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The fun thing about Montréal is that in the middle of the winter the sun rises due south.
#montreal #grid #cardinalDirections #localGeography -
The fun thing about Montréal is that in the middle of the winter the sun rises due south.
#montreal #grid #cardinalDirections #localGeography -
I'm explaining Hamiltonian Monte Carlo in my grad-level stats class tomorrow, so I put together this animation illustrating HMC in one dimension. I find it very soothing.
#bayesian #BayesianInference #posterior #stats #r #rlang #statistics #MCMC
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Proximity to sexual abuse and scandal increasingly looks like a prerequisite for joining Trump’s upcoming Cabinet.
President-elect Donald Trump made yet another surprising pick on Tuesday,
naming former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO #Linda #McMahon as his intended nominee for education secretary.McMahon, along with her husband, #Vince #McMahon, helped turn the WWE into the pervasive entertainment product that has become intertwined with modern North American culture.
Trump was a good friend to the McMahons during this time, even getting in the ring for the “Battle of the Billionaires” in 2007.Linda McMahon stepped down from WWE in 2009 and launched herself in conservative politics,
serving on the Connecticut State Board of Education and running two unsuccessful campaigns for Senate in 2010 and 2012.
She then became a Republican megadonor, and was rewarded with an administrator position at the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first-term Cabinet.
On Tuesday, she was rewarded once again.
“Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World,” Trump wrote in a statement.
“We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”But much like Trump Cabinet picks #Pete #Hegseth and #Matt #Gaetz, McMahon has troubling skeletons in her closet.
The WWE has long been known for its highly questionable, borderline abusive work environment.
Linda McMahon and Vince McMahon
—from whom she is now reportedly separated
—are being sued by five anonymous plaintiffs who served as “ring boys,” essentially teenage stagehands.
The ring boys allege that they were being sexually abused by WWE wrestlers Pat Patterson and Terry Garvin.
The suit states that both Linda and Vince knew exactly what was happening to the ring boys but did little, if anything, to stop it.
Vince faces even more damaging allegations of sexual assault, trafficking, and more.
And although these are separate from Linda, almost all of these accusations date from when Linda was leading the WWE.
Trump has yet to comment on the allegations.
Linda McMahon also falsely claimed in 2009 on a candidate questionnaire for the Connecticut Board of Education that she had a bachelor’s degree in education,
-- when she only has a certificate.
Per The Washington Post’s recap of the incident, she resigned from the board as soon as she heard that local journalists intended to make her error public,
but claimed the timing of her resignation was merely coincidental.If confirmed as education secretary, McMahon will be charged with carrying out Trump’s plan for the Department of Education:
specifically, to kill it completely.https://newrepublic.com/post/188630/linda-mcmahon-trump-cabinet-sexual-abuse-scandal
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- PLATT A, Singh M, Stein S, Soherwardi S, et al.
Replication-Competent Virus Detected in Blood of a Fatal COVID-19 Case.
Ann Intern Med. 2023 Dec 12. doi: 10.7326/L23-0253.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38079637&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38079637 - ARSHAD Z, Nazareth J, Pareek M.
Learning to live with covid-19: testing, vaccination, and mask wearing still play
a key part in managing the pandemic.
BMJ. 2023;383:p2943.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38097251&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38097251 - WISE J.
Covid-19: Preliminary figures show 1.2% of people in England had infection at end
of November.
BMJ. 2023;383:p2917.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38081655&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38081655 - PETERS MA, Cloete K, Odwe G, Tadele G, et al.
Embedding implementation research to cross the quality of care chasm during the
covid-19 pandemic and beyond.
BMJ. 2023;383:e076331.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38081643&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38081643 - ZVIEDRITE N, Jahan F, Moreland S, Ahmed F, et al.
COVID-19-Related School Closures, United States, July 27, 2020-June 30, 2022.
Emerg Infect Dis. 2023;30.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38086396&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38086396 - TSOI JYH, Cai J, Situ J, Lam WJ, et al.
Autoantibodies against angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) after COVID-19
infection or vaccination.
J Med Virol. 2023;95:e29313.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38100626&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38100626 - MEISTER TL, Kirchhoff L, Bruggemann Y, Todt D, et al.
Stability of pathogens on banknotes and coins: A narrative review.
J Med Virol. 2023;95:e29312.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38100621&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38100621 - CHEN Q, Qin S, Zhou HY, Deng YQ, et al.
Competitive fitness and homologous recombination of SARS-CoV-2 variants of
concern.
J Med Virol. 2023;95:e29278.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38088537&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38088537 - YIN ZJ, Xiao H, McDonald S, Brusic V, et al.
Dynamically adjustable SVEIR(MH) model of multiwave epidemics: Estimating the
effects of public health measures against COVID-19.
J Med Virol. 2023;95:e29301.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38087460&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38087460 - LI J, Mao H, Song W, Chen Y, et al.
Low neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5.2.48, BF.7.14, XBB.1 subvariants by
homologous or heterologous booster.
J Med Virol. 2023;95:e29306.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38084772&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38084772 - BENNING L, Bartenschlager M, Kim H, Kalble F, et al.
Live-virus serum neutralization after bivalent SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination in
hemodialysis patients.
J Med Virol. 2023;95:e29303.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38082556&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38082556 - FUKUDA Y, Togashi A, Hirakawa S, Yamamoto M, et al.
Resurgence of human metapneumovirus infection and influenza after three seasons
of inactivity in the post-COVID-19 era in Hokkaido, Japan, 2022-2023.
J Med Virol. 2023;95:e29299.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38081792&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38081792 - WANG R, Guo J, Lu J, Du P, et al.
A potential broad-spectrum neutralizing antibody against Betacoronavirus.
J Med Virol. 2023;95:e29252.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38078658&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38078658 - XIAO Y, Chang L, Ji H, Sun H, et al.
Posttranslational modifications of ACE2 protein: Implications for SARS-CoV-2
infection and beyond.
J Med Virol. 2023;95:e29304.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38063421&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38063421 - ANAGNOSTOPOULOS A, Fehr J.
Rebound and steep increase of international travel after the COVID-19 pandemic:
where are we going from here?
J Travel Med. 2023 Dec 14:taad158. doi: 10.1093.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38097384&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38097384 - FU Z, Xiang Y, Fu Y, Su Z, et al.
DYRK1A is a multifunctional host factor that regulates coronavirus replication in
a kinase-independent manner.
J Virol. 2023 Dec 15:e0123923. doi: 10.1128/jvi.01239.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38099687&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38099687 - DOMINGO E, Martinez-Gonzalez B, Garcia-Crespo C, Somovilla P, et al.
Puzzles, challenges, and information reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 quasispecies.
J Virol. 2023 Nov 21:e0151123. doi: 10.1128/jvi.01511.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38092661&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38092661 - BOLLAND W, Michel V, Planas D, Hubert M, et al.
High fusion and cytopathy of SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.640.1.
J Virol. 2023 Dec 13:e0135123. doi: 10.1128/jvi.01351.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38088562&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38088562 - JERONIMO PMC, Aksenen CF, Duarte IO, Lins RD, et al.
Evolutionary deletions within the SARS-CoV-2 genome as signature trends for virus
fitness and adaptation.
J Virol. 2023 Dec 13:e0140423. doi: 10.1128/jvi.01404.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38088350&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38088350 - GAO W, Wang L, Cui W, Wang H, et al.
Deubiquitinase USP1 regulates sarbecovirus ORF6 protein function.
J Virol. 2023 Dec 12:e0143723. doi: 10.1128/jvi.01437.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38084957&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38084957 - HARRIS E.
Life Expectancy in US Climbed After Declines Related to COVID-19.
JAMA. 2023 Dec 13. doi: 10.1001/jama.2023.24683.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38090999&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38090999 - SURAN M.
Studies Investigate Whether Antivirals Like Paxlovid May Prevent Long COVID.
JAMA. 2023 Dec 13. doi: 10.1001/jama.2023.24103.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38090997&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38090997 - SPENCER H, Jorgensen E, Seo J, Robinson C, et al.
Notes from the Field: COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Changes in Blood Lead Screening –
Chicago, Illinois, 2017-2022.
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2023;72:1353-1354.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38096125&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38096125 - MCMAHAN K, Wegmann F, Aid M, Sciacca M, et al.
Mucosal boosting enhances vaccine protection against SARS-CoV-2 in macaques.
Nature. 2023 Dec 14. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06951.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38096903&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38096903 - XING Z, Jeyanathan M.
A next-generation inhalable dry powder COVID vaccine.
Nature. 2023 Dec 13. doi: 10.1038/d41586-023-03557.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38093042&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38093042 - What makes people with diabetes more susceptible to serious lung infections?
Nature. 2023 Dec 13. doi: 10.1038/d41586-023-03647.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38093039&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38093039 - NOBS SP, Kolodziejczyk AA, Adler L, Horesh N, et al.
Lung dendritic-cell metabolism underlies susceptibility to viral infection in
diabetes.
Nature. 2023 Dec 13. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06803.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38093014&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38093014 - YE T, Jiao Z, Li X, He Z, et al.
Inhaled SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for single-dose dry powder aerosol immunization.
Nature. 2023 Dec 13. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06809.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38093012&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38093012 - RUGGERI K, Stock F, Haslam SA, Capraro V, et al.
A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19.
Nature. 2023 Dec 13. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06840.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38093007&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38093007 - SCIENCE M, Orkin J, Maguire B, Bitnun A, et al.
Viral dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant in Paediatric Patients; A
prospective cohort study.
Clin Infect Dis. 2023 Dec 12:ciad740. doi: 10.1093.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38084906&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38084906 - RAMAN B, Ramasamy MN.
Synbiotics in post-acute COVID-19 syndrome-a potential new treatment framework?
Lancet Infect Dis. 2023 Dec 7:S1473-3099(23)00735.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38071991&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38071991 - LAU RI, Su Q, Lau ISF, Ching JYL, et al.
A synbiotic preparation (SIM01) for post-acute COVID-19 syndrome in Hong Kong
(RECOVERY): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.
Lancet Infect Dis. 2023 Dec 7:S1473-3099(23)00685.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38071990&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38071990 - ZUO F, Cao Y, Sun R, Yisimayi A, et al.
Neutralisation activity of mucosal IgA against XBB sublineages and BA.2.86.
Lancet Infect Dis. 2023 Dec 7:S1473-3099(23)00732.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38071989&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38071989 - CARR EJ, Dowgier G, Greenwood D, Herman LS, et al.
SARS-CoV-2 mucosal neutralising immunity after vaccination.
Lancet Infect Dis. 2023 Dec 6:S1473-3099(23)00705.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38070528&s=cov&pm=2
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38070528 - AKSU M, Kumar P, Guttler T, Taxer W, et al.
Nanobodies to multiple spike variants and inhalation of nanobody-containing
aerosols neutralize SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture and hamsters.
Antiviral Res. 2023 Dec 6:105778. doi: 10.1016/j.antiviral.2023.105778.
PubMed: https://www.amedeo.com/p2.php?id=38065245&s=cov&pm=2
ABSTRACT available
Share: https://m.amedeo.com/38065245
#betacoronavirus #coronavirus #covid #COVID19 #health #pandemic #research #sarbecovirus #sarsCov2
- PLATT A, Singh M, Stein S, Soherwardi S, et al.
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Mount Alvernia: the thread about the “Princesses of Poverty” who would not leave Liberton, in life or in death
Every so often houses come up in Liberton on the Edinburgh property listings for a charming-sounding place called Mount Alvernia. You don’t have to look twice to guess that this development has been converted from some sort of past ecclesiastical use. And you’d be right, it was once a monastery. But it had no monks: it was home instead to a community of nuns. Perhaps more unusually, two times the authorities of the Catholic Church tried to use legal methods to displace these “Princesses of Poverty“. And twice they failed!
Estate agent’s photo of a nice-looking housing development in Liberton, which quite obviously appears to have been converted from some sort of ecclesiastical building.This monastery was opened in August 1897 by nuns of the Poor Clares (Colletines), a branch of the Order of Saint Clare. This order takes its name from St Clare of Assisi who founded it for women who gave up their worldly possessions to devote themselves to the spirituality of St Francis of Assisi. Mount Alvernia itself is in Sicily and its name is associated with the Franciscan order.
St Francis and St Clare, inside cover plate from “Princesses of Poverty: Saint Clare of Assisi and the Order of Poor Ladies” by Father Marianus Fiege, 1900Six Poor Clares had come to Edinburgh in July 1895 to found a new house north of the Border. They had traveled from Baddesley Clinton in the West Midlands, where their order had established itself in England in 1850 for the first time since that country’s reformation. Two acres of ground at Liberton was acquired for their purpose, adjacent to Mount Vernon House which had recently been occupied by nuns of the Society of the Sacred Heart as a Home for Penitents and where a Roman Catholic Cemetery had been established. It was noted at the time that this site was particularly suitable owing to its proximity to the ancient estate of the Convent of St. Catherine of Sienna.
Ordnance Survey 1:25 inch map, 1914, of Edinburgh, centred on Mount Alvernia at LibertonThese Poor Clares were a closed, contemplative order who took solemn vows to lived a life of poverty. They fasted frequently and rejected the wearing of shoes. They observed continual silence and did not leave their cloister. They devoted themselves entirely to the worship of God and prayer for all people, particularly the suffering and needy. The rules of their house prohibited them being supported by endowments and instead they lived entirely upon charity. To facilitate communication between the Intern Sisters – those within the cloister – and the outside world there were a small number of Extern Sisters, who lived in quarters adjacent and to which they were not restricted. The Externs helped support the community through the baking of communion bread (St Clare and her order have a particular association with blessed loaves), producing handmade religious scrolls and through practical tasks such as marketing eggs and undertaking secretarial services.
The foundation stone of the monastery was laid by Archbishop Angus Macdonald of St Andrews and Edinburgh on 19th May 1896. The buildings were in a Collegiate Gothic style to the designs of A. E. Purdie, a London Architect, and it was built from local Craigmillar Stone faced with Dunfermline Stone.
Artist’s impression of the Monastery at Mount Alvernia from the Edinburgh Evening News, 15th May 1896In a Presbyterian city, whose Catholic minority was notably poor, the nuns struggled to attract alms and the first 20 years of their existence saw a considerable debt being acquired. £1,384 was raised in time for their Silver Jubilee in 1920 to clear it. The money had been entirely collected by two local men, Bernard Flannagan and a Mr Higgins. However just 5 years later the community was in distress once more and the Glasgow Observer and Catholic Herald carried an urgent appeal for help, “their distress was never more pronounced“. Once more, Bernard Flannagan acted as collector on their behalf.
For 33 years, Mount Alvernia‘s resident chaplain was Rev. Father Patrick McMahon (1863-1945) and his golden jubilee of service was celebrated there in March 1938. But all was not well behind the closed doors of the cloister and an irreconcilable schism, brewing since 1934, had arisen between the five Extern Sisters (Sister Margaret Mary Clare – Agnes Burns; Sister Marie Colette Theresa – Laura Elizabeth Harrison; Sister Mary Clare – Edith Harris; Sister Mary Theresa – Catherine Morgan; and Sister Mary Joseph – Susan Higgins) and the 17 Interns, which included the Abbess and the Vicaress. The Externs Sisters refused to submit to the authority of the Abbess and had chosen Sister Mary Clare as leader, from their own ranks. The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Andrew McDonald, was unable to resolve the situation and took the drastic action of closing the monastery and dispersing the sisters to other houses.
Archbishop Mcdonald in 1920, when Abbot of St Benedict’s Abbey at Fort Augustus; By William Drummond Young. CC-by-SA 4.0, Blairs Museum via WikimediaThe Diocese served notice for the community to leave in April 1938. The Intern Sisters left a week later but the Externs refused to go. The Church then had a Sheriff’s writ served evicting them from their home and cut off their electricity and gas. They were banished from their order and excommunicated. Sister Mary Clare, leader of the Externs, told the Evening News that they had been served a letter by the Church’s law agent informing them of their expulsion and stating they were no longer entitled to wear their habits. They were to return these on or before the 28th April in exchange for the sum of £10 towards replacement clothing and a pension of £1 10s per week, for just 13 weeks, to help them establish themselves in civilian life.
St Clare repelling the Saracens, plate from “Princesses of Poverty: Saint Clare of Assisi and the Order of Poor Ladies” by Father Marianus Fiege, 1900Despite threats from the Church to withdraw even this pitiful pension the Extern Sisters remained defiant; they had made their vows and the Priest had commanded their Abbess” Receive this new spouse of Christ, keep her and guard her pure and spotless until you present her at the judgement seat of God. To Him you will have to give an account of her soul“. In short, their vows were sacred and perpetual and to leave the Monastery to return to civilian life would be breaking them. “Rome, and Rome alone, we must obey“, Sister Mary Clare told the Evening News, “Here we will live and here we will die.” The Externs intended to challenge their eviction and “trusted an answer would come from God“.
Fresco of Saint Clare and nuns of her order praying, Chapel of San Damiano, AssisiThat answer came in the form of their supporters whose number included the lawyer Doull Connolly, who acted for them and organised a defence at the Sheriff Court. A sympathetic cardinal Cardinal was written to, asking him to make an appeal to the Pope on their behalf. The Archbishop of Glasgow decided the Externs were not excommunicated in his jurisdiction and gave them the sacraments, for which transport was arranged thrice weekly. Even the local coalman slipped them a couple of bags every fortnight. While the dispute split opinion amongst Scotland’s Catholics, in Edinburgh it aroused considerable curiosity; numerous sightseers took a trip to Liberton to see Mount Alvernia for themselves, to bring gifts and to offer their support to the nuns within through the grille of the Monsastery’s doorway.
The case went to the Sheriff Court where T. J. D. Connolly acted as defence advocate. On July 5th Sheriff Substitute James Macdonald KC ruled in favour of the Extern sisters, who told the Daily Record that they hoped to be left in peace, but the Church appealed.
SUMMARY EJECTION NOT ALLOWED. Evening News headline, 6th July 1938That appeal was heard in the Court of Session the next year. Connolly told that court the case, with 2 churchmen and 2 nuns as pursuers and 5nuns as defenders, was “unique” in its annals. On June 14th Lord Robertson held the defence was irrelevant and granted a decree for the Nuns removal.
EDINBURGH EXTERN NUNS MUST REMOVE. Evening News headline, 14th June 1939The nuns appealed in turn and in March 1940 – on the same day that the Evening News reported 2 German bombers had been shot down in the North Sea – it also reported the case had been concluded in their favour and Lord Robertson’s decision was overturned.
LIBERTON NUNS WIN APPEAL. Evening News headline, 29th March 1940The Externs could finally live on in piece, and alone, at Mount Alvernia. This they continued to do for over a decade until the early 1950s when a determined effort was made by Archbishop McDonald’s successor, Archbishop Gordon Gray, to heal the rift and re-open the Monastery to Interns. Two of the Extern holdouts were amongst the first Interns of the re-established Monastery, the other three agreeing to move to new homes in England at this time.
Portrait Of Cardinal Gordon Gray (1910 – 1993), Former Archbishop of St Andrews And EdinburghThe re-established Poor Clares got on with their holy lives in peace and harmony until the decision was taken by the Abbess Mother Frances to close the monastery in 1992. Their ranks had dwindled from 22 to 13 and those who remained were of advancing age and unable to support themselves. A final Mass was given by Bishop Kevin Rafferty on 28th August. Their community was dispersed to other houses of the order, but left behind the bodies of the 24 nuns who had died during their lives at Mount Alvernia and who had been laid to rest in its burial ground.
The Funeral Procession of St Clare, plate from “Princesses of Poverty: Saint Clare of Assisi and the Order of Poor Ladies” by Father Marianus Fiege, 1900The premises were sold for £200k to the “Pastoral and Social Charity Ltd”, whose board was bishops and archbishops of the Scottish RC Church. They provoked outrage in 1994 when they proposed disinterring the 24 nuns laid to rest at Mount Alvernia and moving them to nearby Mount Vernon cemetery
Contemporary newspaper photo of the Mount Alvernia burial ground. Edinburgh Evening News, 23rd September 1994The removal of the nuns’ remains was to prepare the site for sale to developers – they contented that future developers would be at liberty to remove headstones or cover the grave plots. But when the petition for the warrant to disinter came before the Sheriff Court, the District Council objected and were ordered to advertise it in the press to try and trace any relatives of the nuns (which was something in which the Pastoral and Social Charity had failed in its attempts).
Legal Notice inserted in the Scotsman, 15th March 1994, of the petition to disinter the nuns buried at Mount AlverniaOf the nuns in question were Mother Mary Joseph (Susan Higgins) and Sister Mary Clare (Edith Harris) – who were the 2 Extern sisters who had been involved in the 1930s court battle and had become Interns when the house was re-established. Relatives were duly identified, including Sister Mary Clare’s great niece, and they appealed against the petition. Their objection noted the findings of the Court of Session in 1940 that when a woman joined the order, she bound herself “to live her whole life in the convent, thereafter being laid to rest within the convent grounds“.
Richard Carson, the Director of Environmental Services for the District Council submitted that four of five of the bodies in question would be in “horrific condition” due to having been buried relatively recently, the last in 1991, and stated that the District Council was willing to take on stewardship of the burial ground as it had done for other sites in the city. After hearing from both sides, the Sheriff Peter McNeill QC threw the Church’s petition out on the grounds insufficient evidence had been provided that the sale of the site was contingent on the burial ground being cleared. He ruled that “the remains were sacred” and could only be moved if a pressing reason could be proven. Veronica Harris told the Evening News “It’s a sign of the greed of this century that people can dispose of the remains just to make a fast buck” and that it was a “great relief” that the disinterment would not go ahead.
Mount Alvernia in 1998, after six years of closure, neglect and vandalism having taken its toll.In 1998 planning permission was granted by the District Council to AMA (New Town) Ltd to redevelop Mount Alvernia for housing on condition the burial ground be walled off and maintained. The ever tasteful Daily Record reported this under the headline “Tomb With a View”.
Mount Alvernia, viewed from the burial ground, with the modern flats on the right, chapel on the left and range of the monastery between.“Rest in Peace. But be Quick About it. Hallowed ground now bears a sell-by date and the grave is not necessarily forever.”
Annette McCann, Scotland on Sunday, 29th January 1995Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
So, it turns out that this month's WikiProject NH popular pages report (for March, covering the February time period) just so happens to coincide with Sen. Shaheen's retirement announcement; I think this is generally a good list to consult to discover who has statewide name recognition, and thus might be able to run a statewide election here. Let's review the politics of the living people in the top 25:
- KKKaroline: will probably stick with promoting fascism from the White House (at least until she gets fired) instead of running for Senate
- Paul Michael Levesque, a.k.a. "Triple H": married into the McMahon family, and Linda McMahon is currently serving as Trump's Secretary of Education, so probably right-wing
- Sarah Silverman: Notable for being a Bernie surrogate who told the "Bernie or Bust" faction that they were being "ridiculous" at the 2016 DNC; she later returned to support Bernie in the 2020 primaries as well. I think she could probably do pretty well here if she wanted to run.
- Mandy Moore: Performed at the 2016 DNC, marched at the Women's March, supported Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 primaries... she could probably do pretty well here, too, if she wanted to run.
- Noah Kahan: I know nothing about his politics, but given that he's from the Upper Valley area, I'm guessing he's probably relatively liberal/left?
- Seth Meyers: I think he's a relatively normie Democrat, but I'm not quite sure
- Dan Brown: probably a bad idea
- Toby Fox: I know nothing about his politics, but based on what I hear about Undertale's themes of mercy, they're probably pretty good?
- Ludwig Ahgren: idk
#NHPolitics #NHSEN -
THE GRIFTERS. Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump, Pam Bondi. Co-starring Elon Musk, RFK Jr, Eric Trump, Don Jr, Russell Vought, JD Vance, Peter Thiel, Linda McMahon, Jared Kushner and Jeff Bezos. Directed by The United States Of America. An Oligarch Production.
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So, it turns out that this month's WikiProject NH popular pages report (for March, covering the February time period) just so happens to coincide with Sen. Shaheen's retirement announcement; I think this is generally a good list to consult to discover who has statewide name recognition, and thus might be able to run a statewide election here. Let's review the politics of the living people in the top 25:
- KKKaroline: will probably stick with promoting fascism from the White House (at least until she gets fired) instead of running for Senate
- Paul Michael Levesque, a.k.a. "Triple H": married into the McMahon family, and Linda McMahon is currently serving as Trump's Secretary of Education, so probably right-wing
- Sarah Silverman: Notable for being a Bernie surrogate who told the "Bernie or Bust" faction that they were being "ridiculous" at the 2016 DNC; she later returned to support Bernie in the 2020 primaries as well. I think she could probably do pretty well here if she wanted to run.
- Mandy Moore: Performed at the 2016 DNC, marched at the Women's March, supported Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 primaries... she could probably do pretty well here, too, if she wanted to run.
- Noah Kahan: I know nothing about his politics, but given that he's from the Upper Valley area, I'm guessing he's probably relatively liberal/left?
- Seth Meyers: I think he's a relatively normie Democrat, but I'm not quite sure
- Dan Brown: probably a bad idea
- Toby Fox: I know nothing about his politics, but based on what I hear about Undertale's themes of mercy, they're probably pretty good?
- Ludwig Ahgren: idk
#NHPolitics #NHSEN -
So, it turns out that this month's WikiProject NH popular pages report (for March, covering the February time period) just so happens to coincide with Sen. Shaheen's retirement announcement; I think this is generally a good list to consult to discover who has statewide name recognition, and thus might be able to run a statewide election here. Let's review the politics of the living people in the top 25:
- KKKaroline: will probably stick with promoting fascism from the White House (at least until she gets fired) instead of running for Senate
- Paul Michael Levesque, a.k.a. "Triple H": married into the McMahon family, and Linda McMahon is currently serving as Trump's Secretary of Education, so probably right-wing
- Sarah Silverman: Notable for being a Bernie surrogate who told the "Bernie or Bust" faction that they were being "ridiculous" at the 2016 DNC; she later returned to support Bernie in the 2020 primaries as well. I think she could probably do pretty well here if she wanted to run.
- Mandy Moore: Performed at the 2016 DNC, marched at the Women's March, supported Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 primaries... she could probably do pretty well here, too, if she wanted to run.
- Noah Kahan: I know nothing about his politics, but given that he's from the Upper Valley area, I'm guessing he's probably relatively liberal/left?
- Seth Meyers: I think he's a relatively normie Democrat, but I'm not quite sure
- Dan Brown: probably a bad idea
- Toby Fox: I know nothing about his politics, but based on what I hear about Undertale's themes of mercy, they're probably pretty good?
- Ludwig Ahgren: idk
#NHPolitics #NHSEN -
So, it turns out that this month's WikiProject NH popular pages report (for March, covering the February time period) just so happens to coincide with Sen. Shaheen's retirement announcement; I think this is generally a good list to consult to discover who has statewide name recognition, and thus might be able to run a statewide election here. Let's review the politics of the living people in the top 25:
- KKKaroline: will probably stick with promoting fascism from the White House (at least until she gets fired) instead of running for Senate
- Paul Michael Levesque, a.k.a. "Triple H": married into the McMahon family, and Linda McMahon is currently serving as Trump's Secretary of Education, so probably right-wing
- Sarah Silverman: Notable for being a Bernie surrogate who told the "Bernie or Bust" faction that they were being "ridiculous" at the 2016 DNC; she later returned to support Bernie in the 2020 primaries as well. I think she could probably do pretty well here if she wanted to run.
- Mandy Moore: Performed at the 2016 DNC, marched at the Women's March, supported Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 primaries... she could probably do pretty well here, too, if she wanted to run.
- Noah Kahan: I know nothing about his politics, but given that he's from the Upper Valley area, I'm guessing he's probably relatively liberal/left?
- Seth Meyers: I think he's a relatively normie Democrat, but I'm not quite sure
- Dan Brown: probably a bad idea
- Toby Fox: I know nothing about his politics, but based on what I hear about Undertale's themes of mercy, they're probably pretty good?
