a gun.
You want to know that you have confidence in the person next to you, to the left and to the right of you, having the best capabilities that you could possibly have. Training, training and more training is really what prepares you for combat. So celebrate the women who can do the supreme.
Read about the other two at the link.
Two more stories about how Trump’s election threatens women:
CHICAGO (AP) — In the days after the presidential election, Sadie Perez began carrying pepper spray with her around campus. Her mom also ordered her and her sister a self-defense kit that included keychain spikes, a hidden knife key and a personal alarm.
It’s a response to an emboldened fringe of right-wing “manosphere” influencers who have seized on Republican Donald Trump ’s presidential win to justify and amplify misogynistic derision and threats online. Many have appropriated a 1960s abortion rights rallying cry, declaring “Your body, my choice” at women online and on college campuses.
For many women, the words represent a worrying harbinger of what might lie ahead as some men perceive the election results as a rebuke of reproductive rights and women’s rights.
“The fact that I feel like I have to carry around pepper spray like this is sad,” said Perez, a 19-year-old political science student in Wisconsin. “Women want and deserve to feel safe.”
First Snow, Juliana Oakley
Isabelle Frances-Wright, director of technology and society at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank focusing on polarization and extremism, said she had seen a “very large uptick in a number of types of misogynistic rhetoric immediately after the election,” including some “extremely violent misogyny.”
“I think many progressive women have been shocked by how quickly and aggressively this rhetoric has gained traction,” she said.
The phrase “Your body, my choice” has been largely attributed to a post on the social platform X from Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and far-right internet personality who dined at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida two years ago. In statements responding to criticism of that event, Trump said he had “never met and knew nothing about” Fuentes before he arrived.
Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said the phrase transforms the iconic abortion rights slogan into an attack on women’s right to autonomy and a personal threat.
“The implication is that men should have control over or access to sex with women,” said Ziegler, a reproductive rights expert.
Chris Peterson wasn’t surprised that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. But he was surprised by how quickly he and his wife started asking one another: should we try to have another baby before a possible nationwide abortion ban takes effect? Or should we give up on having a second child?
Peterson and his wife, who live in North Carolina, are thousands of dollars in debt because their first child needed to spend weeks in the hospital after being born prematurely. They had wanted to pay off that debt and wait a few years before having a second baby. But now, reproductive rights are again in the balance – Trump has said he would veto a nationwide abortion ban, but his allies are emboldened to push through more restrictions.
Peterson is terrifiedof what is to come, and that his wife might not be able to get the medical care she needs if they decide to conceive again.
“We should be happy thinking about expanding our family,” said Peterson, who is, like his wife, in his late 30s. “We shouldn’t be worried that we’re going to have medical complications and I might end up being a single father.”
Peterson is not the only American who, in the weeks after the US election, is rethinking plans around having children. On 6 November, the number of people booking vasectomy appointments at Planned Parenthood health centers spiked by 1,200%, IUD appointments by more than 760% and birth control implant appointments by 350%, according to a statement provided to the Guardian by Planned Parenthood. Traffic to Planned Parenthood’s webpages on tubal ligation, vasectomies and IUDs has also surged by more than 1,000% for each.
After the election, the Guardian heard from dozens of people in the US reconsidering whether to have children. Most pointed to fears over the future of reproductive healthcare, the economy and the climate in explaining their concerns.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
That’s is for me. I hope you have been able to get some rest and relaxation over Thanksgiving weekend. Take care everyone.
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I’m trying very hard not to panic this morning. Ever since the shooting at the Trump rally on Saturday, cable news outlets MSNBC and CNN have completely surrendered to Trump and the Republicans. Both channels are hosting wall-to-wall coverage of the Republican National Convention.
On Monday, MSNBC even took Morning Joe off the air and replaced it with anodyne Today Show-like programming, because they were afraid a host or guest might say something derogatory about Trump. Joe and Mika threatened to quit if it happens again.
