#johnbussbskysocialjohnbuss — Public Fediverse posts

Mostly Monday Reads: Questioning Minds Want to Know

“Paging Elon! Paging ELON! PAGING ELON MUSK!!!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Questions of the day:  Why are all Orange Caligula’s best foreign buddies Communists?  If so, why does he keep calling every Democratic Office Holder a Communist as if it’s something he despises?  Has anyone else noticed this?  Additionally, when did it become legal to bribe voters?  When did it become okay to do an Unconstitutional raid on a member of Congress’s home within 60 days of an election?  WTAF is going on in our country?  All he makes are bad decisions. Their results become exponentially worse by the minute.

I don’t even know where to start today. I assumed all hell would break loose once our stupid Speaker of the House sent the Congress Critters home for vacation, but I had no idea what on earth the minds of the madmen in the West Wing could come up with. The only positive finding I can see in all of this today is that  “Trump’s midterm road show reveals GOP troubles — and his own priorities. Republicans need the president to mobilize voters, but his low approval ratings limit where he can help.”  This is from the Washington Post. It’s reported by Natalie Allison and Isaac Arnsdorf.

“It’s the last time he’s really going to be able to do this in full force,” said Mark Mitchell, a politically independent pollster who previously supported Trump but is now critical of

Trump has at times been in high spirits while traveling and said he thinks campaigning is going well, one adviser said. But another person with knowledge of his behavior observed that Trump has been in a “foul mood.”

Trump’s advisers maintain that the rallies are the most effective thing Trump can do — short of lowering gas prices driven up by the war he started with Iran — to try to minimize Republican losses this fall. GOP officials say Trump showing up in the backyard of supporters who voted for him three times is the party’s best chance to turn out those voters this fall when he isn’t on the ballot. Republican enthusiasm is trailing that of Democrats. A recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that among those who say they are extremely motivated to vote, Democrats lead 59 percent to 35 percent. That’s a contrast with the 2022 midterms, when such extremely motivated voters were evenly divided between the two parties.

Be like #Susan

The article lists a number of places where Trump held his small rallies have shown exactly who shows up. They are Trump-friendly to start out with and generally accomplish nothing other thing collecting these folks’ names for GOTV activities.  However, a rally in Syracuse, New York turned out to show more about the opposition than the Trump Supporters.  This is from a local newspaper and I just had to share it before I dive into the list of evil I presented at the top. “Woman in yellow jacket fires middle fingers as she’s tossed from Trump’s Syracuse rally.” It was reported by Chris Baker at Syracuse.com. Susan has no become a poster Queen.

A woman in a yellow jacket and a Primus T-shirt is capturing the internet’s attention Friday after sheriff’s deputies removed her from a Donald Trump rally in Syracuse.

The woman was escorted out of the Oncenter in Syracuse as Trump spoke to a crowd of at least 2,500 supporters.

She fired middle fingers into the faces of nearby Trump supporters and shouted what seemed to be profanities at them. Many returned the gesture and shouted back. \

Video of the woman being removed immediately took off online. Hundreds of thousands of people had seen it by midnight Friday.

Susan appears to be the archetype for all the Trump resisters who showed up at the various Trump Rallies.

youtube.com/shorts/ejpbj…

— (@here2learn2.bsky.social) 2026-10-12T14:20:18.960Z

Okay. Now to the gloom and doom.  (sigh)  First, this extremely depressing event concerning Representative Ilhan Omar. We’re clearly in Banana Republic Territory now if this is what our Justice Department is doing.

POLITICAL RETRIBUTIONFederal agents raided Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s DC home this morning.A sitting member of Congress who has repeatedly been targeted by Trump, now facing a federal investigation over immigration paperwork her father completed when she was a child. A CHILD.

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) 2026-10-12T13:47:40.189Z

This is from the AP.  “Agents search Rep. Omar’s Washington home in criminal probe as she vows she won’t ‘be silenced’.” Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker share the lede.

Federal agents on Monday searched the home of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a startling escalation in a criminal investigation that brings renewed scrutiny to the frequent target of Trump administration derision in the final weeks of her reelection bid.

The search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s home so close to next month’s midterm contests that will determine control of the House and the Senate was swiftly condemned by top Democrats in Congress, who raised questions about the timing given longstanding Justice Department protocol to avoid overt investigative steps involving political candidates in the direct run-up to an election.

The Justice Department confirmed in a statement that Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant in the Washington, D.C., area in connection with an ongoing federal criminal investigation but provided no other details.

The nature and scope of the investigation were unclear, though officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have repeatedly hinted at the existence of an inquiry targeting Omar, a Somali-born Democrat whose status as an immigrant to the U.S. and left-wing views have repeatedly drawn criticism from Republicans and senior Trump officials.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said last month that there was an “ongoing investigation” related in part to whether Omar lied on her immigration forms and that “something’s going to happen.”

Omar responded to the search with a statement on X that called it an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”

“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” she said. “I will not be silenced.”

Though the Republican focus on Omar’s background dates back years, the search of her home took place three weeks before the November midterms, in which Omar is on the ballot for reelection. The Justice Department has historically sought to avoid public investigative actions involving a candidate within 60 days of a primary or general election.

“For years, Donald Trump and far-right extremists have relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Omar with vile personal attacks and baseless accusations,” top House Democratic leaders said in a statement. “Now, less than 30 days until the midterm election, his violent mass deportation machine has descended upon the home of a duly elected Member of Congress and her family.”

This next article is from AXIOS’ Ben Berkowitz.  “Feds search Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in immigration probe.”

Driving the news: Fox News first reported that Homeland Security Investigations agents conducted the search, citing a Justice Department statement.

• A DOJ spokesperson confirmed to Axios that DHS agents “executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice” as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.
• DHS referred Axios to the DOJ.

The other side: Omar’s office blasted the search.

• “This raid by Trump’s DHS is an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies,” Omar spokesperson Jacklyn Rogers said in a statement.
• “The Congresswoman has done nothing wrong.”
• House Democratic leaders separately issued a joint statement calling the search “deeply disturbing” and part of a “rogue abuse of power” by the administration.

Last month, border czar Tom Homan confirmed an ongoing criminal probe into Omar, though he declined to offer details.

• Fox reported Monday that the search was tied to a fraud investigation into Omar’s immigration paperwork.
• The Somali native came to the U.S. in 1995 as a 12-year-old refugee.

This is a short snip from CNBC that may show the weird reasoning for the raid. “Rep. Ilhan Omar blasts federal criminal raid on home: ‘I will not be silenced’. Dan Mangan has the lede.

In September, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told right-wing commentator Benny Johnson at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas that DHS was investigating issues around Omar and her family’s immigration to the United States.

“There may be more to this, the whole family migration and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with,” said Mullin. He said the investigation could end with deportations.

The DOJ, for years, has had a policy regarding the announcement and initiation of federal investigations and prosecutions close to elections. The policy discourages beginning an investigation, taking investigative steps, bringing criminal charges, or making public statements for the purpose of affecting an election or to give a candidate an advantage or disadvantage.

A person familiar with the raid on Omar’s home told CNBC on Monday that the DOJ does not consider that action to violate the policy because the raid was not meant to be public.

Now to Elon Musk and his re-entrance into the election bribing business. This is from Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times. “Inside Elon Musk’s $276 Million Midterm Rescue Mission for Republicans. The world’s richest person has quietly become by far the biggest known midterm donor, trying to save Republicans’ Senate majority with some of the largest donations in American political history.”

Elon Musk has quietly funneled more than $276 million into Republican groups and his super PAC since the start of July, building a huge turnout operation to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections.

The staggering amount of money makes Mr. Musk, the richest person in the world, by far the largest known donor in the midterms. Representatives for Mr. Musk supplied the previously unreported figures on his political giving to The New York Times before a federal filing deadline on Thursday.

In an effort to save Republicans’ Senate majority, he gave a total of $158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing the party’s candidates for the chamber, according to his team. In sum, that is one of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group’s Democratic rival raised from all of its donors that quarter.

Mr. Musk has also built a major Republican turnout operation through a super PAC he founded in 2024, America PAC. He donated over $76 million this summer to the group, which in turn spent that much on building a sprawling canvassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters. The group is active in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races.

Mr. Musk has already given far more money, about $366 million, to federal committees during the 2025-26 election cycle than he did during the 2024 election, when he laid out roughly $290 million to help return President Trump and Republicans to power. He has given even more in undisclosed donations during both elections, according to people briefed on the giving.

The latest torrent of spending has helped give the Republican Party a financial advantage in the midterms, as well-funded outside groups like Mr. Trump’s powerful super PAC flood the airwaves with advertising in the final weeks. No Democratic billionaire is spending nearly as much as Mr. Musk, and money remains a central worry for the party in an otherwise favorable political environment.

The donations also clear up the mystery of how much staying power Mr. Musk wants to have in American politics.

Here are a few good reads, and then I’ll sign off for the day.  This one is actually a few weeks old, but it’s worth the read. “How Trump keeps undercutting his anti-communist message.” The story comes from NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben.

Speaking in the Oval Office this week, President Trump once again claimed he wanted to give $5,000 to every adult in the U.S. — but only if Republicans win the House and Senate in November.

It’s an idea he first proposed at the Republican midterm convention earlier this month. And from the moment he proposed it, even some of his allies were skeptical.

Broadcasting from the convention, Michael Duncan — one host of the conservative Ruthless podcast — said while the proposal might be politically smart, the better policy might be to instead “just cut taxes by $5,000.”

“We don’t need helicopter money,” he added.

His co-host Josh Holmes agreed: “Maybe we don’t have a bureaucrat who shuffles paper from the left side of his desk to the right and then sends you a check for your time.”

The right-leaning satire site the Babylon Bee was more pointed: “Trump Pledges That If Voters Defeat Socialism In November, They Will Each Get An Equal Redistribution Of Wealth From The Government,” read one of its headlines.

This is the contradiction that keeps arising in Trump’s second term, as the leader of the party that has often claimed to support free markets repeatedly tries to bend the economy to his will. But it’s especially striking as Trump continues to try to label Democrats as “communists.”

“We will defeat the communists, and that’s what they are. They’re not socialists, they’re not democrats, they’re communists,” Trump said at the Republicans’ midterm convention.

And millions heard the message in a TV ad that aired last week: “Together we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America,” says Trump in the ad, which states at the end that it was funded by the federal government. An ethics group has filed a lawsuit against taxpayer money being used for the overtly political advertisement.

The Trump administration has announced equity stakes in more than 30 private companies, imposed dozens of tariffs, and taken the unusual step of trying to lower interest rates via the Treasury Department.

These big, unorthodox policy moves are certainly not communism, but they’re also not typical Republican free-market capitalism. So what could you call it?

“I would say transactional interventionism,” says Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute.

To him, Trump has no set economic philosophy. Rather, many of Trump’s policy moves are aimed at achieving a specific outcome — like using a tariff to boost a particular industry or punish a foreign country … or suggesting a $5,000 check to reward votes.

So, really, who is the actual one with policies that look like the Soviet Union?  Who is buddies with Putin and and warms up to Xi Jinping? This is from Reuters. “What’s in the diesel deal between Putin and Trump?”

US President Donald Trump has stepped up his efforts to lower US diesel prices by lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports and announcing a ceasefire on energy infrastructure between Russia and Ukraine.

Soaring US diesel prices are hurting US truckers and farmers, and are a concern for voters and political parties ahead of November 3 midterm elections.

There’s the bottom line right there. Trump is also pissed about Zelensky bombing those Russian Data Centers. This is a great headline from Newsweek. “How Ukraine Could Explode Trump’s ‘Deal With the Devil’,”  David Averre has the story.

Donald Trump likes to think of foreign policy as a business. Allies should earn their keep and adversaries should be made to pay, unless they can make an offer that leaves America better off than it was before.

The man who brought you The Art Of The Deal and a few too many seasons of The Apprentice should really know when he’s the one being taken for a ride.

Vladimir Putin is currently waging a war on Ukraine and threatening Washington’s historical allies across the pond, while the Kremlin’s digital operatives spread fabricated news and attempt to manipulate the American political conversation via extensive disinformation campaigns.

This, according to the White House, should not discount the Russian president from consideration as Washington’s best partner to help resolve America’s fuel crisis.

Trump’s Russian diesel import deal, hashed out over the phone to Moscow last week, is likely to leave Putin better off, Ukraine worse off, and Americans with little to show for it. But Kyiv‘s recent strikes on Russian data centers suggest it might’ve found another way to make life hard for Putin, and demonstrate why Ukraine, not Russia, could be the more valuable partner for Washington.

It’s really difficult to digest this kind of overt self-dealing in the globe’s first truly democratic republic. How dumb do you have to be to be a Trumper?

I’m still having trouble making comments on the blog for some reason. I have contacted WordPress, and they’re still out to lunch on this one. I think it likely has something to do with any upgrade they made, and AI is likely involved imho. I’ve seen this total loss for something that just popped up into a supposed update before.  It sucks when you don’t have actual programmers to find out who was in charge of that particular feature, when it was basically a rogue computer. Where have I heard that one before?

Trump "says" prices will come down AFTER the midterms 😆😆😆TRANSLATION: Vote for me first, then MAYBE you’ll be able to afford groceries.Sorry, Donald. We see your #RepublicanAffordabilityCrisis and we're gonna let your drown in it 🖕🖕🖕https://tinyurl.com/ynynn4x9

— Morgan J Freeman (@mjfree.bsky.social) 2026-10-12T20:20:15.051Z

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #AI #CorruptDOJ #DonaldTrumpLovesCommunists #ElonMuskElectionBuyer #ElonMuskIsANAZI #PutinAndTrumpGasDeal #RepIlhanOmar #SyracuseSusanSHERO #ViolentAndIllegalICEScapades

FInally Friday Reads Living in La-La-Land and the Dark TimeLine

Of course you did, sir. Well deserved.” John Buss,@repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

No! Orange Caligula did not win the 2026 Nobel Prize! And I bet we’re going to hear the whining for a while. This Forbes headline says it all. “Nobel Committee ‘Shamed Itself Beyond Repair’ by Snubbing Trump, He Says In Truth Social Repost.” Conor Murray reported the story today. The only folks shamed beyond repair are the idiot MAGA Americans who voted for him. I seriously doubt they can express any form of human emotions, however. They’ll be a bit more sanguine when the draft gets reinstated and the young ones get sent to Iran to fight Bibi’s war. Did I mention the ever-higher gas prices?

“President Donald Trump, who has long campaigned to win the Nobel Peace Prize, reshared a Truth Social post Friday morning that attacked the Norwegian Nobel Committee and accused this year’s winner, South African human rights lawyer Navi Pillay, of being an “unabashed hater of America and Israel.”

I also like this headline in USA Today. “Donald Trump passed over for Nobel Peace Prize he’s long coveted.” Miles J. Herszenhorn and Francesca Chambers share the lede.

President Donald Trump was bracing for defeat. Still, he made a last-minute push, arguing in the Oval Office this week that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for intervening to settle or prevent conflicts around the world.

It didn’t work.

On Oct. 9 the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize to South African lawyer Navi Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law. Pillay has dedicated her career to promoting human rights law by defending the anti-apartheid movement and investigating crimes against humanity.

The decision denies Trump an award he has long coveted and frequently griped about not receiving, months after he ousted Venezuela’s leader in a military operation and launched a war against Iran.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to recognize Pillay, an international jurist, serves as a rebuke of the Trump administration’s efforts to sanction the International Criminal Court after it issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged crimes committed by Israel in its war against Hamas. “The system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions are under attack,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the committee’s chair. “We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice.”

The announcement was reported in the New York Times this morning, “Live Updates: Human Rights Lawyer Navi Pillay Is Awarded Nobel Peace Prize. Ms. Pillay has served as a judge in her native South Africa and on international courts investigating war crimes. She led a U.N. panel that determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding the Israeli government rejected. Ms. Pillay has served as a judge in her native South Africa and on international courts investigating war crimes. She led a U.N. panel that determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding the Israeli government rejected.”

One of Navi Pillay’s contributions to international law is her pioneering work on the gravity of sexual violence during conflict. As a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, she pushed from the bench to define the rape of women and children as a weapon of war instead of “collateral damage.” In 1998, when that tribunal found a former Rwandan mayor guilty of genocide, it was the first time that rape had been defined as part of genocide. Sexual violence has since been integrated in international law as a potential war crime, a crime against humanity or an act of genocide.

She has quite a long list of credentials. You might, however, remember Orange Caligula is distinguishing himself by showing what kind of folks he wants to be future Americans. This is a headline from CBS News from September 26th. “Trump administration to welcome up to 17,500 more White South Africans as refugees.” Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports the story.

The Trump administration is planning to welcome up to 17,500 additional White Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees over the next 12 months, according to a notice sent to Congress on Tuesday and obtained by CBS News. The State Department informed congressional officials that the Trump administration is planning to allocate 17,500 refugee spots for fiscal year 2027, and that they will “primarily” go to Afrikaners, who President Trump has claimed are being oppressed for being White. Fiscal year 2027 starts in October. While the second Trump administration has effectively shut down the U.S. refugee resettlement program for most people fleeing persecution and violence around the world, it has made an exemption for Afrikaners, resettling thousands of them over the past year and a half.

The first group of Afrikaners from South Africa to arrive for resettlement listen to a speech at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on May 12, 2025.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Trump administration officials have portrayed Afrikaners as victims of racial oppression in post-apartheid South Africa. The South African government has consistently denied persecuting the ethnic minority, made up of descendants of European settlers, mostly from the Netherlands.

“Afrikaners face the seizure of agricultural property without compensation; government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business; and hateful rhetoric fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored minorities,” the State Department said in its notice to Congress. Last week, the U.S. imposed new sanctions on South African officials who it said were responsible for discriminating against Afrikaners. The Afrikaner resettlement effort is projected to cost the U.S. government $500 million, the notice to Congress said. “The United States anticipates that Afrikaners from South Africa will fully assimilate into the United States in a manner that preserves taxpayer resources for U.S. citizens and does not anticipate other countries resettling Afrikaners,” the notice read.

I really had to share this picture of Trump’s ‘special immigrants’.  It’s really obvious isn’t it? Thanks to photographer Saul Loeb for capturing the special moment.  I have to say I have little hope for those dudes, but I have high hopes the children will spend time in our school system and learn what most of us value. Believe me when I say I’m trying hard to find topics that aren’t distasteful. It simply isn’t working,  The Guardian has this headline today  has ‘Medieval’ and ‘rather disturbing in it point directly at the US. I keep finding it more difficult these days to be a citizen of this country. “‘Medieval’ and ‘rather disturbing’: US plan to livestream execution elicits global condemnation. Pentagon said execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, would be broadcast live.”  How the fuck is this legal, constitutional or in keeping with all those  Christians in the White House and West Wing flashing their Christianess? Oh, dear. I’m cussing today.

‘Medieval’ and ‘rather disturbing’: US plan to livestream execution elicits global condemnation

— The Guardian (@theguardian.com) 2026-10-09T16:45:21Z

The US is facing worldwide condemnation over a “barbaric” plan to execute a disabled man by firing squad and livestream it to the public, with critics comparing the Trump administration to dictatorships in Iran and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at a military base at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, would be livestreamed on 3 December.

The United Nations’ office of the high commissioner for human rights warned on Friday that broadcasting the killing would amount to a public execution and “breach the absolute prohibition of torture”.

The plan also drew opprobrium from politicians, religious leaders and human rights advocates in the US and abroad. Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, wrote on social media: “A barbaric idea, beneath our dignity as a country. Push back on this.”

Yassamin Ansari, the first Iranian American Democrat elected to the US Congress, posted: “In Trump’s America, we’re doing public executions now. WTF. This is what happens under brutal dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan. It’s all part of Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the United States.”

Britain, which abolished the death penalty in the 1960s, moved to distance itself from the execution. Bridget Phillipson, the UK’s equalities minister and Labour party chair, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she found the concept “rather disturbing”.

Phillipson stressed that the decision was a matter for the US government, adding: “They are a close ally. Does that mean that we support everything the US government does? No.”

Under US military law, a president must approve an execution by firing squad. Trump did so on the recommendation of his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, according to the Pentagon.

Hegseth gleefully confirmed the livestream plan after previously saying that the execution would be public. Speaking to the conservative broadcaster Real America’s Voice, he said people should be able to watch because they need to understand that there were “serious consequences” for such crimes.

Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, Hegseth replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”

Now 56, Hasan was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 after being convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. Twelve of those killed and 30 of the wounded were soldiers.

The former army psychiatrist opened fire with a handgun at a medical facility at Fort Hood on 5 November 2009 as soldiers waited for medical checks before deployment. He was shot by a police officer during his arrest and left partly paralysed, and now uses a wheelchair.

The execution is expected to be the first by firing squad carried out by the US military since 1945, when army private Eddie Slovik was executed for desertion during the second world war. The last US military execution of any kind took place in 1961, when John Bennett was hanged.

Hasan’s case comes amid renewed scrutiny of capital punishment in the US following the botched lethal injection of Tennessee death-row prisoner Christa Pike last week. Her lawyers said she awoke in hospital “angry and confused” and remained seriously ill and shackled to her hospital bed.

Mother Jones has this take on this. “Pete Hegseth Wants to Livestream a Snuff Film. The Defense Secretary plans to telecast the military’s first firing squad execution since 1945.” Sophie Hurwitz has the lede.

“He’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth said. The execution, as Hegseth envisions it, would be first and foremost a mass spectacle. “We’re going to make sure people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” he said.

That is to say, Pete Hegseth wants to make a snuff film.

Jim Craig, a veteran Mississippi death penalty lawyer, spoke with me in April, after Trump announced his plan to bring back the federal firing squad. The obscenity of the violence, Craig said, is the whole idea.

This proposal by the Trump Justice Department is characterized by their attraction to brutality. It’s characterized by their affection for causing visible harm to people. You see it in their foreign policy. You see it in their policing. The firing squad is very physical and visceral in the damage that it does to the person being executed. That’s why they like it. We should not mince words about this. It has nothing to do with the Eighth Amendment. It has nothing to do with the supply of drugs, or anything else. They like it because it’s the same kind of video game brutality that they like in every other context of this administration’s barbarism.

A firing squad execution, when the executioners aim well, “essentially vaporizes” a person’s heart, Craig explained. When they don’t, the victim bleeds out and dies slowly.

This is the kind of thing that would cause my grandfather to look up from his newspaper to say “Jesus wept.” Then, all of us kids would say “shortest verse in the Bible”, he’d nod and go back to reading.  I might add it was usually something about the Vietnam War. Alright, so this isn’t getting any better.  While Donald’s special people are getting special treatment as ‘desirable’ immigrants,  I’m sharing this ICE nightmare with you.

This is headline is from today’s Washington Post. “ICE didn’t know 5-year-old boy was in car when officer fired, Mullin says. Federal authorities said Oscar Belgal used his car to ram government vehicles and endanger officers.”

Federal authorities on Friday strongly denounced the reaction of New York officials to the shooting of a Dominican man by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, casting the man as the aggressor who used his car to ram two government vehicles and accelerate toward officers despite having a 5-year-old in the back seat.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the ICE officers did not know the boy was in the vehicle driven by Oscar Belgal, 28, who was struck in the neck during the shooting Thursday afternoon in New York City. Belgal was treated at the scene and taken to a hospital before being moved to a detention facility outside the state, authorities said.

Mullin said Belgal, the boy’s father, would face criminal prosecution and be placed in deportation proceedings.

“He knew he had a child in the car and chose to accelerate at a high-rate of speed,” Mullin said at a news conference in Washington, flanked by senior ICE officials. “He’s a criminal, a thug, a gang banger. The outrage should be with him endangering a 5-year-old.”

New York officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), have denounced the agency and demanded that ICE pause enforcement operations in the state. Mamdani called on federal officials to “abolish ICE.”

“No, we’re not putting a pause on enforcement,” Mullin said. “I’m sorry, we’re not. In fact, I’m not sorry.”

I’m getting really tired of all this white male posturing. I’m beginning to think this entire demographic of Trumpers have teeny tiny little penises like their Dear Leader. You can shout all this hateful stuff and y’all still seem like wimps and simps for Trump.

Okay, I’ll let Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark have the last suggested read today. I seriously had trouble believing this was actually real, but then we’re deep in La-La-Land territory now. “‘I Need Some Pepto-Bismol’: Trump’s Taxpayer-Funded Ad Bombs in Focus Group. It’s not *just* the corruption that bothers them. It’s the actual content, too.”  This makes me glad that my TV gets used only for things like watching the Hurricane in the Gulf.

IF YOU’VE SPENT MUCH TIME watching the NFL, college football, or Dancing with the Stars over the past week, or if you’re just an average political obsessive,1 you’ve probably noticed the taxpayer-funded ads from Donald Trump.

They’re billed as “public service announcements,” and one of the spots features excerpts from a speech Trump gave at one of his 2024 campaign rallies. The speech goes like this: With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all. Since the ads began to air, it’s become pretty clear that people hate the idea of the government using taxpayer money to broadcast them. And I mean, they truly hate it. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that people oppose “using taxpayer funds to pay for election-related television ads featuring the President or members of his cabinet” by a margin of 86–9.2 What’s been less clear is whether the ads themselves are effective. After all, voters always claim to hate political ads. Even when campaign commercials are really effective, voters almost never admit to liking them, trusting them, or being influenced by them. And yet they work. But do Trump’s? To find out, we convened a group of voters from Florida who backed Trump in 2024 but now disapprove of his job performance—the very voters he needs to win back—and showed them the ad. What we saw was a whole new level of revulsion. In fact, we couldn’t even get through the question.

Well, you can go there if you want to, but at least some of them are leaving the Trump Train to Hell. So, I hope I haven’t grossed you out too much. I just kept wondering what it’s like to be one of these reporters on any of these beats. They all must need psychologists by now. What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?Be sure to Vote DAMN IT! And have as good a weekend as possible   I can’t seem to leave a reply on this thread. Here’s what I want to add: It’s a bright, sunny, and slightly windy day here so far. Here’s the AP headline for the hurricane, and I’m not sure what I’m typing into, but every time they change something there, it’s not for the better.   Isaias closes in on the US Gulf Coast as a dangerous Category 3 hurricane

Isaias is expected to come ashore between Mobile Bay on the Alabama coast and the city of Destin in the Florida Panhandle — a region known for powdery white sand beaches dotted with vacation homes, waterfront bars, and seafood shacks.

  We lucked out here in Lousyana.     #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #ICEViolence #NobelPeacePrizeWinner2026HumanRightsLawyerNaviPillay #PublicExecutionHegsethStyle #TaxPayerFundedTrumpAds #TrumpSSpecialImmigrants

Mostly Monday Reads: Pre-election Maneuvers

“Beware, the Malignant, Malicious MAGA Midwife Magician has resurfaced in recent days.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

We’re definitely on the countdown to the Midterms. I wish Jimmy Carter were around to verify elections, especially in Georgia. The voter confusion and suppression methods underway in this country are worthy of giving us Banana Republic status. I was about to write about election stuff anyway when JJ brought to my attention a new Georgia law passed in March.  It doesn’t take effect until 2028, but it sure does illustrate nefarious intent. Imagine a ballot without party affiliation next to the candidate’s name.

Both Georgia officials, like the D.A. Fannie Willis and voter-rights organization Democracy Docket are leading the charge to stop this. Laws and elections in every state matter. This is from June, but you can see why the fight continues.

Metro Atlanta district attorneys sued to block a new Georgia law that would strip party labels from district attorney and other local races in five Democratic-leaning counties, arguing the measure is an unconstitutional attack on Black and Democratic voters.

DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Fulton County challenging House Bill 369 (HB 369), which Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed into law last month. The law would make several county-level offices — including district attorney — nonpartisan beginning in 2028, but only in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties.

Those five metro Atlanta counties are among the state’s most populous and Democratic-leaning. They also have large Black populations and all have Black women serving as district attorney — a fact the lawsuit and voting rights advocates have pointed to as central to the law’s impact.

The challenge marks the opening of a major legal fight over whether Georgia Republicans can selectively remove party labels from local races in the very counties where Democratic candidates have built power. In practical terms, nonpartisan elections mean voters would no longer see whether candidates for certain local offices are running as Democrats, Republicans or members of another party.

Boston argues the law is not a neutral change, but a targeted political maneuver by the Republican-controlled Georgia General Assembly to obscure party affiliation in counties where Democrats currently hold most elected offices.

You may read more at the link as it elucidates the three grounds on which the lawsuit challenges HB 369.  We all remember the Musk Wisconsin voter bribes during the 2024 elections. He didn’t even face charges. So, is it illegal if the President tries it?  “Is it legal? Trump promises Medicare and ACA checks without Congress ahead of midterm elections. Democrats are raising legal questions, but no court has blocked either payment yet.”  This is from Scripps News. Joe St George has the story.

President Trump announced that more than 20 million seniors on Medicare will soon receive a direct deposit of nearly $100, drawing Democratic criticism and questions about whether the payments — made without congressional approval — are legal.

“I am pleased to announce over 20 million seniors on Medicare will still be receiving a deposit of nearly $100 directly into their bank accounts,” Trump said.

Trump said the money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund. A White House fact sheet says most eligible seniors will receive $90 via direct deposit in early October. Those without direct deposit will receive a check.

The Medicare payment is not the only check the administration is cutting. Last month, Trump announced refunds to some people enrolled in Affordable Care Act health plans, saying they had been previously overcharged.

“Nearly 1 million hardworking Americans in 30 states will soon be getting refunds of $500 each,” Trump said.

On the campaign trail, Trump has also promised more money if Republicans win in the November midterm elections.

So far, no legal challenge has resulted in a court blocking either the $500 ACA refunds or the $90 Medicare payments, though Democrats have been sharply critical of both.

“If you want to BUY midterm votes, maybe start by not gutting everyone’s health care in the first place,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden said, referring to the $500 ACA checks.

Also drawing scrutiny on Capitol Hill is Trump’s use of taxpayer dollars to pay for commercials this campaign season. The White House says the spending is legal, but others disagree. Complaints have been filed with the FCC and broadcasters, though no judge has yet blocked the commercials from airing.

This story in the Washington Sun lets us know what some of the plans are for stopping voter suppression tactics by the Federal Government.”State Officials Are Trying to Get Ahead of Federal Agents at the Polls.

The Trump administration has left open the door to sending federal agents to polling locations on Election Day.

Democratic state officials and organizations across the country are preparing for a scenario in which the Trump administration deploys federal agents to the polls in November.

The administration has said it has no plans to send federal agents to polling locations on Election Day. But President Donald Trump and some of his close advisers have left voting rights organizations and state officials uneasy after deflecting when asked about whether they will be deployed.

“The deployment of federal power against its opponents and organizations and the public is really top of mind right now,” said EJ Juárez, executive director of the State Innovation Exchange, a network of progressive state legislators across the country. “We have a set of people in power that are very much set on changing the rules of the game midway through.”

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told lawmakers during a hearing in March that he would only send agents to the polls if there was a “specific threat,” but that he couldn’t “guarantee hypothetically what threat would be.” When asked Monday by Time magazine whether he would deploy federal agents, Trump said, “Haven’t thought of it.” He also refused to rule out using the Insurrection Act to declare a state of emergency leading up to the election.

“In the event that something unusual or unexpected or alarming occurs, we have procedures in place to elevate that problem to our office,” Shenna Bellows, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, told The Washington Sun. “In collaboration with the attorney general’s office, we would be in court and getting orders from the court within hours, not days or months.”

Bellows’ office has been working with state and local officials nationwide through the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a component of the nonprofit Center for Internet Security. In February 2025, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency cut $10 million that Congress had appropriated to CIS, directly impacting the EI-ISAC’s work.

This week’s Rogue player in Orange Caligula’s cabinet is Rapey, Drunk, and Religious Crackpot Pete Hegseth. It’s just one thing after another with this one and it raises questions about Congressional oversight. This is from The Hill. Alexander Bolton has the lede. “GOP senators, blindsided by Hegseth, demand notice, transparency.”  You would think Republican War Hawks would have an issue with all the crazy going on with that guy. Now, they figure it out?

Key Republican senators say they were blindsided by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announced 20 percent reduction of the U.S. military’s general and admirals, and they’re voicing concerns about the lack of consultation with Congress and the possibility that qualified senior officers were sacked for political or ideological reasons.

Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill are questioning whether too many experienced and highly qualified generals and admirals are being pushed out because of politics and what impact it might have on military readiness in the future.

“I wouldn’t have made that a priority if I had been asked,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who said he was only informed of the 20 percent reduction shortly before it was announced.

“I didn’t get a long lead,” he said when asked if he got a heads up before Hegseth’s announcement Wednesday.

Wicker didn’t have many details about the significant reduction in senior ranks. “I think he’s probably interested in cutting out bureaucracy at the top level,” he speculated.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is handling the Pentagon’s request for an emergency supplemental spending package as well as the annual defense spending bill, said the sudden and large reduction of generals and admirals raises questions and concerns.

Collins said she didn’t get advanced notice of the steep reduction in military leadership ranks.

She noted she told Hegseth at a hearing earlier this year that his ouster of senior military officials was “deeply troubling” and risked “depriving us” of the “talent, dedication and patriotism” of women and people of color who were disproportionately pushed out.

That really doesn’t sound like they’ve figured too much out there. There’s no plan of action, of course.  Just whining  they’ve not been consulted. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want any one subjected to what Hegseth considers ethos. He’s obviously pickled his brain with booze and sent it out to be laundered to a brainwashing cult. I’m just hoping that folks that care about the folks who serve in America’s forces are worried enough to dump the Trumpers.