- Ludwig Ahgren: idk
#NHPolitics #NHSEN -
So, it turns out that this month's WikiProject NH popular pages report (for March, covering the February time period) just so happens to coincide with Sen. Shaheen's retirement announcement; I think this is generally a good list to consult to discover who has statewide name recognition, and thus might be able to run a statewide election here. Let's review the politics of the living people in the top 25:
- KKKaroline: will probably stick with promoting fascism from the White House (at least until she gets fired) instead of running for Senate
- Paul Michael Levesque, a.k.a. "Triple H": married into the McMahon family, and Linda McMahon is currently serving as Trump's Secretary of Education, so probably right-wing
- Sarah Silverman: Notable for being a Bernie surrogate who told the "Bernie or Bust" faction that they were being "ridiculous" at the 2016 DNC; she later returned to support Bernie in the 2020 primaries as well. I think she could probably do pretty well here if she wanted to run.
- Mandy Moore: Performed at the 2016 DNC, marched at the Women's March, supported Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 primaries... she could probably do pretty well here, too, if she wanted to run.
- Noah Kahan: I know nothing about his politics, but given that he's from the Upper Valley area, I'm guessing he's probably relatively liberal/left?
- Seth Meyers: I think he's a relatively normie Democrat, but I'm not quite sure
- Dan Brown: probably a bad idea
- Toby Fox: I know nothing about his politics, but based on what I hear about Undertale's themes of mercy, they're probably pretty good?
- Ludwig Ahgren: idk
#NHPolitics #NHSEN -
Finally Friday Reads: Your Cassandra Daily
Nothing says Thanksgiving to me more than the WKRP Turkey Drop! Thank you, John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
My first short story remains in my scrapbook in its purply blue mimeograph ink. It has my drawing of Cassandra and my interpretation of my favorite Greek Character, who was dedicated to the Greek God Apollo but was fated to make true prophecies no one ever believed. I was drawn to her in my 5th-grade mythology class. I remember my mother listening to me once and starting to question me before she interrupted herself by telling me this. “I don’t know why I question you; you’re almost always right.” I usually don’t believe everything I read, but I remember it. Prognostication is less godly and more mathematical these days, but when you know what’s likely to happen when you do that S-VAR model based on solid theory and a new hypothesis, you don’t always want to welcome the results.
I’ve been running around with my hair on fire since the Orange Demon started obsessing about tariffs again. He tried them during his last Reign of Terror and nearly drove our farmers out of business. Congress had to rescue them with huge subsidies that paid them for not selling their crops or livestock. Trump started a Trade War with China. He needed a visit from Herbert Hoover’s Ghost and to listen to the huge chorus of economists who warned him, but he persisted. Luckily, it didn’t take out the U.S. economy, but it ran up the deficit and jeopardized the Agriculture sector.
This warning is from the AP. “Trump’s tariffs in his first term did little to alter the economy, but this time could be different.” Trump’s misunderstanding of tariffs could wreck the economies of North America. This analsyis comes from Josh Boak.
Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries.
The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared.
This time, though, his tariff threats might be different.
The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he’ll do what he says and what the consequences could be.
“There’s going to be a lot more tariffs, I mean, he’s pretty clear,” said Michael Stumo, the CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that has supported import taxes to help domestic manufacturing.
The president-elect posted on social media Monday that on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada until those countries satisfactorily stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the United States.
Those tariffs could essentially blow up the North American trade pact that Trump’s team negotiated during his initial term. But on Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and she had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States.
Trump also posted on Monday that Chinese imports would face additional tariffs of 10% until Beijing cracks down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl.
President Sheinbaum immediately denied Trump’s characterization of their conversation. This headline from HuffPo says it all. “Trump Mocked After Mexico’s President Blows Up His Brag About Their Call.” Josephine Harvey reports on the response.
Donald Trump seemed to offer alternative facts on Wednesday about his recent call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and was swiftly rebutted by the leader herself, prompting mockery on social media.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president-elect declared that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Shortly afterward, Sheinbaum shared a Spanish-language message about the conversation, writing, “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and communities.”
Both leaders characterized the call as positive. The two spoke after Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico as soon as he takes office. Trump said, “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He also threatened to put an “additional 10%” tariff on goods from China.
This week’s news was somewhat reminiscent of Trump’s claim ahead of the 2016 election that he would make Mexico pay for “100%” of a proposed wall at the U.S. border. Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president at the time, disagreed. Mexico did not pay.
Social media users sarcastically celebrated Trump’s fictional victory this week.
“All it took was one call. Donny deals,” journalist Sam Stein posted online.
Mike Nellis, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, said, “Trump thinks he convinced the President of Mexico to stop all migration across the border LOL.”
Olivia Troye, who was a White House official in Trump’s first term, offered a “Translation” of the president-elect’s comments about Mexico.
Just had a conversation with the President of Mexico who didn’t allow me to bully her, which left me confused about my charm…she pointed out that this is very bad…very bad for me if I do these tariffs…” Troye wrote.
China and Canada were also blunt about DonOld’s mischaracterizations of his conversations with their leaders. USA Today‘s Kim Hjelmgaard reported it this way. “‘Counter to facts and reality’: China, Mexico, Canada respond to Trump tariff threats.”
Officials in China, Mexico and Canada criticized Tuesday a pledge made by President-elect Donald Trump on social media to impose new tariffs on all three of the United States’ largest trading partners on the first day of his presidency.
Trump said the move, which appears to violate the terms of a free-trade deal Trump signed into law in 2020, is aimed at clamping down on drugs − fentanyl especially − and migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.
The president-elect said he would sign an executive order immediately after his inauguration introducing a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on goods from China.
Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a platform he owns. “It is time for them to pay a very big price!” He accused China in a separate post of failing to block smuggling of U.S.-bound fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
There was quick pushback to Trump’s comments from all three countries.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”
Mexico’s finance ministry said in a statement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump sponsored during his first term, provided “certainty” for investors. “The response to one tariff will be another, until we put at risk companies that we share,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said, naming General Motors and Ford, among others. Sheinbaum said her comments, read aloud in a press conference, were sent in a letter to Trump.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said the tariffs would be “devastating to workers and jobs” in both the U.S. and Canada.
A tariff is effectively a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country. Oil is the top U.S. import from Canada, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The largest category of goods imported to the U.S. from Mexico is cars and components for cars. The U.S. imports a significant amount of electronics from China. Some goods are exempt from tariffs because of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Businesses are already responding to the tariff threats. This will not be good for American Consumers. NBC News reports: “Here’s where consumers could feel the price pain if Trump’s tariffs go into effect. Trump has made threats about tariffs in the past. Businesses are nevertheless taking the latest threats seriously.” This guy hasn’t even taken the oath of office, and he’s already acting like he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
An estimate from The Budget Lab at Yale shared Wednesdaywith NBC News found that the cost to consumers from Trump’s proposed tariffs could reach as much as $1,200 in lost purchasing power on average based on 2023 incomes, assuming retaliatory duties on U.S. exports are put into place.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has already warned that any new tariffs imposed by the U.S. would be met with retaliatory ones by her country. Canada is similarly considering its own options, including possible tariffs on U.S. goods, according to The Associated Press.
America’s biggest import from Canada is oil — and any increase in energy prices would likely be felt throughout the economy.
“Another way to think about this is it’s 4 to 5 months of a normal year’s inflation in one fell swoop,” Ernie Tedeschi, The Budget Lab’s director and the former chief economist under the Biden administration, said in an email.
The three countries Trump has selected for a new round of targeted tariff proposals — China, Mexico and Canada — represent nearly half of all U.S. import volumes.
While Trump has insisted other countries end up paying the cost of tariffs, most economists agree those costs wind up getting passed on to shoppers. And at a time when rising prices remain a top concern, the types of goods that could see higher costs are the ones consumers interact with every day.
Some companies are warning that particularly import-heavy parts of the economy could be hit hard. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry warned Tuesday that any added costs on U.S. imports “will be shared by our customers.” Electronic goods account for the largest share of U.S. imports from China as of 2023.
“There’s very little in [the] consumer electronics space that is not imported. … These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” Barry said.
This is what happens when morons vote for a moron. David R. Lurie of Public Notice has this analysis on other Trump plans. These endanger our National Security. “Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s scheme to gut the intel agencies. It’s hard to envision a less suited intelligence chief. That’s a feature, not a bug.”
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Marc Zuckerberg perfects his role as Surrender Monkey by dining with the Dotard at Mara Lardo. This is from the BBC. “Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.” It was definitely a Baboon butt moment.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has visited Donald Trump at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, further evidence of the apparent thawing in their once frosty relations.
The president-elect already has a close, high-profile relationship with another of the leading figures in tech, X owner Elon Musk.
Historically, though, there has been no such closeness between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg – with Trump barred from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riots, and Trump threatening the Meta boss with jail if he interfered in the 2024 presidential election.
However, there has recently been evidence those strained relations are improving, culminating in Mr Zuckerberg dining with the president-elect at his Florida mansion.
“Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.
“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.
The Detroit Free Press featured an Op-Ed by the AG of Michigan, Dana Nessel. It is difficult not to notice the incredibly large number of Sexual Predators Trump has been appointing to his Cabinet and other leadership positions. It seems like a feature and not a bug, “Michigan AG Nessel: Trump cabinet picks show disdain for victims of sex assault.” We continue to see a parade of the stupid and the lawless.
Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.
Only a third of the estimated 440,000 victims over the age of 12 each year will ever report, often due to negative emotions such as guilt, shame, and self-blame.
Survivors feel they won’t be believed, so why bother reporting, opening themselves up to ridicule, judgment and shame?
So what is it we are telling victims of these brutal, life-altering crimes, when our President-elect seeks to elevate alleged fellow perpetrators to cabinet positions and other high levels of power in our government?
To lead the Department of Defense, Trump has nominated Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who settled an accusation that he raped a woman and entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the victim. To lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been accused of groping a young woman who worked for him as a babysitter on several occasions. For Secretary of Education – responsible for ensuring the schooling of our nation’s children – he nominated Linda McMahon, who has been sued for criminal negligence for enabling the grooming and sexual abuse of children by employees of her organization. And as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he nominated former Representative Matt Gaetz — who withdrew from consideration last week — the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, following accusations he paid minors for sex. And Trump still has more nominations to make.
With these nominations, we are telling survivors of sexual assault that they don’t matter, that their trauma is meaningless and that they should stay silent.
And they will.
The American Prospect calls them “The Rape Gang.”
The presumptive Secretary of Education is married to a man whose former employee alleges he forced her to perform sex acts with his friend for an hour and a half after he defecated on her head. The presumptive Commerce Secretary preemptively sued his former assistant in 2018, after her lawyer threatened to publicize “not pretty” 2 a.m. text messages she’d received from him and his wife. The presumptive Health and Human Services director’s explanation for forcibly groping a former nanny’s breasts while holding her hostage in a kitchen pantry was that he “had a very, very rambunctious youth”; he was 46 at the time. The White House efficiency czar, currently a defendant in a putative class-action lawsuit filed by eight former employees who accuse him of perpetrating an “Animal House” work environment of “rampant sexual harassment,” and paid a quarter of a million dollars to a flight attendant who says he got naked and asked her to touch his erect penis in exchange for the gift of a horse.
And of course the presumptive Defense Secretary was accused of raping a woman who was tasked with monitoring what she described to police as his “creeper vibes” after a Republican women’s conference at which he was a keynote speaker, just a month and change after the birth of his fourth child with a woman who was not his wife at the time. (Reader, she married him.)
The aggressive rapeyness of the second Donald Trump administration is so tyrannical it’s almost enough to make a girl wistful for Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who withdrew his name from attorney general contention yesterday (to make way for the despicable Pam Bondi) amid an orgy of leaks from two investigations into his sexploits with a 17-year-old procured by a convicted sex trafficker friend. Multiple witnesses testified that Gaetz did not actually know the 17-year-old was underage, you see, and that he ceased having sex with her when he found out.
We definitely have a kakistocracy coming our way. We can see the incompetence, the total lack of knowledge of policy, and the complete inappropriateness of every candidate for Cabinet. It comes from the ultimate dotard. The only thing we have going for us now is our resolve and the fact that the Republican Majority in both Houses is narrow. Both houses have also had lots of experience in gumming up the works for Trump. Trump’s so-called mandate is a bald-faced lie. The LA Times asks, “As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a ‘mandate’?” Of course, Trump will be oblivious to all that, so he’s relying heavily on executive mandates that may or may not be legal.” Jenny Jarvis has the details.
Though Trump overwhelmingly won the electoral college vote, his tally in the popular vote is hardly a landslide.
In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.
When Trump exaggerates his presidential mandate, he is not an outlier but drawing from bipartisan history.
In his victory speech on Nov. 6, President-elect Donald Trump claimed Americans had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
It’s a message his transition team has echoed in the last three weeks, referring to his “MAGA Mandate” and a “historic mandate for his agenda.”
But given that Trump’s lead in the popular vote has dwindled as more votes have been counted in California and other states that lean blue, there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change.
The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president-elect’s share of the popular vote now falls in the bottom half for American presidents — far below that of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964, defeating Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by nearly 23 percentage points.
In the last 75 years, only three presidents — John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000 — had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current lead.
“If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it,” said Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University.
There is a slim majority margin in the US House of Representatives. There is no mandate radical change there. This is from Politico, “Where the slim House margin might matter most.” The analysis is by Anthony Adragna.
Republicans are vowing an all-out war in the opening days of the next Congress against Biden administration regulations in areas as varied as energy, financial, housing and education policy.
They’re hoping for a redux of 2017 and 2018, when Republicans used their unified control of government and the powers of the Congressional Review Act to ax 16 regulations. With a coming 53-47 majority, GOP senators say they’re again primed to use the CRA, one of their most potent tools to undo Democratic policies — and one that tends to unite the often fractious Republican conference.
But — and it’s a major but — an extremely narrow House margin could make things hard to pull off, at least for the first couple of months of the Trump administration. While the GOP could lose as many as three votes in the Senate with Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) casting tie-breakers, the House very well be at a one-vote margin until early April (more on that math below).
Still, that hasn’t dampened Republicans’ enthusiasm around the CRA.
“We’re going to want to go and evaluate everything that fits into the jurisdiction” of the 1996 review law, incoming Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Inside Congress. Invoking it involves passing simple-majority votes in both chambers plus a presidential signature, no filibusters allowed.
President Joe Biden’s administration recognized this looming threat and prioritized early completion of rulemakings to shield them from congressional challenge. Still, dozens of regulations were finalized after Aug. 1, 2024, leaving them vulnerable to the CRA, according to Public Citizen, which closely tracks the potential use of the law. (That corresponds to the date identified by the Congressional Research Service after which rules might be vulnerable to revocation.)
Barrasso’s hardly alone with vows of aggressive use of the tool, which had only been successfully used once before Trump’s first term.
“We’ll do every possible regulation we can get to,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “It’s a wonderful tool for undoing the bureaucratic excess of the Biden administration.”
“On some of these crazy policies we ought to just get rid of them as fast as we can,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said he’d instructed his staff to find regulations that may be good targets for challenges.
“This is the only time the Congressional Review Act actually has teeth, otherwise it’s a messaging vehicle,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, referring to the first months of a new trifecta, since using the CRA effectively requires one party to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a relatively infrequent occurrence in modern politics.
Hopefully, this turns into a Can’t Do Anything Congress.
Have a good weekend! Hope you had a great day for feasting! I’m off to eat a turkey sandwich!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonnyDotardAndTheChaosCult #TrumpCabinetRapeGang
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Finally Friday Reads: V is for Vendetta, Violence, Vengence, and Victims
“Call out the National Guard!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I never thought our democracy would collapse so easily and so quickly, yet here we are. Our supposed checks and balances have fallen to incompetence, corruption, and the fear of a tribal cult. I don’t think anyone figured that the Supreme Court would be stacked by sycophants, one of the political parties would surrender its powers to a cult of fascists, and that the executive branch and its functions would be set on destroying itself. Nothing is more symbolic of this than the People’s House being turned into some tacky version of Versailles.
Yet, here we are. The HHS Secretary is crazy and wants to kill us with Voodoo. The DOJ has turned into a vehicle for vengeance. Homeland Security has turned on our citizens and immigrants. Other departments like Education and the EPA are being dismantled. Voodoo economics would be a kind description of the craziness that passes for economic policy.
This is from CNN. “Justice Department opens investigation into New York attorney general who won civil fraud case against Trump.”
The Justice Department has subpoenaed New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office as part of a criminal investigation into President Donald Trump’s long-time adversary, according to multiple sources, in the latest example of the Trump administration taking on the president’s perceived enemies.
Two grand jury subpoenas were issued by the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York seeking information about James’ investigations into the Trump Organization and National Rifle Association, the sources said.
A grand jury investigation into James has also convened in Albany, New York, according to a source familiar. The grand jury probe into James is said to be looking into deprivation of rights, which means violating someone’s constitutional rights, against Trump.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the subpoenas and grand jury investigation.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, said, “Investigating the fraud case Attorney General James won against President Trump and his businesses has to be the most blatant and desperate example of this administration’s carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
Lowell added: “Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration. If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with the facts and law.”
Politico‘s Kyle Cheney questions the strategy. “MAGA world swallows a difficult truth: Arresting Trump’s opponents is easier said than done. From the Epstein saga to Texas redistricting, the far right’s bluster about criminal consequences often leads to disappointment.” Here’s hoping he’s right.
The calls from President Donald Trump’s MAGA base are getting noisier: Texas Democrats who fled the state to derail a hyperpartisan GOP redistricting maneuver should be criminally charged, arrested and dragged back to Austin.
Now, it appears the FBI is involved in the hunt.
But those screaming the loudest appear likely to wind up disappointed. There’s no known evidence that the absconding lawmakers have actually broken any federal or state laws, despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s strained suggestion that they may have committed bribery.
It’s a familiar refrain for Trump’s second term: The far right lusts to see prominent Democrats or Trump adversaries hauled off in handcuffs, only to be let down when their revenge fantasies run into reality.
“They voted for that and now they realize they can’t have retribution because it’s not legally sound,” said Gene Rossi, a white collar criminal defense lawyer who spent 30 years at the Justice Department.
This cycle — impetuous promises of criminal consequences followed by dejection when Trump’s enemies aren’t immediately arrested — has already happened with Jack Smith, with James Comey, even with Joe Biden and Barack Obama (and their top advisers). The Trump administration has ordered investigations of all these figures, but legal experts say the probes are largely performative and unlikely to prompt serious or legitimate criminal charges.
It’s also happening, perhaps most profoundly, with MAGA loyalists’ dissatisfaction over the Jeffrey Epstein saga. The base believed Trump would vindicate conspiracy theories about Democrats and other public figures being involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking, leading to a new wave of arrests and prosecutions. That hasn’t materialized.
Brash promises and MAGA backlash
Trump, of course, has long stoked his base’s hunger for criminal reprisals, even dating back to his 2016 “Lock her up” pledge against Hillary Clinton.
He escalated that rhetoric during the 2024 campaign. “I am your retribution,” he promised his supporters.
And ever since he returned to office, administration officials and influential MAGA figures have suggested that high-profile arrests are justified and imminent, often vowing that “justice is coming.”
But both Trump and his base are learning that it’s not simple to round up political opponents, even with Trump loyalists in charge of the Justice Department.
“I want arrest[s] not DOJ people making promises on Fox News,” said Trump-aligned podcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a recent post on X, which appended a list of MAGA-fueled scandals that have not led to any notable legal consequences.
Jones isn’t alone. A cascade of Trump’s influential backers have wondered aloud why the president and his Justice Department have not delivered the arrests and indictments they crave.
The issue flared most prominently last month when the Justice Department and FBI made the whiplash-inducing admission that the so-called Epstein files do not contain a “client list” of celebrity sex traffickers. The existence of such a list has been an article of faith among MAGA influencers for years, and Trump aides’ efforts to unwind the conspiracy theories have plunged the administration into weeks of turmoil and recriminations.
“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Elon Musk wrote in a July 7 post on X.
There’s more of this analysis at the link. All kinds of institutions are failing to hold Yam TIts’ government accountable, even though many court cases stall and constrain him. The Administration has taken to ignoring court orders. Back in mid-July, the Independent provided a report of this strategy. “What order? Trump team ignoring 1 in 3 major judicial rulings against them, analysis finds. Federal judges have accused the Trump administration of resisting court orders in approximately 34 percent of cases.”
Multiple federal court judges have accused the Trump administration of deliberately defying court orders by being slow to respond, misrepresenting facts in filings, and not taking prompt action as President Donald Trump continues an unprecedented campaign to expand his executive authority.
In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, the Washington Post found that it was accused of resisting court orders in at least 57 of those cases – approximately 34 percent.
Since taking office, Trump has sought to implement his agenda as swiftly as possible, particularly in cases involving his immigration policies and attempts to drastically reduce the federal workforce.
Despite multiple district court judges issuing temporary injunctions to stop the administration from deporting immigrants without due process or sending them to third countries they’ve never been to, filings indicate the administration has continued its efforts.
This has, most notably, occurred in the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who was previously granted permission to remain in the U.S. by a court. The administration inadvertently sent Abrego Garcia to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, under accusations that he was a gang member.
Multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, yet officials made no swift efforts – leading to a judge’s admonishment.
“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance,” Judge Paula Xinis, appointed by former president Barack Obama, said after the administration failed to provide updates on how it was returning Abrego Garcia.
It was just one of several immigration cases in which judges have raised concerns about the administration not following orders.
The DOJ’s arguments have not been able to breach the law. Now, the strategy is to stack the Federal Courts as badly as the Supreme Court. This is from NPR. It was published on the same day as the article above. “Is Emil Bove the face of a new MAGA judiciary?” No wonder they also went after funding for NPR. You may listen to the nine-minute analysis at the link. The Alliance for Justice created a huge list of reasons the man should be put on the bench. “10 Reasons Emil Bove Should Not Become a Judge (A Non-Exhaustive List).” However, the Senate has become as bad as the House of Representatives and the man was put on the bench despite protest.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Chancellor Palpatine shattered the Jedi by taking Anakin Skywalker, a member of the Jedi Council, as his Sith apprentice, Darth Vader. In becoming Palpatine’s apprentice, Vader relinquished his commitment to peace and justice, bowed his knee to power, and became the Emperor’s attack dog. He then used his power to ruthlessly purge Jedis from the Galactic Empire.
In the here and now, fiction may forecast reality, as Emil Bove, a partisan henchman from Trump’s inner circle, is about to be elevated to a lifelong position on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals — not because he embodies qualities that a federal judge should possess, but because he has served as Trump’s personal hit man.
A judgeship on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is not an obscure role. The Third Circuit decides major cases on civil rights, voting, immigration, and more. Many of its decisions never even reach the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Bove will create a majority of Republican appointees on the Third Circuit, guaranteeing him many opportunities to impose his will on one of the most consequential courts in the country. And yet, the man Trump has nominated has a track record that should disqualify him outright.
Right at the top of the list is this. “He Used the Justice Department for Political Prosecutions,” followed by “He Tramples on Free Speech and Due Process.”
Bove played a central role in turning the Department of Justice into a tool of political retribution. As a senior official under Trump, he helped orchestrate the sudden abandonment of a federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — reportedly because Adams agreed to help implement Trump’s mass deportation plan. At least 10 DOJ attorneys, including some affiliated with the conservative legal movement, resigned in protest of the apparent quid pro quo.
As the acting deputy attorney general at the DOJ, Bove demanded the names of FBI agents investigating the January 6 insurrection so he could punish them for “insubordination.” He also removed experienced prosecutors from the Jan. 6 investigation when they wouldn’t bend to political pressure. That kind of intimidation does not belong anywhere near a courtroom.
He did get appointed thanks to the cowardly acquiescence of Republican Senators. Republicans in Congress are also doing nothing about protecting our Veterans. This is from ProPublica. “Veterans’ Care at Risk Under Trump as Hundreds of Doctors and Nurses Reject Working at VA Hospitals. Amid concerns about the stability of the agency, records show nearly 40% of the doctors offered jobs at the VA from January through March of this year turned them down — quadruple the rate of rejections for the same period a year earlier.”
Veterans hospitals are struggling to replace hundreds of doctors and nurses who have left the health care system this year as the Trump administration pursues its pledge to simultaneously slash Department of Veterans Affairs staff and improve care.
Many job applicants are turning down offers, worried that the positions are not stable and uneasy with the overall direction of the agency, according to internal documents examined by ProPublica. The records show nearly 4 in 10 of the roughly 2,000 doctors offered jobs from January through March of this year turned them down. That is quadruple the rate of doctors rejecting offers during the same time period last year.
The VA in March said it intended to cut its workforce by at least 70,000 people. The news sparked alarm that the cuts would hurt patient care, prompting public reassurances from VA Secretary Doug Collins that front-line health care staff would be immune from the proposed layoffs.
Last month, department officials updated their plans and said they would reduce the workforce by 30,000 by the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30. So many staffers had left voluntarily, the agency said in a press release, that mass layoffs would not be necessary.
“VA is headed in the right direction,” Collins said in a statement.
But a review of hundreds of internal staffing records, along with interviews with veterans and employees, reveal a far less rosy picture of how staffing is affecting veterans’ care.
After six years of adding medical staff, the VA this year is down more than 600 doctors and about 1,900 nurses. The number of doctors on staff has declined each month since President Donald Trump took office. The agency also lost twice as many nurses as it hired between January and June, records viewed by ProPublica show.
In response to questions, a VA spokesperson did not dispute numbers about staff losses at centers across the country but accused ProPublica of bias and of “cherry-picking issues that are mostly routine.”
Agency spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz said that the department is “working to address” the number of doctors declining job offers by speeding up the hiring process and that the agency “has several strategies to navigate shortages,” including referring veterans to private providers and telehealth appointments. A nationwide shortage of health care workers has made hiring and retention difficult, he said.
I watched the latest episode of South Park last night. At least we have them on our side. Here are two articles about the reactions from Noem and Vance. Noem is very thin-skinned despite all the surgical and cosmetic enhancements. This is from Daily Kos. “Poor Kristi Noem doesn’t like ‘South Park’ highlighting her awfulness.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is trying to play the victim after the satirical animated show “South Park” mercilessly mocked her on Wednesday night’s episode.
“It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It’s only the liberals and the extremists who do that,” Noem told right-wing podcaster Glenn Beck on Thursday night, referring to how “South Park” made fun of her obviously Botox- and filler-filled face. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly, they can’t. They just pick something petty like that.”
Of course, the show made fun of more than just Noem’s looks. It also ridiculed her cringeworthy cosplaying, the fact that she shot and killed her own puppy, and that she’s one of the biggest cheerleaders for President Donald Trump’s evil immigration plan.
But more than that, Noem claiming that only “liberals” make fun of how women look is insane, given that she works for Trump, the king of making crude and disgusting comments about how women look.
Over the years, he’s made fun of pop icon Cher’s plastic surgery, called actor Bette Midler “ugly,” said Angelina Jolie is “not a beauty,” said Rosie O’Donnell has a “fat, ugly face,” and accused MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski of “bleeding badly from a face-lift,” just to name a few.
Here’s JD Vance’s response via the Independent. “JD Vance responds to South Park’s brutal takedown of Trump admin. ‘Well, I’ve finally made it,’ Vance writes on X after mini-version of vice president seen waiting on Trump in animated episode.” They can dish it out, but they can’t take it, as the old saying goes.
Vice President JD Vance took to X on Thursday morning to respond to South Park’s brutal takedown of the Trump administration.
The South Park account shared an image of Vance and President Donald Trump with the caption “Welcome to Mar-a-Lago!”
“Well, I’ve finally made it,” Vance wrote.
The second episode of the 27th season of South Park took aim at the president and many of his colleagues and supporters. At one point, a mini version of the vice president is shown waiting on the president, who’s in bed with Satan.
The episode also includes a parody of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who became known for having shot her own dog. Meanwhile, Cartman imitates conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The episode outlines the financial struggles of Mr. Mackey after he was laid off from South Park Elementary. Mackey’s banker suggests that he join Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of their good salaries.
Mackey ends up joining ICE, watching an orientation video with Noem, which mocks the fact that she once confessed to killing her own dog.