MSNBC will not air “Morning Joe,” its celebrated politics roundtable program, on Monday, opting to instead air continued breaking news coverage of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
The progressive news network confirmed the decision to preempt its influential and top-rated morning show after a CNN inquiry Sunday evening. The network said the show will resume airing Tuesday.
The decision by MSNBC to leave one of its most recognizable programs on the sidelines amid a seismic politics-driven news cycle, with the Republican National Convention getting underway in the wake of the Saturday shooting at Trump’s campaign rally, is certain to raise eyebrows.
A person familiar with the matter told CNN that the decision was made to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole. Given the breaking news nature of the story, the person said, it made more sense to continue airing rolling breaking news coverage in the fraught political moment.
Morning Joe hosts Mika (formerly Brzezinski) and Joe Scarboro
“Given the gravity and complexity of this unfolding story, NBC News, NBC News NOW and MSNBC have remained in rolling breaking news coverage since Saturday evening,” a spokesperson for NBCUniversal News Group said in a statement to CNN. “As we continue to cover this story into the week, the networks will continue to cross simulcast, alternating between NBC News, NBC News NOW and ‘MSNBC Reports,’ so there is one news feed covering this developing situation.”
In the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life, some of the former president’s supporters have vehemently criticized the press and liberal media commentators for their hard-knuckled reporting, which has sounded the alarm on what four more years under the former president would look like.
Cesar Conde, the chairman of NBCUniversal News Group, made the decision in conjunction with Rashida Jones, the president of MSNBC, and hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the person familiar with the matter told CNN.
MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough slammed his own network for pulling his show on Monday in favor of news coverage of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, saying he and co-host Mika Brzezinski were “surprised” and “disappointed” by the call and threatening to leave if it happens again.
“Next time we are told there will be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” Scarborough said live on air Tuesday morning. “And the news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”
Scarborough said the network told the “Morning Joe” team that there would be one NBC News feed “in breaking news mode” across all NBC channels all day Monday. But the “Today” show aired on Monday morning on NBC, and MSNBC hosts Andrea Mitchell and Chris Jansing appeared for their regularly scheduled shows in the afternoon.
“If we had known that there wasn’t going to be the one news feed from NBC News across all NBC News channels … we obviously would have been in yesterday morning,” Scarborough said, later adding: “Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen, but it didn’t happen.”
Trump with his massive bandage.
Despite the heavy coverage, no one seems to be asking questions about what actually happened on Saturday. What kind of injury did Trump have? If he was actually grazed by an AR-15 bullet, it seems as if it would have done more damage than is apparent in photographs. Originally, local police said he was hit by fragments of the teleprompter. Trump went to the golf course on Sunday; he wasn’t wearing a bandage and his ear looked normal. Now he’s wearing a large “maxi-pad” at the convention. Here are a few Twitter comments on the subject:
You would think someone would inquire about Trump’s medical report if for no other reason than Trump has not provided any medical updates or information, neither has the hospital that treated him. Outside of Trump telling us he’s “fine”, how severe was the wound? Did he loose part of his ear (bullets do terrible things to flesh)? How long for recovery? Will the wound require cosmetic surgery? What about reports that it may not have been a bullet which wounded him but glass from the shattered teleprompter? If I missed such reports from his campaign or the hospital please post. Thank you.
Feel free to point me to the magic trajectory that would allow for a through-and-through of a person’s ear from a location lateral to them. Show me your expertise in… basic geometry.
Hi. A round from an AR wouldn’t poke a little hole in an ear. Trump didn’t get shot. He was injured by shrapnel or shattered glass or something.
Josh Marshall
@joshtpm
We shouldn’t have to speculate abt any of this. It is the most basic thing for law enforcement and or the medical team that examined Trump to say what they found. It’s such a basic thing. It’s a huge story. How can it be that there’s zero official abt this part of it?
AR-15 bullets
This man is running for president. Shouldn’t we get more details about what happened? And why aren’t we getting more information about the shooter? Ever since it came out that he was a Republican, no one seems to want to talk about him. Maybe if the FBI can break into his phone, we will learn something.