One last thing about the upcoming election. This from the link above at AlterNet. “Trump’s ‘desperation’ is showing as he races to red states: ex-Fox host.”

Longtime friend of President Donald Trump Geraldo Rivera thinks that President Donald Trump is growing more and more desperate.

Trump is headed to red states that are now dangerously close to electing Democrats on Nov. 3. While Trump pledged he’d be campaigning every day for Republicans, it appears there are many GOP candidates who don’t want to be seen with him.

Speaking to CNN on Monday, co-host Brianna Keilar asked Rivera, a former Fox News host, whether Trump’s efforts to “barnstorm” red states were a “Hail Mary” or something else.

“I see it as desperation more than anything else,” he said. He cited Latino voters as a good example. “Anyone who voted Republican — well not everyone — but two out of three have now decided to go the other way. Back, in many cases, to the Democrats. From Florida to Texas, to Arizona, California. I think that huge Latino belt in the southern part of the country is going to go overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly for the Democrats.”

Trump approval among Latino voters ranks at about 27 percent, according to a new NBC News/Telemundo poll taken at the end of September, Keilar cited. Disapproval is at 69 percent. She asked if he thought that was enough to really make a difference.

“I think cost of living is very important to voters. So is the war in Iran that the president started with no clear idea how to end. But I think really, if you were to ask me in my heart of hearts, Brianna, I think it is the absolute cruelty, the abject cruelty with which the Trump administration has administered its immigration policy.”

He suggested that the only way that Republicans can ever have any hope of salvaging the Latino voters of the future would be to abandon Trump’s abusive techniques.

Are we finally getting an example of bullies never win?  This is another story from the Washington Sun that you might want to read. “Republicans in Safe Red States Are Breaking With Trump, Too. At least five GOP senators who are not on the ballot have criticized the president’s handling of the economy and policy priorities.”  Avani Kalra has the story.

It’s not just vulnerable Republicans in swing districts distancing themselves from their party leader.

As President Donald Trump travels the country touting the “greatest” American economy in history, even senators in safe red states are beginning to push back on his rhetoric and policies.

“I’m not going to tell the voters, ‘Oh, it’s President Biden’s fault, and it’s not that bad, you shouldn’t believe your checkbooks,’” Sen. John Kennedy, whose home state of Louisiana swung for Trump by 22 points in 2024, told reporters before the Senate recessed for the elections.

“I also tell them the truth: The main reason for the resurgence in inflation is the Iran war. I think they appreciate the truth, but they’re angry,” Kennedy told The Washington Sun later. His term is up in 2028.

Such rhetoric is a surprising twist. Candidates in tough races often break with unpopular presidents, as they are doing this year. Lawmakers who aren’t on the ballot or who occupy safe seats seldom do. But suddenly they are, as if their states might not be as sheltered from the political headwinds sweeping the nation as history suggests, or perhaps they see hints that the winds could keep blowing for the rest of Trump’s term and beyond.

Kennedy is just one example of out-of-cycle Republicans increasingly criticizing Trump as his approval rating continues to drop. At least four other non-threatened GOP senators have split with the president in recent weeks.

Take West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice, who echoed Kennedy’s concerns that voters are frustrated by the cost of living. He told The Washington Sun that “Republicans,” not just the president, have made missteps while speaking with Americans about the economy.

West Virginia favored Trump by over 40 points, and Justice’s term is not up until 2031.

I’m reminded of James Carville’s old saying when he was running Bill Clinton’s first campaign for the presidency. “It’s the economy stupid!’  I can guarantee you that we’re living up to the Dismal Science reputation these days as we economists have to deliver the bad news about the economy daily.  I promise this is it and I’ll got some lunch and lighten up. This is from MS NOW‘s Paul Waldman.

The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics fell far short of expectations: just 29,000 jobs created in September. Though not many people are losing their jobs, it is a bad time to be looking for one (just ask any graduating senior). And critically, wage growth was again lower than inflation, meaning that on average, Americans continue to fall behind on affording the necessities of life.

To look at President Donald Trump’s poll ratings, one would think we’re in the middle of an outright depression, not just a mediocre economy that isn’t providing the kind of security and opportunity people want. That may be explained by a yawning gap between what Trump promised and what he has delivered — especially for those people, including young men, who put the greatest hope in him to improve their lives.

Begin with the big picture, which could hardly be worse for Trump. His average approval on the economy is in the low 30s. On inflation — or “the cost of living” in some surveys — it’s even worse. Last week’s AP/NORC poll showed his approval on the cost of living at just 17%, the same number as in the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. Perhaps most shocking of all, in both polls, most Republicans said they disapprove of the president’s handling of the issue.

It was clearly a mistake for Trump to say on the campaign trail in 2024, “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One.” But that’s not all he hasn’t been able to deliver. Ever since he ran in 2016, he has offered a vision of a return to an America of the past, one in which manufacturing was the driver of the economy and the people who today feel they have been left behind — especially men, and especially men in rural areas — could rely on well-paid, secure jobs that offered not just a good living but also a sense of accomplishment and status.

We talked about how bad it is for Farmers, well the latest victims of Trump’s disastrous economy are Truckers.  $6 diesel is basically putting them out of business.  You may read more about that at News Week.  Here’s the headline. “Mass Layoffs, Trucking Bankruptcies Mount Amid Diesel Price Shock.” The future does not look bright for the Trump Regime.  Here’s a little John Lennon singing Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out!  “What you say, what you say, what you say?”

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Anyone who dances like this doesn't need a ballroom—he needs a padded cell.

— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@mrsbettybowers.bsky.social) 2026-10-05T16:02:27.985Z

#2026MidTermElections #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #TheDismalTrumpEconomy #voterSupression

Finally Friday Reads: Republicans are only about Power and Money

“I can see why Chuck Grassley likes the Junior Trumplican Senator from Missouri being on his committee.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m struggling a little, so this may be short. My dear cat Dinah, 15 years old, has been getting frail since about September. I’ve been taking her to the vet and the emergency vet for a few months, and there’s been nothing solid to go on other than that she’s a geriatric cat. This last week has been different. I need to get her to the Vet again this afternoon, and I’m already exhausted from a midnight trip to the ER on Wednesday. Bear with me.

Watching Senator John Neely Kennedy of LA back as a theatrical idiot has been interesting.  He’s an Oxford graduate who has cooked up some kind of swampbilly act to get elected to seats in the Republican party. He is such an embarrassment. That is what you have to do these days to get money and votes in what used to be the Party of Lincoln. The entire Republican Party has become a club of rich, endlessly greedy, insane, no-nothings. They’ve always had that element, but dark money has completely empowered them to get elected, do their will, and entertain their right-wing bigots. Once the ruling class decided they could put idiots in the presidency like Reagan and Dubya and just take what they want, that was it. The next thing was putting idiots on SCOTUS to twist the laws that used to contain them. Now they’re focused on no more serious Republicans in governance at all.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana told former special counsel Jack Smith that he made him "want to throw up in my mouth"@anntelnaes.bsky.social (archives 1/5/21)

— paulpro (@mariopro.bsky.social) 2026-10-01T19:58:52.211Z

My reply to this is and will always be that all Senator John Neely Kennedy does any more is throw-up in his mouth. That’s because he knows in his brain what he’s doing where most of the Senators are there because they have no clue and vote the way their corporate overlords demand.  The money and insanity of figures like Elon Musk have set the ideal of a two-party system off track. I honestly don’t think it’s retrievable at this point. Their local political loons love the money and power. I can attest that Senator John Neely Kennedy was once a serious person. I don’t have the psychology chops to figure out exactly what species of loons he’s morphed into.

Case in point from Talking Points Memo today. “Chris Rufo — Known For ‘DEI’ and ‘CRT’ Panics — Tries to Make ‘the Indian Question’ a Thing
Rufo often gets treated as a “respectable” conservative. His latest podcast episode — framing Indian-Americans as a problem in need of solving — is more evidence that he shouldn’t be.” I cannot even fathom what kind of perverted brain had to come up with this. Christopher Mathias has the story.

To the degree that a “respectable” or “moderate” right exists today in America, Christopher Rufo is considered part of it. He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the tony midtown think tank that holds black-tie galas; he recently enjoyed a polite sit-down interview with Ezra Klein on Klein’s massively popular New York Times podcast; and he has over 120,000 subscribers on Substack, a publishing platform whose owners have celebrated Rufo as one of their “best” political writers who readers can “trust.”

This veneer of legitimacy has helped Rufo mainstream an arguably fascist agenda. The 42 year old, after all, largely masterminded the destructive, racist moral panics targeting “Critical Race Theory” and “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs. He helped spearhead the spurious attack on “gender ideology” in public schools, smearing queer-supportive educators as “groomers.” He helped foment conspiracy theories about fraud at Somali daycare centers in Minneapolis, providing the pretext for ICE’s deadly incursion into the city. And he played a central role in spreading the ugly lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were stealing and eating people’s pets.

He’s been up front about how he approaches these propaganda campaigns — and how to get those in power to act upon them. “You have to be very aggressive,” he explained once in a speech at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian liberal arts school where he is a Distinguished Fellow. “You have to fight on terms that you define. You have to create your own frame, your own language. And you have to be ruthless and brutal in pursuit of something good.”

This past weekend Rufo introduced an alarming new term that feels like an escalation, even for him: the “Indian Question” — that is, what to do about the very existence of Indian people, citizens and noncitizens alike, in America? Rufo’s new phrase formed the title of the latest episode of “Rufo & Lomez,” the BlazeTV podcast he co-hosts with Jonathan Keeperman, a lesser known and less “respectable” proprietor of white nationalist talking points, who previously plied his trade anonymously, from behind the pseudonym “Lomez,” until he was unmasked in a 2024 Guardian exposé.

The prompt for this discussion of the “Indian Question” was a viral, racist post  by Bo French, the GOP candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner. “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it,” French wrote on X earlier this month, posting a photo of largely south Asian college students cheering on the University of Texas football team. “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” In a follow up post, French made the barely concealed subtext of his message more explicit: “Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners,” he wrote.

As TPM’s Josh Kovensky noted, French’s tweet — an articulation of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory — roiled the right, eliciting some rare, if tepid, denunciations from prominent Republican officials in Texas, and exposing faultlines in the GOP’s coalition over the exact boundaries of MAGA’s ethnonationalism. Are some non-white ethnicities more allowed than others? Are some immigrant groups more prone to being “assimilated” into white, Christian culture?

Keeperman and Rufo’s “Indian Question” episode amounts to an hour-long defense of French’s post. Keeperman offered a tortured tautology about why the south Asian college kids cheering a comeback victory for the Longhorns — some of whom were wearing cowboy hats and throwing up the “Hook ‘em Horns” hand sign — were not properly “assimilated” into American culture: because he said so.

“Successful assimilation is precisely that you wouldn’t notice it, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about,” he said. “The mere fact of us being able to notice that, no, this is not an assimilated group, this is just a bunch of Indians at the game, is itself sort of definitionally the case that they’re not yet assimilated.”

I know I overshared this article but this is exactly what I mean. It also hits home since I, like many others, have spent all of my natural born years on what used to be Indian Territory. I was born in the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma and spent most of my life in the land of the various Sioux Tribes. Because, my mother knew how horribly our indigenous were treated, she made sure I travelled with her around the states learning as much as possible about Native History.

I am appalled this kind of thing still exists in this century. But then, we’re seeing so many policies thrown around by Republicans that should remain in American History book only, I’ve just about had it with them all.  It’s what it ever was.  It’s your basic land and natural resources grab.  We’re seeing that with AI datacenters now. That’s the only change as they just suddenly exist as something necessary.

Of course, so-called Culture Wars issues are the last resort of mucking up their base since so many of them completely belong in other time periods or planets maybe. This is from The Atlantic. “The GOP’s Culture-War Hail Mary. Will it work?”  Elaine Godfrey has the lede.

Last week, as the war with Iran dragged into its seventh month, gas prices shot up to an average of $4.50 a gallon, and polling showed President Trump about twice as far underwater with American voters as he was at this point in 2018, Republican senators determined that the time had come to discuss something else entirely: youth sports. “Girls’ sports are for girls. Boys’ sports are for boys,” Senator Marsha Blackburn said in a news conference.

With 32 days to go until the midterm elections, Republicans’ closing strategy is obvious: They’re going all-in on trans. (It seems to have worked for them before, after all. More on that in a minute.) In Texas, Republicans are running an unsettling AI-generated ad that shows the Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico dressed as Maria von Trapp and singing about girls with mustaches. A spot in Iowa accuses the Senate candidate Josh Turek of supporting “sex changes for kids.” On X, former Representative Matt Gaetz offered a tidy summary of his party’s agenda: “I hate the war too,” he told a concerned voter. “But the Democrats want to trans your kids.”

Partly, this is because Republicans don’t have much else to say. The administration’s immigration-enforcement strategy isn’t exactly popular. Voters have lost faith in the GOP on economic issues. Meanwhile, the president is obsessing over Corinthian columns. But Republicans also have some reason to believe that making trans happen is a useful strategy: It’s helped them before.

Will these kinds of things really cover up headlines like this one from the AP? Are their people out there really that stupid to not recognize their lives are getting worse.  I certainly see it daily whenever I have to buy groceries.  Price increases aren’t even subtle. “US hiring slows and unemployment ticks higher with a month remaining before Americans head to polls.”  How much more convincing does anyone need?  Paul Wiseman has the analysis.

U.S. employers added a disappointing 29,000 jobs and the unemployment rate ticked up last month, the government reported Friday, a month before voters go to the polls in pivotal midterm elections at a time of discontent over the high cost of living and the state of the economy.

Hiring dropped from a revised 133,000 in August, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate rose to a still-low 4.2% from 4.1% in August.

Economists had expected September payrolls to come in around 90,000.

Labor Department revisions also shaved 60,000 jobs off combined July and August payrolls.

The new hiring data could draw the Federal Reserve’s attention back to hiring and jobs, given that one of the central bank’s two mandates is to seek maximum employment. Many Fed officials have said in recent weeks that they are primarily focused on their other mission, which is combating inflation. With the job market looking a bit weaker, the Fed may be more inclined to keep its key rate unchanged when it meets next month, rather than raise it.

Well, none of that’s going to the inflation problem, that’s for sure.

Anyway, I’ve plagued you with bad news long enough. I’m going back to more important thing like my cat and watching my garden grow. Please do everything you can to go vote and get others to do so too so we can start seeing if and how these problems can be solved reasonably.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #inflation #JohnNeelyKennedyWeirdo #RepublicansSeekToSimulateIndigenousAmericans #RepublicansThatAreBoughtAndSold #TrumpDepression #unemployment

Mostly Monday Reads: The Clusterfuck Express

“Sometimes, science isn’t all that great. No need to create DINOs in the lab.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

If ever a case could be made that the politicians sent to the District to represent the people couldn’t be more out of touch, this year’s case would take top prize.  As someone who has taught and studied fiscal and monetary policy for decades, I’ve never had such a tough time explaining how opposite everything is right now. I imagine those who research and breathe military and foreign policy will say the same thing. The people’s priorities are dead last.

And it shows in the headlines. I’m going to start with a few examples of how badly consumers (e.g., voters) are being treated these days. It’s no wonder there’s a scramble to rig and suppress votes by this administration. This is a sad story to bring up as we face the new school term and Thanksgiving. It comes from MTN. “They don’t understand the scale of the hunger!” – An unfolding crisis at the nation’s food banks. Weeks before the midterm elections, the cost crisis is hammering food pantries in red and blue states”.  No one can do well at school, work, or life with an empty, aching stomach. Scott McFarlane has the story.

On the shelves inside the giant food bank warehouse in Rockville, Maryland, you see a giant stack of flour packets. The sign next to the stack says “1 each” for those packing up food boxes for families.

A shorter stack of canned “mixed fruit” is next to the flour. An even shorter stack of canned tuna is the next to the fruit.

But it’s the empty shelves above that tell the story.

The demand for donated food is unprecedented at the Manna Food Center.

In fairness, this is a challenging moment for food banks and pantries across the country, including in this diverse suburb 20 miles north of Washington, D.C.

Food banks have two fundamental, destabilizing problems that are getting worse:

1. The food is getting more expensive
2. The diesel to deliver the food is getting more expensive

With just a few weeks remaining until a highly-anticipated midterm election, the cost crisis is worse than some elected leaders – including President Trump – are acknowledging.

A week of interviews and food pantry visits by Scott MacFarlane Reportsreveals the depths of the problem. Some of the reality is masked by Trump’s claims that the economy is the greatest in history, in the “hottest country in the world.”

A newly-released study called the “Hunger Report”, produced by a Washington, D.C.-based food bank group had an alarming diagnosis: “The state of food security more broadly is deteriorating.”

Some of the findings are just gutting.

The survey found broad swaths of people who acknowledge they:

• Cut the sizes of their children’s meals, due to the cost of the food
• Have children who didn’t eat for an entire day
• Skipped meals, to save money

It certainly is the fault of the farmers and ranchers of this country. They are hard hit too. So hard hit, the Iowa is quite close to turning Blue as is Nebraska.  This is an article from last May, also known as planting and baby animal season that sums up what the agriculture sector is facing. It’s from an economic stie called MarketPlace.  Caitlin Tan has the analysis if the situation.  “Many farmers, ranchers stare down an economic crisis. Across the U.S., farmers and ranchers are struggling to weather a growing season plagued by drought, high prices, and a trade war.”  Sounds like what you used to read in history about the Great Depression doesn’t it?

American farmers and ranchers are staring down a lot of financial pressure: fuel and fertilizer prices, the war in Iran, tariffs, drought, and more.

In the West, it’s that time when ranchers move their cattle to public grazing lands, so the cattle can eat. But the summer pasture that normally feeds cattle through the fall isn’t very green and lush this year.

“The big word is drought,” said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association.

That means ranchers are looking to buy hay, Magagna said. Extra hay can cost $30,000 on the low end, and hundreds of thousands on the high end.

Ranchers’ other option, he said, is to sell off some of their livestock. Selling could pad ranchers pockets right now, and Magagna advised ranchers to hold onto that cash.

“It may sorely be needed in 2027, 2028 and beyond,” he said, because financial woes are growing for those who live off the land.

“So many farmers are reporting, you know, that they’re kind of on the brink of a crisis situation,” said Aaron Lehman. A fifth-generation farmer, he grows corn, soybeans, and oats, and is president of the Iowa Farmers Union.

Lehman said his costs are soaring, and so are his neighbors’, for labor, health insurance, fuel, and fertilizer.

“For a medium sized farm like mine, they had an increase in costs of about $20,000,” he said.

Last December, the White House announced a $12 billion aid package for farmers. And recently, the White House said China will purchase billions of agricultural products from U.S. farms.

But Lehman is not encouraged by that development.

“Farmers don’t know exactly what to think. They hear some vague news and vague promises and then there’s nothing concrete about it,” he said.

That instability shows up at the bank. Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union, said lenders are backing off.

It’s from that point in the spring to this headline today at CNN. “‘Is it really worth it to keep going on?’ Economic pain hits America’s farm belt.”  This does not meet our expectations for a functional market where the supply and demand should equal in the texbook sense. Obviously both producers and consumers are experiencing some pretty drastic factors.  All of these factors are from bad policy by the White House. It doesn’t take an economist to figure any of this out. Chris Isidore and Tami Luhby share the lede.

Notice this first farmer has had his farm in the family that made it through the Great Depression and quite a few other kinds of Panics which is what they called some of action in the past.

John Yeley has spent the last 26 years working on his farm, which his family has owned since 1852.

Yeley is the seventh generation to run his farm in Illinois, just over the state line from Indiana. Although he plans to keep doing so, he’s not sure he wants his 16-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter to take over because the current economics are so rough.

“Right now, the way all of this is now, no, I wouldn’t wish it on them,” he said about farming.

Farmers like Yeley as well as agriculture experts agree that the farming sector is in a painful recession. Farms are dealing with record-high diesel prices, a fuel that is critical to their equipment. Trade disputes have cut off access to vital markets. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have sent fertilizer costs soaring, just as farmers pay higher interest rates on the loans needed to get from planting to harvest season.

Yeley is not sure he’ll earn a profit this season, even with prices up for for his corn and soybeans.

“We’re not a big county, but we’ve had three farmers go under this year,” said Yeley. “I know that’s on the minds of everybody, is it really worth it to keep going on? The stress level is pretty high.”

Currently, the price of diesel is the most pressing problem for farmers.

So what kind of idiot would start a series of wars where oil is most at play? Yeah, that’s rhetorical. Trump’s ‘foreign policy’ basically ignores the reality of how intertwined our economies are and how easily a market can be disrupted. That kind of knowledge has been common since the world’s great minds picked apart the Great Depression and the World Wars. Unfortunately, the world’s great minds or even the country’s aren’t a play here. This country isn’t what it used to be at all. While Trump rants about communism in the Democratic Party, we get headlines like this in the New York Times.  How is this even the idea of someone rational?  “Trump Offered to Sell Arms to China, U.S. Ambassador Says. President Trump made the offer to Xi Jinping, China’s leader, said David Perdue, the ambassador to China. The White House later said the U.S. had no plans for such a sale.”  Now there’s a denial?  WTF?  Edward Wong has the story.

President Trump has asked Xi Jinping, the leader of China, whether he would like to buy American weapons, David Perdue, the American ambassador to China, said in a television interview on Sunday.

“President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,’” Mr. Perdue said on “Fox News Sunday” while discussing the state visit by Mr. Xi to Washington last week. “He actually asked President Xi would he like to buy some at one point.”

Mr. Perdue did not give further details and did not reveal Mr. Xi’s reply.

An admission that the American president offered to sell arms to China is extraordinary. The Communist-ruled nation is considered by most American policymakers and legislators of both parties to be the greatest military, economic and diplomatic rival of the United States — the only real challenger to America as a superpower.

When asked for comment, the White House said through a U.S. official that the United States had no plans to sell arms to China. The State Department said in a statement that “U.S. law prohibits arms sales to China and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has the world’s fastest-growing military, and for decades U.S. officials across administrations, including in the current one, have warned of a potential military clash between the two nuclear-armed powers in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly over the island of Taiwan or China’s aggressive actions in territory claimed by U.S. allies in the South and East China Seas.

Chinese defense companies, with the approval of the Chinese government, are supporting adversaries of the United States, including Iran and Russia, by selling them dual-use equipment and satellite imagery, as well as planning the secret export of weapons, according to U.S. officials. The United States has imposed sanctions on some Chinese companies.

The link is gifted.  So is this one written by Guest Essayist Tim Wu, which was published today by The New York Times.  Wu worked on economic issues during the Biden Administration. It’s all about the big word that Trump finds appalling. “Affordability Is a Winning Message for Democrats. But There’s an Even Better One.”

The most important political division in our times is not between Democrats and Republicans, or socialists and capitalists; it’s between those who think today’s economic system is fair and working well for most people, and those who do not. While a minority of Americans defend the current system, citing aggregate indicators like growth rates, a majority see things differently. A recent CBS News poll found that some 60 percent of Americans think the economy is “unfair” and that most people under 45 say they have fewer economic opportunities than their parents did. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 66 percent of Republicans said that the gap between rich and poor is a “big problem.” Though the stock market is up and the United States is not suffering a recession or mass unemployment, Gallup’s monthly Economic Confidence Index has been persistently negative.

To run a proper affordability campaign — one that taps into a discontent even deeper than that over high prices — Democrats should cater to this widespread sense of unfairness. The key message is rebalancing: a promise to level out a lopsided economy that favors huge concentrations of wealth.

That message can risk sounding like generic political talk about standing up for the little guy. Credibility has to come from a platform of policies that shift economic power away from the big guys in ways that voters can readily understand.

You see this in the platforms of candidates who have run on affordability. Mr. Mamdani’s government-run groceries stores are supposed to make milk cheaper, yes — but also to undercut the power of corporate food conglomerates. Ms. Sherrill’s utility tariff for data centers is designed to lower energy prices for consumers, yes — but also to force Big Tech to pay for its own infrastructure. Mr. Sand hopes to lower home prices, yes — but in part by barring private equity from buying up single-family homes as investments.

What we are seeing is the resurgence of an age-old American ideology of economic balance. While it lacks a formal name, it may well be the most popular ideology in the country.

There are signs on the campaign trail that some Democratic candidates grasp the appeal of this broader affordability message, as when Mr. Talarico, running for Senate in Texas, says that “the biggest divide in this country is not left versus right” but rather “top versus bottom.” Democrats should not be afraid to hit this message harder: The problem is not just high prices but also the structure of the economy. If Democrats can embrace what affordability is really about, they might do even more than win elections; they might bring about the change that most Americans, including most Republicans, say they are looking for, and in so doing, realign our politics.

This article by Josh Marshall writing at TPM shows that the grifting is still ongoing. Why do we have to put up with this?  “US Tax Dollars Now Used to Secure Deals for Trump Family Cronies.” Why isn’t this an outrage to everyone in the Congress?  Mike Johnson clearly needs to go, but who knows what’s up around Shreveport. I certainly don’t.

This has gotten very little attention, as far as I can tell. But it sounds quite sleazy and another example of the US government becoming a de facto investment arm of the Trump Corporation/TrumpaNostra. Lukoil, the Russian oil company, put up for sale most of its foreign assets outside of Kazakstan about a year ago. This was in response to new US sanctions. Carlyle Group and a couple other bidders have wanted to purchase these assets but approvals have been stalled in regulatory approvals in Washington. Now a group lead by billionaire financier Todd Boehly is close to securing the deal. Partnering with him are, according to The Financial Times (paywall), a group of “Gulf power brokers with ties to the Trump family” and … the US government itself, in the form of the US International Development Finance Corporation.

The current CEO of the DFC is Ben Black, son of Leon Black, a decades-long Trump pal and business associate, who is deep, deep into the Epstein saga and controversies.

The Trump-connected families are …

The US International Development Finance Corporation and Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and brother of its president, are in Boehly’s consortium. The billionaire Syrian-Qatari Al-Khayyat family, which has worked closely with the White House and Trump family members on property and energy projects, is also included.

The Al-Khayyat bros (two brothers, not using that term just loosely) are partners in that (fairly controversial) Albanian resort development that Jared and Ivanka. So pretty extensive ties. The UAE guy’s brother speaks for itself.

International oil financing is way outside my expertise. But it certainly sounds like the US government through the DFC is being used leverage a deal for business pals of the Trump family. The US government has to approve any deal. And one would imagine this deal will have something of an inside track since the US government is a member of the consortium making the deal. I don’t think there’s anything specifically or narrowly illegal about this. But it’s pretty clearly the US government now becoming a tool – now through direct investments of US tax dollars – of Trump family business.

Yes, it’s said that Life is Unfair, but does our government really have to make it so much worse for the majority of us?  And, why do people keep voting these idiots into office? Haven’t we had enough of this?

So, yes, I’m a disgusted about things today. Why aren’t these crooks headed to jail?

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CrisisInNationSFarms #CrisisInNationSFoodBanks #EatTheRich #EconomicFairness #TrumpCreatedEconomicPain #TrumpGrift

Finally Friday Reads: Moving Right Along

“Why Natalie gets paid the big bucks.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day. Sky Dancers!

It seems we have more of the same this week, and that’s a damn shame! Voting Rights, Press Access, Trump’s Fanboi treatment of a dictator, and the deconstruction of anything represent fairness and opportunity sally forth.  Let’s take a look at the headlines as we get closer to the midterm elections!

Let’s start with a Supreme Court Decision that’s definitely in the damn shame category. This is from Jacob Knutson writing for Democracy Docket. “Supreme Court revives DHS use of flawed immigration database for voter purges.”  Ideology once again trumps law and data.

In a dangerous decision for voters, the Supreme Court authorized the Trump administration to overhaul a federal immigration database into a vast, centralized and deeply flawed database of Americans’ personal information to initiate registration purges.

The decision lets the administration move forward with a key provision of President Donald Trump’s 2025 anti-voting executive order, much of which courts have permanently blocked.

At least five of the Court’s Republican-appointed justices lifted a lower-court order that found the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) modification and use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement (SAVE) system “trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”

The majority’s opinion gave short shrift to the danger of eligible voters, especially naturalized citizens, being wrongly removed from the rolls — a concern highlighted by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent.

“[T]he harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,” Jackson wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The decision Friday marks a significant loss to voters — particularly naturalized citizens, who have been disproportionately falsely flagged as ineligible voters when states have fed their registration lists into SAVE.

It also deals a blow to voting and privacy groups challenging DHS’s overhaul of SAVE as a violation of federal privacy laws and an unconstitutional attempt to usurp states’ authority over elections.

SAVE has existed for decades as a tool that lets states check the immigration status of people applying for government benefits.

However, in the 2025 executive order, Trump directed DHS to transform the database into a sweeping tool to vet state voter rolls.

The Supreme Court granted the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) request to stay the lower-court ruling even though a coalition of voting and privacy advocates led by the League of Women Voters warned that SAVE was never designed to check voter eligibility and, when used this way, will erroneously flag eligible voters as noncitizens.

“Today’s decision is profoundly disappointing, as it puts millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the administration’s unreliable voter purge database weeks before the midterm elections,” the coalition said in a statement. “However, this case is not over. The D.C. district court ruled that the expanded SAVE program violated multiple laws.”

“We will be doing everything in our power to protect Americans’ voting and privacy rights by ensuring that the district court decision stands,” it added.

The White House is certainly afraid of the results of the upcoming election.  So are members of Congress.  This is from Susan B. Glasser writing for The New Yorker. “The Week Republicans Finally Panicked About Trump. The President’s party, facing a midterm reckoning, is begging for a way out of his Iran-war doom loop.”

Trump’s ability to change the subject has long been one of his political superpowers. This was widely understood to be one of the reasons—beyond his apparently genuine loathing of the news organizations in question—for his “FAKE NEWS” press ban. I’m sure that he thought the spectacle of his dictator pas de deux with Xi would provide days’ worth of obsessive chatter. It may be, however, that the only person in politics that the President has succeeded in distracting this time is himself.

Forty days before the midterm elections, Washington is increasingly consumed not by Trump’s endless antics so much as by the rapidly clarifying political reality of the predicament in which the President, deeply unpopular and trapped in an unwon war of his own choosing in the Middle East, has got himself and his party. A reckoning—one far harsher than was expected, even a few months ago—now seems imminent.

Few are flatly predicting yet that Democrats will seize control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives—in the Senate, they would need to flip a net of four seats to win the chamber—but, by just about every metric except the vast sums of campaign cash that Trump has drummed up, this election looks increasingly likely to produce an outright repudiation of the President’s party, after a campaign season in which Trump’s own reckless politics and persona have defined the political landscape. No modern President, in fact, has ever gone into a midterm election this unpopular. Trump’s standing with the American public is currently twice as low as it was at this point in 2018, when Republicans lost forty-one seats in the House.

“Since early September, there has been a noticeable shift toward Democrats,” Doug Sosnik, who served as the political director of the Clinton White House, wrote on Thursday, in one of his closely followed election analyses. The movement of voters away from Republicans “hit a tipping point in recent weeks,” Sosnik concluded, with “Democrats now positioned for gains that looked unimaginable at the beginning of the year,” an outcome largely attributable to voters’ rejection of “the increasingly erratic behavior of an out of touch Commander in Chief.” This assessment is not all that different from what Republicans—both privately and, in some cases, publicly—are saying. “Republicans are running out of runway,” Dave Winston, a longtime G.O.P. pollster, warned this week in an op-ed in Roll Call, blaming this development on the fact that Trump’s economic message has been “falling on deaf ears.” The phrase “ringing alarm bells” was used.

The political class has responded accordingly. “The Republican abandonment of Donald Trump begins,” the conservative National Review wrote on Wednesday. That same day, Punchbowl News said this was the week that Republicans were hitting the “panic button.” That afternoon, the right-wing Christian radio host Steve Deace posted a screed on X complaining that Trump’s failed war with Iran risks becoming a “2020 Covid lockdown level of political albatross” that could cost the G.O.P., even in Trump bulwarks such as Deace’s home state of Iowa, where Democrats now look like they could take both the governorship and an open U.S. Senate seat. Just two years ago, Trump won the state by thirteen points.

So many Republican candidates in recent days have broken with Trump that it’s as if a secret memo went out announcing that the floodgates were officially open. (Newsweek even started a tracker of “Republicans breaking with Trump ahead of midterms.”) Among the more notable defections were Republican Senate nominees in Iowa and Michigan, both of whom pleaded with Trump to end the war with Iran, now. “Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life,” Mike Rogers, a former congressman who is the G.O.P. nominee in Michigan, says in a new ad, itself a rebuke to Trump’s line that the affordability crisis is just another Democratic hoax. “Groceries cost too much. We have to bring prices down. The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly. When it does, energy costs will plummet.” Representative Ashley Hinson, the nominee in Iowa, echoed that language. “The war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end,” she said. Democrats quickly pointed out that, so far, Hinson had voted multiple times against resolutions in Congress to stop the conflict.

Well, that’s refreshing! This take is from Bill Scher writing for the Washington Monthly.  ‘This Is the Biggest Reason Why a Blue Wave Is Probably Coming. Nothing makes voters angrier at the party in power than having less money in their pockets, and real disposable income is down.”  I just hope all these prognosticators are right.