“A few years ago, I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face, because sometimes doing what’s important means doing what’s hard,” she says in the episode before shooting a number of dogs during her ICE orientation speech.
Trump campaign alum Matt Mowers responded to Vance on X, saying being featured on South Park was “A key life milestone appreciated by any millennial.”
Poor Kristi Noem doesn't like 'South Park' highlighting her awfulness https://twp.ai/4ip5ur
— Tuck The Frumpers (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2025-08-08T17:30:24.000Z
Meanwhile, our foreign policy stinks as bad as the domestic policies. Both Putin and Netanyahu feel empowered to take over whatever they want. This is from Axios. “Even Republicans have questions about Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City.” The analysis is by Alexand Solender.
Some congressional Republicans are raising questions about Israel’s planned occupation of Gaza City as pro-Israel Democrats push back on the operation with unusual ferocity.
Why it matters: Israel’s coalition of political allies in the U.S. has become scrambled in recent weeks amid a growing humanitarian crisis is Gaza — and a coinciding drop in U.S. public opinion toward Israel.
- Lawmakers sympathetic to Israel are warning that the plan could be a logistical nightmare and warning the country to tread carefully and avoid further alienating the international community.
- It’s not just Democrats questioning the plan. “I’d like to know who is actually going to run it,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that oversees the Middle East, told Axios.
- Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), another member of the panel, told Axios: “Occupation for security also comes with the responsibility of providing humanitarian assistance and creating an economic future.”
State of play: The Israeli Security Cabinet on Thursday approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to have the IDF “take control” of Gaza City in an effort to defeat Hamas.
- In addition to occupying Gaza City, which is expected to take months and displace around 1 million Palestinian civilians, the IDF will also be charged with distributing humanitarian aid, Axios’ Barak Ravid reported.
- The IDF’s chief of staff pushed back during the Cabinet meeting, arguing the plan could endanger Israeli hostages in Gaza and lead to protracted Israeli military governance.
- President Trump, who has split with Netanyahu on allegations of famine in Gaza, is not planning to intervene to oppose the operation.
Driving the news: Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the roughly 100-member New Democrat Coalition and a vocal pro-Israel centrist, called the plan “tactically questionable and strategically self-defeating.”
“If implemented, the decision is more likely to play into Hamas’s original objectives in starting this war and further unite much of the world against Israel than it is to bring home the last surviving hostages and advance the security needs of the nation,” Schneider said in a statement.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), one of Democrats’ staunchest Israel backers, said in a statement that Israel is the “ultimate arbiter of its own security” but that “the war in Gaza is in danger of becoming a quagmire.”
Trump is still looking to solve the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, but Putin has him by the balls. This is from Bloomberg. “US and Russia Plan Truce to Cement Putin’s Gains in Ukraine.”
Washington and Moscow are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to people familiar with the matter.
US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as early as next week, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, the people said.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Such an outcome would represent a major win for Putin, who has long sought direct negotiations with the US on terms for ending the war that he started, sidelining Ukraine and its European allies. Zelenskiy risks being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it deal to accept the loss of Ukrainian territory, while Europe fears it would be left to monitor a ceasefire as Putin rebuilds his forces
And for all of Trump’s lying about it, The Daily Beast reports that “White House Did Have Secret Talks on Epstein Crisis. Trump had forced JD Vance to deny that a meeting was taking place.” This story is reported by Erikky Foster.
Turns out the Trump administration really did huddle behind closed doors to talk about the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite JD Vance’s public denial.
On Wednesday, the vice president dismissed mounting media reports claiming he was hosting secret Epstein talks at his house.
“It’s completely fake news,” Vance declared. President Donald Trump had told reporters, “I don’t know” and redirected them to the vice president.
Yet, top Trump administration officials did convene to map out next steps regarding the files on the late convicted sex offender, CNN reported, citing a source familiar with the logistics.
The meeting was reportedly relocated from Vance’s D.C. home to the White House. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were also in attendance, according to MSNBC.
It’s unclear whether the talks included Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who were initially reported to be joining the dinner at the vice president’s Naval Observatory mansion.
Vance’s supposed involvement in the talks had drawn criticism. Ever since Watergate, the Justice Department has kept criminal investigations separate from White House influence, to prevent any appearance of political interference.
One last story and then I’ll leave you to your weekend. This one from VOX has me screaming. “The White House has a preferred alternative to PBS. It may already be in countless classrooms. How the right-wing network PragerU could fill the void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s defunding.” They’ve stuck this abomination in Louisiana classrooms, and there’s nothing truthful in any of its materials.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced last week that it would shut down after Congress voted to claw back over $500 million of federal funding from the organization. The announcement imperils local PBS and NPR stations around the country that have provided news and educational content for kids for nearly half a century.
Amid the stripping of these federal funds, last month, the White House debuted a new educational partner at its launch event for its new Founders Museum exhibit: PragerU, a nonprofit organization that specializes in creating right-leaning educational short videos for adults and children. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon introduced the partnership, followed by PragerU CEO Marissa Streit.
For the White House exhibit, PragerU created AI-generated videos of the Founding Fathers delivering patriotic accounts of the Revolution. In one, an AI-generated John Adams borrows a catchphrase from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and tells the viewer, “Facts do not care about our feelings.”
Since its founding in 2009, PragerU has become a juggernaut in the conservative educational media space, with their videos reaching millions of followers across social media. The organization has helped launch the media careers of right-wing figures like Candace Owens. Their popular videos elevate narratives that have been sharply criticized as climate denialist, Islamophobic, and “misleading” about slavery.
PragerU’s partnership with the Department of Education is not the first time the conservative content mill has partnered with the government. Over the past few years, the organization has partnered with states and superintendents throughout the country to make their educational material widely available to public school children and teachers.
Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Laura Meckler, national education writer for the Washington Post, about how PragerU partnered with states to bring its content to the classroom and if the organization is poised to fill the educational void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
So, I agree with Rachel and Krugman. We’re a fascist state, and I don’t like it at all.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action List for today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #AmericanFascism #DOJToolOfVengence #SouthPark #TrumpStackingCourts
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Finally Friday Reads: V is for Vendetta, Violence, Vengence, and Victims
“Call out the National Guard!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I never thought our democracy would collapse so easily and so quickly, yet here we are. Our supposed checks and balances have fallen to incompetence, corruption, and the fear of a tribal cult. I don’t think anyone figured that the Supreme Court would be stacked by sycophants, one of the political parties would surrender its powers to a cult of fascists, and that the executive branch and its functions would be set on destroying itself. Nothing is more symbolic of this than the People’s House being turned into some tacky version of Versailles.
Yet, here we are. The HHS Secretary is crazy and wants to kill us with Voodoo. The DOJ has turned into a vehicle for vengeance. Homeland Security has turned on our citizens and immigrants. Other departments like Education and the EPA are being dismantled. Voodoo economics would be a kind description of the craziness that passes for economic policy.
This is from CNN. “Justice Department opens investigation into New York attorney general who won civil fraud case against Trump.”
The Justice Department has subpoenaed New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office as part of a criminal investigation into President Donald Trump’s long-time adversary, according to multiple sources, in the latest example of the Trump administration taking on the president’s perceived enemies.
Two grand jury subpoenas were issued by the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York seeking information about James’ investigations into the Trump Organization and National Rifle Association, the sources said.
A grand jury investigation into James has also convened in Albany, New York, according to a source familiar. The grand jury probe into James is said to be looking into deprivation of rights, which means violating someone’s constitutional rights, against Trump.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the subpoenas and grand jury investigation.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, said, “Investigating the fraud case Attorney General James won against President Trump and his businesses has to be the most blatant and desperate example of this administration’s carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
Lowell added: “Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration. If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with the facts and law.”
Politico‘s Kyle Cheney questions the strategy. “MAGA world swallows a difficult truth: Arresting Trump’s opponents is easier said than done. From the Epstein saga to Texas redistricting, the far right’s bluster about criminal consequences often leads to disappointment.” Here’s hoping he’s right.
The calls from President Donald Trump’s MAGA base are getting noisier: Texas Democrats who fled the state to derail a hyperpartisan GOP redistricting maneuver should be criminally charged, arrested and dragged back to Austin.
Now, it appears the FBI is involved in the hunt.
But those screaming the loudest appear likely to wind up disappointed. There’s no known evidence that the absconding lawmakers have actually broken any federal or state laws, despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s strained suggestion that they may have committed bribery.
It’s a familiar refrain for Trump’s second term: The far right lusts to see prominent Democrats or Trump adversaries hauled off in handcuffs, only to be let down when their revenge fantasies run into reality.
“They voted for that and now they realize they can’t have retribution because it’s not legally sound,” said Gene Rossi, a white collar criminal defense lawyer who spent 30 years at the Justice Department.
This cycle — impetuous promises of criminal consequences followed by dejection when Trump’s enemies aren’t immediately arrested — has already happened with Jack Smith, with James Comey, even with Joe Biden and Barack Obama (and their top advisers). The Trump administration has ordered investigations of all these figures, but legal experts say the probes are largely performative and unlikely to prompt serious or legitimate criminal charges.
It’s also happening, perhaps most profoundly, with MAGA loyalists’ dissatisfaction over the Jeffrey Epstein saga. The base believed Trump would vindicate conspiracy theories about Democrats and other public figures being involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking, leading to a new wave of arrests and prosecutions. That hasn’t materialized.
Brash promises and MAGA backlash
Trump, of course, has long stoked his base’s hunger for criminal reprisals, even dating back to his 2016 “Lock her up” pledge against Hillary Clinton.
He escalated that rhetoric during the 2024 campaign. “I am your retribution,” he promised his supporters.
And ever since he returned to office, administration officials and influential MAGA figures have suggested that high-profile arrests are justified and imminent, often vowing that “justice is coming.”
But both Trump and his base are learning that it’s not simple to round up political opponents, even with Trump loyalists in charge of the Justice Department.
“I want arrest[s] not DOJ people making promises on Fox News,” said Trump-aligned podcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a recent post on X, which appended a list of MAGA-fueled scandals that have not led to any notable legal consequences.
Jones isn’t alone. A cascade of Trump’s influential backers have wondered aloud why the president and his Justice Department have not delivered the arrests and indictments they crave.
The issue flared most prominently last month when the Justice Department and FBI made the whiplash-inducing admission that the so-called Epstein files do not contain a “client list” of celebrity sex traffickers. The existence of such a list has been an article of faith among MAGA influencers for years, and Trump aides’ efforts to unwind the conspiracy theories have plunged the administration into weeks of turmoil and recriminations.
“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Elon Musk wrote in a July 7 post on X.
There’s more of this analysis at the link. All kinds of institutions are failing to hold Yam TIts’ government accountable, even though many court cases stall and constrain him. The Administration has taken to ignoring court orders. Back in mid-July, the Independent provided a report of this strategy. “What order? Trump team ignoring 1 in 3 major judicial rulings against them, analysis finds. Federal judges have accused the Trump administration of resisting court orders in approximately 34 percent of cases.”
Multiple federal court judges have accused the Trump administration of deliberately defying court orders by being slow to respond, misrepresenting facts in filings, and not taking prompt action as President Donald Trump continues an unprecedented campaign to expand his executive authority.
In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, the Washington Post found that it was accused of resisting court orders in at least 57 of those cases – approximately 34 percent.
Since taking office, Trump has sought to implement his agenda as swiftly as possible, particularly in cases involving his immigration policies and attempts to drastically reduce the federal workforce.
Despite multiple district court judges issuing temporary injunctions to stop the administration from deporting immigrants without due process or sending them to third countries they’ve never been to, filings indicate the administration has continued its efforts.
This has, most notably, occurred in the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who was previously granted permission to remain in the U.S. by a court. The administration inadvertently sent Abrego Garcia to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, under accusations that he was a gang member.
Multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, yet officials made no swift efforts – leading to a judge’s admonishment.
“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance,” Judge Paula Xinis, appointed by former president Barack Obama, said after the administration failed to provide updates on how it was returning Abrego Garcia.
It was just one of several immigration cases in which judges have raised concerns about the administration not following orders.
The DOJ’s arguments have not been able to breach the law. Now, the strategy is to stack the Federal Courts as badly as the Supreme Court. This is from NPR. It was published on the same day as the article above. “Is Emil Bove the face of a new MAGA judiciary?” No wonder they also went after funding for NPR. You may listen to the nine-minute analysis at the link. The Alliance for Justice created a huge list of reasons the man should be put on the bench. “10 Reasons Emil Bove Should Not Become a Judge (A Non-Exhaustive List).” However, the Senate has become as bad as the House of Representatives and the man was put on the bench despite protest.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Chancellor Palpatine shattered the Jedi by taking Anakin Skywalker, a member of the Jedi Council, as his Sith apprentice, Darth Vader. In becoming Palpatine’s apprentice, Vader relinquished his commitment to peace and justice, bowed his knee to power, and became the Emperor’s attack dog. He then used his power to ruthlessly purge Jedis from the Galactic Empire.
In the here and now, fiction may forecast reality, as Emil Bove, a partisan henchman from Trump’s inner circle, is about to be elevated to a lifelong position on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals — not because he embodies qualities that a federal judge should possess, but because he has served as Trump’s personal hit man.
A judgeship on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is not an obscure role. The Third Circuit decides major cases on civil rights, voting, immigration, and more. Many of its decisions never even reach the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Bove will create a majority of Republican appointees on the Third Circuit, guaranteeing him many opportunities to impose his will on one of the most consequential courts in the country. And yet, the man Trump has nominated has a track record that should disqualify him outright.
Right at the top of the list is this. “He Used the Justice Department for Political Prosecutions,” followed by “He Tramples on Free Speech and Due Process.”
Bove played a central role in turning the Department of Justice into a tool of political retribution. As a senior official under Trump, he helped orchestrate the sudden abandonment of a federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — reportedly because Adams agreed to help implement Trump’s mass deportation plan. At least 10 DOJ attorneys, including some affiliated with the conservative legal movement, resigned in protest of the apparent quid pro quo.
As the acting deputy attorney general at the DOJ, Bove demanded the names of FBI agents investigating the January 6 insurrection so he could punish them for “insubordination.” He also removed experienced prosecutors from the Jan. 6 investigation when they wouldn’t bend to political pressure. That kind of intimidation does not belong anywhere near a courtroom.
He did get appointed thanks to the cowardly acquiescence of Republican Senators. Republicans in Congress are also doing nothing about protecting our Veterans. This is from ProPublica. “Veterans’ Care at Risk Under Trump as Hundreds of Doctors and Nurses Reject Working at VA Hospitals. Amid concerns about the stability of the agency, records show nearly 40% of the doctors offered jobs at the VA from January through March of this year turned them down — quadruple the rate of rejections for the same period a year earlier.”
Veterans hospitals are struggling to replace hundreds of doctors and nurses who have left the health care system this year as the Trump administration pursues its pledge to simultaneously slash Department of Veterans Affairs staff and improve care.
Many job applicants are turning down offers, worried that the positions are not stable and uneasy with the overall direction of the agency, according to internal documents examined by ProPublica. The records show nearly 4 in 10 of the roughly 2,000 doctors offered jobs from January through March of this year turned them down. That is quadruple the rate of doctors rejecting offers during the same time period last year.
The VA in March said it intended to cut its workforce by at least 70,000 people. The news sparked alarm that the cuts would hurt patient care, prompting public reassurances from VA Secretary Doug Collins that front-line health care staff would be immune from the proposed layoffs.
Last month, department officials updated their plans and said they would reduce the workforce by 30,000 by the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30. So many staffers had left voluntarily, the agency said in a press release, that mass layoffs would not be necessary.
“VA is headed in the right direction,” Collins said in a statement.
But a review of hundreds of internal staffing records, along with interviews with veterans and employees, reveal a far less rosy picture of how staffing is affecting veterans’ care.
After six years of adding medical staff, the VA this year is down more than 600 doctors and about 1,900 nurses. The number of doctors on staff has declined each month since President Donald Trump took office. The agency also lost twice as many nurses as it hired between January and June, records viewed by ProPublica show.
In response to questions, a VA spokesperson did not dispute numbers about staff losses at centers across the country but accused ProPublica of bias and of “cherry-picking issues that are mostly routine.”
Agency spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz said that the department is “working to address” the number of doctors declining job offers by speeding up the hiring process and that the agency “has several strategies to navigate shortages,” including referring veterans to private providers and telehealth appointments. A nationwide shortage of health care workers has made hiring and retention difficult, he said.
I watched the latest episode of South Park last night. At least we have them on our side. Here are two articles about the reactions from Noem and Vance. Noem is very thin-skinned despite all the surgical and cosmetic enhancements. This is from Daily Kos. “Poor Kristi Noem doesn’t like ‘South Park’ highlighting her awfulness.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is trying to play the victim after the satirical animated show “South Park” mercilessly mocked her on Wednesday night’s episode.
“It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It’s only the liberals and the extremists who do that,” Noem told right-wing podcaster Glenn Beck on Thursday night, referring to how “South Park” made fun of her obviously Botox- and filler-filled face. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly, they can’t. They just pick something petty like that.”
Of course, the show made fun of more than just Noem’s looks. It also ridiculed her cringeworthy cosplaying, the fact that she shot and killed her own puppy, and that she’s one of the biggest cheerleaders for President Donald Trump’s evil immigration plan.
But more than that, Noem claiming that only “liberals” make fun of how women look is insane, given that she works for Trump, the king of making crude and disgusting comments about how women look.
Over the years, he’s made fun of pop icon Cher’s plastic surgery, called actor Bette Midler “ugly,” said Angelina Jolie is “not a beauty,” said Rosie O’Donnell has a “fat, ugly face,” and accused MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski of “bleeding badly from a face-lift,” just to name a few.
Here’s JD Vance’s response via the Independent. “JD Vance responds to South Park’s brutal takedown of Trump admin. ‘Well, I’ve finally made it,’ Vance writes on X after mini-version of vice president seen waiting on Trump in animated episode.” They can dish it out, but they can’t take it, as the old saying goes.
Vice President JD Vance took to X on Thursday morning to respond to South Park’s brutal takedown of the Trump administration.
The South Park account shared an image of Vance and President Donald Trump with the caption “Welcome to Mar-a-Lago!”
“Well, I’ve finally made it,” Vance wrote.
The second episode of the 27th season of South Park took aim at the president and many of his colleagues and supporters. At one point, a mini version of the vice president is shown waiting on the president, who’s in bed with Satan.
The episode also includes a parody of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who became known for having shot her own dog. Meanwhile, Cartman imitates conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The episode outlines the financial struggles of Mr. Mackey after he was laid off from South Park Elementary. Mackey’s banker suggests that he join Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of their good salaries.
Mackey ends up joining ICE, watching an orientation video with Noem, which mocks the fact that she once confessed to killing her own dog.
“A few years ago, I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face, because sometimes doing what’s important means doing what’s hard,” she says in the episode before shooting a number of dogs during her ICE orientation speech.
Trump campaign alum Matt Mowers responded to Vance on X, saying being featured on South Park was “A key life milestone appreciated by any millennial.”
Poor Kristi Noem doesn't like 'South Park' highlighting her awfulness https://twp.ai/4ip5ur
— Tuck The Frumpers (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2025-08-08T17:30:24.000Z
Meanwhile, our foreign policy stinks as bad as the domestic policies. Both Putin and Netanyahu feel empowered to take over whatever they want. This is from Axios. “Even Republicans have questions about Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City.” The analysis is by Alexand Solender.
Some congressional Republicans are raising questions about Israel’s planned occupation of Gaza City as pro-Israel Democrats push back on the operation with unusual ferocity.
Why it matters: Israel’s coalition of political allies in the U.S. has become scrambled in recent weeks amid a growing humanitarian crisis is Gaza — and a coinciding drop in U.S. public opinion toward Israel.
- Lawmakers sympathetic to Israel are warning that the plan could be a logistical nightmare and warning the country to tread carefully and avoid further alienating the international community.
- It’s not just Democrats questioning the plan. “I’d like to know who is actually going to run it,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that oversees the Middle East, told Axios.
- Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), another member of the panel, told Axios: “Occupation for security also comes with the responsibility of providing humanitarian assistance and creating an economic future.”
State of play: The Israeli Security Cabinet on Thursday approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to have the IDF “take control” of Gaza City in an effort to defeat Hamas.
- In addition to occupying Gaza City, which is expected to take months and displace around 1 million Palestinian civilians, the IDF will also be charged with distributing humanitarian aid, Axios’ Barak Ravid reported.
- The IDF’s chief of staff pushed back during the Cabinet meeting, arguing the plan could endanger Israeli hostages in Gaza and lead to protracted Israeli military governance.
- President Trump, who has split with Netanyahu on allegations of famine in Gaza, is not planning to intervene to oppose the operation.
Driving the news: Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the roughly 100-member New Democrat Coalition and a vocal pro-Israel centrist, called the plan “tactically questionable and strategically self-defeating.”
“If implemented, the decision is more likely to play into Hamas’s original objectives in starting this war and further unite much of the world against Israel than it is to bring home the last surviving hostages and advance the security needs of the nation,” Schneider said in a statement.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), one of Democrats’ staunchest Israel backers, said in a statement that Israel is the “ultimate arbiter of its own security” but that “the war in Gaza is in danger of becoming a quagmire.”
Trump is still looking to solve the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, but Putin has him by the balls. This is from Bloomberg. “US and Russia Plan Truce to Cement Putin’s Gains in Ukraine.”
Washington and Moscow are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to people familiar with the matter.
US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as early as next week, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, the people said.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Such an outcome would represent a major win for Putin, who has long sought direct negotiations with the US on terms for ending the war that he started, sidelining Ukraine and its European allies. Zelenskiy risks being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it deal to accept the loss of Ukrainian territory, while Europe fears it would be left to monitor a ceasefire as Putin rebuilds his forces
And for all of Trump’s lying about it, The Daily Beast reports that “White House Did Have Secret Talks on Epstein Crisis. Trump had forced JD Vance to deny that a meeting was taking place.” This story is reported by Erikky Foster.
Turns out the Trump administration really did huddle behind closed doors to talk about the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite JD Vance’s public denial.
On Wednesday, the vice president dismissed mounting media reports claiming he was hosting secret Epstein talks at his house.
“It’s completely fake news,” Vance declared. President Donald Trump had told reporters, “I don’t know” and redirected them to the vice president.
Yet, top Trump administration officials did convene to map out next steps regarding the files on the late convicted sex offender, CNN reported, citing a source familiar with the logistics.
The meeting was reportedly relocated from Vance’s D.C. home to the White House. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were also in attendance, according to MSNBC.
It’s unclear whether the talks included Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who were initially reported to be joining the dinner at the vice president’s Naval Observatory mansion.
Vance’s supposed involvement in the talks had drawn criticism. Ever since Watergate, the Justice Department has kept criminal investigations separate from White House influence, to prevent any appearance of political interference.
One last story and then I’ll leave you to your weekend. This one from VOX has me screaming. “The White House has a preferred alternative to PBS. It may already be in countless classrooms. How the right-wing network PragerU could fill the void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s defunding.” They’ve stuck this abomination in Louisiana classrooms, and there’s nothing truthful in any of its materials.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced last week that it would shut down after Congress voted to claw back over $500 million of federal funding from the organization. The announcement imperils local PBS and NPR stations around the country that have provided news and educational content for kids for nearly half a century.
Amid the stripping of these federal funds, last month, the White House debuted a new educational partner at its launch event for its new Founders Museum exhibit: PragerU, a nonprofit organization that specializes in creating right-leaning educational short videos for adults and children. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon introduced the partnership, followed by PragerU CEO Marissa Streit.
For the White House exhibit, PragerU created AI-generated videos of the Founding Fathers delivering patriotic accounts of the Revolution. In one, an AI-generated John Adams borrows a catchphrase from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and tells the viewer, “Facts do not care about our feelings.”
Since its founding in 2009, PragerU has become a juggernaut in the conservative educational media space, with their videos reaching millions of followers across social media. The organization has helped launch the media careers of right-wing figures like Candace Owens. Their popular videos elevate narratives that have been sharply criticized as climate denialist, Islamophobic, and “misleading” about slavery.
PragerU’s partnership with the Department of Education is not the first time the conservative content mill has partnered with the government. Over the past few years, the organization has partnered with states and superintendents throughout the country to make their educational material widely available to public school children and teachers.
Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Laura Meckler, national education writer for the Washington Post, about how PragerU partnered with states to bring its content to the classroom and if the organization is poised to fill the educational void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
So, I agree with Rachel and Krugman. We’re a fascist state, and I don’t like it at all.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action List for today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #AmericanFascism #DOJToolOfVengence #SouthPark #TrumpStackingCourts
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Finally Friday Reads: V is for Vendetta, Violence, Vengence, and Victims
“Call out the National Guard!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I never thought our democracy would collapse so easily and so quickly, yet here we are. Our supposed checks and balances have fallen to incompetence, corruption, and the fear of a tribal cult. I don’t think anyone figured that the Supreme Court would be stacked by sycophants, one of the political parties would surrender its powers to a cult of fascists, and that the executive branch and its functions would be set on destroying itself. Nothing is more symbolic of this than the People’s House being turned into some tacky version of Versailles.
Yet, here we are. The HHS Secretary is crazy and wants to kill us with Voodoo. The DOJ has turned into a vehicle for vengeance. Homeland Security has turned on our citizens and immigrants. Other departments like Education and the EPA are being dismantled. Voodoo economics would be a kind description of the craziness that passes for economic policy.
This is from CNN. “Justice Department opens investigation into New York attorney general who won civil fraud case against Trump.”
The Justice Department has subpoenaed New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office as part of a criminal investigation into President Donald Trump’s long-time adversary, according to multiple sources, in the latest example of the Trump administration taking on the president’s perceived enemies.
Two grand jury subpoenas were issued by the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York seeking information about James’ investigations into the Trump Organization and National Rifle Association, the sources said.
A grand jury investigation into James has also convened in Albany, New York, according to a source familiar. The grand jury probe into James is said to be looking into deprivation of rights, which means violating someone’s constitutional rights, against Trump.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the subpoenas and grand jury investigation.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, said, “Investigating the fraud case Attorney General James won against President Trump and his businesses has to be the most blatant and desperate example of this administration’s carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
Lowell added: “Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration. If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with the facts and law.”
Politico‘s Kyle Cheney questions the strategy. “MAGA world swallows a difficult truth: Arresting Trump’s opponents is easier said than done. From the Epstein saga to Texas redistricting, the far right’s bluster about criminal consequences often leads to disappointment.” Here’s hoping he’s right.
The calls from President Donald Trump’s MAGA base are getting noisier: Texas Democrats who fled the state to derail a hyperpartisan GOP redistricting maneuver should be criminally charged, arrested and dragged back to Austin.
Now, it appears the FBI is involved in the hunt.
But those screaming the loudest appear likely to wind up disappointed. There’s no known evidence that the absconding lawmakers have actually broken any federal or state laws, despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s strained suggestion that they may have committed bribery.
It’s a familiar refrain for Trump’s second term: The far right lusts to see prominent Democrats or Trump adversaries hauled off in handcuffs, only to be let down when their revenge fantasies run into reality.
“They voted for that and now they realize they can’t have retribution because it’s not legally sound,” said Gene Rossi, a white collar criminal defense lawyer who spent 30 years at the Justice Department.
This cycle — impetuous promises of criminal consequences followed by dejection when Trump’s enemies aren’t immediately arrested — has already happened with Jack Smith, with James Comey, even with Joe Biden and Barack Obama (and their top advisers). The Trump administration has ordered investigations of all these figures, but legal experts say the probes are largely performative and unlikely to prompt serious or legitimate criminal charges.
It’s also happening, perhaps most profoundly, with MAGA loyalists’ dissatisfaction over the Jeffrey Epstein saga. The base believed Trump would vindicate conspiracy theories about Democrats and other public figures being involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking, leading to a new wave of arrests and prosecutions. That hasn’t materialized.
Brash promises and MAGA backlash
Trump, of course, has long stoked his base’s hunger for criminal reprisals, even dating back to his 2016 “Lock her up” pledge against Hillary Clinton.
He escalated that rhetoric during the 2024 campaign. “I am your retribution,” he promised his supporters.