Former President Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, said his father doesn’t have stitches after he was shot in an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend, but that he has a “nice flesh wound” from the shooting.
The former president could be seen touching his ear as the attack unfolded, before he was shielded by Secret Service and whisked off the rally stage with blood on his face. When he appeared at the Republican National Convention on Monday and Tuesday, he wore a large bandage over his injury.
Speaking to “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil from the convention in Milwaukee Wednesday morning, Eric Trump said his father has referred to the injury as “the greatest earache he’s ever had.”
“You know, he was millimeters away from having his life expunged … I’m sure the ear doesn’t feel well,” Eric Trump said.
Eric Trump also told “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell on Tuesday that his father’s hearing is fine and that he is “in great spirits.
The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general said Wednesday it has opened an investigation into the Secret Service’s handling of security for former President Donald Trump on the day a gunman tried to assassinate him at a Pennsylvania rally.
In a brief notice posted to the inspector general’s website, the agency said the objective of the probe is to “Evaluate the United States Secret Service’s (Secret Service) process for securing former President Trump’s July 13, 2024 campaign event.”
There was no date given for when the investigation was launched. The notice was among a long list of ongoing cases that the inspector general’s office is pursuing.
President Joe Biden already had directed an independent review of the security at the rally.
The shooting has raised questions about how the gunman was able to climb onto a roof with a clear line of sight to the former president, who said he was shot in the ear.
The 20-year-old shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to get within 135 meters (157 yards) of the stage where the Republican former president was speaking when he opened fire. That’s despite a threat on Trump’s life from Iran leading to additional security for the former president in the days before the Saturday rally.
We’re learning more about the movements of Thomas Matthew Crooks before Saturday’s shooting at the rally for former President Donald Trump.
New video obtained exclusively by Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 appears to show 20-year-old Thomas Crooks lurking in the area an hour before he opened fire.
The man, who didn’t want to show his face on camera, captured the video at 5:06 p.m. on Saturday evening. He says it was a seemingly simply moment as he was trying to capture the size of the crowd, but ended up capturing much more.
“I wanted to pan the crowd because it was a massive crowd, so I was just taking in the moment. So this was before the shooting. Obviously had no idea how that day, how that day would end,” said the man who attended the rally with his teenaged son.
The video appears to show Crooks, 20, lurking in the area near a building just past the secured perimeter of the event itself. As it pans to the crowd, it shows multiple law enforcement vehicles in the area facing the building itself. As the video moves back toward the building, Crooks appears to be seen again. This means that Crooks was likely in the area for more than an hour before the shots were fired….
Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 has learned from multiple sources that Crooks was spotted at the rally, photographed as suspicious and officers were actively looking for him when he made his way onto the roof.
Law enforcement sources say Crooks was able to access the roof by climbing over an air conditioning unit adjacent to the building.
DC Democrats are still fighting each other over whether Biden should be their nominee. This has been going on for 3 weeks now. No one ever explains how replacing him would work. All of the suggested replacements are polling worse than Biden, and are unknown to the average voter who doesn’t follow politics closely. Many of these “insiders” who want to replace Biden also want to dump Kamala Harris. That would guarantee losing black and women voters who are the base of the party.
President Joe Biden spent more than a week in meetings and on phone calls addressing Democrats’ concerns about his candidacy with a positive, conciliatory message about his path forward. At times, he even sounded contrite about his uneven debate performance, which prompted calls for him to suspend his re-election campaign.
He took blunt questions about his mental acuity in stride. He smiled through suggestions from allies that he take a cognitive test or consider allowing someone younger to take his place on the Democratic ticket. He agreed that his supporters have legitimate concerns and promised to show them he’s up for the rigor of a presidential campaign and another four years in the White House.
Then he’d had enough.
In the past few days, Biden has started to privately convey a new message to Democrats: The conversation about my future is over, and I’m getting irritated that you’re not realizing that. Biden has called several prominent allies individually to tell them to spread the word.