There are lots of reasons to believe Democrats are about to crush the midterm elections. Donald Trump’s average job approval is below 40 percent, about 5 points lower than it was in the 2018 midterms, which were deemed a “Blue Wave.” His authoritarian antics continue to dominate media coverage, as does seemingly corrupt behavior from him and his family. Democrats are ahead in the generic congressional ballot poll average by nearly 9 points, matching the national popular vote margin for the 2018 House elections. In September polling of Senate races, Democrats lead in six states with Republican-held seats, more than the four needed to take control. Gas and food prices remain high, which the public broadly blames on Trump’s ham-fisted tariffs and blunderbuss war with Iran.

There are millions of reasons to believe Republicans are going to hold off a Blue Wave: specifically, the hundreds of millions of dollars they are flooding into political advertising to paint Democratic candidates as radical socialists. As Democrats need wins in states and districts where Trump won comfortably in 2024, the right-leaning voters who will determine the outcomes may well be swayed by the negative advertising avalanche. Furthermore, the Democratic margins in most Senate polling are usually within the margin of error, and there is plenty of precedent for Republicans to outperform polls on Election Day.

But one factor may outweigh the rest: the decline in real disposable income.

Real disposable income measures how much money people have after taxes, adjusted for inflation. Seth Masket, the political scientist who now publishes a Substack newsletter has long tracked the correlation between real disposable income and midterm election outcomes. As The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson observed about Masket’s research back in 2010, “It’s not perfect correlation, but the trend is clear. When folks feel richer, they reward the party in power.” This May, Masket offered a midterm forecast largely based on the specific metric he uses, “growth in per capita real disposable income between the second quarter of the year before the election and the first quarter of the election year,” which came in at a limp 0.4 percent. The model projected a 46-seat net gain for House Democrats, though even Masket said he would consider it surprising if that exact number came to pass.

Allow me to add a data point: the second quarter of the election year.

Per capita real disposable income took a big hit in the second quarter of 2026, with growth coming in at negative 0.4 percent compared to the prior quarter.

And what happened just before the second quarter began? Donald Trump attacked Iran, and oil prices skyrocketed.

If we look at growth in per capita real disposable income from the 3rd quarter in the year before a midterm to the 2nd quarter in the year of the midterm, the 2025-2026 number is also negative: -0.5 percent.

Any such decline is unusual. We’re about to hold the 20th midterm election since 1950. In only four of these, from the period of third quarter to the second quarter, did per-capita real disposable income shrink.

Two of those midterms, 1958 and 1974, tie for the biggest Blue Waves of the last 75 years, each netting Democrats 48 House seats. A third was in 2022 during the Joe Biden presidency, when red-hot inflation chewed up paychecks, but Masket notes it as a massive outlier, with the president’s party coughing up only nine House seats. He attributes the limited losses to a slew of Trump-backed extremist candidates baselessly flogging election fraud and backlash over the right-wing Supreme Court ending Roe v. Wade. I would add that the worst of the inflation spike had ended; 2022’s second quarter decline was not as bad as the preceding four, and the following quarter was positive. In other words, the trajectory was moving in the right direction.

Economics matters.  I can speak from recent experience in this second Trump term about what his tariffs and other bad policy are doing to me and I can see by checking the data that I’m not the only one.  You can hear in conversations between people and from your friends. The money runs out before the car can be gassed and the grocery shopping is adequate.  This is why I laughed at that article about sending women back to being housewives with a few tax cut dribbles. That would mean homeless and starvation for most of America’s families. Also, this is a very bad time of year to cut out programs that feed school children and the elderly. Those headlines do not help the situation at all.

Trump is feeding his fires with government funds. His audacity with this move did not surprise me.  Nothing does anymore.  Will this be another illegal move left to back pages so know when can really find it?  Isaac Arnsdorf has the story for the Washington Post. “Trump ad airing with government funding despite law against ‘propaganda’. The agency responsible for the commercial was not immediately clear.”  He clearly has no interest of knowledge of our laws.

A television ad promoting President Donald Trump began airing on cable Wednesday saying it was paid for by the U.S. government, despite a federal prohibition on using taxpayer dollars for “publicity or propaganda.”

The ad is similar to spots released earlier by the nonprofit arm of Trump’s political operation to promote his record in the midterms campaign. But this one includes a tag reading, “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

Since the 1950s, annual appropriations legislation — including the funding bill Trump signed in February — has routinely included a ban on using federal funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” The Government Accountability Office has said the prohibition applies to communications that are “purely partisan” and “designed to aid a political party or candidates.”

The ad consists of a supercut of Trump photos and videos interspersed with text of campaign slogans. The soundtrack features snippets of Trump speeches and a chorus of women singing, “I’ll make them love me.” It ends with Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White praising Trump over footage of the June match on the White House lawn and military flyovers.

It has aired so far on Newsmax in Chicago and Fox News in Los Angeles, according to ad-tracking firm AdImpact. The firm noted, however, that it could not verify spending data for the ad because the networks airing it were not classifying it as political.

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, argued that the ads are not political and that Trump is not on the ballot.

The president has repeatedly told his supporters to vote as if he were.

This AP article as provided by the  Washington Sun has news that the Press Pool is back in place at the White House. “White House TV Pool Is Operating Again After Days of Outlets Being Banned When the White House booted CNN and two other outlets from the grounds, the other four networks in the pool declined to participate in a show of solidarity.” Jocelyn Noveck has the lede.

The U.S. network video pool for the White House was back in operation Friday, for the first time since President Donald Trump banned three news outlets in a high-profile showdown over media access.

“As of now, all systems are go,” said a person familiar with the pool, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the fluidity of the situation.

The pool consists of five major U.S. broadcast outlets that take turns shooting and sharing video. When the White House banned CNN — which belongs to the pool — and two other outlets from White House grounds, the other four declined to participate in a show of solidarity.

A judge temporarily struck down the ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Thursday, but his ruling didn’t directly address the pool. The networks continued to refrain from covering Trump as part of the pool even as reporters from all three outlets were allowed back in the White House.

As President Donald Trump prepared to take Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit the National Archives on Friday, the pool’s live feed was being shared again.

This last bit of news has me very angry having lived through the period when segregation in schools was either the rule or the geographic fact up in to the period where desegregation became the rule. This is also from the AP.  “Trump administration moves to limit fixes for systemic racism in schools.” Annie Ma has the story.

For decades, a key principle underpinned civil rights enforcement in American schools: Not all discrimination was intentional.

Even if a school policy was written without overt racial bias, it might unfairly hurt one group of students over another, the understanding went. The concept is known as systemic racism, and Republican and Democratic administrations agreed: Schools and universities that received federal funding had an obligation to address it.

Under President Donald Trump’s administration, that’s no longer the case. One by one, the administration has limited the remedies schools can use to address systemic racial injustice.

This summer, the Education Department rescinded a regulation that allowed schools to gauge potential discrimination by comparing outcomes across races, such as the racial breakdown of students in advanced classes. Then, it issued a letter to American schools, emphasizing it’s illegal to consider race when crafting discipline policies — even if one particular racial group ends up suspended or expelled more often.

At the same time, Trump’s Justice Department has stepped away from many school desegregation cases. In a news release Thursday, the department boasted of successfully working through the courts to close more than 50 desegregation cases since Trump took office, with motions to dismiss in the works in many other cases. Previous administrations had used these federal court cases to hold schools accountable when students of color had worse outcomes than white students — high rates of discipline, worse school facilities or reduced access to extracurriculars and advanced coursework.

While Trump’s first administration deprioritized enforcing racial justice, his current administration has gone further — threatening to punish schools for any consideration of race in their policies and practices.

To the administration, the practice of examining different outcomes for particular groups of students, sometimes known as “disparate impact,” was itself a form of racial discrimination.

“The Obama and Biden Administrations weaponized disparate impact by effectively coercing schools to discipline students differently based on race in order to engineer equitable disciplinary outcomes across racial groups,” Education Department spokesperson Sabin Sidney said. “These practices unfortunately led to unsafe classrooms and undermined student learning.”

It’s very difficult for me to see us return to this situation especially given my children and grandchildren are multiracial.

So, that’s pretty much enough to stew on for the moment.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#2026Midterms #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Affordability #BlueWaveMidterm2026 #Freedom #SocialJustice #TaxPayerFundedPropaganda #voterSuppression #WhiteHousePressPool

Mostly Monday Reads: Orange Caligula and the Red Menace

“Meanwhile in the Nation’s Capital… in the Oval Office… nothing to be concerned about…” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The media’s responses to Orange Caligula’s latest attack on the press were reported in today’s headlines. He wasn’t successful with his last attack when he threw out Jim Acosta in 2018. You may remember the melodrama that ensued when Sara Sanders  announced the revocation of Acosta’s “hard pass,” then created some lie alleging that he “placed his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.” The intern was trying to snatch his microphone. The response is clearly bigger this time out.

First step?  Back to the courts. This is from the Washington Post. “Major TV networks halt video coverage of Trump over CNN ban. CNN, along with MS NOW and Politico, filed a lawsuit over the ban, which the president defended as ‘an assault on the FAKE NEWS’.” Scott Nover has the report.

News organizations responded strenuously Monday to President Donald Trump’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, filing a lawsuit in federal court and banding together to halt video coverage of the president until further notice.

In the suit filed in federal district court in Washington, CNN, MS NOW and Politico are alleging violations of news outlets’ First Amendment free press rights and Fifth Amendment due process. They are requesting a federal judge hear the case on an expedited basis.

Soon after the lawsuit was announced, ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC said they would halt TV coverage of presidential events, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post, over the White House’s ban of CNN, which is one of the five members the White House television pool.

“This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, the Fox News Washington bureau chief and chair of the TV pool, wrote in a memo to the White House press corps that was obtained by The Post. “ … There will be no replacement pool put in place. All other pool coverage will continue as normal, including Congress, VIPs, and selected events in Washington and around the country.”

In a joint statement Monday, the five members of the rotating TV pool wrote: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

The three further allege that the White House’s decision Friday to revoke their credentials was “because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

I’ve basically quit TV News because I can’t stand to see any animated and speaking version of this icky slob of a hooman. Print media only for me. Trump-fee TV. That ought of cause the use of anxiety and and anti-depressants to plummet!  Here’s the New York Times coverage as reported by Michael M. Grynbaum and Ali Watkins. ”  Nobody shoots himself in the foot like Dementia Don.

Major television networks on Monday agreed to suspend their pooled coverage of President Trump after the White House refused to allow CNN to serve as a pool representative on Monday.

The move is an extraordinary escalation of an unfolding showdown between the Trump administration and the White House press corps, which began last week when the president barred journalists at CNN, MS NOW and Politico from entering the White House grounds. Those three outlets said on Monday they would sue to regain access.

Despite Mr. Trump’s years of lawsuits and threats against the news media, archrival news organizations have rarely undertaken this kind of collective action.

Five networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC — have long shared the responsibility of providing television coverage of presidential events, splitting the financial costs and distributing footage that is carried by news organizations worldwide. The networks perform their duties on a rotation, and CNN had been slated to provide coverage for Mr. Trump’s travel on Monday to the United Nations General Assembly.

It is extremely unusual for a president to travel or hold public events without being accompanied by representatives from the television pool. The president’s activities on Monday are still expected to be covered by print, radio and wire journalists, along with still photographers.

“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, the Washington bureau chief at Fox News, wrote in a note to television pool members on Monday, which was obtained by The New York Times. (Mr. Boughton is the acting chair of the television pool consortium; the networks rotate the chairmanship on a quarterly basis.)

“This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties,” Mr. Boughton wrote. “There will be no replacement pool put in place. All other pool coverage will continue as normal.”

“We will provide updates as this situation develops,” he added.

The five networks later issued a joint statement, writing: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

Thanks for this and the featured song today JJ!

OMG. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Two million likes on TikTok… and counting.

— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) 2026-09-21T02:42:52.891Z

Trump continues to make a mockery of both foreign and national policy. This headline from the AP shows exactly how dumb he thinks we all are.  “Trump decries Democrats as ‘communists,’ even as he looks to impress China’s communist leader.”

Communism, President Donald Trump says, is the greatest threat the U.S. has ever faced.

This summer, citing similarly grave concerns, he took the rare step of delivering a primetime address to the nation, accusing China of “sinister election meddling” in 2020 and reviving his yearslong push to dispute his loss in that year’s election.

Even as Trump seeks to decry Democrats as communists ahead of November’s midterm elections, he is rolling out the red carpet this week for Chinese President Xi Jinping, the leader of the world’s most powerful communist country.

The state visit comes as the president himself has increasingly directed his administration to take large stakes in private companies to try to stimulate the economy — something even some Republicans decry as corporate socialism.

The contradictions between Trump’s words and actions risk muddying Republican attack lines on Democrats.

“I do think that we’re not offering a clear contrast,” said Marc Short, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence and worked in Trump’s White House in his first term.

During the recent Republican midterm convention in Dallas, the president repeatedly branded Democrats as communists, even proclaiming, “It’s going to be a communist country if they win.”

“In state after state, the Democrat establishment has been overthrown and replaced by crazed lunatics and radicals,” he said, adding, “America has beaten communism before, and we will beat it again.”

Meanwhile, this happened.  This is from the Washington Post again.  “U.S. proposes AI incident alert system in talks with China. U.S. and Chinese officials plan to discuss “more transparency” on artificial intelligence at a summit in Washington this week.”

The United States and China are considering a “notification mechanism” to monitor national security incidents involving artificial intelligence, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday night.

Bessent met on Sunday with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York ahead of a summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping this week. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also met with his Chinese counterparts Sunday.

The two countries “want a shared vision of common goals and common threats,” Bessent told reporters following the meeting, which was held at the JP Morgan headquarters in Manhattan. “We think that, just like any cross-border activity, that moving from more opaque to more transparency between the number one and number two AI powers in the world is very important.”

Democrats communists. China not a communist state.  Got it.

M’okay!  Explain this to me then. “White House Plan to Subsidize Stay-at-Home Parents Divides Conservatives. Some praise the idea championed by Vice President JD Vance to direct federal money to support traditional families, while others say it cuts against conservative principles.”  So, what’s the difference between this and the welfare mothers that Reagan used to belittle continually. Could it be racist stereotypes?   Coral Davenport has the lede.This is from the New York Times.  And, yes, in all the years this blog has been running I’m not sure why all of the sudden I’m relying on the big guys. Could it be the search engines maybe?

Republicans are sharply divided over a new plan being drafted by the Trump administration that would allow stay-at-home spouses to collect child care subsidy payments from a federal program intended to assist working parents.

Some commentators and lawmakers called the policy, which could help realize a vision of stay-at-home motherhood championed by Vice President JD Vance, a “grand slam,” “no-brainer” and “President Trump’s greatest legacy.”

Others eviscerated it as “socialism,” “rank politics” and “stupid.”

The split reaction reflects one of the emerging fractures in Mr. Trump’s MAGA coalition. Traditional Republicans, religious conservatives and America First populists have jostled for influence with the pronatalist movement, which aims for women to have more children and stay home to raise them, and supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement.

And the role of the federal government in shaping family policy has proved to be a key flashpoint.

When news of the plan broke over Labor Day weekend, Rachel Campos-Duffy, the co-host of “Fox & Friends,” declared on air, “I think this might be my favorite policy, like, ever, that Trump has brought.”

Ms. Campos-Duffy, the wife of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and a mother of nine, is a prominent voice in the pronatalist movement. She and others in the movement said the proposed subsidy would be the administration’s largest step toward achieving pronatalists’ goals.

Conservative podcasts, broadcasts and social media buzzed with excitement. A coterie of conservative lawmakers, some of whom have tried but failed to push through legislation to pay stay-at-home parents, including Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, cheered their support.

But many on the right, even those who embrace Mr. Vance’s promotion of traditional families, said that handing out government money to parents so they could stay at home would go against core conservative tenets. They also maintained that the proposal contradicted the administration’s efforts to require Americans to work to get other forms of federal support.

Personally, I don’t understand–and here I go being an economist again–how most family’s will be able to simply make mom stay how and meet the bills with a measly tax break or some such nonsense.  Do all of them ignore the inflation index and the price of groceries, utilities and gas out there?  Also, with interest rates going up, many folks will find buying homes difficult.

So, right now I just can’t make sense of all these contradictory unsensible things that are supposed to make us all suddenly forget the reality of living in Trumplandia.

And back to the Chinese for one more thing.  I’m jumping to an Aussie new source because all the American press is doing today seems a bit pantomime to me. I have to wait to see how long they stick to their guns, frankly. But, this is ABC still, so you decide.  So I got these two contradictory new sources via Mueller She Wrote.

It still feels like Foxs news is still on the the side of our lying POTUS.

US Intelligence has definitively linked commercial Chinese satellite imagery to the Iranian attack on a Jordan airbase that killed 3 US service members. 1/

— Allison Gill (@muellershewrote.com) 2026-09-21T14:27:10.904Z

Source: END/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04…

— Allison Gill (@muellershewrote.com) 2026-09-21T14:28:15.458Z

Is China helping Iran kill US soldiers? Is Trump having one of his man crushes on Xi?  WTF is going on here? Can we get some real news coverage on this please?  Also,what happened to Xi Jinping? Any one read anything on that little incident of his?  Oh wait, there’s some news from the Thai press. Notice a trend here? “China confirms Xi’s US visit after unverified health rumours.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping will make a state visit to the United States from September 23 to 25, 2026, for talks with President Donald Trump, China’s Foreign Ministry announced on September 21. The ministry said Xi would travel at Trump’s invitation.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Xi and Trump would hold in-depth discussions on major issues concerning China–US relations, world peace and development during the three-day visit.

China’s announcement came days after unverified claims circulated on social media that Xi had suffered a stroke. The allegation, circulated on X by Wanjun Xie, was not supported by independently verifiable medical evidence, hospital statements or official documentation.

Chinese authorities had not publicly commented on the rumours, Indonesian news outlet Sindonews reported on September 18. China’s September 21 visit announcement specified the travel dates and Trump’s invitation but contained no statement about Xi’s health.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs separately warned on September 17 against social-media posts claiming that several leaders had fallen ill after attending the New Delhi summit. The ministry described the posts as malicious, although its warning did not specifically name Xi, according to ABP Live.

Okay, I’m off to play some game about living on a beautiful island that seems to lack nation status.  Just what I need util Student Time tonight.

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DementiaDonaldTrump #DonaldAndTheWhiteHousePressCorps #DonaldAndXi #DonaldSManCrushes #IsChinaHelpingIranKillUSSoldiersTrumpXiSummitOnAI #OrangeCaligulaSCabinetCrazy #TrumpPolicySubsidizeAtHomeMoms #WhiteHousePolicySubsidizingStayAtHomeMoms

Finally Friday Reads: Definitely Not the Normal Timeline

“Given trump’s track record of hiring Fox News pundits. Maria Bartiromo, come on down!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The end of the week is always good for a little drama. It’s not that I want to go all gossip rag, but anytime something weird happens to a hyper Trumper, especially one kicked from Fox News, I’m all in. Fox News is not worth watching, but what it does is always of interest. It’s still the home of blatant right-wing propaganda.

Maria Bartiromo used to be a business reporter with a following on the normal Fox Business schedule. Now, she’s been inexplicably booted from Fox. It is always interesting to watch the back-and-forth relationships between the network that flies its freak flag continually and what’s going on in the current West Wing.  This is so weird that I can’t help but follow it.

This head line comes from Status News.  It’s written by Oliver Darcy, a former CNN senior Media Reporter. “Bartiromo’s Fox Betrayal. Fox News offered no explanation for Maria Bartiromo’s abrupt firing. But Status has learned what happened behind the scenes and why it put the longtime host at odds with her own network.”

On Thursday afternoon, Fox News issued a press release that reverberated through the media and political worlds. In a terse statement, the network announced that it had severed ties with Maria Bartiromo, the once-respected business journalist who in recent years became consumed by right-wing conspiracy theories. “We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 ½ years and wish her all the best on her next chapter,” Fox News said.

That was it. The Rupert Murdoch-controlled network offered no explanation for parting ways with the high-profile host, who is known to be very close to Donald Trump. It didn’t even explicitly say that Bartiromo had been fired—though make no mistake, she was. In the hours that followed, insiders wondered what had gone awry. What had Bartiromo done to get pink-slipped by the outlet she had called home for more than a decade?

Status has learned that Bartiromo’s termination stems from an incident, which has not previously been reported, that occurred in July. After Trump delivered his unhinged prime time speech in which he pushed more conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, this time making a number of allegations against China, I am told that Fox issued guidance to senior employees instructing them to steer clear of giving credence to Trump’s delusional claims. I’m told that the guidance was issued in writing.

Indeed, the day after Trump’s prime time address, Fox conspicuously avoided covering the debunked claims the president had pushed. The lack of coverage raised eyebrows among media observers at the time. It also appears to have caught the attention of the White House.

It’s unclear whether Trump or someone at the White House inquired with Bartiromo about the lack of coverage. But ultimately Bartiromo spilled the secret, Status has learned, divulging to the White House that Trump’s speech had received scant coverage on the channel because network bosses had ordered it so. I’m even told the text message in which Fox Business brass offered their guidance was shared by Bartiromo with the White House. In doing so, Bartiromo not only effectively betrayed her employer, but also disclosed confidential company information, violating the terms of her employment agreement.

Well, isn’t that interesting.  The Hill has this analysis. “Trump: Fans ‘will not be happy’ Bartiromo out at Fox News.” The reporter on this story is Mira Bhakta.

President Trump said late Thursday that Maria Bartiromo’s fans will not be happy that the host is out at Fox News.

“I can’t believe Maria Bartiromo is no longer going to have her great show(s) on FoxNews/Business,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “Three different shows, always number one. Maria is a total professional, and a true warrior.”

“Her fans, of which there are many, will not be happy. God bless you, Maria,” he added.

Bartiromo worked at Fox Business for just more than 12 years and grew to be one of Trump’s most vocal supporters on the network. Before that, she worked as a financial journalist for 20 years at CNBC, where she won an Emmy Award for a documentary about Google.

Fox abruptly announced that the final episode of “Mornings with Maria” aired Thursday morning and that the show would be called “Mornings with Fox Business” beginning Friday and feature rotating hosts.

The network will also rename “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street” to “FBN’s Wall Street,” with a new host.

Fox News gave few details on what led to Bartiromo’s departure.

Hot Air‘s Ed Morrissey has this new headline up this afternoon.  “War? Bartiromo Gets Boot From Fox, Lawyers Up.”

Reporters live by the leak. Sometimes, they die by the leak too … if they’re the leaker. Allegedly.

“Word leaked out yesterday that Fox Business Channel and longtime host Maria Bartiromo had parted ways. At first, observers expected to hear that she had left to replace Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary. However, her former booking producer Breanna Morello made it sound as though Fox cut ties with Bartiromo rather than the other way around:

@Breanna Morello

Fox Corp is parting ways with Maria Bartiromo. As her former booking producer, I can say she is the hardest-working journalist at the company. Bartiromo has given everything to her 12 years of work at Fox Corp. She worked six days a week and has a presence on their platforms seven days a week. She was always a class act and embodied what journalism should be. I look forward to seeing what she does next. As I noted in last night’s Final Word, the situation was confusing enough to become a topic in Vice President J.D. Vance’s press briefing at the White House. When asked about it, Vance seemed surprised to hear the news, calling her a “very very dear friend.” Vance also said he didn’t think she would be coming into the White House …

Well, more of the worst economic policy ever is likely on the way. This is from CNBC. “Trump doubles down on threat to halt trade with top partners unless Fed cuts rates.” This story is reported by Kevin Breuninger.

President Donald Trump on Friday doubled down on his threat to cut off trade with countries that have surpluses with the U.S. unless the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates.

“What I’m saying, very simply, is that we should be paying the lowest interest rate in the world,” Trump said in the Oval Office Friday afternoon. He had been asked about his Truth Social post earlier in the day declaring, “LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT.”

Trump issued that sweeping ultimatum after urging the Fed and its chairman, Kevin Warsh, to “get smart” and cut rates following a much-stronger-than-expected monthly jobs report.

Read Trump’s full post:

Great jobs number just announced, breaking all estimates (except mine!) by double and triple – And you haven’t seen anything yet! EMPLOYERS ADDED 162,000 JOB IN AUGUST. Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago! A STRONG COUNTRY MEANS A LOWER INTEREST RATE – IT’S A BETTER CREDIT…Very simple! We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World, like “the old days.” Without the United States agreeing to allow them their big surpluses, and we could stop that immediately, they would no longer be considered financially ELITE! LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT, which the U.S. Supreme Court, in its ridiculous and very costly Tariff decision, strongly acknowledged “the President” has an absolute right to do. IT’S BETTER THAN TARIFFS! The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart – BE PATRIOTS for a change. High interest rates put the U.S.A. at a very unfair disadvantage, and I won’t allow that to happen! President DONALD J. TRUMP

The Fed declined to comment on Trump’s post.

It’s likely also one the reasons for this phenomenon.  This story is reported by Catherine Rampell writing at The Bulwark. “Europe’s Gold Fled the Nazis. Now It’s Fleeing Trump. Our allies once trusted America to safeguard their reserves. Now they worry the president might freeze them.” 

NEARLY A CENTURY AGO, our European allies evacuated their gold to America to safeguard it from the Nazis. Today, some European countries are taking it back—apparently to protect it from Donald Trump.

I wish this were a gag about our president’s garish tastes.

It is not.

In a frightening sign of just how much trust has been lost between the United States and its erstwhile allies, billions of dollars of gold reserves are being repatriated or otherwise moved out of Trump’s reach.

Yesterday, the Dutch central bank announced that it had shifted about $12 billion of gold reserves held mostly in New York over to London vaults instead.1 This follows a similar move by France’s central bank, which recently sold off about $15 billion of bullion held in New York, replacing it with gold bars stored in Paris instead. And for the past year, Germany and Italy—the second- and third-largest holders of gold reserves, respectively, after the United States—have been debating whether to pull their gold from U.S. vaults, too.

Paul Krugman has even more frightening details to outline on his SubStack.  “Ingots We No Longer Trust. America’s word is as good as gold — that is, unreliable.” This really sends a bad signal to every one.

For the most part, monetary gold — gold held as reserves by national central banks — is a lot like the stones of Yap. Central banks own trillions of dollars’ worth of gold, which they sometimes sell to each other to settle international payments. But these transfers rarely involve physically moving gold across borders. A large fraction of the world’s gold reserves actually sits in a vault underneath the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, although the New York Fed does move ingots between compartments when transfers take place.

And why not? The sanctity of nations’ ownership of gold stored in New York is guaranteed by the word of the U.S. government — a government that is utterly reliable, because it honors the role of law.

Or anyway, that’s the country we used to be.

“Rule of law” is not a phrase often applied to the Trump administration. And the administration has special contempt for international law. Many of Trump’s tariffs have been ruled illegal under U.S. law, but more or less all of those tariffs were and are in clear violation of past agreements solemnly signed by previous U.S. presidents, including Trump himself.

So the idea that the U.S. government might devise some excuse to seize gold held in the Fed’s vault is no longer far-fetched. And nations are taking precautions. Earlier this week the Dutch central bank announced that it was shifting about $12 billion in gold from the vault in New York to the Bank of England’s vault in London. This follows a move by the French central bank to shift an even larger sum from New York to Paris. Other countries are considering similar moves.

The direct economic or financial impact of these actions will be minimal. There won’t even be large trans-Atlantic gold shipments: foreign central banks will sell their New York gold to private buyers in America and replenish it with purchases from private sellers in Europe.

But the symbolism is chilling. America is no longer trusted. Foreign governments can no longer count on us to obey the most basic rules, like the commandment that thou shalt not steal other people’s gold.

A federal prosecutor investigating the murder of a man by an ICE office is under investigation.  This is scary and shows how out of control the DOJ has become. This is from CBS News.  There a quite a few reporters on this story. “Federal prosecutor fired after investigating ICE officer for civil rights offenses in Minnesota shooting, sources say.” Violating civil rights of people is evidently A-OK with the Trump Regime’s war on the U.S. Constitution.

A federal prosecutor in Minnesota who was investigating an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer for possible civil rights crimes has been fired, four sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Evans was investigating ICE officer Christian Castro over the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant earlier this year. The Justice Department ultimately charged Castro this week with making false statements about the incident, but the indictment remains sealed, CBS News has previously reported.

Earlier this week, ProPublica reported that Evans told attorneys for the man who was shot, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, and other victims to prepare for Castro to only be charged with making false statements, which would carry lesser penalties than criminal charges that he violated people’s constitutional rights under color of law.

ProPublica quoted directly from an email it said Evans had sent to the attorneys.

“This is being directed by the Main Justice and the US Attorney,” the email from Evans reportedly said. “I objected in the strongest possible terms and fought it as hard as I could. It wasn’t enough.” (CBS News has not obtained the email reviewed by ProPublica.)

Three sources told CBS News that Evans is under investigation by the Justice Department. Two sources said the investigation focuses on allegations of leaking.

This country is a cesspool.  The elected officials that we vote for and count on to ensure the Constitutionality of actions taken here are sadly missing. But the, look at this headline, and you’ll see that clearly. This is Politico‘s take on a Wall Street Journal Investigation.  “‘Too lazy to do the job’: Democrats dump on Fetterman after WSJ report. The Wall Street Journal’s story recounted multiple instances of Sen. John Fetterman refusing to meet with constituents in Washington even for scheduled meetings.” Gregory Svirnovskiy has the lede.

A swath of Democrats denounced Sen. John Fetterman in the aftermath of a Wall Street Journal report that showed the Pennsylvania Democrat routinely ducking meetings with constituents, skirting committee hearings and contemplating skipping a police funeral in his home state.

“John Fetterman is a disgrace,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) wrote Thursday night on X. “Our state deserves better than a lazy trust fund baby who is too lazy to do the job.”

“There is a lot I could say about this report of John Fetterman’s pathetic behavior as a Senator,” Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) wrote on the platform Friday morning. “But between the laziness, disrespect, and willingness to carry water for a foreign government, it shows us something we already know: this man has no sense of duty. He is not up for the high office he was elected to — and we in Pennsylvania will do something about it in 2028.”

The Journal’s story recounted multiple instances of Fetterman refusing to meet with constituents in Washington, even for scheduled meetings. In one case, he canceled on three paralyzed military veterans in his office, telling his staff that he was feeling unwell. But Fetterman came into the office shortly thereafter to prepare for a live hit with Fox News.

 I have a feeling he’s not alone. Many of our elected officials are not doing their jobs. I certainly hope the midterms are based on change. I’d like to believe our democracy is still recoverable.

What’s’ on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CorruptDOJ #FauxNews #GoldRush #ICEMurdersInMinnesota #JohnFetterman #MariaBartiromo #WhenThatManIsDeadAndGone

Finally Friday Reads: Crimes, Misdemeanours, and Ignorance of the Law

“The new White House Press Secretary is a hoot!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m pretty sure this craziness with our neighbors to the north is more tap dancing to get our minds off the Epstein files, the failed Israeli/US war on Iran, and basic affordability. Look at dat!  Look at dat! Look over there with jazz hands isn’t flying with most of us. Who the hell still believes all this? But it tends to distract the mainstream media, which is really bad.  Very bad stuff is hiding behind all of this. Let me show you today.

If you’ve known me long enough, you know I have a serious love affair with our nation’s National Parks. I’ve camped and hiked around more than I can remember, but that’s only because some of the big ones are so amazing they took this little girl’s heart to the point she still reminds me what it means to see wild animals in the wild and breathtaking views. As I got older, my sketchbook filled with every place we camped and explored. They also remind you of our indigenous peoples and the glory of endless wilderness.

That’s why my blood pressure took off when I read this. “Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer. The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.” The article can be found at NOTUS and is written by Anna Kramer. Yosemite is one of the nations’ oldest and most glorious examples of American landscapes.  He’s totally dedicated to the idea of selling stuff off to support his Trumpify every historical place in the District.

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.

National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.

Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to a company that, through a web of limited-liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. Officials are proposing the Park Service give up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, and in return receive land of equal value somewhere in California that has yet to be decided.

The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves. Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests.

The property’s current access road is more than 10 miles from an entrance to the park, and much further from Yosemite’s most iconic sights. Without a new road, visitors to the property — whether it be developed into a hotel, resort or private residence — would need to drive an hour and a half in a circuitous route to reach the popular Yosemite Valley.

This is an unprecedented move and a dangerous one.

If the deal goes through, the Trump administration would be breaking with 150 years of American precedent at the birthplace of the national park system. The federal government has historically strived to expand the crown-jewel national parks, not give up land within them.

“The national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias,” said Cicely Muldoon, a 40-year veteran of the Park Service who served as Yosemite’s superintendent for about five years. Muldoon retired from Yosemite shortly after President Donald Trump took office in 2025.

“Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit,” she said Interior’s advocacy for the deal is a significant reversal of a pledge Secretary Doug Burgum made in his 2025 confirmation hearing: “The national parks, absolutely we need to support and protect every single inch of those,” he said.It also contravenes the presidential message Trump shared on Aug. 24 of this year, to announce the beginning of National Park Week: “My Administration is committed to protecting every acre of our lands and preserving the cleanest air and water in the world.”And it goes against the agency’s past position on this specific piece of land. The Park Service has received this privatization request before, and it has rejected it repeatedly for over two decades.

Don’t even get me started on Trump trying to rename Lake Ontario.  But you don’t have to take my word on it try this at Business Insider.  The internet has gone into full meme mode over Trump’s Lake Ontario name change. The story is reported by Joshua Nelken-Zitser.