And ever since he returned to office, administration officials and influential MAGA figures have suggested that high-profile arrests are justified and imminent, often vowing that “justice is coming.”
But both Trump and his base are learning that it’s not simple to round up political opponents, even with Trump loyalists in charge of the Justice Department.
“I want arrest[s] not DOJ people making promises on Fox News,” said Trump-aligned podcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a recent post on X, which appended a list of MAGA-fueled scandals that have not led to any notable legal consequences.
Jones isn’t alone. A cascade of Trump’s influential backers have wondered aloud why the president and his Justice Department have not delivered the arrests and indictments they crave.
The issue flared most prominently last month when the Justice Department and FBI made the whiplash-inducing admission that the so-called Epstein files do not contain a “client list” of celebrity sex traffickers. The existence of such a list has been an article of faith among MAGA influencers for years, and Trump aides’ efforts to unwind the conspiracy theories have plunged the administration into weeks of turmoil and recriminations.
“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Elon Musk wrote in a July 7 post on X.
There’s more of this analysis at the link. All kinds of institutions are failing to hold Yam TIts’ government accountable, even though many court cases stall and constrain him. The Administration has taken to ignoring court orders. Back in mid-July, the Independent provided a report of this strategy. “What order? Trump team ignoring 1 in 3 major judicial rulings against them, analysis finds. Federal judges have accused the Trump administration of resisting court orders in approximately 34 percent of cases.”
Multiple federal court judges have accused the Trump administration of deliberately defying court orders by being slow to respond, misrepresenting facts in filings, and not taking prompt action as President Donald Trump continues an unprecedented campaign to expand his executive authority.
In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, the Washington Post found that it was accused of resisting court orders in at least 57 of those cases – approximately 34 percent.
Since taking office, Trump has sought to implement his agenda as swiftly as possible, particularly in cases involving his immigration policies and attempts to drastically reduce the federal workforce.
Despite multiple district court judges issuing temporary injunctions to stop the administration from deporting immigrants without due process or sending them to third countries they’ve never been to, filings indicate the administration has continued its efforts.
This has, most notably, occurred in the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who was previously granted permission to remain in the U.S. by a court. The administration inadvertently sent Abrego Garcia to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, under accusations that he was a gang member.
Multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, yet officials made no swift efforts – leading to a judge’s admonishment.
“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance,” Judge Paula Xinis, appointed by former president Barack Obama, said after the administration failed to provide updates on how it was returning Abrego Garcia.
It was just one of several immigration cases in which judges have raised concerns about the administration not following orders.
The DOJ’s arguments have not been able to breach the law. Now, the strategy is to stack the Federal Courts as badly as the Supreme Court. This is from NPR. It was published on the same day as the article above. “Is Emil Bove the face of a new MAGA judiciary?” No wonder they also went after funding for NPR. You may listen to the nine-minute analysis at the link. The Alliance for Justice created a huge list of reasons the man should be put on the bench. “10 Reasons Emil Bove Should Not Become a Judge (A Non-Exhaustive List).” However, the Senate has become as bad as the House of Representatives and the man was put on the bench despite protest.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Chancellor Palpatine shattered the Jedi by taking Anakin Skywalker, a member of the Jedi Council, as his Sith apprentice, Darth Vader. In becoming Palpatine’s apprentice, Vader relinquished his commitment to peace and justice, bowed his knee to power, and became the Emperor’s attack dog. He then used his power to ruthlessly purge Jedis from the Galactic Empire.
In the here and now, fiction may forecast reality, as Emil Bove, a partisan henchman from Trump’s inner circle, is about to be elevated to a lifelong position on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals — not because he embodies qualities that a federal judge should possess, but because he has served as Trump’s personal hit man.
A judgeship on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is not an obscure role. The Third Circuit decides major cases on civil rights, voting, immigration, and more. Many of its decisions never even reach the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Bove will create a majority of Republican appointees on the Third Circuit, guaranteeing him many opportunities to impose his will on one of the most consequential courts in the country. And yet, the man Trump has nominated has a track record that should disqualify him outright.
Right at the top of the list is this. “He Used the Justice Department for Political Prosecutions,” followed by “He Tramples on Free Speech and Due Process.”
Bove played a central role in turning the Department of Justice into a tool of political retribution. As a senior official under Trump, he helped orchestrate the sudden abandonment of a federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — reportedly because Adams agreed to help implement Trump’s mass deportation plan. At least 10 DOJ attorneys, including some affiliated with the conservative legal movement, resigned in protest of the apparent quid pro quo.
As the acting deputy attorney general at the DOJ, Bove demanded the names of FBI agents investigating the January 6 insurrection so he could punish them for “insubordination.” He also removed experienced prosecutors from the Jan. 6 investigation when they wouldn’t bend to political pressure. That kind of intimidation does not belong anywhere near a courtroom.
He did get appointed thanks to the cowardly acquiescence of Republican Senators. Republicans in Congress are also doing nothing about protecting our Veterans. This is from ProPublica. “Veterans’ Care at Risk Under Trump as Hundreds of Doctors and Nurses Reject Working at VA Hospitals. Amid concerns about the stability of the agency, records show nearly 40% of the doctors offered jobs at the VA from January through March of this year turned them down — quadruple the rate of rejections for the same period a year earlier.”
Veterans hospitals are struggling to replace hundreds of doctors and nurses who have left the health care system this year as the Trump administration pursues its pledge to simultaneously slash Department of Veterans Affairs staff and improve care.
Many job applicants are turning down offers, worried that the positions are not stable and uneasy with the overall direction of the agency, according to internal documents examined by ProPublica. The records show nearly 4 in 10 of the roughly 2,000 doctors offered jobs from January through March of this year turned them down. That is quadruple the rate of doctors rejecting offers during the same time period last year.
The VA in March said it intended to cut its workforce by at least 70,000 people. The news sparked alarm that the cuts would hurt patient care, prompting public reassurances from VA Secretary Doug Collins that front-line health care staff would be immune from the proposed layoffs.
Last month, department officials updated their plans and said they would reduce the workforce by 30,000 by the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30. So many staffers had left voluntarily, the agency said in a press release, that mass layoffs would not be necessary.
“VA is headed in the right direction,” Collins said in a statement.
But a review of hundreds of internal staffing records, along with interviews with veterans and employees, reveal a far less rosy picture of how staffing is affecting veterans’ care.
After six years of adding medical staff, the VA this year is down more than 600 doctors and about 1,900 nurses. The number of doctors on staff has declined each month since President Donald Trump took office. The agency also lost twice as many nurses as it hired between January and June, records viewed by ProPublica show.
In response to questions, a VA spokesperson did not dispute numbers about staff losses at centers across the country but accused ProPublica of bias and of “cherry-picking issues that are mostly routine.”
Agency spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz said that the department is “working to address” the number of doctors declining job offers by speeding up the hiring process and that the agency “has several strategies to navigate shortages,” including referring veterans to private providers and telehealth appointments. A nationwide shortage of health care workers has made hiring and retention difficult, he said.
I watched the latest episode of South Park last night. At least we have them on our side. Here are two articles about the reactions from Noem and Vance. Noem is very thin-skinned despite all the surgical and cosmetic enhancements. This is from Daily Kos. “Poor Kristi Noem doesn’t like ‘South Park’ highlighting her awfulness.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is trying to play the victim after the satirical animated show “South Park” mercilessly mocked her on Wednesday night’s episode.
“It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It’s only the liberals and the extremists who do that,” Noem told right-wing podcaster Glenn Beck on Thursday night, referring to how “South Park” made fun of her obviously Botox- and filler-filled face. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly, they can’t. They just pick something petty like that.”
Of course, the show made fun of more than just Noem’s looks. It also ridiculed her cringeworthy cosplaying, the fact that she shot and killed her own puppy, and that she’s one of the biggest cheerleaders for President Donald Trump’s evil immigration plan.
But more than that, Noem claiming that only “liberals” make fun of how women look is insane, given that she works for Trump, the king of making crude and disgusting comments about how women look.
Over the years, he’s made fun of pop icon Cher’s plastic surgery, called actor Bette Midler “ugly,” said Angelina Jolie is “not a beauty,” said Rosie O’Donnell has a “fat, ugly face,” and accused MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski of “bleeding badly from a face-lift,” just to name a few.
Here’s JD Vance’s response via the Independent. “JD Vance responds to South Park’s brutal takedown of Trump admin. ‘Well, I’ve finally made it,’ Vance writes on X after mini-version of vice president seen waiting on Trump in animated episode.” They can dish it out, but they can’t take it, as the old saying goes.
Vice President JD Vance took to X on Thursday morning to respond to South Park’s brutal takedown of the Trump administration.
The South Park account shared an image of Vance and President Donald Trump with the caption “Welcome to Mar-a-Lago!”
“Well, I’ve finally made it,” Vance wrote.
The second episode of the 27th season of South Park took aim at the president and many of his colleagues and supporters. At one point, a mini version of the vice president is shown waiting on the president, who’s in bed with Satan.
The episode also includes a parody of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who became known for having shot her own dog. Meanwhile, Cartman imitates conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The episode outlines the financial struggles of Mr. Mackey after he was laid off from South Park Elementary. Mackey’s banker suggests that he join Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of their good salaries.
Mackey ends up joining ICE, watching an orientation video with Noem, which mocks the fact that she once confessed to killing her own dog.
“A few years ago, I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face, because sometimes doing what’s important means doing what’s hard,” she says in the episode before shooting a number of dogs during her ICE orientation speech.
Trump campaign alum Matt Mowers responded to Vance on X, saying being featured on South Park was “A key life milestone appreciated by any millennial.”
Poor Kristi Noem doesn't like 'South Park' highlighting her awfulness https://twp.ai/4ip5ur
— Tuck The Frumpers (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2025-08-08T17:30:24.000Z
Meanwhile, our foreign policy stinks as bad as the domestic policies. Both Putin and Netanyahu feel empowered to take over whatever they want. This is from Axios. “Even Republicans have questions about Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City.” The analysis is by Alexand Solender.
Some congressional Republicans are raising questions about Israel’s planned occupation of Gaza City as pro-Israel Democrats push back on the operation with unusual ferocity.
Why it matters: Israel’s coalition of political allies in the U.S. has become scrambled in recent weeks amid a growing humanitarian crisis is Gaza — and a coinciding drop in U.S. public opinion toward Israel.
- Lawmakers sympathetic to Israel are warning that the plan could be a logistical nightmare and warning the country to tread carefully and avoid further alienating the international community.
- It’s not just Democrats questioning the plan. “I’d like to know who is actually going to run it,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that oversees the Middle East, told Axios.
- Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), another member of the panel, told Axios: “Occupation for security also comes with the responsibility of providing humanitarian assistance and creating an economic future.”
State of play: The Israeli Security Cabinet on Thursday approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to have the IDF “take control” of Gaza City in an effort to defeat Hamas.
- In addition to occupying Gaza City, which is expected to take months and displace around 1 million Palestinian civilians, the IDF will also be charged with distributing humanitarian aid, Axios’ Barak Ravid reported.
- The IDF’s chief of staff pushed back during the Cabinet meeting, arguing the plan could endanger Israeli hostages in Gaza and lead to protracted Israeli military governance.
- President Trump, who has split with Netanyahu on allegations of famine in Gaza, is not planning to intervene to oppose the operation.
Driving the news: Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the roughly 100-member New Democrat Coalition and a vocal pro-Israel centrist, called the plan “tactically questionable and strategically self-defeating.”
“If implemented, the decision is more likely to play into Hamas’s original objectives in starting this war and further unite much of the world against Israel than it is to bring home the last surviving hostages and advance the security needs of the nation,” Schneider said in a statement.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), one of Democrats’ staunchest Israel backers, said in a statement that Israel is the “ultimate arbiter of its own security” but that “the war in Gaza is in danger of becoming a quagmire.”
Trump is still looking to solve the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, but Putin has him by the balls. This is from Bloomberg. “US and Russia Plan Truce to Cement Putin’s Gains in Ukraine.”
Washington and Moscow are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to people familiar with the matter.
US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as early as next week, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, the people said.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Such an outcome would represent a major win for Putin, who has long sought direct negotiations with the US on terms for ending the war that he started, sidelining Ukraine and its European allies. Zelenskiy risks being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it deal to accept the loss of Ukrainian territory, while Europe fears it would be left to monitor a ceasefire as Putin rebuilds his forces
And for all of Trump’s lying about it, The Daily Beast reports that “White House Did Have Secret Talks on Epstein Crisis. Trump had forced JD Vance to deny that a meeting was taking place.” This story is reported by Erikky Foster.
Turns out the Trump administration really did huddle behind closed doors to talk about the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite JD Vance’s public denial.
On Wednesday, the vice president dismissed mounting media reports claiming he was hosting secret Epstein talks at his house.
“It’s completely fake news,” Vance declared. President Donald Trump had told reporters, “I don’t know” and redirected them to the vice president.
Yet, top Trump administration officials did convene to map out next steps regarding the files on the late convicted sex offender, CNN reported, citing a source familiar with the logistics.
The meeting was reportedly relocated from Vance’s D.C. home to the White House. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were also in attendance, according to MSNBC.
It’s unclear whether the talks included Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who were initially reported to be joining the dinner at the vice president’s Naval Observatory mansion.
Vance’s supposed involvement in the talks had drawn criticism. Ever since Watergate, the Justice Department has kept criminal investigations separate from White House influence, to prevent any appearance of political interference.
One last story and then I’ll leave you to your weekend. This one from VOX has me screaming. “The White House has a preferred alternative to PBS. It may already be in countless classrooms. How the right-wing network PragerU could fill the void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s defunding.” They’ve stuck this abomination in Louisiana classrooms, and there’s nothing truthful in any of its materials.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced last week that it would shut down after Congress voted to claw back over $500 million of federal funding from the organization. The announcement imperils local PBS and NPR stations around the country that have provided news and educational content for kids for nearly half a century.
Amid the stripping of these federal funds, last month, the White House debuted a new educational partner at its launch event for its new Founders Museum exhibit: PragerU, a nonprofit organization that specializes in creating right-leaning educational short videos for adults and children. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon introduced the partnership, followed by PragerU CEO Marissa Streit.
For the White House exhibit, PragerU created AI-generated videos of the Founding Fathers delivering patriotic accounts of the Revolution. In one, an AI-generated John Adams borrows a catchphrase from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and tells the viewer, “Facts do not care about our feelings.”
Since its founding in 2009, PragerU has become a juggernaut in the conservative educational media space, with their videos reaching millions of followers across social media. The organization has helped launch the media careers of right-wing figures like Candace Owens. Their popular videos elevate narratives that have been sharply criticized as climate denialist, Islamophobic, and “misleading” about slavery.
PragerU’s partnership with the Department of Education is not the first time the conservative content mill has partnered with the government. Over the past few years, the organization has partnered with states and superintendents throughout the country to make their educational material widely available to public school children and teachers.
Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Laura Meckler, national education writer for the Washington Post, about how PragerU partnered with states to bring its content to the classroom and if the organization is poised to fill the educational void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
So, I agree with Rachel and Krugman. We’re a fascist state, and I don’t like it at all.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action List for today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #AmericanFascism #DOJToolOfVengence #SouthPark #TrumpStackingCourts
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Finally Friday Reads: Your Cassandra Daily
Nothing says Thanksgiving to me more than the WKRP Turkey Drop! Thank you, John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
My first short story remains in my scrapbook in its purply blue mimeograph ink. It has my drawing of Cassandra and my interpretation of my favorite Greek Character, who was dedicated to the Greek God Apollo but was fated to make true prophecies no one ever believed. I was drawn to her in my 5th-grade mythology class. I remember my mother listening to me once and starting to question me before she interrupted herself by telling me this. “I don’t know why I question you; you’re almost always right.” I usually don’t believe everything I read, but I remember it. Prognostication is less godly and more mathematical these days, but when you know what’s likely to happen when you do that S-VAR model based on solid theory and a new hypothesis, you don’t always want to welcome the results.
I’ve been running around with my hair on fire since the Orange Demon started obsessing about tariffs again. He tried them during his last Reign of Terror and nearly drove our farmers out of business. Congress had to rescue them with huge subsidies that paid them for not selling their crops or livestock. Trump started a Trade War with China. He needed a visit from Herbert Hoover’s Ghost and to listen to the huge chorus of economists who warned him, but he persisted. Luckily, it didn’t take out the U.S. economy, but it ran up the deficit and jeopardized the Agriculture sector.
This warning is from the AP. “Trump’s tariffs in his first term did little to alter the economy, but this time could be different.” Trump’s misunderstanding of tariffs could wreck the economies of North America. This analsyis comes from Josh Boak.
Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries.
The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared.
This time, though, his tariff threats might be different.
The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he’ll do what he says and what the consequences could be.
“There’s going to be a lot more tariffs, I mean, he’s pretty clear,” said Michael Stumo, the CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that has supported import taxes to help domestic manufacturing.
The president-elect posted on social media Monday that on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada until those countries satisfactorily stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the United States.
Those tariffs could essentially blow up the North American trade pact that Trump’s team negotiated during his initial term. But on Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and she had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States.
Trump also posted on Monday that Chinese imports would face additional tariffs of 10% until Beijing cracks down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl.
President Sheinbaum immediately denied Trump’s characterization of their conversation. This headline from HuffPo says it all. “Trump Mocked After Mexico’s President Blows Up His Brag About Their Call.” Josephine Harvey reports on the response.
Donald Trump seemed to offer alternative facts on Wednesday about his recent call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and was swiftly rebutted by the leader herself, prompting mockery on social media.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president-elect declared that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Shortly afterward, Sheinbaum shared a Spanish-language message about the conversation, writing, “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and communities.”
Both leaders characterized the call as positive. The two spoke after Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico as soon as he takes office. Trump said, “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He also threatened to put an “additional 10%” tariff on goods from China.
This week’s news was somewhat reminiscent of Trump’s claim ahead of the 2016 election that he would make Mexico pay for “100%” of a proposed wall at the U.S. border. Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president at the time, disagreed. Mexico did not pay.
Social media users sarcastically celebrated Trump’s fictional victory this week.
“All it took was one call. Donny deals,” journalist Sam Stein posted online.
Mike Nellis, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, said, “Trump thinks he convinced the President of Mexico to stop all migration across the border LOL.”
Olivia Troye, who was a White House official in Trump’s first term, offered a “Translation” of the president-elect’s comments about Mexico.
Just had a conversation with the President of Mexico who didn’t allow me to bully her, which left me confused about my charm…she pointed out that this is very bad…very bad for me if I do these tariffs…” Troye wrote.
China and Canada were also blunt about DonOld’s mischaracterizations of his conversations with their leaders. USA Today‘s Kim Hjelmgaard reported it this way. “‘Counter to facts and reality’: China, Mexico, Canada respond to Trump tariff threats.”
Officials in China, Mexico and Canada criticized Tuesday a pledge made by President-elect Donald Trump on social media to impose new tariffs on all three of the United States’ largest trading partners on the first day of his presidency.
Trump said the move, which appears to violate the terms of a free-trade deal Trump signed into law in 2020, is aimed at clamping down on drugs − fentanyl especially − and migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.
The president-elect said he would sign an executive order immediately after his inauguration introducing a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on goods from China.
Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a platform he owns. “It is time for them to pay a very big price!” He accused China in a separate post of failing to block smuggling of U.S.-bound fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
There was quick pushback to Trump’s comments from all three countries.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”
Mexico’s finance ministry said in a statement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump sponsored during his first term, provided “certainty” for investors. “The response to one tariff will be another, until we put at risk companies that we share,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said, naming General Motors and Ford, among others. Sheinbaum said her comments, read aloud in a press conference, were sent in a letter to Trump.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said the tariffs would be “devastating to workers and jobs” in both the U.S. and Canada.
A tariff is effectively a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country. Oil is the top U.S. import from Canada, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The largest category of goods imported to the U.S. from Mexico is cars and components for cars. The U.S. imports a significant amount of electronics from China. Some goods are exempt from tariffs because of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Businesses are already responding to the tariff threats. This will not be good for American Consumers. NBC News reports: “Here’s where consumers could feel the price pain if Trump’s tariffs go into effect. Trump has made threats about tariffs in the past. Businesses are nevertheless taking the latest threats seriously.” This guy hasn’t even taken the oath of office, and he’s already acting like he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
An estimate from The Budget Lab at Yale shared Wednesdaywith NBC News found that the cost to consumers from Trump’s proposed tariffs could reach as much as $1,200 in lost purchasing power on average based on 2023 incomes, assuming retaliatory duties on U.S. exports are put into place.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has already warned that any new tariffs imposed by the U.S. would be met with retaliatory ones by her country. Canada is similarly considering its own options, including possible tariffs on U.S. goods, according to The Associated Press.
America’s biggest import from Canada is oil — and any increase in energy prices would likely be felt throughout the economy.
“Another way to think about this is it’s 4 to 5 months of a normal year’s inflation in one fell swoop,” Ernie Tedeschi, The Budget Lab’s director and the former chief economist under the Biden administration, said in an email.
The three countries Trump has selected for a new round of targeted tariff proposals — China, Mexico and Canada — represent nearly half of all U.S. import volumes.
While Trump has insisted other countries end up paying the cost of tariffs, most economists agree those costs wind up getting passed on to shoppers. And at a time when rising prices remain a top concern, the types of goods that could see higher costs are the ones consumers interact with every day.
Some companies are warning that particularly import-heavy parts of the economy could be hit hard. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry warned Tuesday that any added costs on U.S. imports “will be shared by our customers.” Electronic goods account for the largest share of U.S. imports from China as of 2023.
“There’s very little in [the] consumer electronics space that is not imported. … These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” Barry said.
This is what happens when morons vote for a moron. David R. Lurie of Public Notice has this analysis on other Trump plans. These endanger our National Security. “Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s scheme to gut the intel agencies. It’s hard to envision a less suited intelligence chief. That’s a feature, not a bug.”
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Marc Zuckerberg perfects his role as Surrender Monkey by dining with the Dotard at Mara Lardo. This is from the BBC. “Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.” It was definitely a Baboon butt moment.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has visited Donald Trump at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, further evidence of the apparent thawing in their once frosty relations.
The president-elect already has a close, high-profile relationship with another of the leading figures in tech, X owner Elon Musk.
Historically, though, there has been no such closeness between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg – with Trump barred from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riots, and Trump threatening the Meta boss with jail if he interfered in the 2024 presidential election.
However, there has recently been evidence those strained relations are improving, culminating in Mr Zuckerberg dining with the president-elect at his Florida mansion.
“Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.
“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.
The Detroit Free Press featured an Op-Ed by the AG of Michigan, Dana Nessel. It is difficult not to notice the incredibly large number of Sexual Predators Trump has been appointing to his Cabinet and other leadership positions. It seems like a feature and not a bug, “Michigan AG Nessel: Trump cabinet picks show disdain for victims of sex assault.” We continue to see a parade of the stupid and the lawless.
Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.
Only a third of the estimated 440,000 victims over the age of 12 each year will ever report, often due to negative emotions such as guilt, shame, and self-blame.
Survivors feel they won’t be believed, so why bother reporting, opening themselves up to ridicule, judgment and shame?
So what is it we are telling victims of these brutal, life-altering crimes, when our President-elect seeks to elevate alleged fellow perpetrators to cabinet positions and other high levels of power in our government?
To lead the Department of Defense, Trump has nominated Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who settled an accusation that he raped a woman and entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the victim. To lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been accused of groping a young woman who worked for him as a babysitter on several occasions. For Secretary of Education – responsible for ensuring the schooling of our nation’s children – he nominated Linda McMahon, who has been sued for criminal negligence for enabling the grooming and sexual abuse of children by employees of her organization. And as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he nominated former Representative Matt Gaetz — who withdrew from consideration last week — the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, following accusations he paid minors for sex. And Trump still has more nominations to make.
With these nominations, we are telling survivors of sexual assault that they don’t matter, that their trauma is meaningless and that they should stay silent.
And they will.
The American Prospect calls them “The Rape Gang.”
The presumptive Secretary of Education is married to a man whose former employee alleges he forced her to perform sex acts with his friend for an hour and a half after he defecated on her head. The presumptive Commerce Secretary preemptively sued his former assistant in 2018, after her lawyer threatened to publicize “not pretty” 2 a.m. text messages she’d received from him and his wife. The presumptive Health and Human Services director’s explanation for forcibly groping a former nanny’s breasts while holding her hostage in a kitchen pantry was that he “had a very, very rambunctious youth”; he was 46 at the time. The White House efficiency czar, currently a defendant in a putative class-action lawsuit filed by eight former employees who accuse him of perpetrating an “Animal House” work environment of “rampant sexual harassment,” and paid a quarter of a million dollars to a flight attendant who says he got naked and asked her to touch his erect penis in exchange for the gift of a horse.
And of course the presumptive Defense Secretary was accused of raping a woman who was tasked with monitoring what she described to police as his “creeper vibes” after a Republican women’s conference at which he was a keynote speaker, just a month and change after the birth of his fourth child with a woman who was not his wife at the time. (Reader, she married him.)
The aggressive rapeyness of the second Donald Trump administration is so tyrannical it’s almost enough to make a girl wistful for Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who withdrew his name from attorney general contention yesterday (to make way for the despicable Pam Bondi) amid an orgy of leaks from two investigations into his sexploits with a 17-year-old procured by a convicted sex trafficker friend. Multiple witnesses testified that Gaetz did not actually know the 17-year-old was underage, you see, and that he ceased having sex with her when he found out.
We definitely have a kakistocracy coming our way. We can see the incompetence, the total lack of knowledge of policy, and the complete inappropriateness of every candidate for Cabinet. It comes from the ultimate dotard. The only thing we have going for us now is our resolve and the fact that the Republican Majority in both Houses is narrow. Both houses have also had lots of experience in gumming up the works for Trump. Trump’s so-called mandate is a bald-faced lie. The LA Times asks, “As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a ‘mandate’?” Of course, Trump will be oblivious to all that, so he’s relying heavily on executive mandates that may or may not be legal.” Jenny Jarvis has the details.
Though Trump overwhelmingly won the electoral college vote, his tally in the popular vote is hardly a landslide.
In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.
When Trump exaggerates his presidential mandate, he is not an outlier but drawing from bipartisan history.
In his victory speech on Nov. 6, President-elect Donald Trump claimed Americans had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
It’s a message his transition team has echoed in the last three weeks, referring to his “MAGA Mandate” and a “historic mandate for his agenda.”
But given that Trump’s lead in the popular vote has dwindled as more votes have been counted in California and other states that lean blue, there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change.
The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president-elect’s share of the popular vote now falls in the bottom half for American presidents — far below that of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964, defeating Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by nearly 23 percentage points.
In the last 75 years, only three presidents — John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000 — had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current lead.
“If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it,” said Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University.
There is a slim majority margin in the US House of Representatives. There is no mandate radical change there. This is from Politico, “Where the slim House margin might matter most.” The analysis is by Anthony Adragna.
Republicans are vowing an all-out war in the opening days of the next Congress against Biden administration regulations in areas as varied as energy, financial, housing and education policy.
They’re hoping for a redux of 2017 and 2018, when Republicans used their unified control of government and the powers of the Congressional Review Act to ax 16 regulations. With a coming 53-47 majority, GOP senators say they’re again primed to use the CRA, one of their most potent tools to undo Democratic policies — and one that tends to unite the often fractious Republican conference.
But — and it’s a major but — an extremely narrow House margin could make things hard to pull off, at least for the first couple of months of the Trump administration. While the GOP could lose as many as three votes in the Senate with Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) casting tie-breakers, the House very well be at a one-vote margin until early April (more on that math below).
Still, that hasn’t dampened Republicans’ enthusiasm around the CRA.
“We’re going to want to go and evaluate everything that fits into the jurisdiction” of the 1996 review law, incoming Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Inside Congress. Invoking it involves passing simple-majority votes in both chambers plus a presidential signature, no filibusters allowed.