“We think we’ve got a good plan to fight through this,” a senior Biden aide said.
Nearly three weeks since his rocky debate performance that shook his party, Biden is intent on shutting down dissent among Democrats in order to move forward and focus on defeating Donald Trump. And after hearing out his critics, he’s tightening his circle to those he‘s relied on the longest — and who support his path ahead.
Biden’s thinning patience for questions about his candidacy were on display as he campaigned Friday in Detroit telling a large, effusive crowd: “You made me the nominee. No one else. Not the press, not the pundits, not the insiders, not donors.”
“And I’m not going anywhere,” Biden added.
Read more DC gossip at the NBC link.
Biden did make some news this morning. He is working on changes to the Supreme Court.
It’s hard to know the precise combination of developments that changed President Biden’s mind about Supreme Court reforms and prompted him to place them more centrally in the framework of the 2024 election.
Was it the ethics scandals of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and the Supreme Court’s own ineptitude in dealing with them? Was it the series of controversial decisions across a whole host of issues and areas of civic life in which the court wrested power away from the executive and legislative branches and placed it firmly in the judicial branch? Was it the six-justice conservative majority aggressively uprooting the court’s own precedents in pursuit of its own preferred legal and policy outcomes? Was it the fact that he’s trailing in the polls with his own re-election more at risk that at any previous point in his presidency?
All of the above are in play, of course. A tipping point was reached, and it’s unlikely any one development was the difference-maker.
The shift, first reported by the Washington Post, was revealed over the weekend in a call Biden had with the Congressional Progressive Caucus:
“I’m going to need your help on the Supreme Court, because I’m about to come out — I don’t want to prematurely announce it — but I’m about to come out with a major initiative on limiting the court. … I’ve been working with constitutional scholars for the last three months, and I need some help,” Biden said, according to a transcript of the call obtained by The Washington Post.
The NYT separately confirmed that Biden’s “proposals to overhaul the court … could be unveiled in the coming weeks.”
Among the menu of choices Biden is reported to be considering:
term limits for the justices;
imposing an enforceable ethics code; and
Relatedly, backing a constitutional amendment to reverse the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity.
Late addition: I meant to note that enlarging the court beyond its current nine-justice setup does not appear to be among Biden’s proposals.
None of these measures will pass the GOP-controlled House, though they could serve as messaging vehicles on the Hill between now and the election. More importantly, they elevate Supreme Court reforms to his second term agenda, creating the opportunity for the November election to be a referendum on the high court and create legislative momentum if Biden wins. Even then, it’ll be a very heavy lift.
This is a long-game move, that also offers a few short-term political advantages.
Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, applaud on Tuesday.
Yesterday’s big news was that Trump has chosen JD Vance as his running mate. It appears this is going to be a controversial choice. We will be writing more about him in the days to come, but here are a few relevant articles:
Donald Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick has reignited fears in Europe that he would pursue a transactional “America first” foreign policy that could culminate in the US pushing for Ukraine to acquiesce to Vladimir Putin and sue for peace with Russia.
“It’s bad for us but it’s terrible news for [Ukraine],” said one senior European diplomat in Washington. “[Vance] is not our ally.”
Foreign diplomats and observers have frequently called Trump’s actual policies a “black box,” saying that was impossible to know for certain what the unpredictable leader would do when in power.
Some have soothed themselves by suggesting that names tipped for top positions, such as former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, would maintain a foreign policy status quo while Trump focuses on domestic affairs.
But a prospective Trump administration now has a much more energetic surrogate who will fuel Trump’s skepticism towards Ukraine and Europe, while urging on the party’s aggressive trade and foreign policy elsewhere around the globe.
“Senator Vance was one of the leading opponents of the new assistance package to Ukraine last spring and has expressed indifference to what happens in that war,” said Michael McFaul, director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a former ambassador to Russia. “By choosing Vance as his running mate, Trump has clarified a very clear choice for American voters in November on foreign policy.”