President Donald Trump renamed Lake Ontario as Lake America, and it’s making waves on the internet.

After tense trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed and the US imposed new 50% tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, Trump turned to another tool in his arsenal: rebranding.

On Thursday, Trump issued an executive order to rename Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes that straddles the US-Canada border, as Lake America. As the Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney wrote on X, the name predates the Confederation of Canada and the US Declaration of Independence. “The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘”the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’,” he wrote.

The name change follows a similar move Trump made last year when he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, a change that Mexico and other countries, including the UK and China, have refused to adopt.

After Thursday’s executive order, it didn’t take long for the internet to respond with memes. Here are the 10 best.

Go check them out!

Trump tries over and over again to remove all the settled cases against him. Most courts remain firmly on the side of the settled case based on settled law. Here’s yet another Trump failure to ditch responsibility for all his crimes. This is from local TV station Spectrum News NY1.  “Trump loses again in bid to erase his N.Y. hush money conviction.” You may remember that this is the payment to Stormy Daniels.

A federal judge on Friday once again spurned Donald Trump’s effort to erase his hush money conviction, rejecting the president’s bid to move the state court case to federal court and have it dismissed on presidential immunity grounds.

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein reiterated his earlier finding against Trump, saying that the reasons Trump cited for renewing his request were “neither new nor legally sufficient.”

The judge added: “He has failed to show good cause and diligence.”

It is the third time Hellerstein has blocked Trump from having the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize control of the case from the New York court where he was tried and convicted.

And, like before, Trump will appeal, according to a spokesperson for his legal team who called Hellerstein’s ruling “baseless and lawless.”

“The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan DA be removed to federal court, and immediately overturned and dismissed,” a statement issued on behalf of the legal team said. “President Trump will be filing a powerful appeal, and will continue defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn.”

The guilty verdict, reached in May 2024 while Trump was between terms, made him the first former — and now current — U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. Trump is also challenging his conviction through the state court appellate process, which is pending.

Hellerstein’s decision came after a federal appeals court last year ordered him to reconsider his prior denial. The judge previewed his ruling during oral arguments in February, slamming Trump’s lawyers for legal maneuvers that amounted to taking “two bites at the apple.”

State prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stormy and E. Jean are high on my list of tough and amazing women for see these cases through. We can only hope we get the Epstein files released and we see more women damaged by Trump receive justice and compensation. And speaking of the Stormy case, this headline yesterday from Raw Story is an eye opener. There most be a line as wide as big as the country itself of co-criminals waiting for Trump Pardons. “Explosive motive unmasked by DOJ insiders as Michael Cohen crawls back to Trump: report.” Travis Gettys has the story.

The Department of Justice has discussed using former attorney Michael Cohen – who has seemingly come crawling back – as a witness to build new criminal cases against President Donald Trump’s legal adversaries, according to a new report.

Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng, who has a personal history with Cohen, the president’s longtime personal attorney and fixer, reported that Trump administration officials are hoping to leverage his testimony to bring criminal prosecutions against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – both of whom successfully battled Trump in court.

“Bragg’s case, of course, is the reason Trump became America’s first felon president, a label Trump bitterly resents,” Suebsaeng wrote.

That’s why the president wants revenge against them both, Suebsaeng said, and he’s apparently dangling a pardon to Cohen as leverage for his testimony.

“Cohen had previously posted on Substack that he felt ‘pressured and coerced’ to be those prosecutors’ star witness against Trump, though Cohen has been publicly very coy about claiming whether he was ‘coerced’ to give false testimony,” Suebsaeng wrote.

DOJ does have the authority to charge prosecutors with coercing false testimony, although that almost never happens, but Trump officials are considering it now.

The headlines from independent media sources never fail to amaze.  Even local government officials have trouble with Trump’s ignorance of how things are done in American. He abuses his position and ignores well-settled law over and over.This is from the New York Times.   “Wyoming Governor Objects to ‘Very Odd’ D.O.J. Election Monitoring. Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, said he was concerned by the behavior of election observers who visited a polling station in Cheyenne.”  This story comes from the keyboard of Tim Balk.

Mr. Trump has often returned to such conspiracy theories in his second term, arguing that widespread fraud could affect this year’s elections. As president, he has deployed the resources of the federal government, notably the Justice Department’s, to investigate his unsubstantiated claims, sowing more doubt in the nation’s elections and raising alarm among state officials about whether he will try to intervene if Republicans lose their congressional majorities in November.

Governor Gordon, a low-key, term-limited Republican who leads one of the country’s most conservative states, said at a meeting with state election officials on Wednesday that he had been concerned by the behavior of the election observers.

“I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns — I don’t like that,” Mr. Gordon said at the meeting. “And I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either.”

The monitors ultimately visited six polling places, showing their credentials only when asked for them, Mr. Gordon said in the interview, describing their behavior as “very odd.” He said he had asked the state attorney general, Keith Kautz, to investigate the matter.

The observers had cited statutes related to the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act, Mr. Gordon said.

This year, the Justice Department’s observers have visited polling places in other states, including politically tense regions such as the Minneapolis area. The agency said on Tuesday that it had sent 80 monitors to seven states during primary season.

But the requests to interview voters and gain access to machines in Wyoming were unusual. And they come at a moment when the Justice Department has been locked in an intense legal battle with roughly 30 states, demanding their private, unredacted voter rolls in a hunt for evidence of noncitizen voting.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump is still convinced that noncitizens vote.  Most allegations turn out to be baseless. There has to be something sketchier in Trump’s election interference.  It’s more likely he’s trying to ‘monitor’ polls to intimidate certain classes of voters not known to vote Republican. He is hot for voter suppression.

This is my favorite headline for the day. It comes via from Public Notice.  “Are voters finally realizing GOP presidents are disasters? Michael Tomasky makes the case that they are.”  I could make the case easily for their economic policy. I’m pretty certain that others in other areas could do that as well.  Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson share the lede.

“Trusting the Republicans more on the economy at this point is like trusting Sean Combs to be your babysitter,” writes Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, in his recent piece headlined, “At Long Last, Americans Are Starting to See the Truth About the GOP.”

“For decades now, the Republican Party has built its electoral success on myths and lies,” Tomasky adds. “Ronald Reagan was the last Republican president who your average person would say left the country better off than he found it.”

One could quibble about the legacy of George H.W. Bush, but it’s hard to dispute that the last two Republican presidents easily rank among the worst in American history. Their successors have each been handed a flaming bag of economic and cultural ruin and did commendable jobs putting out the fire, only to hand the reins to the man who will unequivocally go down as our worst president of all time (so far!), Donald J. Trump — whose second term is shaping up to be even more disastrous than the one that ended with mass death amid a pandemic he badly mismanaged.

Tomasky argues Democrats are missing a golden opportunity by not campaigning more aggressively on the obvious truth that from the presidency on down, the Republican Party has a cataclysmic record when it has power, especially in the 21st century. But messaging aside, he says he’s heartened by recent polling showing voters may finally be seeing the light.

“Jobs are just one factor. The performance of the stock market under Democrats is much, much stronger than under Republicans. The increases in median household income and amount by which they’ve reduced the deficit are much greater,” Tomasky told Public Notice. “The comparisons aren’t close, but you never hear any Democrats talk about it.”

“Why this is changing now is really simple and straightforward: The economy is bad, and there’s a Republican president,” he added.

Trump has basically wrecked the idea that Republicans are better at foreign policy and wars. There’s no way any of his health policies via the nuts he put in Health and Human Services can be seen as anything but charlatans. And, the DOJ is a laugh. So much for law and order.  Since the Republic party continues to enable all of this mess, I can’t understand that anyone other that a member of the Orange Caligula Cult could tolerate what’s going on these days.

Okay, this is my last suggested read for the day. It comes from Balls and Strikes and is written by Jay Willis. “The Trump DOJ Is Running Out of Ways to Humiliate Itself In Public. Another week, another argument from your federal government that would be kind of embarrassing if a high school sophomore tried to make it.”  Sounds about right.

For some time now, I have been tracking the Justice Department’s alarmingly rapid transformation from one of the legal profession’s most prestigious employers into a clubhouse for semiliterate dunces whose primary qualification for the job is a willingness to sign their names to legal filings that resemble lightly edited Truth Social posts. This week’s addition to the canon comes in the course of President Donald Trump’s relentless pursuit of what is somehow among the highest-priority items on his second-term policy agenda: slapping his name on the Kennedy Center before his time in office runs out.

The legal fight began back in December 2025, when the Kennedy Center’s Trump-aligned board of trustees first tried to shoehorn the words “THE DONALD J. TRUMP AND” above existing Kennedy Center signage. A federal court ordered the removal of Trump’s name in June, but the board remains committed to fulfilling the president’s wishes. Its latest proposal would append a “RENOVATED AND RESTORED BY PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP” inscription to the side of the building, beneath the Kennedy Center signage this time around. The board also wants to name the grounds on which the Kennedy Center sits the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” like an enterprising NFL team selling a secondary set of stadium naming rights to whichever corporate behemoth is desperate enough to pay for it.

In a new court filing, the Trump Justice Department is warning about what might happen if its client does not get his way: According to Brantley T. Mayers, a lawyer in the Civil Division, prospective donors will not open their wallets unless the renovation plans include “prominent recognition” of Trump’s involvement. And without those renovations, Brantley says, the “dilapidated” and “crumbling” Kennedy Center will “deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure,” and may even have to be “taken down” in order to avoid “collapse or calamity.” In other words, the Justice Department’s official position is that without the addition of an (apparently load-bearing) “RENOVATED AND RESTORED” inscription, the Kennedy Center will be at risk of falling down and killing everyone inside.

“The Board recognizes that President Trump’s efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal,” Brantley writes. “The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.” (All weird comma placements in original.)

How is this even a legal issue?  Anyway, this country is so fucked-up under Trump that it’s hard to recognize. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #TrumpCourtCases #TrumpCrimes #TrumpHaplessDOJ #TrumpHHSWeirdos #TrumpSellingNationalParks #TrumpVotingSuppression

Totally Tuesday Reads: Shock and Awe

“Trouble in paradise.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Yes, it’s me today! Thankfully, JJ stepped in for me yesterday when a huge truck taking something out of the Navy Base project took down my entire cable line. I was without it and was looking at student time during the first week of class at 5 p.m.  So, I called Cox and was given a time for later on today, after another class started up. Needless to say, I was pretty panicked.

Since Cox was so unhelpful, I went over to the construction site, which was even more insulting, as I was shown a map indicating that trucks were allowed on my avenue. It was a truck route. Tell it to the City Council, which drew the maps. Needless to say, these trucks are far bigger than what I’ve ever seen coming and going the 25 years I’ve lived here, which includes when the Navy base was open and military equipment for the shock and awe attack on Iraq was being taken off the railroad line there and driven by trucks to the merchant marine ships waiting on the Mississippi River to take them to the Middle East.

So, with two strikes out with Big Corporations, I headed to my neighbor’s house across the street to talk to the couple who live there. Luckily, one of them works at home, like I do, and the other was at City Hall, working for the City Council. I’m like, good to see you, but I really need your husband. He called hubby immediately for me and explained my situation. So, guess what, New Orleans City Hall worked. I called my Councilman’s office, and my neighbor contacted the regional Cox bigwigs. About three o’clock, a Cox bucket truck pulled up with the most skilled technician I’ve ever seen, who got it done right before some severe weather kicked in.  All of the guys really went to work to help me, while I’m thinking that if I miss the first two days of a fall semester, I’ll never teach again.

So, again, JJ came to my rescue while I spent the enter afternoon chasing all these folks down.  I did my thing and went to bed early. It’s nice to know my local government works when everything else is MAGA chaos.  So, since I was raised in the Beef state and the Corn state, and I’m an economist with all degrees in agriculture states, riddle me this. How does importing more beef to this country help American ranchers and farmers who are in financial trouble right now? And if every import is subject to tariffs, how does this help households? Trumps been giving all the tariff revenue to big businesses and my guess is they don’t pass the cash forward. This keeps making me glad I’m mostly doing finance things these days although it blows my mind that a sitting president and his family might get a bank just for having crypto which is a risky asset and not real money. Trying to teach econ during this regime is like reading fairy tales while trying to teach about data-based reality.

So, I’m going to dive right in with the economic mess we’re in and the policies making it worse. He must be so secure in the idea that he can rig elections that he’s not even concerned about his own base. This is from the New York Times. “G.O.P. Lawmakers Rebuke Trump on Plan to Increase Beef Imports. Republicans who have mostly refrained from criticizing the president’s actions have been vocal in opposition to the move, which they say will harm their constituents.” Catie Edmondson has the story.

Congressional Republicans are leveling some rare and uncharacteristically harsh criticism of President Trump for his decision to increase imports of ground beef at a lower tariff rate, warning that the move will hurt American ranchers.

The decision, announced late last week, appeared to be a bid to lower costs across the country before the midterm elections in which Republicans are fighting to preserve their narrow majorities. But it has drawn dissent from even reliable allies of Mr. Trump, many of them from states and districts with large cattle-raising areas, who fear that the move could harm another important constituency: the producers they represent.

“Americans want U.S. beef on the table — not foreign imports,” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Republican, said in a statement on Monday. “Wyoming ranchers produce the highest-quality beef in the world. Our ranchers don’t ask for special treatment. They simply want a fair marketplace.”

Senator Tim Sheehy, Republican of Montana, said in a lengthy statement that he had “advised President Trump against this course of action for a year because American ranchers have been struggling against the packer monopoly for decades, and this will further harm them.”

“Most of whom are MAGA Republicans,” he added.

The cascade of statements — including from Senators Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Steve Daines of Montana and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi — amounted to an unusual chorus of protest from Republicans who have otherwise routinely deferred to Mr. Trump on nearly every major issue, from the war with Iran to his trade wars.

This major Trade War with Canada is equally stupid.  This is from Greg Sargent writing for The New Republic. “How Trump’s Crazed Fury at Canada Is Already Backfiring Badly for Him. The escalating trade war with Canada will hit hard in the Midwest—right where some of the most important contests in the midterms will be decided.”  Pack the West Wing and the Oval office with idiots and this is what you get.

Here’s a bit of poetic justice for you: The Democratic bid for control of Congress just might end up running right through the very heart of Trump country. We’re talking about parts of the Midwest that helped drive Donald Trump’s two successful presidential bids—states like Iowa and Ohio, which he drove deeper into the red column, and states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which Trump flipped outright twice.

That reality explains why Trump’s extended eruption of fury at Canada—he has now redoubled trade hostilities with our longtime ally—is very bad news for the GOP. Trump’s new trade war with Canada threatens fresh harms to local economies in the Midwest—and it’s handing Democrats a weapon in the homestretch of these contests to win over rural Americans and others who are experiencing all this endless derangement in very concrete ways.

“It’s a really dangerous time to be a farmer in the Midwest,” Josh Turek, the Democrat who is challenging Representative Ashley Hinson for the open Senate seat in Iowa, told me.

On Monday, Trump exploded wildly at Canada over the implosion of trade negotiations between the two countries. That collapse in talks over the weekend unleashed 50 percent tariffs by the United States on a large range of Canadian goods, and Canada will now retaliate with tariffs on targeted American exports. Talks are reportedly suspended until after the midterms.

What triggered Trump is that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had refused to be cowed by the American threat of tariffs. So Trump threatened yet more tariffs on still more Canadian goods next year, raging: “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!”

Whether we “need” Canada or not, the fact remains that a lot of trade currently takes place between the two countries. You know who actually can’t afford for all this to be upended right now? Republican incumbents and candidates in the Midwest, that’s who. So “we” may not “need” Canada, but Republicans in the region really “need” Trump to not rupture trade relations with our ally for the next two months.

Here’s why: Control of the House will turn in no small part on three very competitive House races in Iowa, one in Wisconsin, and three or four in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Turek is locked in a dead heat in the Iowa Senate race, and winning there could be pivotal to a Democratic Senate takeover. So could a win by Sherrod Brown, who leads slightly in Ohio. And anything that helps Abdul El-Sayed keep the highly contested Michigan Senate seat blue will also be critical.

These areas will very likely feel the political impact of Trump’s new trade war. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs are expected to hit American exports of agricultural machinery, and that could hit Iowa manufacturers. The state’s very competitive 2nd congressional district, for instance, includes facilities run by John Deere, Altorfer (which deals in Caterpillar products), and other farm equipment concerns.

“Tariffs don’t just hurt our farmers, they hurt our manufacturers, as well,” Lindsay James, the Democratic candidate in that district, told me. She added that her GOP opponent, businessman Joe Mitchell, will be a “rubber stamp” for Trump’s trade wars, which she labeled “impulsive.”

Such messages could land disproportionately in Iowa because Trump’s trade wars have already given the state’s agricultural economy a thorough pounding.

Turek, meanwhile, also singled out the coming impact of trade hostilities on farm equipment manufacturers. He noted that tariffs are contributing to a perfect storm in Iowa, which also includes Trump’s war on Iran, which is driving up fertilizer and diesel prices, and his effort to reduce beef prices by importing huge amounts of it, which will undercut American producers.

“You talk to farmers, and they’ll tell you it’s one gut punch after another,” Turek told me, adding that he constantly hears Iowans tell him: “This is betrayal.”

I can only imagine what kind of hit to the owner of what once was my Dad’s small town Iowa Ford Dealership would be. I like to remind everyone that the sale of Ford F-150s basically funded my school and young life.  Those trucks were all over eastern Iowa doing farm and ranch work all the time. My youngest daughter’s son-in-law was the grandson of the biggest Pig Ranch in the area. Guess who he used to buy his trucks from?  This will really go straight to the heart of every small midwestern town. Most John Deere Tractors are built in this country. I’m sure most of you have never heard of Waterloo, Iowa but you can crush a small town like that when you ruin business for the factory that keeps the town on the map.

So, this is some real nonsense in a situation where trade really defines countries ability to survive. This is from the Washington Post. “Trump says U.S. could rename Lake Ontario as Lake America amid Canada trade war. The president cited his tariff fight in a social media post, saying the United States doesn’t expect to be “doing much business with Ontario any longer.” How petty and stupid is that? Who actually thinks this is funny? You may see how consequential renaming the Gulf of Mexico was to map makers and everyone else. This is another middle finger fight rather than real policy. Sammy Westfall has the lede.

President Donald Trump said he is considering changing the name of Lake Ontario, the easternmost of the Great Lakes spanning the U.S.-Canada border, to Lake America, as the U.S.-Canada trade fight escalates.

The threat adds to a long list of things — bodies of water, mountains, cultural centers, battleships, transit hubs, federal agencies — the Trump administration has renamed or proposed to rebrand.

“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer,” he wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday morning.

Over the weekend, Canada and the United States were thrown into a heated trade war after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from negotiations over tariffs — a rare example of a foreign leader telling Trump “enough,” after the U.S. demanded what Carney said was a mounting list of concessions.

The Trump administration announced 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.

Canada on Tuesday issued retaliatory tariffs of up to 50 percent on U.S. imports.

“An attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States … that’s not something we’re going to accept,” Carney said in a statement posted Tuesday.

So, here’s an interesting fact for you from USA Facts. We’re basically creating chaos with the two countries that send us oil and of course, there is the current war between Israel and the United States on Iran with its control of the Straights of Hormuz. Wow, am I glad I don’t rely on a car.  The St Claude Bus and Street car look better to me every day.

Top Oil Exporters to the US

• Canada: Supplies about 57% of total U.S. petroleum imports.
• Mexico: Ranks second, providing roughly 6% of imports.
• Saudi Arabia: Accounts for about 4% of U.S. petroleum imports.
• Iraq: Furnishes approximately 3% of the total.
• Brazil: Provides about 3% of imports. [1]

Most importantly is this bit of fact posted today on Politico. “Canada has one important edge in the North American trade war. Canadians are united in standing up to Trump’s tariffs. The reverse cannot be said for the U.S.”

President Donald Trump is threatening Canada with economic destruction amid an escalating trade war. He’s not factoring in one key U.S. disadvantage.

Americans are not nearly as gung-ho for a tariff stand-off as their northern neighbors, who have been seething for months over Trump’s rhetoric against their country.

“The U.S.A. will always be far bigger, richer, and stronger than Canada,” Trump wrote in a second Truth Social post. “Someone should get these clowns to ‘fall in line’ or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!

The U.S. economy certainly dwarfs its northern neighbor’s. And while Ottawa has managed to support big sectors such as aluminum and forestry to keep them afloat amid tariffs Trump launched last year, it’s not clear how long the Canadian government can support small and medium-sized businesses in a prolonged tariff tit for tat. But poll after poll shows Canadians across the political spectrum are willing to accept those impacts in order to stand up to the U.S. government.

The opposite is true in the U.S., where even many in the president’s own party oppose Trump’s trade agenda — particularly his tariffs on Canada. And unlike Carney, the president faces a voter referendum in November, in the form of midterm elections.

As the two countries settle in for a long-term standoff, the outcome is likely to be defined by each government’s ability to endure pain: economic in Ottawa and political in Washington.

“I think right now the U.S. has more to lose because we have the election coming up in November, where the economy and tariffs are already an issue,” said one former official at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks. “If it spirals, Congress would be the one to feel the impact.”

But again, I believe he’s thinking he’s got the ability to rig the election and it may be somewhat true. Especially, with the Supreme Court on his side. This analysis is from “Balls and Strikes” and the keyboard of Jay Willis. “The Supreme Court Thinks You Are Stupid. The conservative justices are reserving for themselves the power to decide whether Trump can hijack the 2026 midterms.”

A key component of President Donald Trump’s plan for preserving the Republican Party’s power and influence is making it as difficult as possible for Democrats to vote. As the 2026 midterms approach, he is still pushing the unhinged lie that widespread fraud both cost him the 2020 presidential election and also explains every Republican loss in every election since.

This delusion is partially responsible for his obsession with mail-in voting. In March, Trump told Republican lawmakers that passing legal restrictions on mail-in voting would “guarantee the midterms.” Their failure to do so, he continued, would mean “big trouble.”

That same month, Trump did his part, issuing an executive order that would impose onerous requirements on states that allow their residents to vote by mail. And in an unsigned opinion on Monday, the Supreme Court did him yet another favor, turning away a legal challenge that had temporarily blocked the order from taking effect.

The result in Trump v. California does not give Trump everything he wants. But it shows just how far this six-justice conservative supermajority is willing to go to help its favorite president’s political movement—all while reserving for itself the right to decide how much of the Constitution remains in place for the midterms, and how much Trump gets to rewrite as he sees fit.

Trump’s order seeks to do three main things. First, it requires the Department of Homeland Security to provide states with lists of voters whom the federal government has “confirmed” as eligible to vote. Second, it directs Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Justice Department to “prioritize” investigations of state officials who provide ballots to anyone who is not eligible to vote. Finally, it orders the U.S. Postal Service to propose a rule that would require states to send mail ballots in a particular type of envelope and with a special barcode, ostensibly for the purposes of “tracking” the ballot. Trump’s order specifically requires that the Postal Service’s rule prevent the agency from processing a ballot—as in, submitting it for counting—unless a voter has been “enrolled” by the Postal Service first.

This is admittedly confusing, because the order is kind of an executive power matryoshka doll: Instead of directly requiring the Postal Service to refuse to deliver certain mail ballots, it adds a step, requiring the Postal Service to come up with an administrative rule for when it will refuse to deliver those ballots. Perhaps even the Trump brain trust understood that a president ordering an agency with a statutory obligation to provide “prompt, reliable, and efficient services” to “all communities” to simply ignore votes in blue states would be, legally speaking, not a good look.

That said, given that Trump’s order prescribes the content of the Postal Service’s “proposal” in exacting detail, the real-world impact is the same. Under the Constitution, states have the power to administer elections. If Trump gets his way, his federal government would be deciding who does and does not get to vote.

Lisa Needham of Public Notice puts it this way. “John Roberts sticks two more knives in democracy’s back. The mail voting and ballroom decisions are a travesty.”

President Trump is catastrophically, comprehensively, wrecking our democratic order, but he couldn’t do it without the Worst Chief Justice of All Time, John Roberts, and the rest of the Supreme Court’s MAGA majority.

Trump should probably send the nation’s highest jurists a fruit basket or something as a wee bit of thanks for their latest gifts: the right to wreck the midterm elections and the right to keep building the bribe-funded ballroom.

The former is courtesy of the Court’s six conservatives, but the latter is a solo Roberts joint. Put another way, the mail-in ballots case is a shadow docket travesty, while the ballroom is an administrative stay travesty. Both are corrosive to democracy.

Up first: teeing up letting Trump screw with the midterms in an extremely unconstitutional fashion, because of course Trump will suffer immense harm if he can’t get his way.

First, let’s be clear about a smallish silver lining here: the mail-in ballots decision is both reprehensible and a mess, but it doesn’t quite do what some of the reporting says it does. It doesn’t mean that the US Postal Service Final Rule, promulgated last Friday, goes into effect. A different case, brought by the League of Women Voters, still enjoins the administration from implementing that rule, and as Steve Vladeck notes, the litigation on that is yet to come.

But that doesn’t really make things better, at least as far as the whole constitutional crisis part goes. That’s because the Court’s right-wingers continue to swallow the Trump administration’s laughable lies about what they are doing, lies that contradict both their own public statements and the dictates of logic.

Okay, this is certainly way too long but the chaos continues in so many places. It’s important we know the where, when, and how of it all.

Have a good week! I hope the weather is being better to you than us. I’ve never seen such heat except when I visited Arizona in August.  Plus, the humidity down here is beyond description. Even Temple, who loves her walkies, wants to cut them short these days.  So, be safe out there!

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#WeAreSoFucked #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #BeefImports #FarmEconomy #Trumpernomics #USVCanadaTariffs

Finally Friday Reads: Trump’s Printer

“Come on, Natalie Harp is a perfectly normal young republican woman with lofty aspirations.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

It’s hard to know where to start writing these posts these days. Everything is so surreal that I feel like I should be sharing paintings by Dalí or Ernst rather than political cartoons. However, the political cartoons are more spot on than most of the press coverage. BB did some great coverage on the bizarre role of Natalie Harp, the human printer, this week. The more folks dig, the weirder she gets and the more pathetic Orange Caligula looks.

Tom Schaller of Public Notice had this interesting analysis today under the heading “Travel with Natalie.  How three words from Jon Ossoff prompted an epic MAGA crashout”.

Donald Trump is easily triggered. That’s hardly news.

He’s temperamental and emotional in a way that supposedly disqualifies women from serving in powerful political or corporate roles. He lashes out at critics, opponents, the media, even his own staff. Were it not so frightening, it would be Veep-level hysterical that the man atop the world’s most powerful government and military lacks the impulse control of a high schooler.

But the questions now swirling around Trump’s personal assistant Natalie Harp — and especially the way Sen. Jon Ossoff unleashed a media firestorm this week by invoking her name — offer a long overdue lesson for Democrats on how to successfully bait Trump and his MAGA cohorts for maximum effect.

Let’s start by unpacking what Ossoff actually said last Sunday, which was not nearly as salacious as the ensuing MAGA meltdown would have you believe.

“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks,” said Ossoff, of Trump. “See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”doesn’t””

Ossoff says that Trump doesn’t want to do his job but wants to “travel with Natalie”

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-16T22:23:50.397Z

In just four sentences, Ossoff’s carefully crafted language shattered Trump’s curated image as a tough, tireless, troop-loving, America First warrior. The Georgia senator indicted Trump’s military misadventures and octogenarian stamina. He highlighted Trump’s sloth and greed. Ossoff depicted Trump as a detached, spoiled, soft, and vainglorious brat who could make Charli XCX blush.

But the kicker was these three words: “travel with Natalie.”

Ossoff’s statement would have delivered the same critique of Trump as an entitled, lazy lout had he omitted any mention of Harp. But he dropped her name — and only her first name, plus the first-person plural “their” for emphasis — to pair them and suggest a degree of interpersonal intimacy.

Ossoff’s gambit worked perfectly. Americans immediately wanted to learn who Natalie Harp is. Answer: a “platinum blonde geyser of positivity, there to buck him up when the going gets rough,” as the New York Times described the young aide who serves as Trump’s personal, 24/7 “security blanket.”

Ossoff has some very thick skin. The entire Trump cult got outraged quite quickly, with its leader being the most hysterical on the subject.  It takes a lot of talent to yank Trump’s chain enough to be the week’s media darling. The New Republic‘s Greene piled on today. “Natalie Harp Should Concern Everyone—I Should Know, I Once Had Her Job, When I ran President Obama’s socials, I treated that work as needing checks and restraint at every point of the process. Its absence in the Trump White House is scary.”

Handling a U.S. president’s social media voice is a magisterial job. The work involved ranges far and wide—from figuring out how to handle the president’s receipt of a Nobel Peace Prize to huddling with colleagues to pull just the right clip from a speech. Or, if you’re President Donald Trump’s aide and traveling companion, Natalie Harp, you might use AI to portray the president as a fighter pilot dropping payloads of poop on No Kings demonstrators.

I know something about this particular job. I managed President Barack Obama’s partisan social media accounts over much of the first year of his presidency. It’s fair to say this was a more innocent age. The watchwords I took to the work were ones like safeguards and restraint, instead of poop jet and What if we depicted the president as Jesus Christ. A president’s statements, I knew, could move markets even if ventriloquized by twenty- and thirtysomethings working to channel the top guy’s voice. At every point, my colleagues and I took intentional steps to guard against loose words.

It hardly takes a genius to spot how the standards around Trump’s social media accounts have slipped, even against the low baseline of his first term. With The New York Times calling Harp, Trump’s omnipresent aide, the “sylphlike woman” who “supplies him with content she fishes out of the social media gutter (like the video he posted depicting the Obamas as apes),” we have a good idea of why those standards have tumbled—and strong reason to wonder what else the woman who “texts with world leaders on the president’s behalf” and operates “entirely outside the usual chain of command” is doing with her prized, rare access.

I keep wondering if there’s more to her than a “unhealthy obsession with Trump” as her brother said in an interview a few days ago in a CNN interview. She’s been groomed by the likes of Liberty University and has had a lifelong brainwashing by her mother.

“My mom raised us that the idea of American exceptionalism was the correct way of looking at things, that the United States is the boss of the world,” Preston Harp said in the interview. “That, like, slavery was back then. That was normal. People weren’t bad because they had slaves.”

Has the Radical Xtian Right got some other plans for her or bimbo whispering him into doing things for them or Israel? (BTW, I yanked that description from cartoonist Steve Stack as well as the cartoon I shared with you today that’s his.) Those folks are all wrapped up in the idea that they get a quick flight on Sky God if Israel tears down the mosque  on Temple Mount to rebuild a Temple, and they’re serious about it. Maybe there’s some deep-state intrigue there, or maybe the weirdness of the times is getting to me.

Okay, so let me go down this rabbit hole just one more time today with an exclusive from The Daily Beast. (Seriously, I’m not forgetting any of the shit he’s doing for this soap opera moment.) David Gardner has this headline. “Natalie Harp’s Intimate Letters to Trump Revealed in Full.  Trump’s biographer Michael Wolff is revealing two bombshell letters Harp wrote to Trump, calling him her “Guardian and Protector.”

The extraordinary letters were written in 2023, either during or after Harp accompanied Trump on a trip to Scotland and Ireland. She was 31 and Trump was 76. They reveal Harp’s utter devotion to Trump. She even tells him she is envious of women “whose only job seems to be to talk with you and look pretty.”

“I want that job!!” she writes in the letter, saying she missed the days when he would call “and we’d talk about everything and nothing.”

“We shouldn’t have to talk about work all the time!!” she tells Trump.

Harp also refers to herself by the nickname Trump’s staff reportedly gave her: the “Human Printer,” because she printed out positive stories and reports for the president.

The two letters were handed to author and Inside Trump’s Head host Michael Wolff while he was writing his best-selling book, All or Nothing, which chronicled Trump’s 2024 campaign. It included extracts of the letters, and The New York Times later published shorter extracts from the same letters.

Asked to comment on behalf of Harp, White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded, “Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump’s team. The Fake News’s continued attacks on President Trump and his Administration prove exactly why trust in media is at historic lows. The media should get back to reporting real news and stop regurgitating Trump-Deranged liberal talking points.”

There’s a copy of that letter at the link. I’m sure Melania is happy to be relieved of the spotlight. Although the trotted her out as damage control.  People Magazine has this lede yesterday. “Melania Trump Says ‘I Heard You Missed Me’ at First Public Appearance in a Month. The first lady was last seen at the FIFA World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19.”  Does she really believe that?

Melania Trump acknowledged her heavily discussed absence in a recent speech.

The first lady, 56, spoke from the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, Aug. 20, highlighting her Fostering the Future initiative and plans to expand its national network, according to a White House press release. The expansion is facilitated by a $2 million donation from IndyCar and Fox Corporation, which will fund scholarships at Indiana University and Purdue University.

I really try not to be a slut slammer but sheesh, some women just ask for it.  This last read is from Catherine Rampell who is now writing at The Bulwark. Since Trump loves dehumanizing women reporters, I’m waiting for him to go apeshit of this analysis. “Trump’s War on Reality Comes for the Census. One of America’s most trusted institutions just put its name on a totally bogus voter-fraud report.”

SOMEONE ASKS ME AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK whether they should still trust the federal government’s data releases. When we hear official announcements about things like unemployment or inflation, can we rely on those figures to accurately reflect reality, and to be based on proven models? Up until now, I have always said yes.