President Joe Biden’s administration recognized this looming threat and prioritized early completion of rulemakings to shield them from congressional challenge. Still, dozens of regulations were finalized after Aug. 1, 2024, leaving them vulnerable to the CRA, according to Public Citizen, which closely tracks the potential use of the law. (That corresponds to the date identified by the Congressional Research Service after which rules might be vulnerable to revocation.)
Barrasso’s hardly alone with vows of aggressive use of the tool, which had only been successfully used once before Trump’s first term.
“We’ll do every possible regulation we can get to,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “It’s a wonderful tool for undoing the bureaucratic excess of the Biden administration.”
“On some of these crazy policies we ought to just get rid of them as fast as we can,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said he’d instructed his staff to find regulations that may be good targets for challenges.
“This is the only time the Congressional Review Act actually has teeth, otherwise it’s a messaging vehicle,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, referring to the first months of a new trifecta, since using the CRA effectively requires one party to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a relatively infrequent occurrence in modern politics.
Hopefully, this turns into a Can’t Do Anything Congress.
Have a good weekend! Hope you had a great day for feasting! I’m off to eat a turkey sandwich!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonnyDotardAndTheChaosCult #TrumpCabinetRapeGang
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Finally Friday Reads: Your Cassandra Daily
Nothing says Thanksgiving to me more than the WKRP Turkey Drop! Thank you, John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
My first short story remains in my scrapbook in its purply blue mimeograph ink. It has my drawing of Cassandra and my interpretation of my favorite Greek Character, who was dedicated to the Greek God Apollo but was fated to make true prophecies no one ever believed. I was drawn to her in my 5th-grade mythology class. I remember my mother listening to me once and starting to question me before she interrupted herself by telling me this. “I don’t know why I question you; you’re almost always right.” I usually don’t believe everything I read, but I remember it. Prognostication is less godly and more mathematical these days, but when you know what’s likely to happen when you do that S-VAR model based on solid theory and a new hypothesis, you don’t always want to welcome the results.
I’ve been running around with my hair on fire since the Orange Demon started obsessing about tariffs again. He tried them during his last Reign of Terror and nearly drove our farmers out of business. Congress had to rescue them with huge subsidies that paid them for not selling their crops or livestock. Trump started a Trade War with China. He needed a visit from Herbert Hoover’s Ghost and to listen to the huge chorus of economists who warned him, but he persisted. Luckily, it didn’t take out the U.S. economy, but it ran up the deficit and jeopardized the Agriculture sector.
This warning is from the AP. “Trump’s tariffs in his first term did little to alter the economy, but this time could be different.” Trump’s misunderstanding of tariffs could wreck the economies of North America. This analsyis comes from Josh Boak.
Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries.
The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared.
This time, though, his tariff threats might be different.
The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he’ll do what he says and what the consequences could be.
“There’s going to be a lot more tariffs, I mean, he’s pretty clear,” said Michael Stumo, the CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that has supported import taxes to help domestic manufacturing.
The president-elect posted on social media Monday that on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada until those countries satisfactorily stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the United States.
Those tariffs could essentially blow up the North American trade pact that Trump’s team negotiated during his initial term. But on Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and she had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States.
Trump also posted on Monday that Chinese imports would face additional tariffs of 10% until Beijing cracks down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl.
President Sheinbaum immediately denied Trump’s characterization of their conversation. This headline from HuffPo says it all. “Trump Mocked After Mexico’s President Blows Up His Brag About Their Call.” Josephine Harvey reports on the response.
Donald Trump seemed to offer alternative facts on Wednesday about his recent call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and was swiftly rebutted by the leader herself, prompting mockery on social media.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president-elect declared that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Shortly afterward, Sheinbaum shared a Spanish-language message about the conversation, writing, “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and communities.”
Both leaders characterized the call as positive. The two spoke after Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico as soon as he takes office. Trump said, “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He also threatened to put an “additional 10%” tariff on goods from China.
This week’s news was somewhat reminiscent of Trump’s claim ahead of the 2016 election that he would make Mexico pay for “100%” of a proposed wall at the U.S. border. Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president at the time, disagreed. Mexico did not pay.
Social media users sarcastically celebrated Trump’s fictional victory this week.
“All it took was one call. Donny deals,” journalist Sam Stein posted online.
Mike Nellis, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, said, “Trump thinks he convinced the President of Mexico to stop all migration across the border LOL.”
Olivia Troye, who was a White House official in Trump’s first term, offered a “Translation” of the president-elect’s comments about Mexico.
Just had a conversation with the President of Mexico who didn’t allow me to bully her, which left me confused about my charm…she pointed out that this is very bad…very bad for me if I do these tariffs…” Troye wrote.
China and Canada were also blunt about DonOld’s mischaracterizations of his conversations with their leaders. USA Today‘s Kim Hjelmgaard reported it this way. “‘Counter to facts and reality’: China, Mexico, Canada respond to Trump tariff threats.”
Officials in China, Mexico and Canada criticized Tuesday a pledge made by President-elect Donald Trump on social media to impose new tariffs on all three of the United States’ largest trading partners on the first day of his presidency.
Trump said the move, which appears to violate the terms of a free-trade deal Trump signed into law in 2020, is aimed at clamping down on drugs − fentanyl especially − and migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.
The president-elect said he would sign an executive order immediately after his inauguration introducing a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on goods from China.
Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a platform he owns. “It is time for them to pay a very big price!” He accused China in a separate post of failing to block smuggling of U.S.-bound fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
There was quick pushback to Trump’s comments from all three countries.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”
Mexico’s finance ministry said in a statement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump sponsored during his first term, provided “certainty” for investors. “The response to one tariff will be another, until we put at risk companies that we share,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said, naming General Motors and Ford, among others. Sheinbaum said her comments, read aloud in a press conference, were sent in a letter to Trump.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said the tariffs would be “devastating to workers and jobs” in both the U.S. and Canada.
A tariff is effectively a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country. Oil is the top U.S. import from Canada, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The largest category of goods imported to the U.S. from Mexico is cars and components for cars. The U.S. imports a significant amount of electronics from China. Some goods are exempt from tariffs because of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Businesses are already responding to the tariff threats. This will not be good for American Consumers. NBC News reports: “Here’s where consumers could feel the price pain if Trump’s tariffs go into effect. Trump has made threats about tariffs in the past. Businesses are nevertheless taking the latest threats seriously.” This guy hasn’t even taken the oath of office, and he’s already acting like he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
An estimate from The Budget Lab at Yale shared Wednesdaywith NBC News found that the cost to consumers from Trump’s proposed tariffs could reach as much as $1,200 in lost purchasing power on average based on 2023 incomes, assuming retaliatory duties on U.S. exports are put into place.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has already warned that any new tariffs imposed by the U.S. would be met with retaliatory ones by her country. Canada is similarly considering its own options, including possible tariffs on U.S. goods, according to The Associated Press.
America’s biggest import from Canada is oil — and any increase in energy prices would likely be felt throughout the economy.
“Another way to think about this is it’s 4 to 5 months of a normal year’s inflation in one fell swoop,” Ernie Tedeschi, The Budget Lab’s director and the former chief economist under the Biden administration, said in an email.
The three countries Trump has selected for a new round of targeted tariff proposals — China, Mexico and Canada — represent nearly half of all U.S. import volumes.
While Trump has insisted other countries end up paying the cost of tariffs, most economists agree those costs wind up getting passed on to shoppers. And at a time when rising prices remain a top concern, the types of goods that could see higher costs are the ones consumers interact with every day.
Some companies are warning that particularly import-heavy parts of the economy could be hit hard. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry warned Tuesday that any added costs on U.S. imports “will be shared by our customers.” Electronic goods account for the largest share of U.S. imports from China as of 2023.
“There’s very little in [the] consumer electronics space that is not imported. … These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” Barry said.
This is what happens when morons vote for a moron. David R. Lurie of Public Notice has this analysis on other Trump plans. These endanger our National Security. “Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s scheme to gut the intel agencies. It’s hard to envision a less suited intelligence chief. That’s a feature, not a bug.”
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Marc Zuckerberg perfects his role as Surrender Monkey by dining with the Dotard at Mara Lardo. This is from the BBC. “Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.” It was definitely a Baboon butt moment.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has visited Donald Trump at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, further evidence of the apparent thawing in their once frosty relations.
The president-elect already has a close, high-profile relationship with another of the leading figures in tech, X owner Elon Musk.
Historically, though, there has been no such closeness between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg – with Trump barred from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riots, and Trump threatening the Meta boss with jail if he interfered in the 2024 presidential election.
However, there has recently been evidence those strained relations are improving, culminating in Mr Zuckerberg dining with the president-elect at his Florida mansion.
“Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.
“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.
The Detroit Free Press featured an Op-Ed by the AG of Michigan, Dana Nessel. It is difficult not to notice the incredibly large number of Sexual Predators Trump has been appointing to his Cabinet and other leadership positions. It seems like a feature and not a bug, “Michigan AG Nessel: Trump cabinet picks show disdain for victims of sex assault.” We continue to see a parade of the stupid and the lawless.
Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.
Only a third of the estimated 440,000 victims over the age of 12 each year will ever report, often due to negative emotions such as guilt, shame, and self-blame.
Survivors feel they won’t be believed, so why bother reporting, opening themselves up to ridicule, judgment and shame?
So what is it we are telling victims of these brutal, life-altering crimes, when our President-elect seeks to elevate alleged fellow perpetrators to cabinet positions and other high levels of power in our government?
To lead the Department of Defense, Trump has nominated Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who settled an accusation that he raped a woman and entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the victim. To lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been accused of groping a young woman who worked for him as a babysitter on several occasions. For Secretary of Education – responsible for ensuring the schooling of our nation’s children – he nominated Linda McMahon, who has been sued for criminal negligence for enabling the grooming and sexual abuse of children by employees of her organization. And as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he nominated former Representative Matt Gaetz — who withdrew from consideration last week — the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, following accusations he paid minors for sex. And Trump still has more nominations to make.
With these nominations, we are telling survivors of sexual assault that they don’t matter, that their trauma is meaningless and that they should stay silent.
And they will.
The American Prospect calls them “The Rape Gang.”
The presumptive Secretary of Education is married to a man whose former employee alleges he forced her to perform sex acts with his friend for an hour and a half after he defecated on her head. The presumptive Commerce Secretary preemptively sued his former assistant in 2018, after her lawyer threatened to publicize “not pretty” 2 a.m. text messages she’d received from him and his wife. The presumptive Health and Human Services director’s explanation for forcibly groping a former nanny’s breasts while holding her hostage in a kitchen pantry was that he “had a very, very rambunctious youth”; he was 46 at the time. The White House efficiency czar, currently a defendant in a putative class-action lawsuit filed by eight former employees who accuse him of perpetrating an “Animal House” work environment of “rampant sexual harassment,” and paid a quarter of a million dollars to a flight attendant who says he got naked and asked her to touch his erect penis in exchange for the gift of a horse.
And of course the presumptive Defense Secretary was accused of raping a woman who was tasked with monitoring what she described to police as his “creeper vibes” after a Republican women’s conference at which he was a keynote speaker, just a month and change after the birth of his fourth child with a woman who was not his wife at the time. (Reader, she married him.)
The aggressive rapeyness of the second Donald Trump administration is so tyrannical it’s almost enough to make a girl wistful for Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who withdrew his name from attorney general contention yesterday (to make way for the despicable Pam Bondi) amid an orgy of leaks from two investigations into his sexploits with a 17-year-old procured by a convicted sex trafficker friend. Multiple witnesses testified that Gaetz did not actually know the 17-year-old was underage, you see, and that he ceased having sex with her when he found out.
We definitely have a kakistocracy coming our way. We can see the incompetence, the total lack of knowledge of policy, and the complete inappropriateness of every candidate for Cabinet. It comes from the ultimate dotard. The only thing we have going for us now is our resolve and the fact that the Republican Majority in both Houses is narrow. Both houses have also had lots of experience in gumming up the works for Trump. Trump’s so-called mandate is a bald-faced lie. The LA Times asks, “As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a ‘mandate’?” Of course, Trump will be oblivious to all that, so he’s relying heavily on executive mandates that may or may not be legal.” Jenny Jarvis has the details.
Though Trump overwhelmingly won the electoral college vote, his tally in the popular vote is hardly a landslide.
In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.
When Trump exaggerates his presidential mandate, he is not an outlier but drawing from bipartisan history.
In his victory speech on Nov. 6, President-elect Donald Trump claimed Americans had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
It’s a message his transition team has echoed in the last three weeks, referring to his “MAGA Mandate” and a “historic mandate for his agenda.”
But given that Trump’s lead in the popular vote has dwindled as more votes have been counted in California and other states that lean blue, there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change.
The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president-elect’s share of the popular vote now falls in the bottom half for American presidents — far below that of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964, defeating Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by nearly 23 percentage points.
In the last 75 years, only three presidents — John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000 — had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current lead.
“If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it,” said Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University.
There is a slim majority margin in the US House of Representatives. There is no mandate radical change there. This is from Politico, “Where the slim House margin might matter most.” The analysis is by Anthony Adragna.
Republicans are vowing an all-out war in the opening days of the next Congress against Biden administration regulations in areas as varied as energy, financial, housing and education policy.
They’re hoping for a redux of 2017 and 2018, when Republicans used their unified control of government and the powers of the Congressional Review Act to ax 16 regulations. With a coming 53-47 majority, GOP senators say they’re again primed to use the CRA, one of their most potent tools to undo Democratic policies — and one that tends to unite the often fractious Republican conference.
But — and it’s a major but — an extremely narrow House margin could make things hard to pull off, at least for the first couple of months of the Trump administration. While the GOP could lose as many as three votes in the Senate with Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) casting tie-breakers, the House very well be at a one-vote margin until early April (more on that math below).
Still, that hasn’t dampened Republicans’ enthusiasm around the CRA.
“We’re going to want to go and evaluate everything that fits into the jurisdiction” of the 1996 review law, incoming Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Inside Congress. Invoking it involves passing simple-majority votes in both chambers plus a presidential signature, no filibusters allowed.
President Joe Biden’s administration recognized this looming threat and prioritized early completion of rulemakings to shield them from congressional challenge. Still, dozens of regulations were finalized after Aug. 1, 2024, leaving them vulnerable to the CRA, according to Public Citizen, which closely tracks the potential use of the law. (That corresponds to the date identified by the Congressional Research Service after which rules might be vulnerable to revocation.)
Barrasso’s hardly alone with vows of aggressive use of the tool, which had only been successfully used once before Trump’s first term.
“We’ll do every possible regulation we can get to,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “It’s a wonderful tool for undoing the bureaucratic excess of the Biden administration.”
“On some of these crazy policies we ought to just get rid of them as fast as we can,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said he’d instructed his staff to find regulations that may be good targets for challenges.
“This is the only time the Congressional Review Act actually has teeth, otherwise it’s a messaging vehicle,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, referring to the first months of a new trifecta, since using the CRA effectively requires one party to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a relatively infrequent occurrence in modern politics.
Hopefully, this turns into a Can’t Do Anything Congress.
Have a good weekend! Hope you had a great day for feasting! I’m off to eat a turkey sandwich!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonnyDotardAndTheChaosCult #TrumpCabinetRapeGang
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Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Mental and Physical Health and Other News
Good Day!!
Trump sleeps during yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Nothing is normal in the U.S. anymore. The government is run by incompetent and corrupt people. Most concerning of all is that the “president is not only ignorant and incompetent, but also physically and mentally unstable. In addition, he lacks any sense of morality or empathy for other people.
Yesterday, historian Garrett Graff wrote about this for the second time at his Substack Doomsday Scenario: It’s time to talk about Donald Trump’s health (again).
Back in September, after Donald Trump disappeared from view for days and the internet went wild with rumors he was dead or hospitalized, I wrote about how the press needed to be leading a more serious conversation about Trump’s health and fitness for the presidency than it was having.
In the months since, the evidence has only grown that something serious is afflicting Trump.
And then last night happened.
Overnight, the President of the United States went on what can only be described as an unhinged social media fever dream. He posted on his social media site Truth Social hundreds of times in a short span — somewhere north of 150 times overnight, a wild mix of conspiracy theories, videos, and memes. It was extreme even for him.
During that end-of-August episode, the major questions were about the president’s physical health — his bruised hands and his swollen ankles — and in the months since, there have been more reasons and evidence that some part of the president is not well:
- He is stumbling, physically, through more of his events. Since August, he appears to be regularly dragging the right side of his body and struggles to walk in a straight line. Just watch this recent video of Trump boarding Marine One, where he appears to be leaning heavily on Melania Trump to stand. And then there was Trump’s Asia trip, where he seemed so lost, wandering aimlessly through a Japanese press event, that the late night shows set it to music.
- He appears to have fallen asleep in meetings on multiple recent occasions, including at an Oval Office meeting.
- And then there’s the MRI. In October, he went to Walter Reed for his “annual medical exam,” even though it was barely six months after his last “annual medical exam” at Walter Reed, and had a wide range of tests done, including an MRI. In recent days, Trump has gotten into a high-profile tiff with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who pressed him to release the results of that MRI. When asked, Trump couldn’t explain why he had the test. Finally, yesterday the White House released information saying it was a chest MRI for his cardiovascular and abdominal systems and that, as the White House always says he is, the tests showed everything was “perfectly normal” and in “excellent health.” (Gavin Newsom mocked Trump about the results.)
But that’s not the reason worth having a conversation about Trump’s health today.
Today, we should be having a conversation about Trump’s increasingly clear diminished mental capacity. This is a man, after all, with the sole launch authority for the nation’s nuclear weapons who, on a daily basis, seems increasingly more disconnected from reality, beholden to conspiracy thinking, and — most simply — absent-minded. It is not a recipe for global stability — and deserves more serious conversation than its getting.
Please go read Graff’s specific arguments in support of his claims. It’s not long.
Yesterday Trump held a cabinet meeting on video. He could barely stay awake most of the time. Of course, he had been up most of the night posting insane garbage on Truth Social, but still…
Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times: Trump Appears to Fight Sleep During Cabinet Meeting.
President Trump appeared to be fighting sleep on Tuesday during a cabinet meeting at the White House, closing his eyes and at times seeming to nod off, after he criticized media coverage about him facing the realities of aging in office.
Over the course of two hours and 18 minutes, the president, who is 79, sometimes appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open as cabinet officials went around the room describing their work and heaping praise on him….
Mr. Trump does appear frequently before the news media, and he takes questions far more often than his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., did. He is a regular, outsize presence in public life.
But Mr. Trump also appeared to have had a late night. He shared or posted dozens of times on social media on Monday night until nearly midnight.
Early in the meeting, Mr. Trump had complained that he was getting unfair scrutiny compared to Mr. Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race last year amid concerns in his own party about his age, mental acuity and ability to beat Mr. Trump.
“I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong. There will be someday,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s going to happen to all of us. But right now I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago. But who the hell knows?”
A bit more:
Mr. Trump then claimed he got “all A’s” on his physical.
But as Tuesday’s meeting went on, Mr. Trump seemed to grow tired.
About 50 minutes in, as Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, spoke, Mr. Trump struggled to keep his eyes open before he leaned back and forth in his chair. More than an hour and a half into the meeting, while Linda McMahon, the education secretary, spoke, he closed his eyes for five seconds before leaning back and looking at the ceiling. Roughly 20 minutes later, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke, the president leaned forward and appeared to close his eyes again.
It was the second time in less than a month that Mr. Trump appeared to doze off in public. During an Oval Office event on Nov. 6, the president’s eyes grew heavy and closed for several seconds.
Trump recently announced that he had had an MRI scan at his latest physical exam, but claimed he had no idea what it was for. Experts have questioned that, and finally his doctor released some confusing details.
Gina Kolata at The New York Times: Memo From Trump’s Doctor Cites ‘Excellent’ Scan but Offers Little Clarity.
The White House released a letter from President Trump’s physician on Monday about the results of “advanced imaging tests.” The statement, by Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the tests on his cardiovascular system and abdominal region showed the president “remains in excellent overall health.”
Trump in yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Some medical experts said it was unclear what tests doctors conducted, why they were done or what the results mean. And, they said, a person without symptoms would not have imaging tests as part of a routine medical exam under ordinary medical circumstances.
Mr. Trump, the oldest president ever sworn into his office, had M.R.I. scans in October as part of a semiannual physical exam. His annual physical was done in April.
On Sunday, during an appearance on “Meet the Press” on NBC News, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota called on the president to release the results after Mr. Trump had impugned Mr. Walz’s intelligence. Asked by a reporter on Sunday what part of his body was scanned, Mr. Trump said aboard Air Force One, “I have no idea — it was just an M.R.I.” He then said it was not a scan of his brain.
But Dr. Barbabella’s memo did not specify that Mr. Trump had a M.R.I. scan, which uses a magnetic field to produce images of soft tissues that do not show up on X-rays. Instead, the memo describes “advanced imaging” that it said was carried out “because men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health.”
The imaging was part of Mr. Trump’s “comprehensive executive physical,” Dr. Barbabella explained, referring to a detailed medical exam often offered to executives. Such exams can include tests that are not normally done when people have no symptoms of disease.
The memo said Mr. Trump’s cardiovascular imaging is “perfectly normal” with no signs that his arteries are narrowed. His “cardiovascular system shows excellent health,” the statement said.
It added that, “his abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,” and said, “this level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age and confirms that he remains in excellent overall health.”
They are obviously hiding something.
Dan Vergano at Scientific American: Trump’s MRI Is Not Standard ‘Preventive’ Care, Say Experts.
Medical experts are questioning the White House’s explanation for President Donald Trump’s MRI tests as “preventive.”
A Monday memo released by presidential physician Sean Barbabella described the results of “a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health” as normal. “This level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age,” Barbabella said.
Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, Trump’s doctor
But imaging experts who spoke to Scientific American expressed doubts as to Barbabella’s assertion that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening is typical preventive care. American Heart Association guidelines, for example, note that a cardiac MRI is usually requested because of existing heart conditions and often only after other tests.
“No, it is certainly not standard medical practice to perform screening MRIs of the heart and abdomen,” says radiologist and MRI expert Thomas Kwee of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Such imaging is typically only performed in the case of underlying disease, he says, or if there is suspicion of an underlying disease based on the patient’s medical history and physical examination. Barbabella’s memo said the imaging showed Trump was in “excellent health.”
Kwee’s comment echoed those of Medpage Today’s editor in chief, physician Jeremy Faust, who told CNN on Monday that “there’s really no such thing as routine prevention using an MRI.” Faust on Tuesday told Scientific American that the White House memo reference to “advanced imaging” left open questions as to exactly what tests Trump underwent. It could even possibly refer to a CT scan, for example, which is different than MRI. “If we knew exactly what imaging he received, it would give us a better idea of what conditions they are worried about,” Faust says.
More opinions:
“An assessment of a heart MRI and abdominal MRI is not ‘standard for an executive physical,’” says former White House physician Jeffrey Kuhlman, author of the book Transforming Presidential Healthcare. Though it’s not uncommon for physicians who have concierge-type practices to use total or partial body scans on their clients, “this is not evidence-based,” he adds….
Questions around Trump’s health have surfaced repeatedly in recent months. In July the White House reported that the president has chronic venous insufficiency, a blood vessel disease that affects circulation and can cause ankle swelling. And noticeable bruises on the back of Trump’s hands seen in February were attributed to “shaking hands all day” by Leavitt.
There is no solid evidence that executive MRI scans help people, Kwee says, either by diagnosing disease or extending their lifespan. “These scans can also lead to unexpected incidental findings and give false reassurance that there is no underlying disease.”
At least big media is beginning to talk about Trump’s obvious mental and physical health issues. We need them to start focusing on Trump’s age as much as they did Biden’s.
More important stories:
Judd Legum at Popular Information: Kushner’s Moscow mission wasn’t just corrupt. It was unconstitutional.
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has been traveling the world to participate in high-stakes foreign policy negotiations on behalf of the president. On Tuesday, Kushner traveled to Moscow and sat across the table from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. The entire United States delegation consisted only of Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kushner and Witkoff were joined at the table by an interpreter.
Kushner’s participation in the Moscow meeting — and the similar role he played in the Gaza negotiations — likely violates the law.
Representing the Trump administration in high-level foreign policy negotiations makes Kushner, at a minimum, a Special Government Employee (SGE). Under the law, an SGE is someone “who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform, with or without compensation, for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days, temporary duties either on a full-time or intermittent basis.”
Trump has not named Kushner an SGE. But a seminal 1977 opinion by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) found “an identifiable act of appointment may not be absolutely essential for an individual to be regarded as an officer or employee in a particular case where the parties omitted it for the purpose of avoiding the application of the conflict-of-interest laws.” In that opinion, the OLC considered the status of an individual who had not been named to any role by the president but “assumed considerable responsibility for coordinating the Administration’s activities in [a] particular area.” The OLC concluded that since the individual was “quite clearly engaging in a governmental function” and is “working under the direction or supervision of the President,” he should be considered an SGE.
Here, Kushner is engaged in activities that can only be conducted by government officials. The Logan Act bars private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments without authorization. Kushner is acting in an authorized capacity, under Trump’s direction, and that creates a host of legal issues.
A the same time, Kushner is receiving payments from foreign governments.
Since leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner has raised at least $4.8 billion for Affinity Partners, his private equity firm. Nearly 99% of Affinity Partners’ funding comes from foreign sources. The largest investment, $2 billion, came from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF).
The Saudi government pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million annually. Other investors, including the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pay annual fees of up to 2%. As of September 2024, Affinity Partners had collected $157 million in fees, mainly from Middle Eastern governments.
Kushner is continuing to collect these fees as he serves in a top foreign policy role for the Trump administration. This is precisely the kind of behavior the Foreign Emoluments Clause was designed to prevent. Kushner was one of two Americans on Tuesday engaged in high-stakes negotiations with Putin. But as the private equity manager for billions of foreign capital, Kushner has a fiduciary duty to advance the financial interests of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other foreign governments.
The Washington Post: Ex-Honduras president, convicted of drug trafficking, freed on Trump pardon.
Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted by a U.S. court last year on charges that he ran the Central American nation as a “narco-state” that helped send South American cocaine to the United States, has been released from federal prison after receiving a “full and unconditional” pardon from President Donald Trump.
Hernández, 57, was released Monday from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website and a BOP spokesperson.
Hernández, who was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was serving 45 years in prison on importation and weapons charges. U.S. prosecutors said he built his political career on millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers in Honduras and Mexico, and as president helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine to the United States while protecting traffickers from extradition and prosecution.
Juan Orlando Hernández
The Trump administration is waging what it says is a counternarcotics campaign off Venezuela. U.S. forces have destroyed at least 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing more than 80 people, that officials say were carrying drugs to the U.S., and U.S. troops and warships are massing in the region. Trump has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of sending violent criminals and drugs to the U.S.
But on Friday, Trump said that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” and that he would grant him a “Full and Complete Pardon.”
“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump’s decision to pardon an official who, a federal court found, helped flood the United States with cocaine angered congressional Democrats.
“Hernandez’s conviction last year finally held him accountable for all the Honduran and American blood on his hands and sent an unequivocal message: No drug trafficker is above the law, not even former presidents,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That is precisely why all Americans should be outraged by President Trump’s pardoning of former president Hernandez.”
I wonder how much Trump was paid for this pardon.
NBC News: Pentagon inspector general investigation into ‘Signalgate’ is complete.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday was given a final copy of the completed Defense Department Inspector General report that examined his sharing sensitive military information on a Signal group chat back in March, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
The much-anticipated report is expected to become public as early as this week, these people said.
Pete Hegseth
The report outlines the findings of a more than eight-month investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal, an encrypted but unclassified messaging app, to share details of planned U.S. military strikes in Yemen before they had begun.
Hegseth has maintained that he shared no classified information on the group chat….
The two people familiar with the inspector general investigation would not say what its conclusions are. The report was requested by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on March 27.
The group chat, which included other top members of President Donald Trump’s national security team, became public after an editor for The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently added.
Let’s hope it’s not a whitewash.
Aram Roston at The Guardian: Family of victim in alleged Trump ‘drug boat’ killings files first formal complaint.
A family in Colombia filed a petition on Tuesday with the Washington DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the Colombian citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in a US airstrike on 15 September.
The petition marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.