“President Biden’s foreign policy strategy radically contrasts with Mr Trump’s approach,” he said. “Biden and Harris have promoted democracy and stood up to autocrats. Trump and Vance have paid no attention to advancing democracy abroad and instead have embraced autocrats. The contrast in foreign approaches embraced by these two presidential candidates has never been clearer in my lifetime.”
Former President Donald Trump didn’t just select a running mate here – he doused political kerosene on the raging Republican fire over foreign policy.
By tapping the 39-year-old Sen. J.D. Vance, one of the party’s leading national security doves, Trump strengthened the hand of the isolationist forces eager to undo the hawkish GOP consensus that has endured since the Reagan era.
Should Trump prevail in November, the non-interventionists will have one of their most articulate advocates at Trump’s side. What worries the hawks is that Vance may also be the last adviser in the former president’s ear.
While toeing the party line and praising Vance in their public comments, in private the interventionists ranged from horrified to merely alarmed that one of the loudest critics of aiding Ukraine could soon be first in line for the presidency. The grimaces, sighs and whispered frustrations from the old guard as they made their way through the convention reception circuit were easy to find in the day after the selection.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who oversees military spending as the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chair, told one associate,according to a person familiar with the exchange: “The Ukrainians better hurry up and win.”
Another influential congressional Republican simply told me about the Vance selection: “I’m scared to death.”
While he had it on before Trump announced his running mate, the Ukrainian flag pin on the lapel of Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, neatly illustrated without the necessity of words the gulf between so much of the GOP and Vance on the war in Europe.
Read the rest at Politico.
JD Vance with his wife Usha during his Senate campaign.
Some racist Republicans are unhappy with the Vance choice, because he is married to a woman of color.
Extremist figures and members of the Make America Great Again movement have criticized the wife of Ohio Senator JD Vance after former President Donald Trump named him as his running mate in the 2024 election.
Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants, was raised in San Diego before meeting her husband at Yale Law School. They were married in 2014 and later blessed by a Hindu pundit in a separate ceremony, The New York Times reported.
In the wake of Trump’s vice presidential announcement on Monday, numerous conservative and far-right figures have taken to social media to launch racist attacks against Usha Vance because of her Indian heritage and the assumption that her influence on her husband’s political career means the Republican Party will be softer on immigration.
“I’m sure this guy is going to be great on immigration,” Jaden McNeil, a far-right activist and the founder of America First Students, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, while sharing a picture of the Vances with their newborn baby.
Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home along with rapper Kanye West in November 2022, suggested that Vance would not be a “defender of white identity” because of his wife’s Indian heritage.
“Who is this guy, really?” Fuentes said on his podcast. “Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”
Vincent James Foxx, who was present at the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, wrote on X: “JD Vance gets tapped as VP and immediately there’s a Hindu prayer at the RNC. Next we’ll see Sen. Mike Lee and JD Vance team up to convince Trump to let in 10 million Indian immigrants. Green cards on diplomas!”
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.
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from 
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at 
Now, the history of empires is the story of their rise and inevitable fall. As Herodotus wrote about Greek city-states, “most of those which were great once are small today; and those which used to be small were great in my own time.” But nobody has matched this current downfall for sheer egregious stupidity.
That wasn’t true for Nixon, of course, who by then had been out of office for three years. But last year the Supreme Court gutted the rulings that reined in Nixon, and now Trump and Elon Musk are running the government as if they are the only law in the land. They insist they are “saving” the country by burning down its institutions, and they claim a mandate of the people to do it….
DC Democrats are still fighting each other over whether Biden should be their nominee. This has been going on for 3 weeks now. No one ever explains how replacing him would work. All of the suggested replacements are polling worse than Biden, and are unknown to the average voter who doesn’t follow politics closely. Many of these “insiders” who want to replace Biden also want to dump Kamala Harris. That would guarantee losing black and women voters who are the base of the party.
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