Sure, the numbers coming out of the White House may be bull.1 But the numbers from independent statistical agencies (the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, etc.) have remained solid and trustworthy, I usually explain.

After all, these stats agencies employ armies of dedicated, fastidious civil servants who collect the underlying data and conduct careful statistical analysis. Their work is firewalled from political interference. I’ve been covering these data releases long enough 2 to know that if Trump were cooking the books, it would be obvious—not least because those career civil servants would be screaming bloody murder and quitting en masse.

Unfortunately, I can no longer vouch for any of that. Now my answer is: No, you should not default to trusting the government data. There’s clear evidence the Trump administration is cooking at least some of the books.

The rest is behind a firewall but believe me, this is not good news for any one in my business. Most of my analysis in my papers come at least partially from government data. This basically means all of us are using spurious information if something is not done quickly about this. I can only ask for who knows how many times, where is Congress when we need them. I hope the courts can do a few things but seriously, this is a Congressional thing.

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?

 

 

 

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #HumanPrinter #JonOssoff #MichaelWolff #NatalieHarp #RosieODonnellOnKimmel #travelWithNatalie #WhereSMelania

Mostly Monday Reads: If at once You can’t succeed, fail and Fail again

“Shouldn’t the new US Attorney General be prosecuting Reflecting Pool Vandals instead of spinning on the Sunday News Shows?” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Regurgitating the past is so Trumpian. He’s the very model of a relic, an anachronistic trope. This week was full of reminders of how detached he is from reality. Once again, Orange Caligula tried to get the case brought by E. Jean Carroll overturned. Even the Supreme Court didn’t buy it. He may be able to control many of the folks he appointed to executive office, but his manipulation of U.S. democracy still only goes so far.

This is from NBC News‘ Lawrence Hurley. “Supreme Court turns away Trump’s latest bid to block E. Jean Carroll award. President Donald Trump filed an unusual request asking the justices to reconsider a decision they made not to hear his case several weeks ago.” E. Jean and her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, are real American heroes.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined for a second time to take up President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn a jury verdict that awarded $5 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for alleged sexual abuse and defamation.

In an unusual move, the president had asked the court to reconsider its decision from June that rejected Trump’s initial appeal. The court almost never grants such requests.

Trump has already turned over the $5 million dollars, plus interest

The case arose from a federal lawsuit Carroll filed in New York City alleging that Trump sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of a department store in 1996. The defamation claims relate to statements he made about her after his first term in office, in which he described her claims as a “con job” and “hoax.”

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has said he does not know Carroll.

Trump has a separate appeal at the Supreme Court concerning a different defamation case in which Carroll won an $83 million judgment. That case concerns comments Trump made as president during his first term and has been tied up in litigation over whether he can claim immunity.

The court is not set to act on that appeal until later this year.

Good news. E. Jean Carroll spent a decade in court fighting one of the most powerful men in the world.She fought with tenacity and grace — and she won. She is one of my personal heroes.We owe her a debt of gratitude.https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/trump-supreme-court-e-jean-carroll.html

— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) 2026-08-17T16:03:01.801585Z

And of course, he argued presidential immunity.  This is from Politico.

Trump’s Supreme Court challenges to both verdicts argued in part that the verdicts were flawed because they relied on statements Trump made in 2019 about Carroll while he was serving as president and those statements should be considered immune from legal liability under the high court’s 2024 ruling granting presidents immunity for many acts they take while in office.

I wonder when the new AG is going to jump wily-nily into the case?  I wrote a lot on Monday about the current treatment of the US Service members deployed to the Iran-Israeli/US war and their deplorable conditions. I mentioned that historically, Orange Caligula has shown mostly contempt for anyone who served in the military, voluntarily or not. My family has served this country since the Revolution, and I really don’t take kindly to the implications that my dad, uncles, or cousins, or any of the others that fall into the multiple greats, did so because they’re “suckers and losers”.

Public Notice‘s Noah Berlatsky takes on his constant denigration of the many who served.  This happened after a Fox News “journalist,” Joey Jones, earned this headline from The Independent. “Fury erupts at Fox host who blasted ‘weak’ sailors on USS Abraham Lincoln: ‘Put him on that ship’. The former Marine Corps staff sergeant compared the carrier crew’s living conditions to his own deployment in Afghanistan.”  The outrage over this continues. Here’s the take from Berlatsky: “Suckers and losers” as policy. The plight of the USS Lincoln lays bare Trump’s disdain for the troops.”

The Navy Times reported last week, based on interviews with family members, that multiple sailors have recently tried to jump overboard from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln — a ship has been deployed for 250 days as part of President Trump’s war of choice against Iran.

Food is deteriorating and being rationed, there are water shortages, the laundry facilities are broken. And the psychological toll has been brutal.

Trump started a war without provocation and has prolonged it because he does not want to admit he lost. But when questioned on Friday about conditions on the Lincoln, he responded not with compassion or regret, but with callous vindictiveness.

Asked if the deployment had lasted too long, he replied, “No. Not nearly long enough.”

Q: The family members of US service members are concerned about the conditions on the USS LincolnTRUMP: No they're notQ: Has the deployment gone on too long?TRUMP: No no no. Not nearly long enough.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-14T17:16:35.974Z

Trump also claimed that a carrier was moving to the Middle East to relieve the Lincoln. That appears to be true. Still, his belligerent denial of the suffering of service members is shocking.

“Shocking,” though, does not mean surprising.

Over the last decade, Trump has consistently insulted and mocked US troops. His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has made clear that he sees service members as props in his endless battle to win culture war accolades from Nazi bloggers and right-wing talking heads.

The fact that real men and women are experiencing mental health crises and are dying in service of their ill-informed and vindictive whims doesn’t trouble Trump or Hegseth. It should more than worry everyone else though.

In yet another deranged Orange Caligula moment, we see his priorities. This is from the AP. “Trump blames vandals for damaged grass in the same spot where he held his big July 4 celebration.”  WTAF?  Is this paranoia or some odd brain fart? He’s done more damage to the District than the British ever did!

President Donald Trump on Sunday said vandals are to blame for large swaths of dead grass on the National Mall near the World War II Memorial — in the same spot where Trump had a stage built and hosted crowds for his July 4 celebration.

Trump made the accusation in a social media post without saying why he believes it’s the work of vandals instead of trampled turf from the Independence Day festivities. He posted a photo showing a once-grassy area by the World War II Memorial, now patchy and brown across much of the sprawling turf.

“Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool, which will be opened again, and better than ever, shortly,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“Anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!” he added.

Trump has been obviously obsessed with World War II and its generals recently.  Does he want to be Eisenhower now? Does he really think starting WW III would be a terrific idea to cement his place in history? I just don’t get any of this. Can someone please stop this madman before the country declines beyond repair?

In a truly bizarre move, Trump decided joint military exercises with South Korea should be ended because he’s such a good friend of the bizarro leader of North Korea. This is from the New York Times‘ Helene Cooper. “Trump Orders Pentagon to Curtail Military Exercises With Ally South Korea. In a social media post, the president scolded South Korea for not helping denuclearize Iran, and also praised North Korea and its leader.”

President Trump said on Sunday that he had instructed the Pentagon to reduce joint military exercises with South Korea, a longtime U.S. ally and a linchpin of America’s national security strategy in the Asia-Pacific region.

The announcement may heighten growing worries among Asian allies over what the United States is now willing to do to deter China, given the enormous distraction and resource drain of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. The United States is running low on critical weapons and has been moving military resources out of Asia to the Middle East.

In a convoluted social media post, Mr. Trump complained that Seoul did not “join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In the same post, he said that North Korea under Kim Jong Un had been “unthreatening and respectful” while he has been president.

In his post Mr. Trump did not mention a rift in relations in 2017, when the North Korean leader called him a “mentally deranged dotard” after Mr. Trump delivered a speech at the U.N. threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea if the United States had to defend itself or its allies.

Now Mr. Trump is speaking only of what he on Sunday called his “very good relationship” with North Korea and its leader. In his post, he said that because of those ties, he was “not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military exercises with South Korea.”

“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” Mr. Trump said in his post.

Mr. Trump said that because it was too late to cancel the exercises entirely, he had asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” U.S. participation.

The U.S. and South Korean militaries have held joint exercises for more than 70 years, since 1955, after the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

The South Korean Defense Ministry confirmed that the joint military exercises had begun on Monday as scheduled. In a statement last week, the allies emphasized that the 11-day annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises were “defensive in nature” and aimed at enhancing the countries’ readiness and capabilities by “incorporating realistic threats, including lessons learned from recent conflicts.”

But North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Friday had reiterated its condemnation of the drills, branding them “a rehearsal for an aggressive war.” In response, the country conducted two ballistic missile tests off its east coast this month, vowing to “respond to a new level of a threat with a new level of a deterrent.”

I don’t know about you, but I think having a President so totally located in a completely different reality, in charge of things — especially the military — is an extremely dangerous place to be.

So, let’s end this on hope, a wing and a prayer. This is from Axios‘ Mike Zapler and Ben Berkowitz. “Even some Republican voters sour on Trump.” I would hope they could. How can you live in this country today and afford anything? How could you have draft-age children or grandchildren and not be worried?

High prices, a persistent war and anxiety about corruption are quickly eroding President Trump’s support among Republicans, a warning sign for the White House with less than 80 days to the midterms.

Why it matters: Democrats look likely to take control of the House already, but Trump’s weakness could cost Republicans more seats and further endanger the Senate.

• The loss of one or both chambers would guarantee two years of scrutiny and gridlock for the end of Trump’s presidency.

By the numbers: Three surveys out in the last week paint a clear picture of growing dissatisfaction among the president’s base.

• 📉 An Economist/YouGov poll out Tuesday had Trump’s approval rating among Republicans at a second-term low of 79 percent — a decline of 12 points from shortly after he took office.
• In that time, the percentage of Republicans who “strongly approve” of Trump’s performance has dropped more precipitously —by 20 points (from 68 to 48 percent).
• Trump is barely above water among non-MAGA Republicans, who make up about 30 percent of the party. Only 51 percent approved of his performance, vs. 47 percent who disapproved. The positive rating among non-MAGA Republicans fell 13 points in one week.
• ⬇️ A Financial Times poll out this weekend had Trump’s net approval rating among Republicans off 8 points from just a month prior.
• 💰 Republican consumer sentiment fell 9.5 points in August from July, per the University of Michigan monthly survey out Friday — one of the largest declines the decades-old project has ever recorded. The Republican decline was more than double the overall headline number.

Driving the news: It’s no secret what’s behind the numbers: the war in Iran, high gas prices and stubborn inflation.

• These recent findings come on the heels of polls that show rising Republican skepticism of the war and GOP wariness over whether Trump is using his office for personal profit.

The intrigue: Trump’s political strength has long derived from outsized loyalty among Republicans, so even a slight slippage could be consequential.

I also was under the delusion that Republicans were deficit hawks. But, I guess that was just another gaslighting session. If you have time, check this one out by Max Boot from the Washington Post.  Too bad it took some of these assholes so long to figure things out. “I’m a hawk. I’m shocked by a $1.5 trillion defense budget. The request would top World War II spending while funding boondoggles and sweetheart deals.”

So, anyway, it’s another hot, humid Monday down here in New Orleans, and I have to go water the small patch of sod that is now the middle of my small backyard. I’m still trying to teach folks economics and finance, but nothing fits the reality these days.  The entire Data Center thing and the supposed “financing” of it are totally outside my realm, as a PhD in Financial Economics.  Call me churlish, but this looks more like the Command-and-Control economics and policies of the old Soviet Union than those of the United States. Then there’s this, which is so far outside the bounds of legality I can’t even think straight about it. “Trump family crypto business World Liberty gets preliminary approval to establish a bank.”   The flunky he appointed as Comptroller of the Currency has already approved it. Let’s see how he manipulates the Federal Reserve System and the SEC!  Don’t even get me started on RFK Jr’s latest romp through medicine and the vaccines that have saved so many people.

As usual, more at the links.

Anyway, I can’t believe what’s going on. I really can’t. None of this should be happening. Let me know what you think.  As usual, more on any of this can be found at the links.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

 

 

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #EJeanCarrollCase #Republicans #SCOTUS #TrumpAndNorthAndSouthKorea #TrumpAndTheUSNavy #TrumpLosingSupportFromRepublicans #TrumpThinksTheMilitaryIsFullOfLosers

Finally Friday Reads: Chaos Touch

“We all know why Todd Blanche was sworn in as the U.S. Attorney General behind closed doors in the Oval Office.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

As we continue Joint Operation Chaos with Israel in the Middle East, it’s becoming apparent that more money and thought are going into Project Glitz up the White House than into taking care of our all-volunteer army. The headlines this week and today have been disgraceful. The latest weird decision by the peerless leader, which put others’ lives in danger as he escaped in a food cart to a different plane, is to spend billions of dollars on the US Navy to restore old technology.

It’s also becoming apparent that almost all the ships at sea have deplorable living conditions. Trump has never had respect for those serving in the military, but this is over the top. It goes beyond calling them all “suckers”.  It endangers their lives. Senator Mark Kelly has a lot to say about this today.  This report is at The Hill and covered by Finya Swai. “Mark Kelly on aircraft carrier catapult order: ‘Donald Trump knows nothing about this stuff’.”  I hate to think that the U.S. Military is one of the things Trump touches that dies.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) blasted President Trump on Thursday for ordering the U.S. Navy to revert to older catapult systems on its aircraft carriers, arguing the change would be costly while questioning Trump’s qualifications to make such a call.

“He’s a marginally failed real estate developer with multiple bankruptcies,” Kelly said in an interview with MS NOW. “He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems, on aircraft carriers.”

Trump earlier Thursday directed the Navy to return to steam-powered catapults and hydraulic systems on its Ford-class aircraft carriers, ditching the newer electromagnetic technology.

The order would require changes to future carriers, including the USS Doris Miller, which is currently under construction and already slated to use the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS).

Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot and NASA astronaut who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned the move would force the Navy to redesign ships that are well into development and are “probably going to cost billions of dollars.”

The Arizona Democrat has said that despite his own experience in hundreds of career takeoffs and landings, his degree in aeronautical and marine engineering and his work as a test pilot, he still would not tell Navy engineers how to design a carrier.

“Donald Trump knows nothing about this stuff,” the senator continued in the interview. “Not in any world would I suggest to the Navy to change the design of some system on a ship at this point.”

He added, “I mean, does the guy know nothing about the way our government is supposed to work and how it’s supposed to be managed?”

As usual, Orange Caligula is always thinking like it’s still the late 20th Century. This is from the AP. “Trump orders the Navy to return to an older system of launching jets off aircraft carriers.” It’s reported by Konstantin Toropin.

President Donald Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to remove the advanced system used to launch fighter jets from its newest type of aircraft carrier and return to using older steam catapults that he has long said he prefers, according to a directive issued Thursday.

The new mandate would likely cost billions of dollars and revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain.

The memo directs the Pentagon and the Navy to present Trump with plans to remove the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, also known as EMALS, within two months. It also says the Ford-class carrier’s electromagnetic weapons elevators should be replaced.

The move comes after years of Trump railing against the new, magnetically powered catapult system that shoots fighter jets off the deck of the carriers. It also comes at a time when the U.S. military is trying to find funding from Congress for all its desired equipment and as the Navy is struggling to fill its ships with enough sailors.

Evidently, France and China beg to differ.

While Trump is looking to roll back the latest technology, the newest Chinese aircraft carriers employ electromagnetic catapults and France said it plans to use the system on its new carrier.

Trump’s memo directs the fourth Ford-class carrier, the USS Doris Miller, to be the first ship to include the new changes. That will leave the USS Gerald R. Ford, as well as the forthcoming USS John F. Kennedy and USS Enterprise, untouched.

However, redesigning an already finalized ship for such a major system change will not be an easy task.

 

MS NOW interviewed the wife of the sailor who recently jumped ship. “‘The boat is finally getting to me’: Wife of USS Abraham Lincoln sailor who jumped overboard shares texts. The sailor’s wife told MS NOW her husband expressed his mental health concerns to leadership during his long deployment on the aircraft carrier in the Iran war, but was brushed off.”  Lindsey Pipia and Priya Sridhar share the lede.

The wife, who was granted anonymity to describe sensitive mental health issues, said she was not contacted by Navy officials about the incident until four days after her husband jumped off the ship on Aug. 3.

“I think that it was handled very poorly because they didn’t inform me and they didn’t want me to know, and they’re just trying to cover this up,” she told MS NOW as she awaits her husband’s arrival back to San Diego after he was medically evacuated off the ship.

She learned about what she described as a suicide attempt after one of her husband’s friends on the ship messaged her that someone from his squadron went overboard, she said. Later, that friend told her it was her husband, according to messages reviewed by MS NOW. Unable to reach him, she reached out to the ship’s ombudsman in hopes of receiving more information.

Her account contradicts what Navy leadership told family members of the sailors and Marines serving on the Lincoln during tense in-person and virtual town hall meetings last week. Navy officials said they could not comment on the medical records of individual service members, to protect patient privacy.

Many family members are concerned about potential exhaustion, low morale and the mental health of those on board, as the aircraft carrier’s deployment at sea appears to have been extended twice during the ongoing Iran war, with no clear end in sight.

MeidasTouch continues to investigate the conditions on the USS Lincoln and has expanded its research to other ships. This is the report by Aaron Parnas. “Not Just the Lincoln: Families Describe Human Waste, No Food, No End in Sight Across Multiple Ships.” Well, that certainly isn’t a good approach to maintaining morale.

One parent whose son recently returned from eleven months aboard the Lincoln, after finishing five years with an F/A-18 fire squadron known as the “Top Hatters,” described conditions that had deteriorated badly by the time he got off the ship.

 

Early in the deployment, the ship’s water system went down entirely, leaving sailors unable to shower or wash their clothes. When the system was eventually restored, showers had to be tightly rationed. Supplies ran low repeatedly, made worse when resupply ships were unable to bring materials back to the carrier. By the time this sailor left the ship, the parent said, toilets had backed up and overflowed, leaving roughly half a foot of human waste across restroom floors used by around 200 sailors at any given time.

There are many more stories included in the lengthy piece. It’s basically horrifying. Meanwhile, Cadet Bonespurs is threatening Iran again. This is from Reuters. “Hormuz traffic slows further after US threatens more economic pressure on Iran.” The lede is shared by Jonathan Saul, Phil Stewart, and Idrees Ali.

Transit through the Strait of Hormuz appeared to grind to a near standstill on Friday after two more ships were ​attacked there and the United States said it could maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely. A senior Iranian source said on Wednesday that there had been no progress in talks to ‌build on a June agreement to end the war. Since the ceasefire renewed in the June deal broke down, Iran has resumed attacks on ships it accuses of trying to transit the strait without its permission. The United Arab Emirates’ Abu Dhabi National Oil Company said two of its vessels were attacked transiting the strait on Thursday evening. The UAE government blamed Iran, which made no immediate comment. Two vessels passed through the narrow waterway on Friday, according to analysis from ship tracking firm ​Kpler: a grain ship entering Iranian waters and an empty dry bulk ship going in the other direction. A separate empty liquefied petroleum products tanker was sailing into the Gulf via the ​strait, the data showed. There were no crude oil shipments visible on Friday. Nine vessels passed through the strait on Thursday, up from five on Wednesday but ⁠below the average of 12 for August.

I’d say there’s no Nobel Peace Prize for Cadet Bonespurs this year. So, what exactly are Trump’s priorities? Lawrence Hurley at NBC News has this report. “Trump asks Supreme Court to allow White House ballroom construction to continue’. The president wants the justices to act before a court ruling that would block construction goes into effect.”

President Donald Trump on Friday asked the Supreme Court to allow him to continue construction of a sprawling ballroom adjacent to the White House.

The emergency application follows an Aug. 7 ruling by an appeals court in Washington upholding a federal judge’s decision that would block abovegroundwork on site while litigation moves forward.

“If allowed to go into effect, the injunction would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is ‘strictly necessary’ to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries, and presidents and prime ministers of other countries,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the filing.

The appeals court decision has yet to go into effect, meaning construction continues while the Supreme Court decides what to do next. The deadline for the justices to act is Aug. 21, with Sauer asking the court to act immediately.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld an injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon.

Leon said that the White House could move forward with below-ground construction of security and medical facilities, but not the ballroom itself.

The administration immediately appealed, and his ruling has not gone into effect.

One key issue in the case is whether the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which brought the underlying lawsuit, has legal standing to sue based on its members being harmed by construction of a building they object to on aesthetic grounds.

Well, the same agenda as ever. He wants to build himself a Wonderland of monuments and buildings in the District. He wants his name on everything. He wants freedom to grift at will. He wants to live forever in the White House. We need to stop all of this, now!

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

We know the answer to this question.

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #IranWar #StraightOfHormuz #TrumpGrift #TrumpMistreatmentOfMiltary #TrumpNameOnEverything #TrumpWantsOldSchoolTechForTheNavy #TrumpWantsToLiveForeverInTheWhiteHouse #TrumpWonderlandDCPark

Finally Friday Reads: Trump’s latest Bugaboo

“Went grocery shopping yesterday for a few things, came home, and started drawing this. The Golden Age, BWAHAHAHA!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Orange Caligula must still have a lot of childhood nightmares still floating around his brain because he sure finds a lot of monsters under his bed to turn into political talking points and policy nonsense. Case in point, the weirdness that has started around what defines American citizenship since the Roberts court, since the majority didn’t buy his reasoning back in June. The new bugbear is “birth tourism.”

So, the way I understand it, the poor huddled masses yearning to be free have enough bucks to enter the country on jetliners and just hang around in hotels until they get themselves a baby, like the baby has anything to do with this start out with. Sigh.  This nonsense comes from a man whose 4 out of 5 of his children are so-called anchor babies. So, what does this mean for Baron’s ascension to the White House? Have we ever totally figured out Melania’s road to citizenship?

Here’s a more reasoned line of analysis from the LA Times. “After Supreme Court loss, Trump again targets birthright citizenship with new orders.” Kevin Rector has the lede.

President Trump targeted birthright citizenship again Thursday by signing a pair of executive orders purporting to narrow it — including by cracking down on “birth tourism” and limiting which children born to immigrants in the U.S. qualify.

The new orders follow a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that rejected an attempt by Trump to end birthright citizenship outright.

During a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump called that decision by the high court “very unfair” and said the new orders were an attempt to end birthright citizenship by other means.

“Our country suffers because of it, and we’re ending it a different way,” he said.

Trump promised “big crackdowns” on birth tourism, or the practice of pregnant foreign mothers coming to the United States, or foreign fathers using surrogates already in the U.S., specifically to ensure their children receive U.S. citizenship.

Trump said an entire industry has been built up around the practice, turning birthright citizenship into “a joke.”

“Wealthy people are building businesses around birthright citizenship. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. It’s a disgrace,” he said. “They’re buying their way in, and we’re not going to let it happen.”

The orders were immediately criticized by proponents of birthright citizenship as an indefensible attempt by the president and his administration to make an end run around the Supreme Court’s clear finding that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution cannot be undone by the president.

This is ridiculous, and it’s not going to take a lot of folks’minds off day-to-day living expenses. Also, what about the escalation of that nonsense war you started with Israel? And speaking of foreign affairs, ProPublica‘s Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Sharon Lerner follow the money that’s supposed to go to foreign aid projects as provided by Congress. It seems Trump might be reallocating to things he considers more appropriate. “What Is the Trump Administration Doing With Foreign Aid Money? The billions of dollars Congress has allocated for foreign aid programs must be spent. One proposal from the Trump administration suggested funding research on crime against Afrikaners in South Africa.”

Since he returned to office, President Donald Trump’s administration has upended foreign aid. It’s labeled well-established, long-running programs as “not aligned with American interests” and slashed their budgets.

Still, the billions of taxpayer dollars Congress has allocated for foreign aid programs must be spent; lawmakers have insisted the government continue to fund humanitarian aid, global health and pro-democracy causes around the world. With most of the old programs now gone, however, we wanted to know: What is the Trump administration doing with that money now?

Recently, we published our investigation that found one answer to that question in a little-known bureau of the State Department that has dramatically transformed under Trump. For decades, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, known as DRL, has supported  human rights in some of the most oppressive countries in the world. Now, our reporting found,  it’s planning to direct funds to controversial groups supporting right-wing causes in Europe and elsewhere.

Our full story lays out some of the groups the government has considered funding, which include a British free-speech organization that has fought against bans on “gay conversion therapy” and a British American think tank created this year to focus on “existential threats to Britain, to America, and to our shared Judeo-Christian civilisation.” (Administration officials dropped that grant after significant pushback from Congress.)

One proposed grant particularly caught our attention: Trump administration officials suggested funding research on crime against minority populations in South Africa.

It’s clear from sources we spoke with that the key targeted minority population in question is the white ethnic group known as Afrikaners. Afrikaners were responsible for creating the nation’s infamous and brutal racially segregated apartheid system. Previously, DRL staff had been told to begin the process of awarding funds to a group called Lex Libertas, which was founded by a controversial figure who has called for Afrikaner self-governance. The group is currently fundraising to place 3,000 white crosses on the National Mall in remembrance of attacks on South African farmers.

The proposed grant was later opened up to allow a broader set of invited groups to apply for $1 million of funding, though it is still intended for the same purpose, according to people with knowledge of the process. The State Department declined to say whether Lex Libertas will be among those invited to compete, citing ongoing deliberations, but said the Trump administration has serious concerns about the human rights situation in South Africa that need to be addressed. Lex Libertas did not respond to questions about the organization or the proposed grant.

Former diplomats who have worked extensively on human rights told us they were shocked that the victimization of white South Africans would be prioritized over the serious issues elsewhere in the region.

“It’s laughable to suggest that on the African continent, the prime issue of human rights concern is whites in South Africa,” one former agency official said when we asked him about the grant. South Africa is plagued by violence, but extensive research has found that white South African farmers are not victims of crime at higher rates than other groups.

As usual, Trump’s biggest bugbear is people of color. It amazes me that Congress just can’t (or won’t) figure out a way to stop this.  We’ve have breaking news today that Todd Blanche will be the next AG. Once again, Senator Bill Cassiday, Lousyana, has folded. Any chance of doing the right thing just is not possible for him. This is from the New York Times. “Cassidy Will Back Blanche, Salvaging His Confirmation. The Louisiana senator said that, despite reservations, he would back President Trump’s pick for attorney general, giving Republicans enough votes for a majority.”  He’s the Doctor Senator who also enabled RFK jr to climb on his wrecking ball and go after our Health System. The story is reported by Michael Gold and Carl Hulse.

Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said on Friday that he would support Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general, effectively saving the confirmation of President Trump’s pick after two other Republican senators said they would oppose him.

Mr. Cassidy, who lost his re-election bid to a Trump-backed challenger, said in a speech on the Senate floor that he had deep concerns about “apparent lawfare,” the phrase he has used to refer to the Justice Department’s targeting of the president’s political enemies.

But Mr. Cassidy said that after much consideration, he had come to believe that Mr. Blanche, who has served as the president’s personal lawyer, would be better positioned to push back against Mr. Trump’s norm-busting demands than an alternative.

“Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this,” Mr. Cassidy said. “But the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche. It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general, who may not run the department effectively under President Trump.”

He announced his decision hours after Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska became the second Republican to oppose Mr. Blanche’s confirmation, joining Senator Susan Collins of Maine. That threw the nominee’s fate into doubt, given that he could not afford additional Republican defectors, and intensified attention on Mr. Cassidy.

Ms. Murkowski said in a statement that she, too, harbored concerns over the “politicization” of the Justice Department. But the conclusion she reached was the opposite of Mr. Cassidy’s: She said that she feared that Mr. Blanche would “fail to check the worst impulses of this administration.”

Ms. Murkowski cited the department’s handling of the release of the Epstein files, which Mr. Blanche oversaw, and the settlement agreement that Mr. Blanche negotiated in Mr. Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S., which included the creation of a $1.8 billion compensation fund that could have been used to pay people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“The country needs an attorney general who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” Ms. Murkowski said. “I hope Mr. Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”

Ms. Collins, who is running for re-election in a state that Mr. Trump lost in 2024, said on Tuesday that she would vote against Mr. Blanche over similar concerns. Given the continued absence of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who has been gone for nearly eight weeks because of illness, Mr. Blanche could afford to lose no more than two Republican votes and still win a majority for confirmation over the opposition of Democrats.

We lose again, as Steve Benen explains the latest attack on renewable energy in the Maddow Blog. “Team Trump uses taxpayer money to scuttle yet another renewable energy project. As one key Democratic member of Congress summarized, “It is hard to imagine a more backwards use of taxpayer money.”

There’s no shortage of lessons to be learned from the U.S. war with Iran, but high on the list is that it’s in Americans’ interest to embrace renewable energy — not just because it’s cleaner and cheaper, but also because it helps shield consumers from international turmoil in an increasingly volatile sector.

It’s a basic idea the Trump administration doesn’t want to understand. The New York Times reported this week:

The Trump administration will pay the German energy firm RWE $1.22 billion to abandon plans to build wind farms off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana, the company announced on Thursday. […]

Under the agreement, RWE will voluntarily surrender three leases it owned for wind farms in federal waters.

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. In March, the Republican administration announced that it had agreed to pay a foreign company almost $1 billion in American taxpayer money to abandon two wind farm projects that would have produced enough electricity to power more than 1.3 million homes and businesses across New York, New Jersey and North Carolina.

At the administration’s insistence, the company will instead proceed with different energy projects that will cost more and pollute more. Put another way, thanks to a model imposed by President Donald Trump, many American consumers will pay for the privilege of paying more to turn on the lights, all while polluting our own air.

Then in April, it happened again, when the Republican administration announced plans to pay energy companies almost $900 million to abandon plans for two offshore wind farms. Two months later, Team Trump spent $765 million to buy back another group of offshore wind leases.

In late June, a fourth example emerged, when the administration announced plans to pay Duke Energy $129 million to abandon an offshore wind project off the coast of North Carolina.

With a fifth instance this week, the combined price tag for the developments is approaching $4 billion.

I remain mindful that the president has been on a personal crusade against wind power since he lost a fight a decade ago to block a project visible from one of his golf courses in Scotland. This generated such fanatical hatred for wind power that Trump, in 2019, publicly suggested that the sound generated by wind turbines “causes cancer.” (It does not.)

As recently as last month, the Republican also started telling the public that wind energy harms the environment. (That’s bonkers, too.)

But that doesn’t make the latest developments any easier to defend. At a time when the U.S. would benefit from more renewable energy projects, the Trump administration keeps spending billions to scuttle renewable energy projects.

And it’s not like the business sector does us any favors either. Take a look at this article from CNBC.  “Trump teased an Iran deal that didn’t come, but markets soared. Here’s why it keeps happening.” I’d like to make a suggestion that there is no such thing as a rational market when all the leaders in your government are incompetent and self-dealing.  There’s only actors with money trying to get the most out of it. Kevin Breuninger has the analysis.

The Trump administration this week sparked enthusiasm that the U.S. and Iran could soon strike a deal on the Strait of Hormuz, driving down oil prices and sending stocks soaring — only for no deal to emerge.

If that sounds familiar, it may be because President Donald Trump has claimed dozens of times that the U.S. is close to an agreement that will end the war it began more than five months ago.

Investors have reacted to many of those claims with bursts of buying on hopes a breakthrough is near, even as the war instead appears to be widening and progress on Trump’s chief stated goal — containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions — is at a standstill.

“There’s tremendous optimism bias in the market,” Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told CNBC.

Markets continue to assume incentives for both the U.S. and Iran favor a diplomatic end to the war. But some investors seem to “see a deal as a time machine” that will reset the Middle East to its prewar status quo, even though that’s unlikely to happen, Croft said.

The conflict of late centers on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway for the global oil trade that has became a source of major leverage for Iran.

Tehran’s ability to effectively close the strait — an open, un-tolled international waterway before the war started — triggered a global energy supply shock that drove up gas prices, exacerbated inflation and raised alarms about oil reserves.

Even those who believe diplomacy remains a viable path to peace acknowledge the future of the strait presents an intractable problem.

“There still appears to be a fundamental difference over the fate of Hormuz: Iran wants to impose a service fee, while the US wants the pre-war situation restored, i.e., international, free waters in the Strait,” Claudio Galimberti, partner and chief economist at Rystad Energy, said by email.

White House stooge Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen keeps singing “The sun will come out Tommorow, Bet your bottom dollar, that tomorrow there’ll be sun.” Ayup.

Okay, enough of today. Let’s just hope for the best over the weekend.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

#BirthTourism #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #andPeaceInTheGulf #CleanEnergyInitiatives #KillingForeignAid #ToddBlanche

Mostly Monday Reads: State of Disunion

“A new, overheard at the corner bar. Not sure what the latest MAGA perceived transgression is, something about hotdogs, I think.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The GOP Senate folded, collapsed, and surrendered to the will of Orange Caligula and his crony, Todd Blanche. I’m not sure what they gain from this in reality. I’m pretty sure this will offend those of us with enough information and education to make a decision concerning all the taxes we pay, and the taxes he never pays. It’s truly a sad day when the Department of Justice folds so easily. The big outrage is that it is political.

I’ll just start with all the outraged headlines that convey “Sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Ever since I was in fifth grade, I could come up with something from Shakespeare that stood up in modern times. Let’s start with The Bulwark. I really felt this one. “GOP Sheep to the Midterm Slaughter. Todd Blanche’s confirmation will be bad for the country—and a gift to Senate Democrats.” This first subtitle and analysis is written by William Kristol. “Of Lemons and Lemonade.” None of this will ever reach the eyes of die-hard MAGA mental midgets.