Alejandro Carranza Medina and his son. Photograph Courtesy of Carranza family
The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is designed to “promote and protect human rights in the Western Hemisphere”. The US is a member, and in March the Trump administration’s state department wrote: “The United States is pleased to be a strong supporter of the IACHR and is committed to continuing support for the Commission’s work and its independence. Preserving the IACHR’s autonomy is a pillar of our human rights policy in the region.”
The complaint was filed by Pittsburgh-based human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik. “On September 15, 2025, the United States military bombed the boat of Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina,” the filing says, “which Mr Carranza was sailing in the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia. Mr Carranza was killed in the process of this bombing.”
Kovalik identified Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, as the perpetrator, based on Hegseth’s own statements. “From numerous news reports, we know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats. Secretary Hegseth has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings,” the filing goes on.
The complaint adds: “US President Donald Trump has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein.”
NBC News: Trump administration pauses immigration applications from nationals of 19 countries.
The Trump administration on Tuesday halted immigration applications submitted by nationals from 19 countries that already faced restrictions on travel to the United States, according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo.
“USCIS has considered that this direction may result in delay to the adjudication of some pending applications and has weighed that consequence against the urgent need for the agency to ensure that applicants are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” the agency said in a four-page policy memo.
“Ultimately, USCIS has determined that the burden of processing delays that will fall on some applicants is necessary and appropriate in this instance, when weighed against the agency’s obligation to protect and preserve national security,” it added.
The New York Times first reported the immigration pause, which applies to both green card and citizenship applicants.
AP: Federal authorities plan operation in Minnesota focusing on Somali immigrants, AP source says.
Federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the planning.
The move comes as President Donald Trump again on Tuesday escalated rhetoric about Minnesota’s sizable Somali community, saying he did not want immigrants from the east African country in the U.S. because “they contribute nothing.”
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
The enforcement operation could begin in the coming days and is expected to focus on the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and people with final orders of deportation, the person said. Teams of immigration agents would spread across the Twin Cities in what the person described as a directed, high-priority sweep, though the plans remain subject to change.
The prospect of a crackdown is likely to deepen tensions in Minnesota — home to the nation’s largest Somali community. They’ve been coming since the 1990s, fleeing their country’s long civil war and drawn by Minnesota’s generous social programs.
An estimated 260,000 people of Somalian descent were living in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The largest population is in the Minneapolis area, home to about 84,000 residents, most of whom are American citizens. Ohio, Washington and California also have significant populations.
The New York Times: Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ He Doesn’t Want in the Country.
President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.
Even for Mr. Trump — who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries — his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.
“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Mr. Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House, during which he sometimes appeared to be fighting sleep. But when the subject turned to immigration, Mr. Trump made a point of lashing out.
“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.
He said Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”
“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”
Mr. Trump has used this kind of rhetoric throughout his rise in politics, including in his first term as president, when he demanded to know why the United States would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as “shithole countries,” rather than, say, Norway.
But he has long been especially fixated on Somalis in the United States, and on Ms. Omar in particular.
“His obsession with me is creepy,” Ms. Omar wrote in a post shortly after the cabinet meeting. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
Trump is garbage and he should be in prison.
Those are my recommended reads for you today. What’s on your mind?
#alejandroCarranzaMedina #colombia #donaldTrump #drSeanPBarbabella #formerHonduranPresidentJuanOrlandoHernandez #gaza #ilhanOmar #jaredKushner #minnesota #peteHegseth #saudiArabia #signalgate #somaliImmigrants #trumpMri #trumpsHealth #ukraine
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Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Mental and Physical Health and Other News
Good Day!!
Trump sleeps during yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Nothing is normal in the U.S. anymore. The government is run by incompetent and corrupt people. Most concerning of all is that the “president is not only ignorant and incompetent, but also physically and mentally unstable. In addition, he lacks any sense of morality or empathy for other people.
Yesterday, historian Garrett Graff wrote about this for the second time at his Substack Doomsday Scenario: It’s time to talk about Donald Trump’s health (again).
Back in September, after Donald Trump disappeared from view for days and the internet went wild with rumors he was dead or hospitalized, I wrote about how the press needed to be leading a more serious conversation about Trump’s health and fitness for the presidency than it was having.
In the months since, the evidence has only grown that something serious is afflicting Trump.
And then last night happened.
Overnight, the President of the United States went on what can only be described as an unhinged social media fever dream. He posted on his social media site Truth Social hundreds of times in a short span — somewhere north of 150 times overnight, a wild mix of conspiracy theories, videos, and memes. It was extreme even for him.
During that end-of-August episode, the major questions were about the president’s physical health — his bruised hands and his swollen ankles — and in the months since, there have been more reasons and evidence that some part of the president is not well:
- He is stumbling, physically, through more of his events. Since August, he appears to be regularly dragging the right side of his body and struggles to walk in a straight line. Just watch this recent video of Trump boarding Marine One, where he appears to be leaning heavily on Melania Trump to stand. And then there was Trump’s Asia trip, where he seemed so lost, wandering aimlessly through a Japanese press event, that the late night shows set it to music.
- He appears to have fallen asleep in meetings on multiple recent occasions, including at an Oval Office meeting.
- And then there’s the MRI. In October, he went to Walter Reed for his “annual medical exam,” even though it was barely six months after his last “annual medical exam” at Walter Reed, and had a wide range of tests done, including an MRI. In recent days, Trump has gotten into a high-profile tiff with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who pressed him to release the results of that MRI. When asked, Trump couldn’t explain why he had the test. Finally, yesterday the White House released information saying it was a chest MRI for his cardiovascular and abdominal systems and that, as the White House always says he is, the tests showed everything was “perfectly normal” and in “excellent health.” (Gavin Newsom mocked Trump about the results.)
But that’s not the reason worth having a conversation about Trump’s health today.
Today, we should be having a conversation about Trump’s increasingly clear diminished mental capacity. This is a man, after all, with the sole launch authority for the nation’s nuclear weapons who, on a daily basis, seems increasingly more disconnected from reality, beholden to conspiracy thinking, and — most simply — absent-minded. It is not a recipe for global stability — and deserves more serious conversation than its getting.
Please go read Graff’s specific arguments in support of his claims. It’s not long.
Yesterday Trump held a cabinet meeting on video. He could barely stay awake most of the time. Of course, he had been up most of the night posting insane garbage on Truth Social, but still…
Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times: Trump Appears to Fight Sleep During Cabinet Meeting.
President Trump appeared to be fighting sleep on Tuesday during a cabinet meeting at the White House, closing his eyes and at times seeming to nod off, after he criticized media coverage about him facing the realities of aging in office.
Over the course of two hours and 18 minutes, the president, who is 79, sometimes appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open as cabinet officials went around the room describing their work and heaping praise on him….
Mr. Trump does appear frequently before the news media, and he takes questions far more often than his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., did. He is a regular, outsize presence in public life.
But Mr. Trump also appeared to have had a late night. He shared or posted dozens of times on social media on Monday night until nearly midnight.
Early in the meeting, Mr. Trump had complained that he was getting unfair scrutiny compared to Mr. Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race last year amid concerns in his own party about his age, mental acuity and ability to beat Mr. Trump.
“I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong. There will be someday,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s going to happen to all of us. But right now I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago. But who the hell knows?”
A bit more:
Mr. Trump then claimed he got “all A’s” on his physical.
But as Tuesday’s meeting went on, Mr. Trump seemed to grow tired.
About 50 minutes in, as Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, spoke, Mr. Trump struggled to keep his eyes open before he leaned back and forth in his chair. More than an hour and a half into the meeting, while Linda McMahon, the education secretary, spoke, he closed his eyes for five seconds before leaning back and looking at the ceiling. Roughly 20 minutes later, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke, the president leaned forward and appeared to close his eyes again.
It was the second time in less than a month that Mr. Trump appeared to doze off in public. During an Oval Office event on Nov. 6, the president’s eyes grew heavy and closed for several seconds.
Trump recently announced that he had had an MRI scan at his latest physical exam, but claimed he had no idea what it was for. Experts have questioned that, and finally his doctor released some confusing details.
Gina Kolata at The New York Times: Memo From Trump’s Doctor Cites ‘Excellent’ Scan but Offers Little Clarity.
The White House released a letter from President Trump’s physician on Monday about the results of “advanced imaging tests.” The statement, by Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the tests on his cardiovascular system and abdominal region showed the president “remains in excellent overall health.”
Trump in yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Some medical experts said it was unclear what tests doctors conducted, why they were done or what the results mean. And, they said, a person without symptoms would not have imaging tests as part of a routine medical exam under ordinary medical circumstances.
Mr. Trump, the oldest president ever sworn into his office, had M.R.I. scans in October as part of a semiannual physical exam. His annual physical was done in April.
On Sunday, during an appearance on “Meet the Press” on NBC News, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota called on the president to release the results after Mr. Trump had impugned Mr. Walz’s intelligence. Asked by a reporter on Sunday what part of his body was scanned, Mr. Trump said aboard Air Force One, “I have no idea — it was just an M.R.I.” He then said it was not a scan of his brain.
But Dr. Barbabella’s memo did not specify that Mr. Trump had a M.R.I. scan, which uses a magnetic field to produce images of soft tissues that do not show up on X-rays. Instead, the memo describes “advanced imaging” that it said was carried out “because men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health.”
The imaging was part of Mr. Trump’s “comprehensive executive physical,” Dr. Barbabella explained, referring to a detailed medical exam often offered to executives. Such exams can include tests that are not normally done when people have no symptoms of disease.
The memo said Mr. Trump’s cardiovascular imaging is “perfectly normal” with no signs that his arteries are narrowed. His “cardiovascular system shows excellent health,” the statement said.
It added that, “his abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,” and said, “this level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age and confirms that he remains in excellent overall health.”
They are obviously hiding something.
Dan Vergano at Scientific American: Trump’s MRI Is Not Standard ‘Preventive’ Care, Say Experts.
Medical experts are questioning the White House’s explanation for President Donald Trump’s MRI tests as “preventive.”
A Monday memo released by presidential physician Sean Barbabella described the results of “a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health” as normal. “This level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age,” Barbabella said.
Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, Trump’s doctor
But imaging experts who spoke to Scientific American expressed doubts as to Barbabella’s assertion that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening is typical preventive care. American Heart Association guidelines, for example, note that a cardiac MRI is usually requested because of existing heart conditions and often only after other tests.
“No, it is certainly not standard medical practice to perform screening MRIs of the heart and abdomen,” says radiologist and MRI expert Thomas Kwee of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Such imaging is typically only performed in the case of underlying disease, he says, or if there is suspicion of an underlying disease based on the patient’s medical history and physical examination. Barbabella’s memo said the imaging showed Trump was in “excellent health.”
Kwee’s comment echoed those of Medpage Today’s editor in chief, physician Jeremy Faust, who told CNN on Monday that “there’s really no such thing as routine prevention using an MRI.” Faust on Tuesday told Scientific American that the White House memo reference to “advanced imaging” left open questions as to exactly what tests Trump underwent. It could even possibly refer to a CT scan, for example, which is different than MRI. “If we knew exactly what imaging he received, it would give us a better idea of what conditions they are worried about,” Faust says.
More opinions:
“An assessment of a heart MRI and abdominal MRI is not ‘standard for an executive physical,’” says former White House physician Jeffrey Kuhlman, author of the book Transforming Presidential Healthcare. Though it’s not uncommon for physicians who have concierge-type practices to use total or partial body scans on their clients, “this is not evidence-based,” he adds….
Questions around Trump’s health have surfaced repeatedly in recent months. In July the White House reported that the president has chronic venous insufficiency, a blood vessel disease that affects circulation and can cause ankle swelling. And noticeable bruises on the back of Trump’s hands seen in February were attributed to “shaking hands all day” by Leavitt.
There is no solid evidence that executive MRI scans help people, Kwee says, either by diagnosing disease or extending their lifespan. “These scans can also lead to unexpected incidental findings and give false reassurance that there is no underlying disease.”
At least big media is beginning to talk about Trump’s obvious mental and physical health issues. We need them to start focusing on Trump’s age as much as they did Biden’s.
More important stories:
Judd Legum at Popular Information: Kushner’s Moscow mission wasn’t just corrupt. It was unconstitutional.
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has been traveling the world to participate in high-stakes foreign policy negotiations on behalf of the president. On Tuesday, Kushner traveled to Moscow and sat across the table from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. The entire United States delegation consisted only of Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kushner and Witkoff were joined at the table by an interpreter.
Kushner’s participation in the Moscow meeting — and the similar role he played in the Gaza negotiations — likely violates the law.
Representing the Trump administration in high-level foreign policy negotiations makes Kushner, at a minimum, a Special Government Employee (SGE). Under the law, an SGE is someone “who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform, with or without compensation, for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days, temporary duties either on a full-time or intermittent basis.”
Trump has not named Kushner an SGE. But a seminal 1977 opinion by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) found “an identifiable act of appointment may not be absolutely essential for an individual to be regarded as an officer or employee in a particular case where the parties omitted it for the purpose of avoiding the application of the conflict-of-interest laws.” In that opinion, the OLC considered the status of an individual who had not been named to any role by the president but “assumed considerable responsibility for coordinating the Administration’s activities in [a] particular area.” The OLC concluded that since the individual was “quite clearly engaging in a governmental function” and is “working under the direction or supervision of the President,” he should be considered an SGE.
Here, Kushner is engaged in activities that can only be conducted by government officials. The Logan Act bars private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments without authorization. Kushner is acting in an authorized capacity, under Trump’s direction, and that creates a host of legal issues.
A the same time, Kushner is receiving payments from foreign governments.
Since leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner has raised at least $4.8 billion for Affinity Partners, his private equity firm. Nearly 99% of Affinity Partners’ funding comes from foreign sources. The largest investment, $2 billion, came from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF).
The Saudi government pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million annually. Other investors, including the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pay annual fees of up to 2%. As of September 2024, Affinity Partners had collected $157 million in fees, mainly from Middle Eastern governments.
Kushner is continuing to collect these fees as he serves in a top foreign policy role for the Trump administration. This is precisely the kind of behavior the Foreign Emoluments Clause was designed to prevent. Kushner was one of two Americans on Tuesday engaged in high-stakes negotiations with Putin. But as the private equity manager for billions of foreign capital, Kushner has a fiduciary duty to advance the financial interests of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other foreign governments.
The Washington Post: Ex-Honduras president, convicted of drug trafficking, freed on Trump pardon.
Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted by a U.S. court last year on charges that he ran the Central American nation as a “narco-state” that helped send South American cocaine to the United States, has been released from federal prison after receiving a “full and unconditional” pardon from President Donald Trump.
Hernández, 57, was released Monday from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website and a BOP spokesperson.
Hernández, who was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was serving 45 years in prison on importation and weapons charges. U.S. prosecutors said he built his political career on millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers in Honduras and Mexico, and as president helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine to the United States while protecting traffickers from extradition and prosecution.
Juan Orlando Hernández
The Trump administration is waging what it says is a counternarcotics campaign off Venezuela. U.S. forces have destroyed at least 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing more than 80 people, that officials say were carrying drugs to the U.S., and U.S. troops and warships are massing in the region. Trump has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of sending violent criminals and drugs to the U.S.
But on Friday, Trump said that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” and that he would grant him a “Full and Complete Pardon.”
“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump’s decision to pardon an official who, a federal court found, helped flood the United States with cocaine angered congressional Democrats.
“Hernandez’s conviction last year finally held him accountable for all the Honduran and American blood on his hands and sent an unequivocal message: No drug trafficker is above the law, not even former presidents,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That is precisely why all Americans should be outraged by President Trump’s pardoning of former president Hernandez.”
I wonder how much Trump was paid for this pardon.
NBC News: Pentagon inspector general investigation into ‘Signalgate’ is complete.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday was given a final copy of the completed Defense Department Inspector General report that examined his sharing sensitive military information on a Signal group chat back in March, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
The much-anticipated report is expected to become public as early as this week, these people said.
Pete Hegseth
The report outlines the findings of a more than eight-month investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal, an encrypted but unclassified messaging app, to share details of planned U.S. military strikes in Yemen before they had begun.
Hegseth has maintained that he shared no classified information on the group chat….
The two people familiar with the inspector general investigation would not say what its conclusions are. The report was requested by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on March 27.
The group chat, which included other top members of President Donald Trump’s national security team, became public after an editor for The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently added.
Let’s hope it’s not a whitewash.
Aram Roston at The Guardian: Family of victim in alleged Trump ‘drug boat’ killings files first formal complaint.
A family in Colombia filed a petition on Tuesday with the Washington DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the Colombian citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in a US airstrike on 15 September.
The petition marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.
Alejandro Carranza Medina and his son. Photograph Courtesy of Carranza family
The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is designed to “promote and protect human rights in the Western Hemisphere”. The US is a member, and in March the Trump administration’s state department wrote: “The United States is pleased to be a strong supporter of the IACHR and is committed to continuing support for the Commission’s work and its independence. Preserving the IACHR’s autonomy is a pillar of our human rights policy in the region.”
The complaint was filed by Pittsburgh-based human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik. “On September 15, 2025, the United States military bombed the boat of Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina,” the filing says, “which Mr Carranza was sailing in the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia. Mr Carranza was killed in the process of this bombing.”
Kovalik identified Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, as the perpetrator, based on Hegseth’s own statements. “From numerous news reports, we know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats. Secretary Hegseth has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings,” the filing goes on.
The complaint adds: “US President Donald Trump has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein.”
NBC News: Trump administration pauses immigration applications from nationals of 19 countries.
The Trump administration on Tuesday halted immigration applications submitted by nationals from 19 countries that already faced restrictions on travel to the United States, according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo.
“USCIS has considered that this direction may result in delay to the adjudication of some pending applications and has weighed that consequence against the urgent need for the agency to ensure that applicants are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” the agency said in a four-page policy memo.
“Ultimately, USCIS has determined that the burden of processing delays that will fall on some applicants is necessary and appropriate in this instance, when weighed against the agency’s obligation to protect and preserve national security,” it added.
The New York Times first reported the immigration pause, which applies to both green card and citizenship applicants.
AP: Federal authorities plan operation in Minnesota focusing on Somali immigrants, AP source says.
Federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the planning.
The move comes as President Donald Trump again on Tuesday escalated rhetoric about Minnesota’s sizable Somali community, saying he did not want immigrants from the east African country in the U.S. because “they contribute nothing.”
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
The enforcement operation could begin in the coming days and is expected to focus on the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and people with final orders of deportation, the person said. Teams of immigration agents would spread across the Twin Cities in what the person described as a directed, high-priority sweep, though the plans remain subject to change.
The prospect of a crackdown is likely to deepen tensions in Minnesota — home to the nation’s largest Somali community. They’ve been coming since the 1990s, fleeing their country’s long civil war and drawn by Minnesota’s generous social programs.
An estimated 260,000 people of Somalian descent were living in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The largest population is in the Minneapolis area, home to about 84,000 residents, most of whom are American citizens. Ohio, Washington and California also have significant populations.
The New York Times: Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ He Doesn’t Want in the Country.
President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.
Even for Mr. Trump — who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries — his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.
“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Mr. Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House, during which he sometimes appeared to be fighting sleep. But when the subject turned to immigration, Mr. Trump made a point of lashing out.
“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.
He said Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”
“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”
Mr. Trump has used this kind of rhetoric throughout his rise in politics, including in his first term as president, when he demanded to know why the United States would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as “shithole countries,” rather than, say, Norway.
But he has long been especially fixated on Somalis in the United States, and on Ms. Omar in particular.
“His obsession with me is creepy,” Ms. Omar wrote in a post shortly after the cabinet meeting. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
Trump is garbage and he should be in prison.
Those are my recommended reads for you today. What’s on your mind?
#alejandroCarranzaMedina #colombia #donaldTrump #drSeanPBarbabella #formerHonduranPresidentJuanOrlandoHernandez #gaza #ilhanOmar #jaredKushner #minnesota #peteHegseth #saudiArabia #signalgate #somaliImmigrants #trumpMri #trumpsHealth #ukraine
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Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Mental and Physical Health and Other News
Good Day!!
Trump sleeps during yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Nothing is normal in the U.S. anymore. The government is run by incompetent and corrupt people. Most concerning of all is that the “president is not only ignorant and incompetent, but also physically and mentally unstable. In addition, he lacks any sense of morality or empathy for other people.
Yesterday, historian Garrett Graff wrote about this for the second time at his Substack Doomsday Scenario: It’s time to talk about Donald Trump’s health (again).
Back in September, after Donald Trump disappeared from view for days and the internet went wild with rumors he was dead or hospitalized, I wrote about how the press needed to be leading a more serious conversation about Trump’s health and fitness for the presidency than it was having.
In the months since, the evidence has only grown that something serious is afflicting Trump.
And then last night happened.
Overnight, the President of the United States went on what can only be described as an unhinged social media fever dream. He posted on his social media site Truth Social hundreds of times in a short span — somewhere north of 150 times overnight, a wild mix of conspiracy theories, videos, and memes. It was extreme even for him.
During that end-of-August episode, the major questions were about the president’s physical health — his bruised hands and his swollen ankles — and in the months since, there have been more reasons and evidence that some part of the president is not well:
- He is stumbling, physically, through more of his events. Since August, he appears to be regularly dragging the right side of his body and struggles to walk in a straight line. Just watch this recent video of Trump boarding Marine One, where he appears to be leaning heavily on Melania Trump to stand. And then there was Trump’s Asia trip, where he seemed so lost, wandering aimlessly through a Japanese press event, that the late night shows set it to music.
- He appears to have fallen asleep in meetings on multiple recent occasions, including at an Oval Office meeting.
- And then there’s the MRI. In October, he went to Walter Reed for his “annual medical exam,” even though it was barely six months after his last “annual medical exam” at Walter Reed, and had a wide range of tests done, including an MRI. In recent days, Trump has gotten into a high-profile tiff with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who pressed him to release the results of that MRI. When asked, Trump couldn’t explain why he had the test. Finally, yesterday the White House released information saying it was a chest MRI for his cardiovascular and abdominal systems and that, as the White House always says he is, the tests showed everything was “perfectly normal” and in “excellent health.” (Gavin Newsom mocked Trump about the results.)
But that’s not the reason worth having a conversation about Trump’s health today.
Today, we should be having a conversation about Trump’s increasingly clear diminished mental capacity. This is a man, after all, with the sole launch authority for the nation’s nuclear weapons who, on a daily basis, seems increasingly more disconnected from reality, beholden to conspiracy thinking, and — most simply — absent-minded. It is not a recipe for global stability — and deserves more serious conversation than its getting.
Please go read Graff’s specific arguments in support of his claims. It’s not long.
Yesterday Trump held a cabinet meeting on video. He could barely stay awake most of the time. Of course, he had been up most of the night posting insane garbage on Truth Social, but still…
Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times: Trump Appears to Fight Sleep During Cabinet Meeting.
President Trump appeared to be fighting sleep on Tuesday during a cabinet meeting at the White House, closing his eyes and at times seeming to nod off, after he criticized media coverage about him facing the realities of aging in office.
Over the course of two hours and 18 minutes, the president, who is 79, sometimes appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open as cabinet officials went around the room describing their work and heaping praise on him….
Mr. Trump does appear frequently before the news media, and he takes questions far more often than his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., did. He is a regular, outsize presence in public life.
But Mr. Trump also appeared to have had a late night. He shared or posted dozens of times on social media on Monday night until nearly midnight.
Early in the meeting, Mr. Trump had complained that he was getting unfair scrutiny compared to Mr. Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race last year amid concerns in his own party about his age, mental acuity and ability to beat Mr. Trump.
“I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong. There will be someday,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s going to happen to all of us. But right now I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago. But who the hell knows?”
A bit more:
Mr. Trump then claimed he got “all A’s” on his physical.
But as Tuesday’s meeting went on, Mr. Trump seemed to grow tired.
About 50 minutes in, as Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, spoke, Mr. Trump struggled to keep his eyes open before he leaned back and forth in his chair. More than an hour and a half into the meeting, while Linda McMahon, the education secretary, spoke, he closed his eyes for five seconds before leaning back and looking at the ceiling. Roughly 20 minutes later, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke, the president leaned forward and appeared to close his eyes again.
It was the second time in less than a month that Mr. Trump appeared to doze off in public. During an Oval Office event on Nov. 6, the president’s eyes grew heavy and closed for several seconds.
Trump recently announced that he had had an MRI scan at his latest physical exam, but claimed he had no idea what it was for. Experts have questioned that, and finally his doctor released some confusing details.
Gina Kolata at The New York Times: Memo From Trump’s Doctor Cites ‘Excellent’ Scan but Offers Little Clarity.
The White House released a letter from President Trump’s physician on Monday about the results of “advanced imaging tests.” The statement, by Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the tests on his cardiovascular system and abdominal region showed the president “remains in excellent overall health.”
Trump in yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Some medical experts said it was unclear what tests doctors conducted, why they were done or what the results mean. And, they said, a person without symptoms would not have imaging tests as part of a routine medical exam under ordinary medical circumstances.
Mr. Trump, the oldest president ever sworn into his office, had M.R.I. scans in October as part of a semiannual physical exam. His annual physical was done in April.
On Sunday, during an appearance on “Meet the Press” on NBC News, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota called on the president to release the results after Mr. Trump had impugned Mr. Walz’s intelligence. Asked by a reporter on Sunday what part of his body was scanned, Mr. Trump said aboard Air Force One, “I have no idea — it was just an M.R.I.” He then said it was not a scan of his brain.
But Dr. Barbabella’s memo did not specify that Mr. Trump had a M.R.I. scan, which uses a magnetic field to produce images of soft tissues that do not show up on X-rays. Instead, the memo describes “advanced imaging” that it said was carried out “because men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health.”
The imaging was part of Mr. Trump’s “comprehensive executive physical,” Dr. Barbabella explained, referring to a detailed medical exam often offered to executives. Such exams can include tests that are not normally done when people have no symptoms of disease.
The memo said Mr. Trump’s cardiovascular imaging is “perfectly normal” with no signs that his arteries are narrowed. His “cardiovascular system shows excellent health,” the statement said.
It added that, “his abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,” and said, “this level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age and confirms that he remains in excellent overall health.”
They are obviously hiding something.
Dan Vergano at Scientific American: Trump’s MRI Is Not Standard ‘Preventive’ Care, Say Experts.
Medical experts are questioning the White House’s explanation for President Donald Trump’s MRI tests as “preventive.”
A Monday memo released by presidential physician Sean Barbabella described the results of “a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health” as normal. “This level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age,” Barbabella said.
Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, Trump’s doctor
But imaging experts who spoke to Scientific American expressed doubts as to Barbabella’s assertion that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening is typical preventive care. American Heart Association guidelines, for example, note that a cardiac MRI is usually requested because of existing heart conditions and often only after other tests.
“No, it is certainly not standard medical practice to perform screening MRIs of the heart and abdomen,” says radiologist and MRI expert Thomas Kwee of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Such imaging is typically only performed in the case of underlying disease, he says, or if there is suspicion of an underlying disease based on the patient’s medical history and physical examination. Barbabella’s memo said the imaging showed Trump was in “excellent health.”
Kwee’s comment echoed those of Medpage Today’s editor in chief, physician Jeremy Faust, who told CNN on Monday that “there’s really no such thing as routine prevention using an MRI.” Faust on Tuesday told Scientific American that the White House memo reference to “advanced imaging” left open questions as to exactly what tests Trump underwent. It could even possibly refer to a CT scan, for example, which is different than MRI. “If we knew exactly what imaging he received, it would give us a better idea of what conditions they are worried about,” Faust says.
More opinions:
“An assessment of a heart MRI and abdominal MRI is not ‘standard for an executive physical,’” says former White House physician Jeffrey Kuhlman, author of the book Transforming Presidential Healthcare. Though it’s not uncommon for physicians who have concierge-type practices to use total or partial body scans on their clients, “this is not evidence-based,” he adds….
Questions around Trump’s health have surfaced repeatedly in recent months. In July the White House reported that the president has chronic venous insufficiency, a blood vessel disease that affects circulation and can cause ankle swelling. And noticeable bruises on the back of Trump’s hands seen in February were attributed to “shaking hands all day” by Leavitt.
There is no solid evidence that executive MRI scans help people, Kwee says, either by diagnosing disease or extending their lifespan. “These scans can also lead to unexpected incidental findings and give false reassurance that there is no underlying disease.”
At least big media is beginning to talk about Trump’s obvious mental and physical health issues. We need them to start focusing on Trump’s age as much as they did Biden’s.
More important stories:
Judd Legum at Popular Information: Kushner’s Moscow mission wasn’t just corrupt. It was unconstitutional.
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has been traveling the world to participate in high-stakes foreign policy negotiations on behalf of the president. On Tuesday, Kushner traveled to Moscow and sat across the table from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. The entire United States delegation consisted only of Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kushner and Witkoff were joined at the table by an interpreter.
Kushner’s participation in the Moscow meeting — and the similar role he played in the Gaza negotiations — likely violates the law.
Representing the Trump administration in high-level foreign policy negotiations makes Kushner, at a minimum, a Special Government Employee (SGE). Under the law, an SGE is someone “who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform, with or without compensation, for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days, temporary duties either on a full-time or intermittent basis.”
Trump has not named Kushner an SGE. But a seminal 1977 opinion by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) found “an identifiable act of appointment may not be absolutely essential for an individual to be regarded as an officer or employee in a particular case where the parties omitted it for the purpose of avoiding the application of the conflict-of-interest laws.” In that opinion, the OLC considered the status of an individual who had not been named to any role by the president but “assumed considerable responsibility for coordinating the Administration’s activities in [a] particular area.” The OLC concluded that since the individual was “quite clearly engaging in a governmental function” and is “working under the direction or supervision of the President,” he should be considered an SGE.
Here, Kushner is engaged in activities that can only be conducted by government officials. The Logan Act bars private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments without authorization. Kushner is acting in an authorized capacity, under Trump’s direction, and that creates a host of legal issues.
A the same time, Kushner is receiving payments from foreign governments.
Since leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner has raised at least $4.8 billion for Affinity Partners, his private equity firm. Nearly 99% of Affinity Partners’ funding comes from foreign sources. The largest investment, $2 billion, came from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF).
The Saudi government pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million annually. Other investors, including the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pay annual fees of up to 2%. As of September 2024, Affinity Partners had collected $157 million in fees, mainly from Middle Eastern governments.
Kushner is continuing to collect these fees as he serves in a top foreign policy role for the Trump administration. This is precisely the kind of behavior the Foreign Emoluments Clause was designed to prevent. Kushner was one of two Americans on Tuesday engaged in high-stakes negotiations with Putin. But as the private equity manager for billions of foreign capital, Kushner has a fiduciary duty to advance the financial interests of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other foreign governments.
The Washington Post: Ex-Honduras president, convicted of drug trafficking, freed on Trump pardon.
Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted by a U.S. court last year on charges that he ran the Central American nation as a “narco-state” that helped send South American cocaine to the United States, has been released from federal prison after receiving a “full and unconditional” pardon from President Donald Trump.
Hernández, 57, was released Monday from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website and a BOP spokesperson.
Hernández, who was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was serving 45 years in prison on importation and weapons charges. U.S. prosecutors said he built his political career on millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers in Honduras and Mexico, and as president helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine to the United States while protecting traffickers from extradition and prosecution.
Juan Orlando Hernández
The Trump administration is waging what it says is a counternarcotics campaign off Venezuela. U.S. forces have destroyed at least 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing more than 80 people, that officials say were carrying drugs to the U.S., and U.S. troops and warships are massing in the region. Trump has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of sending violent criminals and drugs to the U.S.
But on Friday, Trump said that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” and that he would grant him a “Full and Complete Pardon.”
“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump’s decision to pardon an official who, a federal court found, helped flood the United States with cocaine angered congressional Democrats.
“Hernandez’s conviction last year finally held him accountable for all the Honduran and American blood on his hands and sent an unequivocal message: No drug trafficker is above the law, not even former presidents,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That is precisely why all Americans should be outraged by President Trump’s pardoning of former president Hernandez.”
I wonder how much Trump was paid for this pardon.
NBC News: Pentagon inspector general investigation into ‘Signalgate’ is complete.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday was given a final copy of the completed Defense Department Inspector General report that examined his sharing sensitive military information on a Signal group chat back in March, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
The much-anticipated report is expected to become public as early as this week, these people said.
Pete Hegseth
The report outlines the findings of a more than eight-month investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal, an encrypted but unclassified messaging app, to share details of planned U.S. military strikes in Yemen before they had begun.
Hegseth has maintained that he shared no classified information on the group chat….
The two people familiar with the inspector general investigation would not say what its conclusions are. The report was requested by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on March 27.
The group chat, which included other top members of President Donald Trump’s national security team, became public after an editor for The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently added.
Let’s hope it’s not a whitewash.
Aram Roston at The Guardian: Family of victim in alleged Trump ‘drug boat’ killings files first formal complaint.
A family in Colombia filed a petition on Tuesday with the Washington DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the Colombian citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in a US airstrike on 15 September.
The petition marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.
Alejandro Carranza Medina and his son. Photograph Courtesy of Carranza family
The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is designed to “promote and protect human rights in the Western Hemisphere”. The US is a member, and in March the Trump administration’s state department wrote: “The United States is pleased to be a strong supporter of the IACHR and is committed to continuing support for the Commission’s work and its independence. Preserving the IACHR’s autonomy is a pillar of our human rights policy in the region.”
The complaint was filed by Pittsburgh-based human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik. “On September 15, 2025, the United States military bombed the boat of Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina,” the filing says, “which Mr Carranza was sailing in the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia. Mr Carranza was killed in the process of this bombing.”
Kovalik identified Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, as the perpetrator, based on Hegseth’s own statements. “From numerous news reports, we know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats. Secretary Hegseth has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings,” the filing goes on.
The complaint adds: “US President Donald Trump has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein.”
NBC News: Trump administration pauses immigration applications from nationals of 19 countries.
The Trump administration on Tuesday halted immigration applications submitted by nationals from 19 countries that already faced restrictions on travel to the United States, according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo.
“USCIS has considered that this direction may result in delay to the adjudication of some pending applications and has weighed that consequence against the urgent need for the agency to ensure that applicants are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” the agency said in a four-page policy memo.
“Ultimately, USCIS has determined that the burden of processing delays that will fall on some applicants is necessary and appropriate in this instance, when weighed against the agency’s obligation to protect and preserve national security,” it added.
The New York Times first reported the immigration pause, which applies to both green card and citizenship applicants.
AP: Federal authorities plan operation in Minnesota focusing on Somali immigrants, AP source says.
Federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the planning.
The move comes as President Donald Trump again on Tuesday escalated rhetoric about Minnesota’s sizable Somali community, saying he did not want immigrants from the east African country in the U.S. because “they contribute nothing.”
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
The enforcement operation could begin in the coming days and is expected to focus on the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and people with final orders of deportation, the person said. Teams of immigration agents would spread across the Twin Cities in what the person described as a directed, high-priority sweep, though the plans remain subject to change.
The prospect of a crackdown is likely to deepen tensions in Minnesota — home to the nation’s largest Somali community. They’ve been coming since the 1990s, fleeing their country’s long civil war and drawn by Minnesota’s generous social programs.
An estimated 260,000 people of Somalian descent were living in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The largest population is in the Minneapolis area, home to about 84,000 residents, most of whom are American citizens. Ohio, Washington and California also have significant populations.
The New York Times: Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ He Doesn’t Want in the Country.
President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.
Even for Mr. Trump — who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries — his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.
“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Mr. Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House, during which he sometimes appeared to be fighting sleep. But when the subject turned to immigration, Mr. Trump made a point of lashing out.
“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.
He said Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”
“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”
Mr. Trump has used this kind of rhetoric throughout his rise in politics, including in his first term as president, when he demanded to know why the United States would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as “shithole countries,” rather than, say, Norway.
But he has long been especially fixated on Somalis in the United States, and on Ms. Omar in particular.
“His obsession with me is creepy,” Ms. Omar wrote in a post shortly after the cabinet meeting. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
Trump is garbage and he should be in prison.
Those are my recommended reads for you today. What’s on your mind?
#alejandroCarranzaMedina #colombia #donaldTrump #drSeanPBarbabella #formerHonduranPresidentJuanOrlandoHernandez #gaza #ilhanOmar #jaredKushner #minnesota #peteHegseth #saudiArabia #signalgate #somaliImmigrants #trumpMri #trumpsHealth #ukraine
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Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Mental and Physical Health and Other News
Good Day!!
Trump sleeps during yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Nothing is normal in the U.S. anymore. The government is run by incompetent and corrupt people. Most concerning of all is that the “president is not only ignorant and incompetent, but also physically and mentally unstable. In addition, he lacks any sense of morality or empathy for other people.
Yesterday, historian Garrett Graff wrote about this for the second time at his Substack Doomsday Scenario: It’s time to talk about Donald Trump’s health (again).
Back in September, after Donald Trump disappeared from view for days and the internet went wild with rumors he was dead or hospitalized, I wrote about how the press needed to be leading a more serious conversation about Trump’s health and fitness for the presidency than it was having.
In the months since, the evidence has only grown that something serious is afflicting Trump.
And then last night happened.
Overnight, the President of the United States went on what can only be described as an unhinged social media fever dream. He posted on his social media site Truth Social hundreds of times in a short span — somewhere north of 150 times overnight, a wild mix of conspiracy theories, videos, and memes. It was extreme even for him.
During that end-of-August episode, the major questions were about the president’s physical health — his bruised hands and his swollen ankles — and in the months since, there have been more reasons and evidence that some part of the president is not well:
- He is stumbling, physically, through more of his events. Since August, he appears to be regularly dragging the right side of his body and struggles to walk in a straight line. Just watch this recent video of Trump boarding Marine One, where he appears to be leaning heavily on Melania Trump to stand. And then there was Trump’s Asia trip, where he seemed so lost, wandering aimlessly through a Japanese press event, that the late night shows set it to music.
- He appears to have fallen asleep in meetings on multiple recent occasions, including at an Oval Office meeting.
- And then there’s the MRI. In October, he went to Walter Reed for his “annual medical exam,” even though it was barely six months after his last “annual medical exam” at Walter Reed, and had a wide range of tests done, including an MRI. In recent days, Trump has gotten into a high-profile tiff with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who pressed him to release the results of that MRI. When asked, Trump couldn’t explain why he had the test. Finally, yesterday the White House released information saying it was a chest MRI for his cardiovascular and abdominal systems and that, as the White House always says he is, the tests showed everything was “perfectly normal” and in “excellent health.” (Gavin Newsom mocked Trump about the results.)
But that’s not the reason worth having a conversation about Trump’s health today.
Today, we should be having a conversation about Trump’s increasingly clear diminished mental capacity. This is a man, after all, with the sole launch authority for the nation’s nuclear weapons who, on a daily basis, seems increasingly more disconnected from reality, beholden to conspiracy thinking, and — most simply — absent-minded. It is not a recipe for global stability — and deserves more serious conversation than its getting.
Please go read Graff’s specific arguments in support of his claims. It’s not long.
Yesterday Trump held a cabinet meeting on video. He could barely stay awake most of the time. Of course, he had been up most of the night posting insane garbage on Truth Social, but still…
Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times: Trump Appears to Fight Sleep During Cabinet Meeting.
President Trump appeared to be fighting sleep on Tuesday during a cabinet meeting at the White House, closing his eyes and at times seeming to nod off, after he criticized media coverage about him facing the realities of aging in office.
Over the course of two hours and 18 minutes, the president, who is 79, sometimes appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open as cabinet officials went around the room describing their work and heaping praise on him….
Mr. Trump does appear frequently before the news media, and he takes questions far more often than his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., did. He is a regular, outsize presence in public life.
But Mr. Trump also appeared to have had a late night. He shared or posted dozens of times on social media on Monday night until nearly midnight.
Early in the meeting, Mr. Trump had complained that he was getting unfair scrutiny compared to Mr. Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race last year amid concerns in his own party about his age, mental acuity and ability to beat Mr. Trump.
“I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong. There will be someday,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s going to happen to all of us. But right now I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago. But who the hell knows?”
A bit more:
Mr. Trump then claimed he got “all A’s” on his physical.
But as Tuesday’s meeting went on, Mr. Trump seemed to grow tired.
About 50 minutes in, as Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, spoke, Mr. Trump struggled to keep his eyes open before he leaned back and forth in his chair. More than an hour and a half into the meeting, while Linda McMahon, the education secretary, spoke, he closed his eyes for five seconds before leaning back and looking at the ceiling. Roughly 20 minutes later, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke, the president leaned forward and appeared to close his eyes again.
It was the second time in less than a month that Mr. Trump appeared to doze off in public. During an Oval Office event on Nov. 6, the president’s eyes grew heavy and closed for several seconds.
Trump recently announced that he had had an MRI scan at his latest physical exam, but claimed he had no idea what it was for. Experts have questioned that, and finally his doctor released some confusing details.
Gina Kolata at The New York Times: Memo From Trump’s Doctor Cites ‘Excellent’ Scan but Offers Little Clarity.
The White House released a letter from President Trump’s physician on Monday about the results of “advanced imaging tests.” The statement, by Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the tests on his cardiovascular system and abdominal region showed the president “remains in excellent overall health.”
Trump in yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Some medical experts said it was unclear what tests doctors conducted, why they were done or what the results mean. And, they said, a person without symptoms would not have imaging tests as part of a routine medical exam under ordinary medical circumstances.
Mr. Trump, the oldest president ever sworn into his office, had M.R.I. scans in October as part of a semiannual physical exam. His annual physical was done in April.
On Sunday, during an appearance on “Meet the Press” on NBC News, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota called on the president to release the results after Mr. Trump had impugned Mr. Walz’s intelligence. Asked by a reporter on Sunday what part of his body was scanned, Mr. Trump said aboard Air Force One, “I have no idea — it was just an M.R.I.” He then said it was not a scan of his brain.
But Dr. Barbabella’s memo did not specify that Mr. Trump had a M.R.I. scan, which uses a magnetic field to produce images of soft tissues that do not show up on X-rays. Instead, the memo describes “advanced imaging” that it said was carried out “because men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health.”
The imaging was part of Mr. Trump’s “comprehensive executive physical,” Dr. Barbabella explained, referring to a detailed medical exam often offered to executives. Such exams can include tests that are not normally done when people have no symptoms of disease.
The memo said Mr. Trump’s cardiovascular imaging is “perfectly normal” with no signs that his arteries are narrowed. His “cardiovascular system shows excellent health,” the statement said.
It added that, “his abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,” and said, “this level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age and confirms that he remains in excellent overall health.”
They are obviously hiding something.
Dan Vergano at Scientific American: Trump’s MRI Is Not Standard ‘Preventive’ Care, Say Experts.
Medical experts are questioning the White House’s explanation for President Donald Trump’s MRI tests as “preventive.”
A Monday memo released by presidential physician Sean Barbabella described the results of “a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health” as normal. “This level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age,” Barbabella said.
Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, Trump’s doctor
But imaging experts who spoke to Scientific American expressed doubts as to Barbabella’s assertion that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening is typical preventive care. American Heart Association guidelines, for example, note that a cardiac MRI is usually requested because of existing heart conditions and often only after other tests.
“No, it is certainly not standard medical practice to perform screening MRIs of the heart and abdomen,” says radiologist and MRI expert Thomas Kwee of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Such imaging is typically only performed in the case of underlying disease, he says, or if there is suspicion of an underlying disease based on the patient’s medical history and physical examination. Barbabella’s memo said the imaging showed Trump was in “excellent health.”
Kwee’s comment echoed those of Medpage Today’s editor in chief, physician Jeremy Faust, who told CNN on Monday that “there’s really no such thing as routine prevention using an MRI.” Faust on Tuesday told Scientific American that the White House memo reference to “advanced imaging” left open questions as to exactly what tests Trump underwent. It could even possibly refer to a CT scan, for example, which is different than MRI. “If we knew exactly what imaging he received, it would give us a better idea of what conditions they are worried about,” Faust says.
More opinions:
“An assessment of a heart MRI and abdominal MRI is not ‘standard for an executive physical,’” says former White House physician Jeffrey Kuhlman, author of the book Transforming Presidential Healthcare. Though it’s not uncommon for physicians who have concierge-type practices to use total or partial body scans on their clients, “this is not evidence-based,” he adds….
Questions around Trump’s health have surfaced repeatedly in recent months. In July the White House reported that the president has chronic venous insufficiency, a blood vessel disease that affects circulation and can cause ankle swelling. And noticeable bruises on the back of Trump’s hands seen in February were attributed to “shaking hands all day” by Leavitt.
There is no solid evidence that executive MRI scans help people, Kwee says, either by diagnosing disease or extending their lifespan. “These scans can also lead to unexpected incidental findings and give false reassurance that there is no underlying disease.”
At least big media is beginning to talk about Trump’s obvious mental and physical health issues. We need them to start focusing on Trump’s age as much as they did Biden’s.
More important stories:
Judd Legum at Popular Information: Kushner’s Moscow mission wasn’t just corrupt. It was unconstitutional.
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has been traveling the world to participate in high-stakes foreign policy negotiations on behalf of the president. On Tuesday, Kushner traveled to Moscow and sat across the table from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. The entire United States delegation consisted only of Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kushner and Witkoff were joined at the table by an interpreter.
Kushner’s participation in the Moscow meeting — and the similar role he played in the Gaza negotiations — likely violates the law.
Representing the Trump administration in high-level foreign policy negotiations makes Kushner, at a minimum, a Special Government Employee (SGE). Under the law, an SGE is someone “who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform, with or without compensation, for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days, temporary duties either on a full-time or intermittent basis.”
Trump has not named Kushner an SGE. But a seminal 1977 opinion by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) found “an identifiable act of appointment may not be absolutely essential for an individual to be regarded as an officer or employee in a particular case where the parties omitted it for the purpose of avoiding the application of the conflict-of-interest laws.” In that opinion, the OLC considered the status of an individual who had not been named to any role by the president but “assumed considerable responsibility for coordinating the Administration’s activities in [a] particular area.” The OLC concluded that since the individual was “quite clearly engaging in a governmental function” and is “working under the direction or supervision of the President,” he should be considered an SGE.
Here, Kushner is engaged in activities that can only be conducted by government officials. The Logan Act bars private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments without authorization. Kushner is acting in an authorized capacity, under Trump’s direction, and that creates a host of legal issues.
A the same time, Kushner is receiving payments from foreign governments.
Since leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner has raised at least $4.8 billion for Affinity Partners, his private equity firm. Nearly 99% of Affinity Partners’ funding comes from foreign sources. The largest investment, $2 billion, came from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF).
The Saudi government pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million annually. Other investors, including the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pay annual fees of up to 2%. As of September 2024, Affinity Partners had collected $157 million in fees, mainly from Middle Eastern governments.
Kushner is continuing to collect these fees as he serves in a top foreign policy role for the Trump administration. This is precisely the kind of behavior the Foreign Emoluments Clause was designed to prevent. Kushner was one of two Americans on Tuesday engaged in high-stakes negotiations with Putin. But as the private equity manager for billions of foreign capital, Kushner has a fiduciary duty to advance the financial interests of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other foreign governments.
The Washington Post: Ex-Honduras president, convicted of drug trafficking, freed on Trump pardon.
Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted by a U.S. court last year on charges that he ran the Central American nation as a “narco-state” that helped send South American cocaine to the United States, has been released from federal prison after receiving a “full and unconditional” pardon from President Donald Trump.
Hernández, 57, was released Monday from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website and a BOP spokesperson.
Hernández, who was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was serving 45 years in prison on importation and weapons charges. U.S. prosecutors said he built his political career on millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers in Honduras and Mexico, and as president helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine to the United States while protecting traffickers from extradition and prosecution.
Juan Orlando Hernández
The Trump administration is waging what it says is a counternarcotics campaign off Venezuela. U.S. forces have destroyed at least 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing more than 80 people, that officials say were carrying drugs to the U.S., and U.S. troops and warships are massing in the region. Trump has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of sending violent criminals and drugs to the U.S.
But on Friday, Trump said that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” and that he would grant him a “Full and Complete Pardon.”
“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump’s decision to pardon an official who, a federal court found, helped flood the United States with cocaine angered congressional Democrats.
“Hernandez’s conviction last year finally held him accountable for all the Honduran and American blood on his hands and sent an unequivocal message: No drug trafficker is above the law, not even former presidents,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That is precisely why all Americans should be outraged by President Trump’s pardoning of former president Hernandez.”
I wonder how much Trump was paid for this pardon.
NBC News: Pentagon inspector general investigation into ‘Signalgate’ is complete.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday was given a final copy of the completed Defense Department Inspector General report that examined his sharing sensitive military information on a Signal group chat back in March, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
The much-anticipated report is expected to become public as early as this week, these people said.
Pete Hegseth
The report outlines the findings of a more than eight-month investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal, an encrypted but unclassified messaging app, to share details of planned U.S. military strikes in Yemen before they had begun.
Hegseth has maintained that he shared no classified information on the group chat….
The two people familiar with the inspector general investigation would not say what its conclusions are. The report was requested by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on March 27.
The group chat, which included other top members of President Donald Trump’s national security team, became public after an editor for The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently added.
Let’s hope it’s not a whitewash.
Aram Roston at The Guardian: Family of victim in alleged Trump ‘drug boat’ killings files first formal complaint.
A family in Colombia filed a petition on Tuesday with the Washington DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the Colombian citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in a US airstrike on 15 September.
The petition marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.
Alejandro Carranza Medina and his son. Photograph Courtesy of Carranza family
The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is designed to “promote and protect human rights in the Western Hemisphere”. The US is a member, and in March the Trump administration’s state department wrote: “The United States is pleased to be a strong supporter of the IACHR and is committed to continuing support for the Commission’s work and its independence. Preserving the IACHR’s autonomy is a pillar of our human rights policy in the region.”
The complaint was filed by Pittsburgh-based human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik. “On September 15, 2025, the United States military bombed the boat of Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina,” the filing says, “which Mr Carranza was sailing in the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia. Mr Carranza was killed in the process of this bombing.”
Kovalik identified Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, as the perpetrator, based on Hegseth’s own statements. “From numerous news reports, we know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats. Secretary Hegseth has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings,” the filing goes on.
The complaint adds: “US President Donald Trump has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein.”
NBC News: Trump administration pauses immigration applications from nationals of 19 countries.
The Trump administration on Tuesday halted immigration applications submitted by nationals from 19 countries that already faced restrictions on travel to the United States, according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo.
“USCIS has considered that this direction may result in delay to the adjudication of some pending applications and has weighed that consequence against the urgent need for the agency to ensure that applicants are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” the agency said in a four-page policy memo.
“Ultimately, USCIS has determined that the burden of processing delays that will fall on some applicants is necessary and appropriate in this instance, when weighed against the agency’s obligation to protect and preserve national security,” it added.
The New York Times first reported the immigration pause, which applies to both green card and citizenship applicants.
AP: Federal authorities plan operation in Minnesota focusing on Somali immigrants, AP source says.
Federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the planning.
The move comes as President Donald Trump again on Tuesday escalated rhetoric about Minnesota’s sizable Somali community, saying he did not want immigrants from the east African country in the U.S. because “they contribute nothing.”
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
The enforcement operation could begin in the coming days and is expected to focus on the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and people with final orders of deportation, the person said. Teams of immigration agents would spread across the Twin Cities in what the person described as a directed, high-priority sweep, though the plans remain subject to change.
The prospect of a crackdown is likely to deepen tensions in Minnesota — home to the nation’s largest Somali community. They’ve been coming since the 1990s, fleeing their country’s long civil war and drawn by Minnesota’s generous social programs.
An estimated 260,000 people of Somalian descent were living in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The largest population is in the Minneapolis area, home to about 84,000 residents, most of whom are American citizens. Ohio, Washington and California also have significant populations.
The New York Times: Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ He Doesn’t Want in the Country.
President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.
Even for Mr. Trump — who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries — his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.
“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Mr. Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House, during which he sometimes appeared to be fighting sleep. But when the subject turned to immigration, Mr. Trump made a point of lashing out.
“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.
He said Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”
“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”
Mr. Trump has used this kind of rhetoric throughout his rise in politics, including in his first term as president, when he demanded to know why the United States would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as “shithole countries,” rather than, say, Norway.
But he has long been especially fixated on Somalis in the United States, and on Ms. Omar in particular.
“His obsession with me is creepy,” Ms. Omar wrote in a post shortly after the cabinet meeting. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
Trump is garbage and he should be in prison.
Those are my recommended reads for you today. What’s on your mind?
#alejandroCarranzaMedina #colombia #donaldTrump #drSeanPBarbabella #formerHonduranPresidentJuanOrlandoHernandez #gaza #ilhanOmar #jaredKushner #minnesota #peteHegseth #saudiArabia #signalgate #somaliImmigrants #trumpMri #trumpsHealth #ukraine
-
Finally Friday Reads: Exit! Stage Right! Women First!
“This season of Trumplican Apprentice is lit! Bondi, you’re fired!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The ultimate goal of #FARTUS may be to launch us back to the Gilded Age. While the Captain of the Trumptanic kicks women off the sinking ship first, there don’t appear to be any lifeboats in this version. First, it was Kristi Noem; then, Pam Bondi. Tulsi Gabbard is the likely third to head face-first into the cold sea. Linda McMahon is about to have her entire office building sold out from under her. “Trump Administration Sells First Major Federal Building in DC, Shifts Education HQ to Energy.” Remember, His Stupidness still thinks of the Energy as the Department of Oil, Gas, and Coal. Let’s hope he has no plans for the nuclear stockpile while he’s deciding exactly how he can get Iran’s Oil and the Straight of Hormuz.
Let’s start with the insider buzz, Bondi. This is from the New York Times. “Pam Bondi Wanted a Graceful Exit. But Trump Wanted Her Gone. Pam Bondi had a feeling her days as attorney general were numbered. But she didn’t expect President Trump to drop the curtain quite so soon.” No matter how much she tried to do Trump’s bidding, the Justice System was still functional enough to stop most of it. Like most of Trump’s attorneys. I think disbarment is actually what she deserves.
Attorney General Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea her days were numbered.
President Trump had complained too freely, too frequently, to too many people about her inability to prosecute the people he hates. She was falling short of Mr. Trump’s unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies. She had made mistake upon mistake in her handling of the Epstein files. Her critics were in the president’s ear.
Last month, Ms. Bondi told a friend that Mr. Trump’s willingness to fire Kristi Noem from her post as homeland security secretary meant she might be in jeopardy too.
But Ms. Bondi had not expected Mr. Trump, the man responsible for elevating her to one of the most powerful positions in the country, to drop the curtain quite so soon, according to four people familiar with the situation.
On Wednesday, the 60-year-old Ms. Bondi, downcast but determined, joined Mr. Trump for a glum crosstown drive to the Supreme Court, where they watched arguments in the birthright citizenship case. In the car, Mr. Trump told her it was time for a change at the top of the Justice Department.
Ms. Bondi hoped to save her job or, at the very least, buy a little more time — until the summer — to give herself a graceful exit.
She ended up with neither, and grew emotional Wednesday in conversations with friends and colleagues after she realized she was out. The next morning, Mr. Trump made it official, and fired her via social media post.
Ms. Bondi’s precipitous fall laid bare a cornerstone truth of Mr. Trump’s second term: Loyalty, flattery and obeisance are prerequisites for power, but they don’t provide durable protection from a president intent on carrying out his maximalist personal and political goals
You may read the rest of the analysis by John Thrush and Tyler Pager at the gift link. Actually, I think The Bulwark gets it. “All the President’s Women Scapegoats. The women get the boot while the men get off scot-free.” Bill Kristol has the analysis.
According to the Access Hollywood tape, our president, Donald Trump, likes to “move on” women. In fact he seems to relish moving on them “very heavily.” “I don’t even wait. . . . Grab ‘em by the p—y. You can do anything.”