Here’s the first short blurb. We’re getting yet another eyesore that will wipe out our history.

How much of an eyesore will Donald Trump’s coveted Triumphal Arch be? A National Park Service assessment found that the planned 250-foot arch will intrude on the views from “dozens of historic sites around the capital,” per new reporting from the Washington Post. But look on the bright side: Think of all the flexibility you’ll have finding a good seat to watch them knock it down later. Happy Monday.

Back to Mister Kristol.

Late last night, the American people were handed a lemon: A capitulation by Republican senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina that makes confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general likely. Blanche provided them a fig leaf, a written order formally rescinding the proposed $1.8 billion fund for alleged victims of political prosecutions and a statement allegedly limiting the provision of the agreement that shields Trump, his sons, and their businesses from tax claims.

These assurances will presumably be enough for Blanche to make it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday on a straight party-line vote. He’s then likely—though not certain—to get the 50 votes he’ll need to be confirmed by the whole Senate, probably at the end of the week.

So this lemon will be added to a whole bushel of other lemons in Trump’s cabinet. Todd Blanche will join Jay Clayton, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and Markwayne Mullin as confirmed leaders of the key national security agencies of Trump’s executive branch. Having loyal and determined apparatchiks like them in positions of real power for the next two and a half years is not a good thing.

On the other hand: There is lemonade to be made here. Trump’s polls have been sinking. Republicans are almost certain to lose the House this fall, and the Senate majority is up for grabs. Democratic control of both houses would help check Trump’s authoritarian schemes. And the fact that the entire Senate Republican conference will have to cast a high-visibility vote to confirm Todd Blanche can help in turning the Senate Democratic

.This is from Axios’ Andrew Pantazi. “Blanche poised for confirmation vote after he kills Trump’s fund.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will likely advance to a full Senate confirmation vote after he rescinded the order setting up President Trump’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund Sunday.

Why it matters: Blanche’s Sunday order has won over Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who had held out on voting for Trump’s pick.

The latest: Cornyn and Tillis said in a joint statement that they will vote to advance Blanche’s nomination.

• The senators said they had negotiated a “legally enforceable document” that ends the anti-weaponization fund and limits protections against audits.
• “We look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon,” the senators said in the statement.

Catch up quick: The fund grew out of a May settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the disclosure of his tax records.

• The settlement promised an apology to Trump and his sons, and it created the fund for individuals claiming they suffered from government “lawfare.”
• Another agreement released Trump, his family and the Trump Organization from certain IRS claims and audits.

Of note: Blanche’s new order rescinds one from May implementing the nearly $1.8 billion fund, but not the settlement provision requiring the attorney general to create the fund.

• The settlement’s terms can only be changed via a written agreement from the Trumps and the government. Sunday’s order was signed by Blanche but not by Trump, his sons or the Trump Organization.
• At his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Blanche acknowledged that the settlement was enforceable and that Trump’s lawyers could try to enforce it or claim the DOJ breached the agreement by refusing to operate the fund.

Blanche also clarified the sweeping protections Trump received from tax audits on Sunday.

• In a statement released with the order, Blanche said the protections only apply retroactively and only to the lawsuit’s named plaintiffs: Trump, some of his family, and the Trump Organization. The earlier agreement said it extended to any “related or affiliated” individuals, companies and other organizations.

Reality check: While the Trump protections Blanche lists are without precedent, they also reflect the reality that Trump’s administration will not criminally investigate him anyway.

• Before he leaves office, Trump is expected to hand out sweeping pardons to administration officials and allies. That would render any effort to prosecute Trump, his family or his companies doubly moot.

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo puts it this way. “Faux Deal Ends Faux Fight Over Blanche Nomination. Wet Noodle Award: Cornyn and Tillis.”

Trump is Lucy. GOP senators are the football. D.C. political reporters are Charlie Brown.

For a decade now, the illusion that Republican senators in whole or in part would rise up against the outrages of the Trump presidencies has animated political reporting even as the Senate GOP conference has chronically failed to rise to the occasion.

The farcical effort required to sustain the illusion has required a willing disbelief and feigned innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

So while the urge to pile on Senate Republicans like John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina for not driving a hard bargain with Trump over the nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general is warranted, it must also be acknowledged, as painful as it is, that their pretend resistance actually works at yielding the headlines and reputational burnishing they’re looking for.

Most of this morning’s coverage of the overnight development bears this out.

After weeks of resistance, Blanche finally put in writing, in documents he posted to X, that the “anti-weaponization” slush fund is dead and that the IRS immunity for Trump is retroactive only. It was a limited concession, but it was enough for the two Senate holdouts, Tillis just confirmed on X.

The news coverage hailed this as a “formal” act by Blanche of rescinding the “anti-weaponization” fund. Some managed to cover the development without reference to Blanche’s disastrous anti-democratic run at a DOJ used as tool of retribution for the Trump White House.

This came after President Trump over the weekend continued to escalate his insistence that the “anti-weaponization” slush fund should still move forward. We’re supposed to belief Trump’s former personal lawyer and underling, not the president himself.

Seriously, this is what America’s all about these days. Keeping Orange Caligula happy and enabling the Trump Family Crime Syndicate. It’s hard to take these buffoons seriously, but unfortunately, an entire group of idiots fell for the scam and loved the racism. So the anti-weaponization fund is gone, but the rest of the hoopla stays. So just to let you know how much the entire Republican Party relies on bigoted, ignorant voters, here’s the newest “policy.” This is from Politico‘s Rebecca Carballo. “Trump administration asks colleges to commit to education overhaul. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s letter contains some similarities to a compact offered to and rejected by a small group of schools last year.”

The Education Department is asking university leaders to publicly commit to a series of institutional changes, many of which are in line with the Trump administration’s higher education agenda, by the end of the year.

The agency’s letter asks these leaders to address grade inflation, improve transparency about the costs of attending their schools and curb foreign donations. It also asks them to hire faculty of “all relevant perspectives,” with the Trump administration previously arguing schools are too left leaning and suppress conservative voices.

The letter contains some similarities to the college compact the administration sent to a select group of universities last fall, none of which agreed to sign the compact. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology publicly rejected the compact, arguing that some of its provisions would restrict freedom of expression and the school’s independence. A few schools that were not in the initial group the compact was sent to volunteered to sign it.

The administration’s latest letter appears to be less restrictive than the compact. Monday’s letter does not include some of the more controversial asks in the compact, including a 15 percent cap on international undergraduate enrollment and a five-year tuition freeze. It also does not offer the incentives featured in the compact, including a potential leg up in federal contracts and grants.

So, back to the Trump Arch because destroying historical sites just makes me ill. He so wants to be taken seriously, but all he does is create edifices to his idocy. This is from the New York Times. “Park Service Finds Trump’s Arch Could Detract From Dozens of Historic Places, The 250-foot-tall edifice would alter views across Washington and Arlington Cemetery.”  This report is by Emily Badger.

President Trump’s proposed 250-foot-tall triumphal arch would change the skyline of Washington to such an extent that it would intrude on views at dozens of historic sites around the capital, according to an assessment by National Park Service staff.

It would disrupt the symbolic relationship between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, obstruct sightlines from the Kennedy Gravesite and Robert E. Lee’s home, and alter what official documents call “one of the most magnificent” views in Washington at the National Cathedral four miles away, the Park Service said.

The assessment of the arch’s impact on surrounding historic properties is a key step the administration must complete before the project can receive final approval by the National Capital Planning Commission, which could come as soon as its next meeting on Sept. 3.

The Park Service is supposed to seek ways to reduce such “adverse effects” on historic sites under the National Historic Preservation Act. But the arch is expected to move forward with little change given that Mr. Trump has shown no interest in the most obvious remedies — scaling down the project, or building it somewhere else.

I’m going to slip this in just so we know out there somewhere, there are people who know who he really is.

Sarah Matthews on Trump’s fixation with 2020 election loss, January 6th and the sycophant’s who currently support him. #Pinks

— Jules⚖️📨 (@northjules.bsky.social) 2026-08-03T11:27:20.093Z

Let’s just leave on this note. I hope he reads it because I know a bunch of us want everything he built and did to be completely erased from history. We should bulldoze all those things he destroyed and put them right again. This is from G. Elliot Morris and his numbers for the elections in his blog Strenght in Numbers. “Democrats strongly favored to take the House, Senate tilts Democratic in our new election forecast (crosspost). Our brand-new election forecast for the 2026 congressional midterms puts Democrats at above even odds to take control of both chambers. Please, please don’t screw this up!

Today’s the day we’ve all been waiting for. If you’re reading this, that means we finished dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s and just published our shiny, state-of-the-art 2026 congressional election forecast over at FiftyPlusOne. 🎉

As of 6:00 AM Eastern on August 3, 2026, we give the Democrats an 85% chance to win the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and a 55% chance to win control of the Senate (which we define as 51 seats or more, unless an independent wins in Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, or South Dakota — unlikely, but not impossible).

Because our forecast simulates elections for both chambers in one unified model, we can also calculate the probabilities of either party controlling both chambers after Nov. Democrats win control of both the House and Senate in just over 50% of simulations, whereas Republicans prevail in less than 12%.

Of course, there are graphs, so go check it out!

So, I’ll stop right now because I’m now watering sod in my backyard, with the leftover planted on the neutral ground across the street, twice a day. I’m hoping for a big celebratory election party back in the back with all the fixin’s.

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?

And no, I have no idea what happened to the font here. I’m just going to roll with it.

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CongressionalElectionProjections2026 #ToddBlanche #TrumpVsHigherEducation #TrumpSArch

Finally Friday Reads: War! Good God Y’all!

“Gotta get something out of the billions of dollars spent on the Three Day Special Military Operation!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The chaos continues on nearly all fronts of both federal domestic and foreign policy. On the state level, we see the fight to disenfranchise or re-enfranchise voters unlikely to support Republicans. I believe we’re in a cold civil war. There have been academic arguments about its existence for quite some time, with arguments on both sides of the political spectrum. Discussions today harken back to the idea put forth by Martin Luther King in 1967 about “Two Americas.” I also believe that the Trump administration purposefully pits us against each other as a strategy to distract from the damage coming from just about everything horrible it’s done. That includes the very hot war involving Israel and Iran.

I’ll give you a few suggested reads here on the idea of an American Cold Civil War from both sides of the political spectrum. This first article comes from a 2024 article at The American Prospect written by David Dayen. D-Day considers himself a progressive. “The Cold Civil War. States have always diverged on policies, but it’s grown more intense. And for red states, that’s not enough.” This article reflects on the COVID-19 period. It’s based on comparing red- and blue-state policies.

Over the last 30 years, a state government’s partisan orientation is the overwhelming predictor of the policies it will adopt.

Policy extremism has eroded quality of life in America. As much as half of the gap between the states in life expectancy is due to geographic variation. A 2023 study found that more liberal policies on tobacco, labor, immigration, civil rights, and the environment correspond to a one-year increase in how long a state’s residents live. (In this special issue, Kalena Thomhave takes a closer look at Oklahoma and Connecticut, which had the same life expectancy in 1959 and a 4.7-year spread as of 2019.)

Of the ten states with the highest rates of uninsured residents, seven are controlled fully by Republicans. Of the ten with the fewest uninsured, seven are controlled fully by Democrats. The ten worst health systems in the country, according to the Commonwealth Fund, are all in red states. Eight of the ten states with the most COVID-19 deaths are Republican-led; so are ten of the 12 states with the highest rates of smoking-related cancer deaths. Firearm deaths are lower in blue states and higher in red states. Even obesity levels show this correlation: Ten of the 12 states with the highest percentage of obese residents have Republican trifectas.

Where you live, in short, can determine how long you live.

This wide gulf between healthy and ailing America is bad enough. But red states in particular want their policy preferences to be reflected across the nation, and have engaged in numerous aggressive tactics to make that a reality.

I highly recommend you read D-Day and also this one from the perspective of a Right-Wing mover and shaker in the political and academic arena, Charles R. Kesler. His vitae includes all the groups that have been funding and guiding the Republican party since Reagan’s time. This is an interesting article from 2018, when the right was obsessed with Obama. There are many operational definitions in there, as well as insights into the other end of the spectrum.  It was published in Imprimus. You’ll recognize the practical application of both philosophies in Dayen’s piece. This next read shows the Ivy Tower view approach that gets hammered into political decisions, which include important federal appointments.

In the Claremont Review of Books, we have described our current political scene as a cold civil war. A cold civil war is better than a hot civil war, but it is not a good situation for a country to be in. Underlying our cold civil war is the fact that America is torn increasingly between two rival constitutions, two cultures, two ways of life.

Political scientists sometimes distinguish between normal politics and regime politics. Normal politics takes place within a political and constitutional order and concerns means, not ends. In other words, the ends or principles are agreed upon; debate is simply over means. By contrast, regime politics is about who rules and for what ends or principles. It questions the nature of the political system itself. Who has rights? Who gets to vote? What do we honor or revere together as a people? I fear America may be leaving the world of normal politics and entering the dangerous world of regime politics—a politics in which our political loyalties diverge more and more, as they did in the 1850s, between two contrary visions of the country.

One vision is based on the original Constitution as amended. This is the Constitution grounded in the natural rights of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution written in 1787 and ratified in 1788. It has been transmitted to us with significant Amendments—some improvements and some not—but it is recognizable still as the original Constitution. To simplify matters we may call this “the conservative Constitution”—with the caveat that conservatives have never agreed perfectly on its meaning and that many non-conservatives remain loyal to it.

The other vision is based on what Progressives and liberals, for 100 years now, have called “the living Constitution.” This term implies that the original Constitution is dead—or at least on life support—and that in order to remain relevant to our national life, the original Constitution must be infused with new meaning and new ends and therefore with new duties, rights, and powers. To cite an important example, new administrative agencies must be created to circumvent the structural limitations that the original Constitution imposed on government.

As you can see, this is based on the idea of  “originalism”. However, these arguments seem trite today when you look at what’s happening in the states and on the streets. The arguments are also resplendent in state and federal courts and have been since the Reagan years. The craziness with Fauci witch trials is probably the most obvious bit of news that shows how rabid those discussions/arguments have become since Trump came onto the political scene. The American Cold Civil War has amped up in ways that impact everything these days. Mostly because Orange Caligula has a strong need for public attention and worship, but also because he has so much baggage that he needs to hide behind distractions.

Today’s headlines on the mess in the Middle East were created by Trump and Netanyahu, both with their own delusions of greatness. The other can be seen in Trump’s battles to appoint weak and compliant stooges to important offices. All of this creates more battles in the American Cold Civil War. We’re seeing such weirdness today with the embattled DOJ and the appointment of Trump’s personal lawyer, Todd Blanche. Oh, where do we start with this one?  Politico‘s Chris Marquette and Jordain Carney share the lede on this headline.  “Faced with Blanche dilemma, Trump chooses revenge. The president’s willingness to sacrifice his attorney general’s confirmation shows how deep his contempt for his enemies goes.”

President Donald Trump has a choice: allow changes to a controversial court settlement and secure the confirmation of his former personal lawyer as attorney general, or thumb his nose at a pair of his few remaining Republican critics in Congress.

True to form, he is giving no ground.

Trump’s decision Thursday to signal he would rather pull the nomination of Todd Blanche, his pick to lead the Justice Department, rather than give in to the demands of Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis demonstrated that the president’s desire to thwart his enemies does not end with the demise of their political careers.

Both Republican senators will leave Congress at the end of the year after running afoul of Trump, and both have found a degree of independence since becoming untethered from needing to keep in his good graces.

But their efforts to exert leverage and seek to curtail a controversial settlement agreement reached in May between Trump and the IRS only prompted the president to double down. He announced in a Truth Social post that Blanche would remain as acting attorney general “in any event” and that he would potentially withdraw and resubmit the nomination “after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office” in January. He went on to needle Cornyn again Friday.

Tillis, who announced he would not seek reelection last year after clashing with Trump over Medicaid cuts in his home state of North Carolina, betrayed little surprise when asked about Trump’s reticence to bargain over the IRS settlement.

“Look up the definition of recalcitrant,” he said.

Cornyn, who lost his bid for renomination to a fifth term representing Texas in May after Trump endorsed a scandal-prone opponent, brushed off the accusation that he was simply seeking revenge by blocking Blanche.

He called Trump’s claim “a convenient excuse, but it’s certainly not true.” And he warned the president that trying to wait him out would be a “gamble.”

“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” he said.

Orange Caligula strongly believes in his side and only his side. This is from Axios. Hans Nichols and,
Stef W. Kight reported this story. “Inside Trump’s Senate playbook”.

President Trump has three go-to moves for GOP senators who frustrate him: persuade them when he can, ignore them when he must and bully them at will.

Why it matters: The approach doesn’t always produce results. But it almost always provides drama.

Persuade: Trump dispatched two top deputies to the Senate GOP lunch on Wednesday to make the case, in person, for a third reconciliation bill with elements of the SAVE Act.

• Then he sent in the big guns. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles huddled with the Senate GOP leaders shortly after their lunch.
• When Trump faced a Senate rebuke over the Iran conflict last month, the White House aggressively lobbied wavering Republicans to flip their votes.

Ignore: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche doesn’t need Senate confirmation to do the job, Trump declared on Truth Social on Thursday.

• He can serve as acting attorney general indefinitely. Problem solved.

Bully: Trump began the week by demanding that Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) scrap the filibuster and pass the SAVE Act.

• “Remember, stupidity always brings LOSING & DEATH!” Trump wrote.

What we’re watching: Bullying appeared to be Trump’s preferred tactic this week. By Wednesday, he was openly questioning whether Thune should remain majority leader.

• Thune’s best defense was to downplay his own powers.

• “He thinks I can wave the magic wand,” Thune told Politico. “I wish it were that easy.”

• Trump’s penchant for bullying has emboldened some senators to stand their ground — such as John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who have blocked Blanche’s nomination. Both will be out of the Senate in January.

This take is from CNN’s Kit Maher. “Trump further muddies Blanche negotiations, saying he wishes ‘anti-weaponization’ fund weren’t dead.”

President Donald Trump is further complicating negotiations as White House and Justice Department officials try to unstick Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general, saying Friday that a controversial fund behind the holdup is “dead” but that “I wish it weren’t.”

Key GOP senators — John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina— have indicated they’ll withhold their needed votes to confirm Blanche until they get written assurances that the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund won’t be resurrected, along with certain commitments about tax investigations.

Trump defended the fund at length during a Cabinet meeting Friday, echoing comments posted on Truth Social earlier that day in which he called for Blanche to “be immediately approved” as his permanent pick for for the role. Just a day earlier, the president had said he wouldn’t object to “temporarily withdrawing” Blanche’s nomination until Tillis and Cornyn leave Congress early next year.

Tillis responded on X Friday morning that Trump’s comments were reaffirming why he and Cornyn needed the assurances in writing.

“The President made it clear today that the so-called Anti Weaponization Fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it,” Tillis wrote.

Blanche has already said the controversial fund is “dead” and the Justice Department told courts the program was abandoned, but officials have previously declined to put the commitment in writing. The fund, originally established by a settlement agreement between the Internal Revenue Service and Trump’s personal lawyers, would have offered taxpayer money to those who claimed they were victims of weaponization by the federal government — including those involved with the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot.

Cornyn has been adamant that he also wants Blanche to clarify an addendum to that agreement that offers the president and members of his family tax immunity. The senator wants Blanche to explicitly acknowledge that it only applies to past tax investigations against the president and those listed in the lawsuit that was settled.

The demands have left Blanche in a difficult place since putting limits on the tax addendum could anger the president.

Are we having fun yet? The meeting a few days ago between Trump and Netanyahu was interesting to say the least. Did it resolve anything? This is the take from The Independent. This is what happens when two narcissists/sociopaths try to work together. “Trump claims Board of Peace has reached ‘historic’ Gaza deal to disarm Hamas and withdraw Israeli troops. The deal would see Hamas completely disarm itself and hand political and security control in Gaza over to international troops, a new Palestinian police force and a transitional government body of nonpartisan experts.”  This analysis is provided by Josh Marcus.  Peace in the Middle East. Right. Where have I heard that before?

The parties in the Israel-Hamas war have agreed to a “historic” framework paving the way to rebuild Gaza and remake its government, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday.

The deal includes the “COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Hamas communicated via mediators that it has agreed to the terms of the multi-step road map, U.S. and Board of Peace officials told The Independent.

The deal will eventually see the group hand security and political control to an international stabilization force of troops, a newly trained Palestinian police force and a transitional group of technocratic experts overseeing basic services, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the officials said.

The Israeli military, meanwhile, will pull back its troops from Gaza in phases, according to President Trump.

“One year ago there was a violent raging war, humanitarian crisis and hostages kept in brutal captivity,” he wrote in his post outlining the alleged agreement. “We have made historic progress and there is still much work to do.”

Each phase of the deal would be verified by a committee that certifies compliance on all sides before additional changes would take place, the U.S. officials said.

The disarmament process would include the handover of personal weapons, the decommissioning of heavy military hardware in Gaza and the disclosure and destruction of hidden Hamas tunnels, the officials added.

And, I have a bridge right by me over the Mississippi River that I’d like to sell you.  Or would you prefer one in Brooklyn?

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #AmericanColdCivilWar #SenateHearings #ToddBlanche #USIsraelIranWar #WarPigs

Mostly Monday Reads: SAVE Shennanigans

“It’s incredible watching Donald The Prophet profiting.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The headlines today are full of failed policies. Orange Caligula hasn’t quite found a distraction to take the voters’ minds off everything he’s done this term. We have a failed war and an economy choked by inflation. His main focus is on rigging the election and disenfranchising minority voters and women. He’s been after Senator John Thune to get his SAVE Act passed. However, the more people know about it, the less they like it. So, it’s time to start lighting up your Congressional Critters’ phones.

This is the headline from Politico‘s  Jordain Carney. “Trump tells Thune to keep Senate in session to pass SAVE America Act. The president also again urged the Senate GOP leader to nix the filibuster.” Republicans are always keen on the filibuster until it’s used against them.

President Donald Trump ramped up pressure Monday on Majority Leader John Thune, telling him to keep the Senate in session until a GOP election bill passes.

“John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Monday.

Democrats, he added, will nix the filibuster themselves when they regain power “and can’t believe how lucky they got with this Senate leadership. Remember, stupidity always brings LOSING & DEATH!”

Trump’s Truth Social post comes after he urged supporters last week to call Thune about the SAVE America Act, then said Friday that he wanted Senate Republicans to adopt a blueprint for a $95 billion party-line spending bill, which would include some election-related funding, before they leave town for the August recess as planned on Aug. 6.

Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said over the weekend that they believed the Senate should stay in town until the election bill is passed. Lee has previously called for the Senate to stay in session through prior recesses to pass the SAVE America Act but has not forced the issue on the floor.

Despite Trump’s pressure campaign, the elections bill doesn’t have the votes to pass the Senate and there isn’t enough support within the Senate Republican conference for nixing the filibuster, which requires 60 votes for most legislation to advance.

When Trump says he has a dream, it’s basically to ensure Black Americans can’t get to the polls. There’s no better time than this midterm to turn out and punch that voting machine selection with your middle finger. This analysis at The Hill has part of the explanation why Republican Senators can’t find their spines to buck the MAGA agenda. Alexander Bolten has the lede.

Senate conservatives, led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), are calling on Senate Majority Leader John Thune 

(R-S.D.) to cancel the August recess so they can debate the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, a sweeping election reform bill that President Trump has made his No. 1 legislative priority.

Lee warned in a social media post to Thune last week that he would “object to any effort to put the Senate into recess in August — at least until such time as the Senate has passed the SAVE America Act” and requested a roll call vote to adjourn the Senate for five weeks over most of August and early September.

Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), who’s up for reelection in November, said she would prefer to stay in Washington in August instead of returning to her home state for an extended period to meet with constituents.

“I didn’t come to the United States Senate because I needed something to do. I’m serving because there are things we need to get done for the American People. The Senate needs to stay in session until we can get the SAVE America Act to the floor and passed,” Moody posted on X.

Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), another Trump ally, said he’s ready to cancel the five-week recess to debate the SAVE America Act, which has already failed several times on the Senate floor.

“I’m all for it. We don’t need a recess. Let’s pass the Save America Act. It’s more important than taking a break, taking a recess,” Banks told Fox News.

“I’m back in Indiana for the weekend, I head back to Washington tomorrow. I’ve heard from people everywhere I go, from the diner this morning to the grocery store, ‘Pass the SAVE America Act.’ We have to get it done,” he said.

The Senate has already spent several weeks of floor time debating the SAVE America Act, which would require people to show documented proof of citizenship when registering to vote and show photo identification when voting, and it would restrict mail-in ballots.

Down here in the yahoo state, we have Senator Kennedy to go all Hee-Haw on us. Samuel Chamberlin has this headline (deep breath) from the New York Post. “GOP Sen. John Kennedy warns John Thune is ‘being too cautious’ as Trump agenda hangs in the balance.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) needs to get to work on passing the rest of President Trump’s agenda with fewer than 100 days to go before the midterm elections, a key member of the GOP’s rank-and-file warned Sunday.

“Look, I mean no disrespect. I love John Thune. He’s my leader. He’s got a big brain. He’s better looking than me, but I think he’s just being too cautious,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” adding that the majority leader “wants to spend the rest of our time talking with [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer about shutting down government, and the Graham Platner wing of the [Democratic] party is, his party, is not going to let Schumer agree with us.

“They already want to give Schumer a bathrobe, a Popsicle, and an early bedtime, and have him retire. I don’t think Chuck can agree with us,” Kennedy predicted. “I think he’s going to shut down government.”

“We need to put the, the House budget resolution on the floor,” Kennedy told host Margaret Brennan. “It’s the only chance we have to get money to defense, the farmers, and to take another crack at the SAVE Act. We need to add Iran to the [Lindsey] Graham Russian sanctions bill and vote on it. We need to put the cryptocurrency market structure bill on the floor and vote on it.”

Before leaving for its August recess last week, the House of Representatives passed a stopgap measure that would fund the government until Dec. 4. Some Senate Republicans, including Kennedy, want to tack the Trump-endorsed SAVE America Act, which would require Americans to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote and provide photo identification before casting a ballot, onto the budget resolution.

Currently, a shutdown is set to begin at 11:59 p.m. ET Sept. 30.

It’s amazing how people with perfectly good educations and seemingly functional minds can go all bat shit crazy when they get themselves elected/appointed to anything within the Beltway. I’ve been around here long enough to remember when Foghorn Leghorn was a member of the Democratic Party. He switched parties in August 2007.

Meanwhile, we’ve finally uncovered a bit more truthiness from our human cost in Trump’s war against Fishing Boats. (Psst, have you sent the FBI to your sons, Orange Caligula, if you really want a successful coke bust? This is from the Washington Post.  “Deadly U.S. boat strikes have failed to curb cocaine supply, Pentagon and DEA officials say. The president says Operation Southern Spear has virtually ended drug trafficking by sea. Pentagon and DEA analysts have concluded otherwise.”

The Trump administration’s deadly military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the United States, but they’re prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods, according to a previously unreported assessment by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a closed-door congressional briefing and interviews with current and former U.S. and foreign officials.

In a recent assessment reviewed by The Washington Post, DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire. In a closed-door briefing last month, Pentagon officials told lawmakers the strikes in international waters off South and Central America had not reduced its purity.

Traffickers are also relying more on aircraft, which take off from clandestine airstrips along the Colombian-Venezuelan border and head east to Guyana and Suriname to avoid U.S. forces, according to the DEA assessment.

“When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side,” one DEA official told The Post. “They always find the weak spots and exploit them.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Meanwhile, giant corporations are getting rich at what they do best. As usual, they’re cutting costs by denying their workers a living wage, so those workers must rely on public assistance. This strategy is one of America’s worst legacies.  This is from Popular Information. Judd Legum has the story.

American taxpayers are spending billions every year providing Medicaid benefits to hundreds of thousands of employees of Amazon and Walmart, a new analysis by Popular Information reveals.

Amazon and Walmart are two of the largest and most profitable companies in the country — collectively generating $100 billion in profits in 2025 — but many of their employees still qualify for Medicaid because their take-home pay hovers around (or below) the poverty line.

As taxpayers keep their workers afloat, the wealth of the two companies’ largest shareholders is increasing exponentially. The Walton family, the largest shareholders of Walmart, saw their collective wealth increase from $238 billion in 2021 to $513 billion at the end of 2025. Meanwhile, Amazon founder and current executive chairman Jeff Bezos saw his net worth increase from $187 billion to $255 billion over roughly the same time period.

Popular Information calculated the public subsidy to Amazon and Walmart by cross-referencing several publicly available data sources. Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report examining the top 25 employers of Medicaid enrollees in six states: Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. This provided state-level Medicaid enrollment for Amazon and Walmart workers in all six states, with the exception of Amazon in Maine.

Popular Information compared these figures to the total number of employees working for Walmart and Amazon in each state, sourced from company disclosures, to establish an average Medicaid enrollment rate for each company. The average Medicaid enrollment rate was then used to establish an estimated Medicaid enrollment for employees of each company in the remaining states.

Finally, the estimated number of employees receiving Medicaid in each state was multiplied by that state’s average annual cost of a non-elderly, non-disabled Medicaid enrollee, as published by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC).https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/26/us-heat-wave-dome-weather

Using this methodology, Popular Information estimates that, nationwide, over 156,000 Walmart employees are enrolled in Medicaid at an annual cost to taxpayers of approximately $1.04 billion.

Of course, you can read more at the links. The weather all over the country continues to break records and be miserable. I hope you’re managing to avoid the worst of it. I’ve developed a keen fashion sense that includes cotton under shirts and cut-off jeans, accentuated by bare feet. I can’t make iced tea fast enough, nor can I keep the animals’ water bowls filled with water and a few ice cubes. This article from The Guardian shows the widespread phenomenon. JJ and I are under a “heatwave dome.” BB sent me her forecast, which really is wild.  “Super El Niño Could Combine With Rare Atlantic Niña: See MA Impacts.”

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DeadlyUSBoatStrikes #GreedyCorporateAmazonAndWalmart #ItSTooDarnHot #SAVEAct #SenateMajorityLeaderJohnThune #SenatorJohnKennedy

Finally Friday Reads: Daily Trumpian Buzzkills

“Looks like Barron is advising his Dad again. I’m pretty sure this’ll bring young voters back into the cult.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m a little bit late starting today. I had to make a quick dash down to City Hall to figure out why I was getting a late notice on not paying some tax I had never even heard of at this point. Anyway, it all worked out. It wasn’t the least bit aggravating. I know what to do to resolve it.  I got the opportunity to see and experience why I love this city so much, so no damage was done. However, I learned I still have to write checks at City Hall, and was fortunate to find out I actually have one book of checks still in my desk drawer. I am still trying to figure out the last time I’d written a check, put a stamp on an envelope, and mailed it. My guess is at least a decade ago.

So, let’s see how the week’s ending now that I have done my City Hall thing. Tropical Storm Bertha turned out to be off-and-on heavy rain. I had power and AC, so no problem there. I’m finally getting to my first tea of the day. So, let’s check the headlines that will likely kill my morning love affair with my city. I see that my first suggested read is from Buzzkill Donaldo. Is there any part of our laws or Constitution he doesn’t regularly pissed on?

This is from the New York Times. “Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him. Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.” Tony Romm and Brad Plumer share the lede.

When the Trump administration canceled more than $7.5 billion in Biden-era federal grants for clean energy projects in October, it framed the move as an urgent corrective to protect taxpayer funds from waste.

But it wasn’t true.

In little-noticed court documents, federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, in the 2024 election.

The stunning admission offered an unvarnished glimpse into the way President Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing and infrastructure aid in his second term. Far from rooting out the sort of misspending that Mr. Trump sees as rife in Washington, the White House has instead sought to leverage the budget as a tool to assist its allies — or as a cudgel to hurt the president’s foes.

The saga illustrates the stakes as the Trump administration is completing a set of rules that would provide the president even greater control over more than $1 trillion in annual federal grants. To critics, the new regulation would only make it easier for Mr. Trump to strike wider tranches of congressionally approved funding over political differences.

“The risk that the Trump administration is willing to go to extreme lengths to politicize grant-making is not a hypothetical,” said Devin O’Connor, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning group. He previously served at the White House budget office under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“If they are willing to be that blatant about it,” Mr. O’Connor said of the court filing, “then I think we should take seriously when they put forward a framework that would allow for the extreme politicization of grant-making across all of the federal government.”

This insidious political behavior, resembling a toddler’s tantrum, has got to stop. I’m just glad they’re so glaringly egregious that lawyers and judges easily spot them. This story is from The New Republic. “Angry Trump Openly Urges GOP to Rig Midterms as Brutal Fox Poll Hits. As a striking Fox News poll suggests the GOP midterm position is deteriorating, a voting rights expert walks us through what Trump is really gearing up to attempt this fall—and how to defeat it.”  Greg Sargent interviews Ari Berman. This comes from the transcript of his Podcast.

Ari Berman: Hey, Greg, great to talk to you again. Thank you.

Sargent: So House Republicans just passed a massive $95 billion budget with new war funding, and it also contains $10 billion for provisions related to the SAVE Act, which is the big voter suppression legislation Trump wants. The idea is to pressure the Senate to then pass these things via the simple majority reconciliation process. Ari, before we talk about the Senate, can you just explain what these provisions are in the House budget resolution, and how would they work?

Berman: Well, that’s a good question, Greg. And I can’t really answer it, because we don’t really know. All we know is that the House passed a resolution that says that states are going to get $10 billion in grants if they pass parts of the SAVE Act. But they didn’t release any more details, so we can only speculate on what they’re trying to do. But this seems to me a backdoor way to try to pass the SAVE America Act.

So if you look at the core provisions of the SAVE Act—if you’re going to incentivize states to pass those, it’s basically proof of citizenship to register to vote, voter ID to cast a ballot, and some kind of ban on mail voting. Those are the three big parts of the SAVE America Act.

Sargent: So basically, what this is starting to look like is the House is passing $10 billion to use to essentially try to get states to pass by themselves, in their state legislatures, these things in the SAVE Act.

Voter suppression mechanisms like ending vote by mail, requiring proof of citizenship. You’d do all these things through the states, and the House would try and incentivize that.

Berman: Yeah, they’re basically paying states to do voter suppression. That’s the simplest way I can explain what the House is doing.

Sargent: Trump ratcheted up the pressure on John Thune, the Senate majority leader, to pass these provisions of the SAVE Act via reconciliation—again, we’re talking about the things that the House is basically on track to passing. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (voiceover): Everybody call John Thune at the Senate. He’s the leader of the Republican Party, and tell him to get this stuff approved. So we’re fighting so that all voters must show voter ID. We’re fighting so that all voters must provide proof of citizenship, OK? And also the no mail-in ballots.

G. Elliot Morris presents evidence on who exactly would be hurt by this law in his blog Strength in Numbers. “Poll: These Americans say they’d be disenfranchised by Trump’s election law. Few Americans have heard a lot about the provisions of the SAVE Act. Support declines the more someone hears about it,”

The “SAVE America” Act, a bill in Congress championed by Donald Trump that would require U.S. citizens to physically show documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, among other things, sounds simple enough on paper. What’s so hard about showing your passport or birth certificate to a county clerk when you register to vote?

Turns out, a lot of things. As GOP Senator from Alaska Lisa Murkowski wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week, many Americans in rural areas do not have easy access to a voting registrar to present such documents. And many people, a new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll shows, say they lack the paperwork at all — including citizens who are currently registered to vote.

Plus, our survey finds the people who are most in favor of Trump’s new election law are the ones who have heard the least about it.

In this week’s Chart of the Week I report on two questions about Trump’s SAVE Act that other pollsters are missing.

In our latest Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, fielded July 14–17, 2026, we asked how easily currently registered voters could produce documentary proof of citizenship right now if they wanted to vote.

At first glance, the answer is reassuring; 90% would clear the bar without much trouble — 74% said “very easily,” 16% “with some effort.” Only 6% of registered voters said they would manage to prove their citizenship “with a lot of difficulty,” while 2% said they could not produce one at all, and about 3% weren’t sure.

But 7% of registered voters is still millions of people. Who are these people who would be effectively disenfranchised by Trump’s new law?

The chart below shows how hard a time registered voters from various demographics say they’d have proving their citizenship status:

…

Some groups stand out. First, lower income voters. The share who’d struggle runs from 11% among registered voters earning under $50,000 to just 2% among those making more than $150,000 — a 9-point gap disenfranchising the poor the most.

Younger voters also say they’d be more likely to have a hard time proving their citizenship.

But the group most likely to say the SAVE Act would effectively disenfranchise them is Black voters: 15% say they’d struggle to prove their citizenship, vs 7% for white voters and 5% for Hispanics.

These two findings suggest Trump’s voter ID law would produce a meaningfully more Republican electorate. Nine percent of currently Democratic voters say they’d struggle to prove their citizenship vs 3% of Republicans.

You may review the chart at the link as well as read more analysis on the subject.  Lisa Needham of Public Notice has this headline today. “MAGA’s “pasta pass” talking point is height of gaslighting. They know better. They’re hoping voters don’t.”

It looks like Republicans settled on a talking point about why the SAVE America Act is totally necessary to stop non-citizens from fraudulently voting by the millions and zillions — and you will not be surprised to learn that it is hilariously stupid.

Yes, it’s time to talk about the Olive Garden’s Never-Ending Pasta Pass, the latest thing that Republicans have settled on as justification for the voter ID requirements in President Trump’s signature election suppression bill.

Ground zero for this nonsense seems to have been White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson going on Newsmax last week to discuss how she saw a tweet from Olive Garden about their never-ending pasta deal and that you need ID for it, and she just got to thinking, “Olive Garden takes pasta pass security more seriously than Democrats take election security.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson: "I saw a tweet yesterday from Olive Garden that in order to take advantage of their never-ending pasta pass, you have to show photo ID. I thought, that's weird, Olive Garden takes pasta pass security more seriously than Democrats take election security."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-07-17T12:52:30.032Z

Republican House members dutifully picked up and parroted this nonsense, with Rep. Steve Scalise appearing on CNBC to give his deep thoughts, Rep. David Kustoff racing to Newsmax to share the good news about pasta security, and Rep. Virginia Foxx going on the House floor to push this as a reason to vote in favor of the bill.

Scalise: "Anybody that gets on an airplane has to show a picture ID to vote. Nowadays, if you want to go to Olive Garden and get unlimited pasta, you gotta show a picture ID. This isn't complicated stuff."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-07-21T14:37:58.517Z

This isn’t new, of course — well, the pasta part is, but not Republicans alighting on some random thing they think you need ID to buy and then declaring that should mean you need one to vote.

Trump has spent several years telling people that because you need an ID to go to the grocery store, you should need an ID to vote, and he recently expanded this keen analysis: “All we want is voter ID. You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID.”

Of course, you do not need an ID to go to a grocery store or get gas, but you can understand Trump’s confusion given that he’s probably never done either of these things for himself.

Law Dork‘s Chris Geitner explains just how low the DOJ can go in his post today. “Thursday was the worst day for DOJ. So far. DOJ withdrew its subpoenas issued to New York Times reporters, but the hearing that preceded that decision showed just how degraded DOJ has become.” Again, doesn’t the U.S. Constitution mean anything to any Republican these days?

The degradation of the Justice Department in the second Trump administration is clear, is having immediate effects, and will have long-term effects. Just how degraded DOJ has become was on full display in the Southern District of New York on Thursday.

To get why Thursday’s happenings are so central to understanding how bad things have gotten, know that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is widely seen as one the preeminent U.S. Attorney’s Offices in the nation. Alumni of the office would say it was the key office, and it was openly (sometimes derisively) referred to as the “Sovereign District of New York,” due to the high view that members of the office held of the office.

Now, however, things look different. Over the past two weeks, the office tried to subpoena reporters from The New York Times and ensnared some of the reporters’ family members in a second set of subpoenas for phone records. When challenged, the office’s ability to carry out basic legal research and adhere to general ethical standards were called into question by U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian in a sharp, hour-long hearing that ended with the Trump administration withdrawing the subpoenas rather than face the almost certain likelihood of Subramanian quashing them.

Inner City Press’s Matthew Russell Lee covered the hearing live on Bluesky, and Courthouse News Service covered the hearing as well, in addition to The New York Times’s report.

It was an altogether horrifying appearance in court for Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley, as well as Kevin Sullivan, a lawyer in the office who was initially sitting in the gallery but who, Lee reported, Subramanian called up to sit at counsel’s table because he was “on all the pleadings” — apparently relating to the phone provider subpoenas.

Read more details on Subramanian’s questions and the chaos that followed at the link. The New York Times comes out looking badly too. Of course, the DOJ is the only federal department that looks like it’s at an all-time low. This New York Times headline shows the shocking state of our country’s health as HHS is being run by scaliwags like Dr. Oz, and outright nut jobs like RFK Junior. “Measles Cases Hit New Record in U.S., as Vaccination Rates Wane. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined.”Teddy Rosenbluth has the lede.

The United States has now recorded more cases of measles in 2026 than in any other year since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000, a grim sign that the country may be headed toward a new era in which the disease regularly sickens thousands every year.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. The case count toppled the record set last year, when measles infected more than 2,200 Americans and killed two unvaccinated children. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined.

Reversing course on measles would require a nationwide push to improve vaccination rates, a prospect that experts said seemed unlikely under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has halted funding for vaccine hesitancy research, downplayed the risks of measles and spearheaded a hunt for evidence that vaccines are unsafe.

In November, a panel of international experts will meet to determine whether the United States has lost its elimination status, which has long been viewed as one of the country’s crowning public health achievements.

BTW, we’re still in a hot war, and the Epstein files are still not completely public. This is from NBC News. “U.S. launches new strikes and Trump threatens ‘massive attack’ as Iran widens war. There were signs Friday that some U.S. allies in the Middle East may be losing patience with the daily escalation and lack of diplomatic progress. “It’s only getting crazier,” one senior Arab official, directly involved with diplomatic efforts, told NBC News.”

The United States launched a fresh barrage of strikes on Iran overnight after Tehran opened a second front in its pressure campaign on the world economy.

President Donald Trump threatened a major new escalation and on Thursday told Axios he is weighing whether to launch a “massive attack” on the Islamic Republic that would be “bigger than ever before.” The president’s warning and subsequent 13th night of military strikes came as oil briefly surged above $100 a barrel.

Iran has shown little sign of bowing to U.S. demands, launching new attacks on shipping as well as U.S. bases and allies across the Middle East. These two fronts have combined to increase the cost of the renewed conflict — in human lives, including American soldiers, and global prices.

The struggle for control of the crucial Strait of Hormuz has now been extended to another key trade route, the Bab el Mandeb strait, after attacks by Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea.

And there were signs that some U.S. partners in the region may be losing patience. Senior Arab officials told NBC News they were growing frustrated with the threats, the daily escalations and the lack of diplomatic progress.

“We have no clue where this is going,” said one senior Arab official, with direct knowledge of regional developments. “It’s only getting crazier,” said another senior Arab official, directly involved with diplomatic efforts.

“It’s only getting crazier” pretty much sums up Trump’s second term.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DemocracyBacksliding #GOPAndTrumpDemolishingVoterRights #GOPAndTrumpRiggingElections #IneptAndCorruptDOJ #IsraeliUSAIranWar #PoliticsAndPersonalGrievancesOfDonaldoTrump #SAVEAct

Finally Friday Reads: Peak Delusional Lies and Empty Fury

“In case you missed the most important prime time presidential address since the Cuban missile crisis. Here’s what happened.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I knew that last night’s Presidential rant was going to be a doozy. I actually dialed up PBS and made it through maybe 2 minutes before the stream of lies, and the madness got to me. I still can’t hear him or see him animated. The only thing left to Orange Caligula is madness. I wanted to see how bad it had gotten. It took me all of a few seconds to feel like I had stepped into bedlam.

It appears that many media outlets were discussing the consequences of airing such obvious lies and propaganda surrounding elections. Here’s a sample of that from The Independent via Yahoo. Rhian Lubin has the lede. “Trump calls for NBC and ABC to have their licenses revoked for not airing his ‘election interference’ speech.” He really hates the First Amendment and free and open elections.

President Donald Trump called for NBC and ABC to have their broadcast licenses revoked for not airing his primetime address about “election interference,” accusing the networks of being “part of a plot.”

ABC and NBC covered the Thursday night speech on their online streaming platforms, with both networks airing special reports summarizing Trump’s remarks once the president concluded. But he still rebuked the outlets for not airing it on their primary channels.

“In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech,” Trump said in his evening address. “They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason…Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.”

White House communications director Steven Cheung also joined in the attack. “Cowards. NBC and ABC don’t want you to hear the truth,” he said in a post on X. “All they want to do is hide the facts from YOU.”

NBC News NOW, the network’s streaming service, carried the speech live, as did ABC on its ABC News Live platform.

Fox News aired the full speech live but CNN did not, with Kaitlan Collins explaining to viewers that the network would be “monitoring” what the president said in order to fact check the address.

“We’ll be monitoring what the president says tonight, as we always do, but aren’t taking it live, given the president has a well-documented history of saying blatantly false things about elections,” Collins said.

In the rare primetime address, which lasted approximately 23 minutes, Trump accused unnamed national security officials of hiding information about the security of America’s elections and alleged there were Chinese efforts to interfere in the 2020 election, which he lost.

Citing no hard evidence, the president claimed American elections are vulnerable “to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference” and accused the People’s Republic of China of carrying out “the largest compromise of election data in history” by acquiring election data — much of which is commercially available for purchase by political campaigns and other interested parties.

This report is from Reuters via Yahoo and is written by Helen Coster. Trump threatens to revoke licenses of US networks for not carrying primetime speech.”

Two of the three major U.S. television networks and CNN did not broadcast a prime-time address on Thursday by President Donald Trump on their primary platforms, drawing a rebuke from a president who has placed unprecedented pressure on American media.

The speech focused on election security, four months before the critical midterm elections.

During his speech, Trump said that networks that ‌did not air his speech were engaged in a “plot” and should have their licenses revoked.

“In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said they would not cover this speech,” he said, adding, “Fraud ‌like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.”

Networks have broad First Amendment rights to decide what they choose to broadcast, experts say. But historically, broadcasters have carried most such speeches on the grounds that they provide information of public importance.

Late on Thursday afternoon, a spokesperson for ABC News said ​the network would run Trump’s speech on its ABC News Live streaming platform and ABC News Radio – not its broadcast channel.

NBC News carried the president’s remarks on its free streaming service, NBC News NOW, but not on its main broadcast channel, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company declined to comment.

In a statement, CNN said it would monitor the speech for news, with a live feed appearing on its website and CNN All Access, its subscription streaming channel.

The ABC and NBC streaming channels generally draw a fraction of the viewers that their traditional broadcast signals reach. CNN’s digital network is a paid-for service with a smaller audience than its regular cable channel.

In the speech, Trump declassified intelligence that he said showed Chinese interference in ‌U.S. elections, reviving his long-running attacks on election security despite a U.S. intelligence assessment ⁠that found no evidence Beijing altered the 2020 vote, which he lost.

More details on the coverage by the major stations can be found in this Guardian article. “US TV networks split on broadcasting Trump’s election-focused speech. NBC and CNN stayed away from White House speech, while Fox News, MS Now, CBS, and some ABC affiliates aired it.” I’ve basically quit watching what is now MS Now. As I said, I just went to YouTube to find the live speech. I doubt I could’ve tolerated the anchors trying to deal with this as if it had anything to do with reality.  Well, at least Jen Psaki tried.

MS Now chose to air about half of the speech despite warnings from Jen Psaki, the network’s 9pm host and former Biden White House press secretary, who told viewers that it would be unlike a traditional White House address.

“When you’re in the White House, these are selective moments a president typically takes to speak to the American public,” she said. “We are not in normal times, as you all know. And this speech is not going to be about this country, and it is not going to be about the American people and the challenges people face.”

Trump’s remarks focused on “the deep state” and efforts by China to “meddle” in the US’s election system.

About 15 minutes into Trump’s comments, Psaki cut into the speech and pushed back on his assertions about the electoral system.

CBS also cut into Trump’s speech just over 20 minutes in, bringing on Tony Dokoupil, the Evening News anchor, and Major Garrett, the chief White House correspondent.

Before the speech, Dokoupil explained the network’s decision to air a large portion of it.

“It’s a speech expected to address safety and security of American elections, a topic, of course, that the president has talked a lot about for years now,” he said. “At times, almost constantly, and honestly, much of what the president has said on this topic has been false. Most notably, of course, the claim that he won the 2020 election, when of course he did not. Because of this, there is an argument that it’s irresponsible to air the president’s speech tonight. But this speech will be made. It will be news. And it’s our job to cover the news. And so we are.”

Rather than airing the speech, CNN hosted a panel discussion featuring experts from across the political spectrum. The network’s on-air graphic cast doubt on Trump’s remarks, telling viewers: “Trump Gives Address On Elections After Years of False Claims.”

Here’s some analysis from Election Law Blog and by Rick Hasen. “Trump’s Underwhelming Announcement on Voting Does Not Even Purport to Show That Any Illegal Votes Were Cast in the 2020 Election or That Voting Machines Have Been Hacked or Vote Totals Inaccurate; He Also Made a Pitch to Pass the SAVE America Act But Offered No New Federal Mandates.”

Donald Trump gave a national address where he made some recycled claims (“burn bags,” anyone?) about supposed voting machine vulnerabilities, about thousands of supposed noncitizens registered to vote, alleged voter registration fraud in Michigan, and about a cover-up concerning interference from China in the 2020 election. Among his biggest claims was that China had access to millions of American voting records. He said that there will be newly-declassified documents to back them up.

What Trump did NOT do was even purport to show a single ineligible voter voted in the 2020 election, or that any voting machines were actually compromised, voting machines or voter registration databases breached, or election results inaccurately reported.

Overall, this was an underwhelming announcement delivered with low energy that changes nothing about how state and local election administrators should run elections.

If his government had actual evidence of noncitizen voting, there would be indictments; Trump has been hounding US attorneys to bring such cases, and the fact that he hasn’t shows that these claims likely have no legs. Claims of noncitizen registration often evaporate upon closer inspection (such as the systems’ failure to catch newly naturalized citizens). And he’s made no claims about noncitizens actuallly voting.

He also did not offer anything new by way of policy proposals, saying DHS and others will work with states to remove purported noncitizens from the voting rolls and similar actions. He called for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act again, but offered no new executive orders on voting. That’s a good thing, and it is because the President has no power over how American elections are run.

Given Trump’s track record of incessantly lying about election rigging and voter fraud,view everything he says with a skeptical eye.

One of his major claims is that China got access to voter registration databases. We will have to wait to see what evidence he produces, but here is the earlier declassified intelligence report. Its first conclusion reflecting the collective wisdom of the intelligence community is at odds what Trump is saying:

Key Judgment 1: We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results. We assess that it would be difficult for a foreign actor to manipulate election processes at scale without detection by intelligence collection on the actors themselves, through physical and cyber security monitoring around voting systems across the country, or in post-election audits. The IC identified some successful compromises of state and local government networks prior to Election Day—as well as a higher volume of unsuccessful attempts—that we assess were not directed at altering election processes. Some foreign actors, such as Iran and Russia, spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to undermine public confidence in election processes and results.

HOST: Are you going to watch Trump’s speech?CALLER: No… I’ll get a summary from Meidas.

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T02:48:49.952Z

So that thought about waiting for the summaries was exactly what I did about 3 to 5 minutes in.  I can’t imagine anyone finding it appropriate to put such a mentally incapacitated individual on the screen for the world to see. The slurring alone should indicate that he’s not well.  I’m going to end this drama and trauma today with a post in Democracy Docket. “Trump pushes debunked election lies, demands SAVE America Act in primetime speech.” Yunior Rives has the lede.

President Donald Trump used a primetime address Thursday to resurrect debunked claims about the 2020 election, allege sweeping foreign interference in voting and pressure Congress to pass the anti-voting SAVE America Act.

But despite years of claiming that the election was stolen, he presented no evidence that any entity, foreign or domestic, manipulated votes or registration records, or in any way altered the outcome of the 2020 election. In fact, he didn’t even assert it.

In a disjointed speech, Trump claimed China obtained 220 million U.S. voter files and accused intelligence officials — whom he termed the “Deep State” — of concealing election threats. And he suggested electronic voting systems had previously been compromised.

Trump also announced that his administration would declassify intelligence documents supposedly backing his claims.

In fact, the U.S. intelligence community previously concluded that no foreign actor attempted to alter voter registration, ballot casting, vote tabulation or the reporting of results in 2020. Federal agencies also rejected claims that Venezuela, China or other foreign governments controlled voting equipment or manipulated vote totals.

Trump nevertheless described the newly released material as “brand new and irrefutable information” and said his administration would notify states about alleged vulnerabilities before the midterms.

Then he pivoted to pushing SAVE, his pet legislative project that election experts call “the most restrictive voting bill ever.”

“Addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the SAVE America Act,” Trump said. “The only reason you wouldn’t do it is if you want to cheat.”

The massive anti-voting bill, which has stalled in the Senate, would require voters to show photo identification and provide documentary proof of citizenship. Trump also demanded an effective end to mail voting, falsely calling the practice “inherently corrupt.”

In pushing SAVE, Trump has regularly claimed — falsely — that illegal voting by noncitizens is widespread in U.S. elections.

During his speech Thursday, the president went further, saying that an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had identified 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections.

Orange Caligula simply cannot accept that the overwhelming number of people in the country hate him. His childhood traumas, major personality disorders, and advanced dementia keep him isolated in his own private America.

I hope you have the chance to enjoy something pleasant and peaceful this weekend. While my insane governor continues to rail about how useless New Orleans is, I am absolutely glad I am here. You can read about this feud at this link from MSN. “‘New Orleans thinks they’re so special’: Landry takes jab at city amid rising tensions. We not only are the bread and butter behind all state spending, we also have this news that lets us know that we are. “New Orleans named only city on World Monuments ‘Irreplaceable America’ list. Supporters say the World Monuments Fund recognition points to a broader conversation about the city’s future.”

New Orleans has been named the only city on the World Monuments Fund’s new Irreplaceable America list. It’s a designation recognizing places that help tell the nation’s story, while also facing significant threats to their future.

Unlike the other sites selected, New Orleans was recognized not for a single landmark, building or monument, but as an entire living cultural landscape.

If this country wants to keep convincing itself and others that we’re that shining city on a hill, then these MAGA Republicans and Trump himself. need to be kicked out of their offices. They value nothing about our people, our history, or our culture.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #delusion #lies #NewOrleans #TrumpDementia #TrumpSPresidentialSpeech

Mostly Monday Reads: As the Senate Churns

“Mitch McConnell isn’t messing around in his new leadership role.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

We’ve been playing Where’s Mitch for about a month now, when Republican Senator Lindsey Graham died suddenly of an Aortic Dissection. The Republican Senate Majority is already a close call without the current situation, and polls show a good possibility of a switch to Democratic Leadership, given the chaos of this Trump Term. Given the headlines and the accompanying stories, I think we can safely say that whatever respect Graham may have had, he sacrificed it to serve Orange Caligula.

Here’s the story that grabbed me first, today. This is an Op Ed at Public Notice from Tom Schaller. “Lindsey Graham and the rot of modern conservatism. From Gingrich to Trump, Graham was a fixture as the GOP became increasingly malignant.” Sounds right to me.

The sudden death this weekend of Lindsey Graham at age 71 — young, by today’s gerontocratic standards — is a personal parable for the changes within the conservative movement and modern Republican Party during Graham’s political career.

Indeed, few national elected officials so perfectly bridge the rapid rise of the Newt Gingrich-led GOP to the steady gutting of American conservatism by Donald Trump over the past decade.

Graham is not the sole member of that bridge generation; the career of fellow Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, for example, spans back further, to the days when Barry Goldwater remained conservatism’s intellectual beacon. But Graham perfectly embodies the post-1990s morphing of conservatism into the malignant force that, today, animates Eric Hoffer’s famous observation that every great cause “begins as a movement, becomes as business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

this clip is proof beyond any doubt that Lindsey Graham stands for nothing and only cares about staying in good standing with the Trump cult

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-02-28T23:22:00.963Z

The analysis is a long, winding road of the shifting malignancy that became Senator Lindsey Graham. A few examples stood out to me.  As we all know and remember, Graham never met a military excursion he didn’t support. Schaller’s conclusion, however, makes all the prior evidence add up completely.

Lindsey Graham died a coward. His three-decade career in national politics should be remembered for more than his shameless, pusillanimous capitulations — but not, unfortunately, for some noble pursuit or purpose he used his chameleon-like political skills to secure. He should instead be remembered for using his power to bow and scrape, to change his political colors, largely if not solely in service to himself.

Conservative figures like the deathly-ill Mitch McConnell or Chief Justice John Roberts have been described as destroyers and “gravediggers” of American democracy. But at least they have wielded their shovels to bury America’s constitutional traditions and safeguards in pursuit of their own pinched and petty political philosophies.

Lindsey Graham, American chameleon, did nothing of the sort. He cowered and capitulated for three decades in Congress merely to be at the center of power. From 1994 revolutionary to 2026 poltroon, he embodies the movement-to-business-to-racket transformation of modern conservatism. He lived for nothing and died the same way.

May he rest in pusillanimity.

That’s pretty much the consensus from all sorts of media contributors. Of course, we do have the major trad media that’s doing its best to make the proverbial sow’s ear into a purse. Take CBS, for example, Puleeze. “Breaking down Lindsey Graham’s key accomplishments. Tributes are pouring in for longtime South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died Saturday at 71 from an aortic dissection, according to the medical examiner’s preliminary findings. CBS News‘ Fin Gomez breaks down some of his key accomplishments.” Do not watch the messiness they put on air with a full stomach. I’m not sure being a leader on ‘stronger, more muscular’ on military and diplomatic fronts is a positive thing.

The Washington Post, another legacy media outlet, has this headline today. “Graham’s journey with Trump embodies how the Republican Party has changed.”  He was definitely a follower of whatever the current craze was, that’s for sure. Dan Merica wrote this analysis.

Lindsey Graham was not always a fan of Donald Trump.

But the late senator, whose death was announced on Sunday, so forcefully came around on the president that Trump was likely one of the last people to speak with the South Carolina Republican on Saturday.

That shift — from outspoken critic to unyielding confidant — exemplifies how Trump has transformed the Republican Party so completely in his own image, turning one-time skeptics into true believers while exiling those who refused to bend to his will.

Consider this: Graham went from calling Trump a “jackass” who would cost the party the presidency in 2016 to saying Trump was “not far behind God” a decade later.

Graham and Trump’s relationship began, in earnest, during the Republicans’ 2016 presidential primary, decades after Graham entered Congress as part of the Republican revolution of 1994. Graham’s campaign was short-lived; he entered the race in June 2015 and ended it six months later without fanfare. Two weeks after Graham’s announcement, however, Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower and, well, never exited.

Graham was one of Trump’s harshest critics during his brief campaign, highlighted by the then-GOP frontrunner giving out the senator’s cell phone number at an event and Graham later calling Trump a “jackass.” Trump routinely mocked Graham’s low standing in the polls and called him “one of the dumbest human beings I have ever seen.” And Graham vented about the way Trump spoke about Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona).

After exiting in December 2015, Graham first endorsed former Florida governor Jeb Bush, then got behind Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” Graham wrote on Twitter in May 2016 when Cruz dropped out. “And we will deserve it.”

Graham didn’t even vote for Trump in 2016, deciding instead to stand on the platform of the proverbial Trump train and vote for independent Evan McMullin.

What a difference a decade makes.

I believe that Graham morphed quicker than that. He went from the old McCain corner of voice of reason to the voice of treason pretty quickly. He was the most overt opportunist I think I’ve ever witnessed. The only thing he was consistent on was war mongering. He never heeded the warnings from Lincoln or Eisenhower about the threat of the military-industrial complex.

Politico now reports that Trump wants his seat to go to his sister. “McMaster, Trump look to Graham’s sister for Senate.  South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is expected to announce the interim replacement later Monday.”

President Donald Trump said Monday he wants South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to appoint Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to serve the remainder of the late senator’s term.

One Republican familiar with McMaster’s plans said the governor intends to appoint Nordone to serve in the Senate for the rest of the year. This person was granted anonymity to discuss the decision.

McMaster is expected to announce his decision about who will replace Graham during a press conference later Monday afternoon.

“I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina,” Trump said in a post on social media. “This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!”

Even if she’s appointed, it’s unclear if Nordone would want to run for the full term. A number of South Carolina Republicans have already expressed interest in taking over Graham’s seat since his death Sunday, including Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.).

Trump’s word carries significant weight in deeply conservative South Carolina, and his preference for a caretaker appointment triggers a wide-open primary to take Graham’s place as the Republican nominee for Senate.

The Republican Party has now made me unable to stomach voting for their women. The story behind the two of them is endearing.  This story is from Yahoo! News. “Inside the family life of Lindsey Graham, the senator who helped raise his little sister. Graham, who died Saturday at 71, became his sister Darline’s legal guardian after their parents died 15 months apart. He never married, and called her the closest person in his life.”  Jack Brewster has the story. It does include a few comments about a gay man and his commitment to undermining his own identity. Again, opportunism seems to rule his decisions.

Lindsey Graham was one of the rare U.S. senators who never married and had no children. But the South Carolina Republican, who died Saturday at 71 after a brief and sudden illness, did not consider himself a man without a family.

“I’ve never married. I guess I attribute that to timing, too,” Graham wrote in his 2015 memoir. “The opportunity never presented itself at the right time, or I never found time to meet the right girl, or the right girl was smart enough not to have time for me. I haven’t been lucky that way. But I have a family.”

That family was, above all, his younger sister, Darline Graham Nordone.

I tend to fall more in line with what Jeer Heet offers in his Graham Obit at The Nation today. “Lindsey Graham Chose Evil. Conspiracy theorists liked to say that Graham’s Trump sycophancy was a result of blackmail. But the truth is worse: He stuck with Trump to keep the US war machine going.”  I think he will be mostly remembered for his war mongering and his complete reservation on Trump.

Although Senator Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly on Saturday at 71, was one of the most odious figures in American public life, he does deserve a partial defense from a strangely pervasive calumny directed against him by liberal critics. In the last decade of his life, Graham underwent a dramatic political transformation. In 2015 and early 2016, Graham became a no-holds-barred foe of Donald Trump, whom he lambasted as “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who “represents the worst in America.” But Graham started to warm to Trump once the insurgent candidate won the Republican primary on May 4, 2016. This process accelerated after Trump was elected president in November, when Graham became, against stiff competition, the president’s most obsequious lackey.

Graham’s metamorphosis was all the more startling because his earlier disdain for Trump sprang logically from his political history. Prior to 2016, Graham was best known as the ultra-hawkish ally of fellow war-happy senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman (their noxious nickname for themselves was the “Three Amigos”), which made him a natural opponent of candidate Trump’s isolationist foreign policy. Further, Graham had a history of bipartisanship, working with Democrats on immigration reform and campaign finance and casting the sole Republican vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nominations. This gave Graham a profile, on domestic matters at least, more mainstream than Trump’s burn-it-down populism.

What explains Graham’s quick change of political identity? One theory popular among Resistance liberals and Never Trump conservatives was that the senator, who was widely rumored to be a closeted gay man, had been blackmailed by Trump, perhaps with kompromat provided by Vladimir Putin. In 2019, for instance MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle dropped a heavy-breathing hint along this line by suggesting that Trump knows “something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham.”

The blackmail theory was never grounded in evidence and suffered the further disadvantage of making Graham seem like a victim rather than someone making affirmative choices about his life. The actual story of Graham’s ideological conversion is much worse than any conspiracy, because he gave us his principles for the worst of reasons: to stay close to the center of power, stave off MAGA primary challenges, and bring Trump around to Graham’s deeply militarist worldview.

It’s hard for me to spend so much time and energy on Graham, but he was always along for every political ride, one way or another, grabbing onto any diatribe he could. I hope these next few days will at least raise questions about the idea of “to thyself be true.”  He confused me. He denied being a gay man, but sure rode his own interests into some disturbing behaviors and politics. I bet he’d love to see all this attention he’s generated by dying so unexpectedly and young.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #ConfirmedBachelorLadyLindseyGrahamRSC #SenatorLindseyGrahamObituaries

Finally Friday Reads: To the Depths of Depravity and Beyond!

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

“The Mitch McConnell saga continues to evolve. It is rumored FBI Director Kash Patel, while on a very early morning patrol of our Nation’s Capitol, made a grizzly discovery in the recently drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.” John Buss, @repeat1968

If Nixon was a crook, what on earth do we label Orange Caligula? He appears to be surpassing Bond and comic book villains.  He doesn’t even appear cognizant enough to spell his name, and we know he can’t walk straight. What’s the deal then? My first guess is that Stephen Miller is really in charge of everything but decorating forays. However, there seems to be a lot more going on than just one wicked man could possibly do.

This is the headline today in Lawfare. “Faithful Execution and the Removal Power. President Trump is exercising his removal power in ways that defeat his duty to faithfully execute the law.” Nick Bednar and Todd Phillips provide the analysis.

On July 9, President Trump removed or forced out all three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Congress established the commission to aid state governments in administering elections and to certify voting equipment. It consists of four members appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, who serve fixed four-year terms. Although its members lack statutory removal protections, Congress designed the commission with other devices commonly used to preserve independence from the president, including requirements that no more than two members be affiliated with the same political party and that three members agree to any action, a combination that necessarily requires all actions to be bipartisan.

In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court affirmed that Article II of the Constitution allows the president to remove principal officers—such as the members of the EAC—at will. The Supreme Court anchored its decision in the idea that the president must have adequate control over executive-branch officers to carry out his constitutional obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” As the current moment illustrates, however, the removal power also allows the president to undermine faithful execution by removing principal officers tasked with implementing the laws enacted by Congress.

We argue that removals of this kind exceed the president’s removal power. The Take Care Clause obliges the president to ensure the laws enacted by Congress are executed. A removal that leaves an agency legally incapable of acting prevents that execution. The Supreme Court was aware of the potential contradiction between expanding the removal power and the president’s obligation under the Take Care Clause in Slaughter, because we, the authors, filed an amicus brief alerting the Court to the issue. Courts can enforce this limit, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Cook—issued the same day as Slaughter—supplies the remedial tools. Enforcing the Take Care Clause would ensure that multimember commissions, such as the EAC, remain capable of enforcing the laws Congress has enacted.