Trump likes to move on women. He also apparently likes to fire them. A month ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the first cabinet official of Trump’s second term to be removed. She had tried dutifully to implement the mass-deportation agenda under the direction of Trump’s top aide, Stephen Miller. But it was Noem, not Miller, who was dumped when Trump needed a scapegoat for its unpopularity.
Not that one should shed tears for Noem. Nor should one cry for Attorney General Pam Bondi. She too was more than willing and eager to do Trump’s bidding. But Trump judged her to have failed to secure adequate revenge against his enemies. He probably also blamed her for the botched coverup of the Epstein files—even though Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel seemed equally involved in that effort. But it was Bondi who was dumped, not Blanche or Patel. In fact, Blanche is now acting attorney general.
And then there’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who’s been a central player in Trump’s signal foreign policy failure, the war on Iran. He’s not been fired either. To the contrary. He’s doing a lot of firing at Trump’s behest. Hegseth is continuing to remove senior military officers who are not or might not be sufficiently compliant with Trump’s wishes.
Yesterday, Hegseth summarily fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. One of the precipitating factors seems to have been Gen. George’s resistance to Hegseth’s attempt to block the promotion of four officers, two black and two female, to be brigadier generals. General George, joined by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, with whom he’d reportedly formed a close relationship, refused to strike them from the list. They cited the officers’ long records of exemplary service. Hegseth had to intervene to purge them.
A few months earlier, Gen. George and Driscoll had refused to accede to demands from Hegseth’s office to block the scheduled promotion of Maj. Gen. Antoinette R. Gant to take command of the Military District of Washington. The Washington District commander appears alongside the president at ceremonial functions in the D.C. area, for example at Arlington National Cemetery. Hegseth’s chief of staff reportedly told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events. Driscoll and Gen. George skillfully deflected, insisting that the president was neither sexist nor racist (how could anyone say such a thing?) and that the objection to Maj. Gen. Gant’s promotion was therefore unwarranted.
So yesterday’s removal of Gen. George seems to have been gender- and race-related: the firing of a man who refused to discriminate against officers for being black and/or women.
There are barrels of deplorables carrying Trump’s water. But, hey it’s the woman he throws in the trash heap first. This is from The Guardian. “Trump accused of running ‘misogynistic administration’ after Bondi dismissal. Bondi and Kristi Noem the only two cabinet members to be removed despite string of scandals involving male officials.”
Donald Trump has been accused of running a “misogynistic administration” after making Pam Bondi the second woman to be fired from a cabinet already dominated by men.
The US president dismissed the attorney general on Thursday amid mounting frustration with her performance, especially over the release of files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The move came less than a month after Trump ousted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, following criticism of her management of the department and immigration enforcement.
Bondi and Noem are the only two cabinet members to lose their jobs so far in Trump’s second term despite male officials such as the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and health secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr, stumbling from controversy to controversy.
And both have been replaced by men, at least for now: Senator Markwayne Mullin took over at homeland security while Todd Blanche was appointed interim attorney general in what was already the least diverse US cabinet this century.
Democrats cried foul on Thursday. “I see a theme,” Jasmine Crockett, a congresswoman from Texas, posted on social media. “He will throw the incompetent women under the bus a lot faster than the incompetent men.”
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari of Arizona drew a contrast with Hegseth, who was found by a Pentagon watchdog to have put US service members at risk when he used the Signal messaging app, and the FBI director, Kash Patel, whose string of errors include prematurely announcing the arrest of the wrong suspect in the Charlie Kirk murder investigation.
Ansari wrote on X: “Noem and Bondi were both awful and committed egregious, impeachable offenses. But isn’t it … interesting … that it’s just the women getting fired? Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth each have a laundry list of scandals under their belts and should be fired as well. Hmmmm.”
There is a lot of speculation in the Beltway that Orange Caligula will take more heads. Thiis is from POLITICO. “Trump weighs more Cabinet changes after Bondi ouster. Pam Bondi was ousted from her post as attorney general on Thursday, but Trump is said to be considering also removing others.” Our bets here on Sky Dancing is that Tulsi faces the hatchet next Here’ Dasha Burn’s thoughts.
President Donald Trump has expressed frustration and disappointment with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer — and is pondering making additional changes to his Cabinet.
“He’s very angry and he’s going to be moving people,” an administration official familiar with the dynamics told POLITICO. That official and three other people with knowledge of Trump’s thinking around his Cabinet were granted anonymity to discuss the unresolved personnel issues.
The additional potential moves follow the ouster of Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last month.
No final decisions have been made on Chavez-DeRemer and Lutnick — and Trump has contemplated firing people and then backed off before.
Should Trump proceed with a larger set of Cabinet changes, it could represent a major attempted reset for an administration confronting an ominous political landscape.The potential high-level shuffling, a second, senior official said, is focused on Cabinet officials Trump feels have “underperformed or who have generated too much negative attention.”
In a statement, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said Chavez-DeRemer and Lutnick are “both doing a great job standing up for American workers, and they continue to have President Trump’s full support.”
Reasons for the speculation are at the link. Let’s remember the reasons that no sane person should cry over Bondi’s departure.
"Under Bondi, in the first six months of Trump’s administration, DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, fraud, and drugs…"https://www.propublica.org/article/trum…
— Rachel Maddow (@maddow.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T17:17:22.866Z
Here’s the ProPublica article. “Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration.”
In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace.
The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investors.
In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica.
The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrations that believed a federal crime may have been committed. The DOJ routinely declines to prosecute cases for any number of reasons, including insufficient evidence or because a case is not a priority for enforcement.
But the number of declinations under Bondi marks a striking departure not only from the Biden administration but also the first Trump term, according to the ProPublica analysis, which examined two decades of DOJ data, including the first six months of Trump’s second term. ProPublica determined the increase is not the result of inheriting a larger caseload or more referrals from law enforcement.
In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019, during Trump’s first administration.
Some of the cases shut down were the result of yearslong investigations by federal agencies such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges.
The shift comes as the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump administration, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency.
In doing so, the DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights, according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left the department under Trump. The Trump DOJ, the employees wrote, is “taking a sledgehammer” to long-standing work to “protect communities and the rule of law.”
The change in priorities was outlined in a series of memos sent to attorneys early last year. Trump’s DOJ has said it is “turning a new page on white-collar and corporate enforcement” and emphasizing the pursuit of drug cartels, illegal immigrants and institutions that promote “divisive DEI policies.” Trump, in an address last March at the department, said the changes were necessary after a “surrender to violent criminals” during the past administration and would result in a restoration of “fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”
The department prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases in the first six months of the administration, which was nearly triple the number under the Biden administration and a 15% increase from the first Trump term. It has pursued fewer prosecutions of nearly every other type of crime — from drug offenses to corruption — than new administrations in their first six months dating back to 2009.
Orange Caligula probably doesn’t want his kids being prosecuted for all they’re up to now. Anyway, another day in Trumplandia, another minute farther from democracy and common sense.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DonaldTrump #PamBondiWeirdo #TrumplicanMisogyny -
Finally Friday Reads: Exit! Stage Right! Women First!
“This season of Trumplican Apprentice is lit! Bondi, you’re fired!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The ultimate goal of #FARTUS may be to launch us back to the Gilded Age. While the Captain of the Trumptanic kicks women off the sinking ship first, there don’t appear to be any lifeboats in this version. First, it was Kristi Noem; then, Pam Bondi. Tulsi Gabbard is the likely third to head face-first into the cold sea. Linda McMahon is about to have her entire office building sold out from under her. “Trump Administration Sells First Major Federal Building in DC, Shifts Education HQ to Energy.” Remember, His Stupidness still thinks of the Energy as the Department of Oil, Gas, and Coal. Let’s hope he has no plans for the nuclear stockpile while he’s deciding exactly how he can get Iran’s Oil and the Straight of Hormuz.
Let’s start with the insider buzz, Bondi. This is from the New York Times. “Pam Bondi Wanted a Graceful Exit. But Trump Wanted Her Gone. Pam Bondi had a feeling her days as attorney general were numbered. But she didn’t expect President Trump to drop the curtain quite so soon.” No matter how much she tried to do Trump’s bidding, the Justice System was still functional enough to stop most of it. Like most of Trump’s attorneys. I think disbarment is actually what she deserves.
Attorney General Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea her days were numbered.
President Trump had complained too freely, too frequently, to too many people about her inability to prosecute the people he hates. She was falling short of Mr. Trump’s unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies. She had made mistake upon mistake in her handling of the Epstein files. Her critics were in the president’s ear.
Last month, Ms. Bondi told a friend that Mr. Trump’s willingness to fire Kristi Noem from her post as homeland security secretary meant she might be in jeopardy too.
But Ms. Bondi had not expected Mr. Trump, the man responsible for elevating her to one of the most powerful positions in the country, to drop the curtain quite so soon, according to four people familiar with the situation.
On Wednesday, the 60-year-old Ms. Bondi, downcast but determined, joined Mr. Trump for a glum crosstown drive to the Supreme Court, where they watched arguments in the birthright citizenship case. In the car, Mr. Trump told her it was time for a change at the top of the Justice Department.
Ms. Bondi hoped to save her job or, at the very least, buy a little more time — until the summer — to give herself a graceful exit.
She ended up with neither, and grew emotional Wednesday in conversations with friends and colleagues after she realized she was out. The next morning, Mr. Trump made it official, and fired her via social media post.
Ms. Bondi’s precipitous fall laid bare a cornerstone truth of Mr. Trump’s second term: Loyalty, flattery and obeisance are prerequisites for power, but they don’t provide durable protection from a president intent on carrying out his maximalist personal and political goals
You may read the rest of the analysis by John Thrush and Tyler Pager at the gift link. Actually, I think The Bulwark gets it. “All the President’s Women Scapegoats. The women get the boot while the men get off scot-free.” Bill Kristol has the analysis.
According to the Access Hollywood tape, our president, Donald Trump, likes to “move on” women. In fact he seems to relish moving on them “very heavily.” “I don’t even wait. . . . Grab ‘em by the p—y. You can do anything.”
Trump likes to move on women. He also apparently likes to fire them. A month ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the first cabinet official of Trump’s second term to be removed. She had tried dutifully to implement the mass-deportation agenda under the direction of Trump’s top aide, Stephen Miller. But it was Noem, not Miller, who was dumped when Trump needed a scapegoat for its unpopularity.
Not that one should shed tears for Noem. Nor should one cry for Attorney General Pam Bondi. She too was more than willing and eager to do Trump’s bidding. But Trump judged her to have failed to secure adequate revenge against his enemies. He probably also blamed her for the botched coverup of the Epstein files—even though Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel seemed equally involved in that effort. But it was Bondi who was dumped, not Blanche or Patel. In fact, Blanche is now acting attorney general.
And then there’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who’s been a central player in Trump’s signal foreign policy failure, the war on Iran. He’s not been fired either. To the contrary. He’s doing a lot of firing at Trump’s behest. Hegseth is continuing to remove senior military officers who are not or might not be sufficiently compliant with Trump’s wishes.
Yesterday, Hegseth summarily fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. One of the precipitating factors seems to have been Gen. George’s resistance to Hegseth’s attempt to block the promotion of four officers, two black and two female, to be brigadier generals. General George, joined by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, with whom he’d reportedly formed a close relationship, refused to strike them from the list. They cited the officers’ long records of exemplary service. Hegseth had to intervene to purge them.
A few months earlier, Gen. George and Driscoll had refused to accede to demands from Hegseth’s office to block the scheduled promotion of Maj. Gen. Antoinette R. Gant to take command of the Military District of Washington. The Washington District commander appears alongside the president at ceremonial functions in the D.C. area, for example at Arlington National Cemetery. Hegseth’s chief of staff reportedly told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events. Driscoll and Gen. George skillfully deflected, insisting that the president was neither sexist nor racist (how could anyone say such a thing?) and that the objection to Maj. Gen. Gant’s promotion was therefore unwarranted.
So yesterday’s removal of Gen. George seems to have been gender- and race-related: the firing of a man who refused to discriminate against officers for being black and/or women.
There are barrels of deplorables carrying Trump’s water. But, hey it’s the woman he throws in the trash heap first. This is from The Guardian. “Trump accused of running ‘misogynistic administration’ after Bondi dismissal. Bondi and Kristi Noem the only two cabinet members to be removed despite string of scandals involving male officials.”
Donald Trump has been accused of running a “misogynistic administration” after making Pam Bondi the second woman to be fired from a cabinet already dominated by men.
The US president dismissed the attorney general on Thursday amid mounting frustration with her performance, especially over the release of files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The move came less than a month after Trump ousted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, following criticism of her management of the department and immigration enforcement.
Bondi and Noem are the only two cabinet members to lose their jobs so far in Trump’s second term despite male officials such as the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and health secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr, stumbling from controversy to controversy.
And both have been replaced by men, at least for now: Senator Markwayne Mullin took over at homeland security while Todd Blanche was appointed interim attorney general in what was already the least diverse US cabinet this century.
Democrats cried foul on Thursday. “I see a theme,” Jasmine Crockett, a congresswoman from Texas, posted on social media. “He will throw the incompetent women under the bus a lot faster than the incompetent men.”
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari of Arizona drew a contrast with Hegseth, who was found by a Pentagon watchdog to have put US service members at risk when he used the Signal messaging app, and the FBI director, Kash Patel, whose string of errors include prematurely announcing the arrest of the wrong suspect in the Charlie Kirk murder investigation.
Ansari wrote on X: “Noem and Bondi were both awful and committed egregious, impeachable offenses. But isn’t it … interesting … that it’s just the women getting fired? Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth each have a laundry list of scandals under their belts and should be fired as well. Hmmmm.”
There is a lot of speculation in the Beltway that Orange Caligula will take more heads. Thiis is from POLITICO. “Trump weighs more Cabinet changes after Bondi ouster. Pam Bondi was ousted from her post as attorney general on Thursday, but Trump is said to be considering also removing others.” Our bets here on Sky Dancing is that Tulsi faces the hatchet next Here’ Dasha Burn’s thoughts.
President Donald Trump has expressed frustration and disappointment with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer — and is pondering making additional changes to his Cabinet.
“He’s very angry and he’s going to be moving people,” an administration official familiar with the dynamics told POLITICO. That official and three other people with knowledge of Trump’s thinking around his Cabinet were granted anonymity to discuss the unresolved personnel issues.
The additional potential moves follow the ouster of Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last month.
No final decisions have been made on Chavez-DeRemer and Lutnick — and Trump has contemplated firing people and then backed off before.
Should Trump proceed with a larger set of Cabinet changes, it could represent a major attempted reset for an administration confronting an ominous political landscape.The potential high-level shuffling, a second, senior official said, is focused on Cabinet officials Trump feels have “underperformed or who have generated too much negative attention.”
In a statement, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said Chavez-DeRemer and Lutnick are “both doing a great job standing up for American workers, and they continue to have President Trump’s full support.”
Reasons for the speculation are at the link. Let’s remember the reasons that no sane person should cry over Bondi’s departure.
"Under Bondi, in the first six months of Trump’s administration, DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, fraud, and drugs…"https://www.propublica.org/article/trum…
— Rachel Maddow (@maddow.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T17:17:22.866Z
Here’s the ProPublica article. “Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration.”
In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace.
The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investors.
In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica.
The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrations that believed a federal crime may have been committed. The DOJ routinely declines to prosecute cases for any number of reasons, including insufficient evidence or because a case is not a priority for enforcement.
But the number of declinations under Bondi marks a striking departure not only from the Biden administration but also the first Trump term, according to the ProPublica analysis, which examined two decades of DOJ data, including the first six months of Trump’s second term. ProPublica determined the increase is not the result of inheriting a larger caseload or more referrals from law enforcement.
In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019, during Trump’s first administration.
Some of the cases shut down were the result of yearslong investigations by federal agencies such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges.
The shift comes as the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump administration, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency.
In doing so, the DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights, according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left the department under Trump. The Trump DOJ, the employees wrote, is “taking a sledgehammer” to long-standing work to “protect communities and the rule of law.”
The change in priorities was outlined in a series of memos sent to attorneys early last year. Trump’s DOJ has said it is “turning a new page on white-collar and corporate enforcement” and emphasizing the pursuit of drug cartels, illegal immigrants and institutions that promote “divisive DEI policies.” Trump, in an address last March at the department, said the changes were necessary after a “surrender to violent criminals” during the past administration and would result in a restoration of “fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”
The department prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases in the first six months of the administration, which was nearly triple the number under the Biden administration and a 15% increase from the first Trump term. It has pursued fewer prosecutions of nearly every other type of crime — from drug offenses to corruption — than new administrations in their first six months dating back to 2009.
Orange Caligula probably doesn’t want his kids being prosecuted for all they’re up to now. Anyway, another day in Trumplandia, another minute farther from democracy and common sense.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DonaldTrump #PamBondiWeirdo #TrumplicanMisogyny -
Finally Friday Reads: Exit! Stage Right! Women First!
“This season of Trumplican Apprentice is lit! Bondi, you’re fired!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The ultimate goal of #FARTUS may be to launch us back to the Gilded Age. While the Captain of the Trumptanic kicks women off the sinking ship first, there don’t appear to be any lifeboats in this version. First, it was Kristi Noem; then, Pam Bondi. Tulsi Gabbard is the likely third to head face-first into the cold sea. Linda McMahon is about to have her entire office building sold out from under her. “Trump Administration Sells First Major Federal Building in DC, Shifts Education HQ to Energy.” Remember, His Stupidness still thinks of the Energy as the Department of Oil, Gas, and Coal. Let’s hope he has no plans for the nuclear stockpile while he’s deciding exactly how he can get Iran’s Oil and the Straight of Hormuz.
Let’s start with the insider buzz, Bondi. This is from the New York Times. “Pam Bondi Wanted a Graceful Exit. But Trump Wanted Her Gone. Pam Bondi had a feeling her days as attorney general were numbered. But she didn’t expect President Trump to drop the curtain quite so soon.” No matter how much she tried to do Trump’s bidding, the Justice System was still functional enough to stop most of it. Like most of Trump’s attorneys. I think disbarment is actually what she deserves.
Attorney General Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea her days were numbered.
President Trump had complained too freely, too frequently, to too many people about her inability to prosecute the people he hates. She was falling short of Mr. Trump’s unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies. She had made mistake upon mistake in her handling of the Epstein files. Her critics were in the president’s ear.
Last month, Ms. Bondi told a friend that Mr. Trump’s willingness to fire Kristi Noem from her post as homeland security secretary meant she might be in jeopardy too.
But Ms. Bondi had not expected Mr. Trump, the man responsible for elevating her to one of the most powerful positions in the country, to drop the curtain quite so soon, according to four people familiar with the situation.
On Wednesday, the 60-year-old Ms. Bondi, downcast but determined, joined Mr. Trump for a glum crosstown drive to the Supreme Court, where they watched arguments in the birthright citizenship case. In the car, Mr. Trump told her it was time for a change at the top of the Justice Department.
Ms. Bondi hoped to save her job or, at the very least, buy a little more time — until the summer — to give herself a graceful exit.
She ended up with neither, and grew emotional Wednesday in conversations with friends and colleagues after she realized she was out. The next morning, Mr. Trump made it official, and fired her via social media post.
Ms. Bondi’s precipitous fall laid bare a cornerstone truth of Mr. Trump’s second term: Loyalty, flattery and obeisance are prerequisites for power, but they don’t provide durable protection from a president intent on carrying out his maximalist personal and political goals
You may read the rest of the analysis by John Thrush and Tyler Pager at the gift link. Actually, I think The Bulwark gets it. “All the President’s Women Scapegoats. The women get the boot while the men get off scot-free.” Bill Kristol has the analysis.
According to the Access Hollywood tape, our president, Donald Trump, likes to “move on” women. In fact he seems to relish moving on them “very heavily.” “I don’t even wait. . . . Grab ‘em by the p—y. You can do anything.”
Trump likes to move on women. He also apparently likes to fire them. A month ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the first cabinet official of Trump’s second term to be removed. She had tried dutifully to implement the mass-deportation agenda under the direction of Trump’s top aide, Stephen Miller. But it was Noem, not Miller, who was dumped when Trump needed a scapegoat for its unpopularity.
Not that one should shed tears for Noem. Nor should one cry for Attorney General Pam Bondi. She too was more than willing and eager to do Trump’s bidding. But Trump judged her to have failed to secure adequate revenge against his enemies. He probably also blamed her for the botched coverup of the Epstein files—even though Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel seemed equally involved in that effort. But it was Bondi who was dumped, not Blanche or Patel. In fact, Blanche is now acting attorney general.
And then there’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who’s been a central player in Trump’s signal foreign policy failure, the war on Iran. He’s not been fired either. To the contrary. He’s doing a lot of firing at Trump’s behest. Hegseth is continuing to remove senior military officers who are not or might not be sufficiently compliant with Trump’s wishes.
Yesterday, Hegseth summarily fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. One of the precipitating factors seems to have been Gen. George’s resistance to Hegseth’s attempt to block the promotion of four officers, two black and two female, to be brigadier generals. General George, joined by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, with whom he’d reportedly formed a close relationship, refused to strike them from the list. They cited the officers’ long records of exemplary service. Hegseth had to intervene to purge them.
A few months earlier, Gen. George and Driscoll had refused to accede to demands from Hegseth’s office to block the scheduled promotion of Maj. Gen. Antoinette R. Gant to take command of the Military District of Washington. The Washington District commander appears alongside the president at ceremonial functions in the D.C. area, for example at Arlington National Cemetery. Hegseth’s chief of staff reportedly told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events. Driscoll and Gen. George skillfully deflected, insisting that the president was neither sexist nor racist (how could anyone say such a thing?) and that the objection to Maj. Gen. Gant’s promotion was therefore unwarranted.
So yesterday’s removal of Gen. George seems to have been gender- and race-related: the firing of a man who refused to discriminate against officers for being black and/or women.
There are barrels of deplorables carrying Trump’s water. But, hey it’s the woman he throws in the trash heap first. This is from The Guardian. “Trump accused of running ‘misogynistic administration’ after Bondi dismissal. Bondi and Kristi Noem the only two cabinet members to be removed despite string of scandals involving male officials.”
Donald Trump has been accused of running a “misogynistic administration” after making Pam Bondi the second woman to be fired from a cabinet already dominated by men.
The US president dismissed the attorney general on Thursday amid mounting frustration with her performance, especially over the release of files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The move came less than a month after Trump ousted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, following criticism of her management of the department and immigration enforcement.
Bondi and Noem are the only two cabinet members to lose their jobs so far in Trump’s second term despite male officials such as the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and health secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr, stumbling from controversy to controversy.
And both have been replaced by men, at least for now: Senator Markwayne Mullin took over at homeland security while Todd Blanche was appointed interim attorney general in what was already the least diverse US cabinet this century.
Democrats cried foul on Thursday. “I see a theme,” Jasmine Crockett, a congresswoman from Texas, posted on social media. “He will throw the incompetent women under the bus a lot faster than the incompetent men.”
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari of Arizona drew a contrast with Hegseth, who was found by a Pentagon watchdog to have put US service members at risk when he used the Signal messaging app, and the FBI director, Kash Patel, whose string of errors include prematurely announcing the arrest of the wrong suspect in the Charlie Kirk murder investigation.
Ansari wrote on X: “Noem and Bondi were both awful and committed egregious, impeachable offenses. But isn’t it … interesting … that it’s just the women getting fired? Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth each have a laundry list of scandals under their belts and should be fired as well. Hmmmm.”
There is a lot of speculation in the Beltway that Orange Caligula will take more heads. Thiis is from POLITICO. “Trump weighs more Cabinet changes after Bondi ouster. Pam Bondi was ousted from her post as attorney general on Thursday, but Trump is said to be considering also removing others.” Our bets here on Sky Dancing is that Tulsi faces the hatchet next Here’ Dasha Burn’s thoughts.
President Donald Trump has expressed frustration and disappointment with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer — and is pondering making additional changes to his Cabinet.
“He’s very angry and he’s going to be moving people,” an administration official familiar with the dynamics told POLITICO. That official and three other people with knowledge of Trump’s thinking around his Cabinet were granted anonymity to discuss the unresolved personnel issues.
The additional potential moves follow the ouster of Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last month.
No final decisions have been made on Chavez-DeRemer and Lutnick — and Trump has contemplated firing people and then backed off before.
Should Trump proceed with a larger set of Cabinet changes, it could represent a major attempted reset for an administration confronting an ominous political landscape.The potential high-level shuffling, a second, senior official said, is focused on Cabinet officials Trump feels have “underperformed or who have generated too much negative attention.”
In a statement, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said Chavez-DeRemer and Lutnick are “both doing a great job standing up for American workers, and they continue to have President Trump’s full support.”
Reasons for the speculation are at the link. Let’s remember the reasons that no sane person should cry over Bondi’s departure.
"Under Bondi, in the first six months of Trump’s administration, DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, fraud, and drugs…"https://www.propublica.org/article/trum…
— Rachel Maddow (@maddow.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T17:17:22.866Z
Here’s the ProPublica article. “Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration.”
In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace.
The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investors.
In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica.
The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrations that believed a federal crime may have been committed. The DOJ routinely declines to prosecute cases for any number of reasons, including insufficient evidence or because a case is not a priority for enforcement.
But the number of declinations under Bondi marks a striking departure not only from the Biden administration but also the first Trump term, according to the ProPublica analysis, which examined two decades of DOJ data, including the first six months of Trump’s second term. ProPublica determined the increase is not the result of inheriting a larger caseload or more referrals from law enforcement.
In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019, during Trump’s first administration.
Some of the cases shut down were the result of yearslong investigations by federal agencies such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges.
The shift comes as the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump administration, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency.
In doing so, the DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights, according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left the department under Trump. The Trump DOJ, the employees wrote, is “taking a sledgehammer” to long-standing work to “protect communities and the rule of law.”
The change in priorities was outlined in a series of memos sent to attorneys early last year. Trump’s DOJ has said it is “turning a new page on white-collar and corporate enforcement” and emphasizing the pursuit of drug cartels, illegal immigrants and institutions that promote “divisive DEI policies.” Trump, in an address last March at the department, said the changes were necessary after a “surrender to violent criminals” during the past administration and would result in a restoration of “fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”
The department prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases in the first six months of the administration, which was nearly triple the number under the Biden administration and a 15% increase from the first Trump term. It has pursued fewer prosecutions of nearly every other type of crime — from drug offenses to corruption — than new administrations in their first six months dating back to 2009.
Orange Caligula probably doesn’t want his kids being prosecuted for all they’re up to now. Anyway, another day in Trumplandia, another minute farther from democracy and common sense.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DonaldTrump #PamBondiWeirdo #TrumplicanMisogyny -
Vince McMahon must really be gone, as they started with the USian national anthem instead of the one they usually sing.
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The May #syslog_ng newsletter is now available on-line:
- Streaming syslog-ng data to your lakehouse using #OTEL
- Central log collection - more than just #compliance
- Compiling syslog-ng on an old #Mac
Read more at:
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More interests I forgot to mention the first and second time around: #pinball #digitalpinball #retrogaming #adventuregames #sierraonline #lucasarts #smartwatches #johnhiatt #USCivilWar #tallships #maratimehistory #selfdirectedinvesting #milwaukeebrewers #projectgutenberg #eink
#ereaders #documentaries #lylelovett #brandicarlile #steveearle #naps #dietdrpepper -
More interests I forgot to mention the first and second time around: #pinball #digitalpinball #retrogaming #adventuregames #sierraonline #lucasarts #smartwatches #johnhiatt #USCivilWar #tallships #maratimehistory #selfdirectedinvesting #milwaukeebrewers #projectgutenberg #eink
#ereaders #documentaries #lylelovett #brandicarlile #steveearle #naps #dietdrpepper -
#Cocktail #Cocktails #Gin
Bee’s KneesI may or may not have had a couple of these while watching My Man Godfrey.
Hadn’t seen it in ages, and it’s as fantastic as ever. Really glad not to have watched anything Oscar nominated tonight.
#WilliamPowell #CarolLombard #MyManGodfrey #Cimemastodon