Read the article for a full list of ramifications. It’s really worth it. Why is this suddenly an important issue? We know that Trump is doing everything inside and outside the power bestowed on the Presidency to throw the elections in his favor.  He’s highly unpopular, and the polls are running against him and Republicans in General. So, with Trump’s bull shitting in deep fail, he’s decided to do whatever he wants. This is from NBC News. “Trump ousts remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission ahead of midterms. The dismissals hamstring a key bipartisan agency just months before the midterms.” Jane C. Timm and Jonathan Allen share the lede. It might be time to hit the panic button.

The White House ousted all three sitting members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, hamstringing the bipartisan agency ahead of the midterm elections.

The Democratic commissioners — Thomas Hicks and Benjamin W. Hovland — were fired by email, two people familiar with their terminations said. One of the sources also said Republican commissioner Christy McCormick received a call and was asked to resign.

“They will be replaced,” said a White House official who confirmed that all three commissioners are gone. Presidential appointments to the EAC are subject to Senate confirmation — by no means a quick process.

White House aide Morgan DeWitt Snow sent the Democratic commissioners a brief email of termination around 4 p.m. ET, one of the people familiar with the dismissals said.

“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the person said the email read.

The EAC is a bipartisan commission that helps state and local officials run elections, certifying election equipment and working with other agencies to ensure state and local elections run smoothly. From 2018 to 2025, it distributed more than $1 billion in grants for election security, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Hovland, one of the Democratic commissioners, told NBC News he was returning from a work trip to a Missouri election office when he was fired.

The EAC, he said, has acted as a clearinghouse, sharing best practices between states and helping them use their limited resources to run elections. Taking away a key federal agency designed to help state and local election administrators will have a negative impact, Hovland said.

“When you’re asking more and more of people without giving them the necessary resources, you know, mistakes happen. And so there’s this real risk of like self-fulfilling prophecies in that way,” he said. “It feels much more like a death-of-1,000-cuts situation than there’s one particular thing that you’re concerned about.”

The commission normally has two Republicans and two Democrats; one Republican, Don Palmer, resigned this year, leaving it with just three members.

Is it time to hit the panic button yet? Are there any Senators and Representatives willing to combat this obvious overreach? Aaron Blacksberg of Just Security asks this question in his headline. “What is the Election Assistance Commission With No Commissioners?”

Last night, President Donald Trump effectively relieved all three serving commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) of their positions. According to media reports, the Commission’s two Democratic members, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were fired by email, while the one Republican member, Christy McCormick, was allowed to resign. All three commissioners were unanimously confirmed by the Senate – Hicks and McCormick in 2015 and Hovland in 2019. The EAC’s fourth commissioner and other Republican member, Don Palmer, previously resigned on April 29. In a statement to media, the White House referenced last week’s Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Slaughter, stating: “The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring ​every legal vote is counted. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so.”

The EAC is a bipartisan, independent commission that was established by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. It requires an affirmative vote by at least three of its commissioners to conduct official business or establish policy. Historically, the EAC has operated for extended periods without a quorum and for several years had zero sitting commissioners.

Since the EAC was created, the commissioners have worked in partnership with state and local election officials to advance the professionalization and integrity of the election profession. A fully functioning EAC is critical for promulgating the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) to certify voting equipment, serving as a clearinghouse of best practices and training support, disbursing HAVA Election Security Grants, and compiling the biennial Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) report.

So what does it mean for this Commission to have no commissioners? In the absence of the Senate confirming new commissioners – by law the EAC must have partisan balance and congressional leaders are tasked with making recommendations to the President – some business can and will continue.

Significantly, the EAC staff has authority to continue disbursing Election Security Grants to states – the primary source of federal election funding – and to continue certifying voting equipment under current standards. Below is an overview of who holds the remaining limited EAC authority and what that authority does and does not encompass.

Again, you can read the details at the link. Seeing it broken down into what can and can’t happen now is shocking for any of us well-schooled in the functioning of government.  Our collective pants should be on fire. This Talking Points article, written by John Light, has a headline that gets straight to the point. “Trump Seizes on SCOTUS Decision to Mess With the Midterms.”

A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court handed down a pair of decisions finding that 1. Trump could exert tremendous control over independent executive branch agencies, including firing their commissioners and 2. the Fed, also an independent agency, was different. Since then, the question of where Trump would strike first has lingered.

Now we know. Last night, Trump forced out all remaining commissioners atop the Election Assistance Commission — two Democrats and a Republican — just months before the midterms. In a statement to ProPublica, an unnamed White House official gestured toward the same logic the Supreme Court used, saying that Trump “reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted.”

The agency largely does the fairly anodyne work of providing election security support for states and distributing funding. But it has figured prominently in Trump’s attempt at a federal takeover of voting.

In a sweeping 2025 executive order, Trump directed the EAC to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to voter registration forms. He also ordered the agency to use its power to distribute funds to pressures states to require that all ballots be received by Election Day, not simply mailed to officials by Election Day.

That executive order and another 2026 order on elections have largely been blocked by the courts.

The question, writes election law scholar Rick Hasen, “is what Trump might try to do with the EAC without commissioners. Most boldly (and I would argue illegally) Trump could try to direct the commissioner-less EAC to do his bidding, for example by stating that the EAC must amend the federal voter registration form that states must accept for federal elections to include documentary proof of citizenship.”

“If he tries anything like this, it will be high profile and very important litigation that will end up at the Supreme Court on the emergency docket over the summer,” Hasen added

And, as we know, the Surpreme Court can no longer be fully trusted to reflect the Constition and the laws passed in 250 years of Congress. Trump is also set on passing the so-called SAVE America Act. Fortunately, he’s not vetoing anything, but it should startle us all that he’s hell-bent on destroying voting as we know it in this democratic republic. This from The Hill. “Trump says he won’t sign housing bill in protest of SAVE America Act inaction.”  Julia Manchester has the story.

President Trump said Friday he will not sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which is set to pass into law tonight, in protest of the Senate not passing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act.

“THE SAVE AMERICA ACT’S non-passage is CRAZY, and a serious threat to any politician who votes against it!” Trump exclaimed in a lengthy Truth Social post.

rump proceeded to call on Senate Republicans to terminate the filibuster in an effort to pass the legislation, warning that Democrats will eliminate the parliamentary procedure if they win back the majority in the chamber.

“The Dumocrats will TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, if and when they ever get the chance to do so, in their very first hour – And I will no longer be able to call them Dumocrats again! The title of DUMB will revert to the Republicans who allowed this horrible calamity to happen to our Party, and our Nation, itself!” the president said.

Trump’s comments come just hours before the bipartisan housing legislation, which was passed late last month, is automatically set to go into law at midnight if the president does not veto the bill.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said Trump will not stop the legislation even if he doesn’t sign it.

“He won’t veto the bill. We already know that. He’ll either allow it to just go into law, or he’ll put his signature on it and take partial ownership, and I hope he does the latter,” Johnson said in an interview with USA Today.

The president sent shock waves through Washington when he abruptly canceled a signing ceremony for the bill at the Capitol last month, saying he would not sign the legislation until the SAVE America Act is passed.

This is what the pursuit of nothing but blind power, attention, and greed leads to when put in charge of a government. We no longer lead the world. We are not the “shining city on the hill” touted by Ronald Reagan. We are now anathema in the hearts of governments and people who once struggled to get the form of government that is being blown up by one narcissistic man with dementia, surrounded by idiots and living demons.

Ms Sparkles awaits her trip to the Vet so she’ll come back to her forever colony and meals healthy and spayed.

I’m late again today. I’ve been trapping the feral cats around my house and on my block. Today, very early, Ms. Sparkles, whom I captured yesterday afternoon, returned from her trip to be spayed and given shots.  This picture is when I caught her. She jumped out of the cage, ran to the food bowl, and her tribe. Sparkles joined Onyx, Bobo, and Silver in their little corner of the Bywater.

I’ve worked with Trap Dat Cat before. When I first got my Kristal, I was hard-pressed for cash, and Nita Hemeter took her to a vet and had her spayed. I raised enough money from my friends on Facebook to pay for the costs. It’s really important to have feral cat colonies here because we’re really close to the ports lined up and down the Mississippi River. Rats and all kinds of things thrive in that ecosystem. The cats control them. The city even recognizes their role in keeping the restaurants and homes free from vermin.

There are still lots of cats living in the old, abandoned Navy Base that is now being turned into a living community with commercial space. As they flee to us, they have a chance to be rehomed or welcomed into a feral cat colony like the one that lives under the very old homes and piers, as my feral cats do.

If you want to get your fill of pictures of some really cute kittens and cats, take a look at the link. Donations are also always welcome. I know Kristal, and I am happy to have them.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today? 

 

#2026Midterms #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #FaithfulExecution #FaithfulExecutionAndTheRemovalOfPower #HelpAmericaVoteActHAVA #SAVEAmericaAct #strayCats #USElectionAssistanceCommission

Mostly Monday Reads: Trump goes all Mafia on FIFA

“Seems like for the estimated $10M midnight apocalyptic firework extravaganza for our Dear Leader, they could have afforded a T.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

While getting ready for the Netherlands v Mexico last night, I just happened to flick through some headlines and  let out a loud ‘What the Hell?’ Loud enough to get a response from down the hall: “What now?” The hell was two headlines — one from the New York Times and the other from The Independent —  that convinced me it was real. I posted excerpts in response to JJ’s post last night downthread.

It basically gave the world another good reason to hate us or laugh at what we’ve become under Orange Caligula. My thought is we’ve become a Mafia state. This is the headline from the NYT:  “Trump Asked FIFA to Review U.S. Player’s Suspension. Now He’s Eligible to Play. The reversal of Folarin Balogun’s World Cup suspension is highly unusual. It was the first time since 1962 that FIFA has nullified a suspension for a red card received during the World Cup.”

It’s basically big news today, so I’ll lead with it. This time, he insulted our friend and ally, Belgium, so I’ll start with their response today as reported by the AP. It’s reported by Samuel Petraquin.  Also, there are pictures of the offense that got the red card.  “Belgian federation to challenge FIFA’s decision to let Folarin Balogun play in World Cup match.”

The Belgian soccer federation wants an explanation from FIFA about a decision to let U.S forward Folarin Balogun play at the World Cup despite getting a red card in his previous game.

Belgium takes on the United States later Monday for a spot in the quarterfinals.

The Belgian federation (RBFA) said it has still not received either “FIFA’s decision or any explanation regarding this matter. In these circumstances, it has no choice but to challenge the player’s eligibility for the upcoming match.”

It did not specify where it intends to appeal FIFA’s decision.

U.S. President Donald Trump intervened on behalf of star U.S. forward Balogun, whose red-card suspension was lifted in a decision that allowed him to play against Belgium.

The Belgian federation said it learned through media reports about the FIFA’s move and sent a letter to the governing body requesting a copy of the decision as well as an explanation of the process.

“As its only response, FIFA sent a letter to the RBFA stating that it considered this correspondence to constitute an appeal, that a judge had been appointed, and that the RBFA had only a few hours to complete that appeal,” it said. “No information whatsoever was provided by FIFA.

Politico reports this on the Trump maneuver. “Inside the White House push to get Folarin Balogun back on the field. President Donald Trump got involved minutes after the U.S. striker received a red card that would have banned him from a crucial match.”  Sophia Cai has the lede.

The campaign to keep Folarin Balogun on the field for the United States’ World Cup run began just minutes after the team’s leading goal-scorer received a red card that would sideline him for the team’s next match.

Following Wednesday’s victory against Bosnia and Herzegovina, White House FIFA World Cup Task Force executive director Andrew Giuliani alerted President Donald Trump to Balogun’s punishment for a rash tackle — removal from the Bosnia match and a routine one-match suspension that would keep him out of a must-win encounter against Belgium.

Trump and Giuliani had been speaking regularly about the World Cup for months. During the planning stages for the tournament, the president received frequent briefings on logistics, security and the U.S. team’s prospects. Once the competition began in mid-June, those conversations accelerated to multiple times each week.

By Wednesday night, the White House had committed itself to taking action over Balogun’s red card, which some soccer analysts believed to be a harsh punishment for the infraction. Giuliani, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and senior U.S. Soccer Federation officials — all of whom had watched the Bosnia match in person at Levi’s Stadium near San Francisco — began activating plans to challenge the referee’s on-field decision to issue a red card. Successful appeals of World Cup red cards are exceedingly rare.

That kicked off four days of coordinated lobbying, legal maneuvering and diplomacy that stretched from the Oval Office to FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich — and underscored how invested Trump’s inner circle had become in the second World Cup hosted on U.S. soil and the fortune of the U.S. men’s national team competing in it. POLITICO spoke to a half-dozen U.S. government and soccer officials who were either directly involved in or briefed on the week’s events.

On Sunday, a day before the U.S. was due to face Belgium with Balogun on the bench, FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee announced that it was suspending Balogun’s one-match suspension for a year. Trump thanked FIFA for “doing what was right and reversing a great injustice.” The Royal Belgian Football Association and European confederation UEFA, of which Belgium is a member, are considering taking action against the FIFA ruling, according to a high-ranking UEFA official granted anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations.

On Thursday, Trump placed a call to FIFA President Gianni Infantino. The two men had built a friendship over nearly eight years, with Infantino becoming a frequent visitor to the Oval Office during Trump’s second term. They remained in contact even when events put U.S. government policy in conflict with FIFA’s objectives, according to people familiar with their relationship. That included when the Trump administration launched military strikes against Iran in February, jeopardizing the country’s ability to compete in the World Cup — a personal history that mattered when Trump dialed Infantino about the Balogun matter.

Trump asked about FIFA’s rules around the red card decision and the grounds for a suspension. Infantino listened carefully but made no promises about the outcome. FIFA declined to confirm any specific discussions but reiterated to POLITICO that the decision to suspend the one-match ban was made by an independent disciplinary committee.

As U.S. Soccer’s legal team formally prepared and submitted its appeal to FIFA, Giuliani and Lutnick also offered to make White House attorneys available to assist with legal analysis if needed, according to people involved in the discussions.

At the same time, Giuliani and Scott Goodwin — a hedge-fund manager who had helped to personally pay the salary of U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino — zeroed in on the officiating history of referee Raphael Claus, who made the red card call on Wednesday. Articles examining previous controversies involving the Brazilian referee circulated among senior government officials as they evaluated every possible argument that could bolster the appeal, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

Stephen Collinson of CNN has the story on what the rest of the world thinks about this shake-down.

For 24 days, the World Cup seemed to achieve a rare feat in America in 2026: It had almost nothing to do with Donald Trump.

But in an extraordinary twist following an appeal from the president, star US goal-scorer Folarin Balogun will play in the knockout clash with Belgium on Monday, despite being sent off in the previous match and earning a one-game ban.

“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president posted Sunday, taking a victory lap on Truth Social.

Trump added more rhetorical rocket fuel to the controversy on Monday, confirming that he’d called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to ask him to review the suspension.

“I didn’t say, ‘You have to do this,’” Trump said in the Oval Office, adding that he didn’t think Balogun’s offense was even a foul.

Balogun’s reprieve rocked global soccer, triggering fresh speculation about the cozy relationship between Trump and the FIFA supremo.

Trump’s call to Infantino and FIFA’s ultimate decision lifted a controversy about soccer refereeing into an international incident surrounding the world’s most popular sporting showcase.

The subsequent drama raises concerns about political interference and the integrity of the tournament. It doesn’t necessarily matter whether Trump’s muscling into the issue was decisive. Just the impression that it was risks souring global perceptions of an event that had generated remarkably positive headlines.

Controversy is guaranteed at World Cup finals. Who could forget Diego Maradona’s “hand of God” goal for Argentina in 1986 or French star Zinedine Zidane’s 2006 World Cup final headbutt?

Read more on this controversy at any of the three links. Believe me, there are a lot more out there. So, here’s another headline that’s making me think doing all that ish to get my passport was a good idea. This headline is from Wired as reported by Maddy Varner. “ICE’s Internal Watchdog Is Now Investigating Online Critics. The Office of Professional Responsibility has opened more than 100 cases over what ICE officials call “incidents of doxing and threats” against ICE employees.”  ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is set up to conduct internal investigations, but has recently begun investigating American Citizens.

OPR is supposed to act as an internal watchdog. It’s responsible for inspecting detention facilities, investigating allegations of employee and contractor misconduct, and processing security checks for new applicants. On its site, it says it also protects against “external threats” by managing badge access to buildings and maintaining the agency’s network security. But lately, court documents indicate, it appears to be pursuing more civilians like Gonyea for what they say online.

In a court declaration filed in April, an ICE official said that between January 2025 and March 2026, OPR investigated 131 cases involving “incidents of doxing and threats directed towards ICE employees nationwide.”

It’s unclear how many of those cases resulted in criminal charges. WIRED was able to identify only one instance when OPR was credited for its investigative work in a case where the Justice Department accused a California man of harassing an ICE attorney and her mother. The DOJ alleged that the man, who pleaded guilty, used to live in the same building as the mother and that he started his harassment campaign in January 2024, well before President Trump took office. ICE did not respond to questions about whether other cases have been brought based on OPR’s work or how many additional cases OPR has opened since March.

“It takes a lot to actually convict someone for their speech, and it’s only possible in very limited circumstances,” says Laura Moraff, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “People do have a First Amendment right to criticize the government and to do that online and to do that anonymously.”

OPR was behind at least one of the flurry of administrative subpoenas sent to tech companies in recent months in an effort to unmask online critics. In court filings, lawyers for the poster argued that the subpoena, which asked for the poster’s name, address, telephone number, and other details, violated the poster’s right to free speech. The government withdrew the subpoena rather than trying to litigate its merits.

You may read some examples of U.S. citizens they’ve bothered by these claims in the article. You might recall this story via the article cited above.

… ICE agents arrived at a polling site in Syracuse, New York, during the state’s primaries in June. The agents were there to see Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker who says they were concerned about an Instagram post she had supposedly made in January, “doxing” an ICE agent.

So, who knows what they may be up to? Let’s hope the press stays on top of it. You may read a great update on the amount of nothing being done by the ICE Agent who killed Renee Good, who is at the root of the Paigelynne Gonyea OPR shenanigans. It’s at this link at The Atlantic. “The Death of Renee Good Has Yet to Be Properly Investigated. Six months after she and Alex Pretti were shot on the streets of Minneapolis, little has come of the probes into their killings.”  Quinta Jurecic is the reporter for the story.

Nearly six months have passed since federal officers shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis. No one has been arrested, the Trump administration has provided no reason to believe that any serious investigation is taking place, and federal officials continue to stonewall state and local investigators in Minnesota.

This inaction was predictable. The day after Good’s death, Vice President Vance insisted at a press conference that the agent who shot her would face no criminal charges. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” Vance told reporters. “He was doing his job.” Soon, Stephen Miller doubled down on the message, announcing “to all ICE officers” that “you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.” Federal agents apparently received the message: The next day, an ICE agent fired a gun into a Minneapolis home, wounding a Venezuelan immigrant, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. The week after that, Pretti was killed outside a doughnut shop. The Department of Homeland Security called him a “domestic terrorist” and said that the officers who shot him had acted in self-defense.

Typically, after a contentious killing by a law-enforcement officer, the Justice Department would launch a criminal civil-rights probe. Following George Floyd’s murder, for example, DOJ conducted an investigation alongside Minnesota law enforcement, and both federal and state prosecutors brought separate charges against the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. So far, though, the federal government has succeeded in protecting immigration officers from serious consequences for the violence of what DHS termed “Operation Metro Surge.” But in promising a total shield from accountability, Miller and Vance may have been premature. Law-enforcement officials in Minnesota are—albeit haltingly—beginning to move forward with investigations and prosecutions on their own. Their efforts may become the locus of yet another clash between state and federal authority in the age of President Trump.

For the first few hours after the ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Good inside her car, the mechanisms of accountability appeared to operate normally: The FBI began mobilizing to investigate the crime scene alongside the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state’s investigative agency. By the evening of the day she was killed, however, officials in Washington, D.C., had frozen out both Minnesota police and law enforcement in Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located. In a recent podcast interview, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty recalled joining a conference call after Good’s death with the FBI, federal prosecutors, and Minnesota investigators: “Everybody agreed this would once again be a joint investigation. And then suddenly the BCA was kicked off the case.” Minnesota abruptly found itself without access to any of the evidence collected at the scene. Even Good’s maroon Honda Pilot, the windshield pierced by Ross’s bullet, was bundled away by the FBI into a storage facility before state law enforcement could get a look at it.

DOJ was now the only agency able to conduct a full investigation into the shooting. But it had little apparent interest in doing so. According to The New York Times, Harmeet Dhillon, who leads DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, refused to open a criminal investigation into Ross. Instead, DOJ looked into the possibility of investigating Good, along with her widow, Becca Good. Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned in protest, as did an FBI agent in Minneapolis.

Bobo, who hangs out on the kitchen stairs waiting for friends and food.

The link is gifted and definitely worth the read.

So, that’s it for me today. I’m still working on trapping the feral cats living under my house, whom I feed and speak to daily. Work is progressing on the kathouse. The electrical work is mostly done. The A/C works again. The backyard no longer has a dilapidated pergula. It’s about to get a nice green space with a nice grill/smoker, a fire pit, many more plants, lighting, and Adirondack chairs. I look forward to the nice cooler fall days.

I’m off to set up traps for the infamous duo Bobo and Sparks.

Try to have a nice, quiet week.  I was hoping the games would be a nice break, but then Orange Caligula can never let good enough alone. He has to get involved and ruin it for everyone.  I still enjoy the openers where all the soccer kids come out with the players. Their looks make me realize we have to ensure the world is a better place before we leave it.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

 

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #FIFA2026 #ICE #ICEThugs #ReneeGoodAndAlexPretti #TrumpCrimeSyndicate #TrumpRuinsEverythingForNearlyEveryone

Finally Friday Reads: When Will It Ever End?

“Should have just went with this in the first place. Honest Don reflects on his achievements.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Every time we think about Orange Caligula, we have to think about what comes after him if he doesn’t make it through his second term. It’s not likely that someone reasonable will take his place in a party that no longer goes by reason. For all intents and purposes, we still have to put the Shillbilly at the top of that list. I’m not really feeling good about that at all.

This is a headline from the New York Times this morning. “Vance Downplays Watergate and Compares Himself to Nixon. The vice president said that the scandal that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency would be “like a 12-hour news story” if it happened today and that the “deep state” had taken down Nixon.” Be afraid. Be very afraid.  Emily Davies has the story.

Vice President JD Vance downplayed the significance of the Watergate scandal during a speech on Thursday, saying that the controversy that toppled President Richard M. Nixon would be “like a 12-hour news story” if it happened today.

“The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Mr. Vance added, saying he had been joking backstage about the scandal before his appearance at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif.

Mr. Vance, who is widely seen as a potential 2028 presidential contender, compared himself to Nixon, who resigned in disgrace after his administration tried to cover up its involvement in a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

“Young senator, vice president, writes some best-selling books, is hated by the media,” Mr. Vance said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance. I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.”

Mr. Vance also conspiratorially compared the political forces that pushed Nixon out of office to President Trump’s opponents.

“If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon,” Mr. Vance said, “it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions, tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”

Mr. Vance’s remarks were notable in part because of how Mr. Trump and his administration have pushed to expand presidential power and test the boundaries of the law. Mr. Vance, a critic of Mr. Trump’s during his first presidential bid in 2016, has become a fierce loyalist and stood by the president through many controversies, casting him as the victim of an unjust political system.

The vice president’s defense of Nixon followed a similar playbook, seeking to rewrite the historical narrative of a scandal-scarred president so that he becomes the target of a witch hunt instead of the perpetrator of wrongdoing.

A spokesman for Mr. Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Vance was in California in part to promote his new memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith” and in part to raise money for the Republican Party.

I never thought I’d see the day when a candidate desperately seeking the presidency would give an all hail to Nixon.  Those of us that remember all findingof those Senate hearings know that finding any one that supported him, especially once the cover-up became clear, were clearly few and far between.

This headline from the AP headline has me shaking my head that I may need a neck brace. “Vance says Watergate would be a ’12-hour news story’ today. Vice President JD Vance said the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon would have been a 12-hour blip in today’s news cycle, and he drew parallels between Nixon and President Donald Trump — arguing both were targeted by “deep state” forces.”

Yup, Arlen Specter was about as deep state as you could get.  Excuse me while I choke on laughter.

It’s obvious that these people have no respect for our Republic or it’s rule of Constitutional Law. This is democracy backsliding at its jaded worst.  This is the analysis by the Washington Post. “Vance dismisses Watergate scandal, says ‘deep state’ went after Nixon. The vice president said he admired Nixon and drew parallels between the past president, who resigned amid pressure in 1974, and Trump today.”  This is fascist level over-reach.

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday expressed sympathy for former president Richard M. Nixon, suggesting that Nixon was wrongly forced out as president in 1974 and comparing his political travails decades ago to those facing President Donald Trump now.

“As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said in remarks at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”

A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to questions about whether the vice president was being facetious and how he was defining Watergate.

… Naftali, a Columbia University presidential historian, referenced tapes that contained thousands of hours of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.

“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say,” said Naftali, who oversaw the Nixon library’s Watergate exhibit. “You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”

“It’s not as if it’s a matter of partisan interpretation. The evidence is overwhelming,” Naftali said, offering additional examples of Nixon’s efforts to subvert legal protections. “If he does know all of this, he’s telegraphing the kind of president he hopes to be.”

Again, I’m just gobsmacked. How do you even get through university or high school, let alone law school and come up with this shit of an interpretation of Nixon?  Speaking of  Orange Caligula and his tendency to pick lying bags of scum who are only interested in power and grifting, here’s an NBC headline to bring back some memories of his last ugly term. “Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton pleads guilty to mishandling classified information.  Bolton served as White House national security adviser during Trump’s first term.”

Former national security adviser John Bolton pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to mishandling classified information related to his work during the first Trump administration.

Bolton, who served as White House national security adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term and has since been a frequent critic of the president, appeared Friday morning for a re-arraignment in Greenbelt, Maryland, before Judge Theodore D. Chuang, an appointee of then-President Barack Obama.

Bolton pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information out of the 18 with which he was initially charged. He faces a prison sentence of up to 60 months and has agreed to pay $2.25 million, prosecutors said. He is set to be sentenced Oct. 28.

Abbe Lowell, Bolton’s attorney, said in a statement Friday that the former national security adviser and U.N. ambassador “did what real leaders do. He took responsibility for a mistake he made, thereby saving the government resources to pursue a case that could expose additional sensitive information.”

Hayden O’Byrne, acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s national security division, said in a statement that the plea agreement “ought to send a message to other public officials whom the public has entrusted with classified, national defense information. If you willfully mishandle these state secrets, the Department of Justice, led by the National Security Division, will investigate and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”

Bolton was originally indicted in October 2025, charged with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges and faced up to 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine per count, and three years of special release.

Sigh, “special release.” Why to punish this truly evil people courts!  Then there’s this guy. This is from PBS News. “WATCH: Stephen Miller says ‘America’s doors are closed fully to asylum seekers’ after Supreme Court rulings.”

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 on Thursday to allow the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security can now end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.

The Supreme Court also voted 6-3 to clear the way for the Trump administration to potentially revive an immigration policy once used to turn back migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The court overturned a lower court order blocking the practice that limited the number of people who could apply for asylum each day.

EThis crap doesn’t reflect the American Values I grew up with.  This makes the Guilded Age look like a Socialist Picnic. “Elon Musk’s zero accountability life. Elon Musk goes berserk if you talk about USAID.” This is from the magazine The Argument. Kobe Yank-Jacobs provides the news and analysis.

Elon Musk really doesn’t want you to say he’s responsible for the deaths of millions.

Earlier this week, Musk threatened to sue Rep. Ro Khanna for charging him with destroying the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and putting millions of lives at risk around the world:

“There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk,” Khanna said. “You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires [with his SpaceX IPO], but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.”

In response, Musk called Khanna a liar, threatened to sue, and said he should be in prison.

But Khanna is making a perfectly reasonable claim here. In that quote, he is (carefully) citing a peer-reviewed study that estimated the effects of dismantling USAID. It found that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will result in 14 million deaths overall by 2030, of which 4.5 million will be children under the age of 5.

This is probably a high-end estimate, but even lower end projections with different methodologies sit between 670,000 and 1.6 million annual deaths compared to a fiscal year 2023 baseline.

In other words, the toll from USAID cuts by seems to be at best around two-thirds of a million people annually1; that’s about as many people as were killed during the Civil War. At worst, Musk is tied to the deaths of 14 million.

If DOGE had managed to cut tens of billions of dollars from the federal budget, Musk and his defenders would certainly have taken credit. It’s bizarre then to disclaim responsibility for the tragic consequences of the cuts they did make.

Yet Musk and his defenders insist that Khanna is somehow slandering him.

There are a couple of interlocking issues worth separating here: one is the factual question of what actually happened to USAID, where Musk is now downplaying his actions. A second question is what is likely to happen out in the real world to real people without USAID. And the final issue is whether Musk should be subject to basic Congressional oversight for wrecking whole government agencies as an outside adviser to the president.

So, I’m cutting it short today because frankly, I can’t read any more of this myself, and I’m still working on the house. I just hope the election is as clean as possible and that people come out in droves.  I’ve really had enough of this.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #ElonMuskNAZI #JDVanceNAZI #JohnBoltonCrook #RichardNixonCrook #StephanMillerNAZI

Mostly Monday Reads: Chaos Information

“Saboteurs be damned! The Situation Room is locked and loaded to eliminate the threat of the Green Newest Scam.” @repeat1968, John Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Well, I have the perfect read and lede to reinforce my repetitive sub-headings for my post. Burgess Evertt of Semaphor quotes outgoing Senator John Cornyn in his latest. Either everyone reads me, or we all finally notice the trend. “‘The president seems to revel in chaos’: Cornyn goes his own way.” Ya think?

A few days after losing his Senate runoff, John Cornyn did something unusual for him: He used his leverage against his own party.

The Texas Republican was frustrated by a nearly year-long delay in getting his state reimbursed by the Trump administration for more than $10 billion in border security spending that Congress had already approved. Cornyn had something valuable to withhold as lawmakers prepared to take up President Donald Trump’s $70 billion immigration spending bill.

“Basically, I told Senator Barrasso and Senator [John] Thune: ‘There’s a price for my vote, and it is to get the administration to release the money,’” Cornyn told Semafor in a recent interview in his hideaway office on the Capitol’s third floor. “Next thing I got is a call from [White House budget director] Russ Vought, and Russ said, ‘we’ll put a notice of funding.’”

Cornyn added a reminder that, with more than six months left in office and a sophisticated understanding of the Senate, he’s positioned to play more hardball if he has to: “That’s one example I think of what you can do when you have some cards to play.”

The four-term incumbent is already setting some conditions on his critical undecided vote for Trump’s attorney general pick, Todd Blanche. Cornyn has returned to the candor he displayed for years in the Senate halls, offering withering assessments of Trump’s Iran deal and legislative strategy — a pattern he might continue on Wednesday, when the president visits GOP senators in person.

See? We basically have to vote them out of office to act in the interests of the country and the people they serve. To continue that train of thought, a reference to my soon-to-be-gone senator was also put into the analysis

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., also ousted by Trump in May, told Semafor that he and Cornyn are “like-minded in the sense that we’re both not returning, and that gives a certain focus. And he’s conveyed he’s got no illusions about the president.

“But you know,” Cassidy added, “it’s not like we sit around in a smoke-filled room, plotting the strategy.”

It just amazes me that Trump manages to get his way as long as they hold office and positions. Then, they suddenly rotate to the right thing.

What does it take to act like an actual American leader these days? This headline at VOX got me thinking, also. “The MAGA stars freaked out by their own movement. The right’s leading lights are looking for anyone to blame for the right’s growing extremism — except themselves.” This analysis is written by Zach Beauchamp.

It’s a real-life version of the famous sketch on Tim Robinson’s show I Think You Should Leave, where a hot-dog-shaped car crashes into a storefront and a man in a hot dog suit says, “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.”

The “hot dog men” — and yes, they’re almost all men — are easy to mock. But their growing ranks point to something serious: that right-wing political machine is spinning out of control in ways that even some of its most aggressive and radical voices recognize as dangerous. And as the right searches for new leadership before Trump himself fades into history, nobody on their side has shown any proven ability to contain or redirect its worst impulses.

In the absence of post-Trump leaders both willing and able to address the real problems, the future of the right — and, thus, in some sense, America — is dangerously unclear.

If that’s the metaphor, then the reality on the ground is even more bizarre.

Shapiro, Rufo, and Rogan are three of the most important figures of the modern right. That they’ve all started sounding like comedy “hot dog men” of late suggests the right has a genuine problem on its hands.

Indeed, there are plenty of other examples.

Mark Levin, the Fox News and talk radio provocateur with Trump’s ear, unironically complains about “podcasters” who are “not about informing or educating,” but rather profiting off being “crazier” than their competitors. Rod Dreher, a right-wing writer who has long promoted a famously racist anti-immigration novel, has been expressing deep concern about rising bigotry on the young right. And even Dinesh D’Souza — a commentator who has spent literally decades spreading increasingly toxic, racially tinged conspiracies — is now warning that right-wing racism may prompt “mass desertions of blacks, Latinos and other minorities from the GOP.”

All of these men openly helped build the right-wing political culture that got us here. Now they’re all trying, desperately, to find the guy who did this.

The examples provided make for a long read, but a good set of evidence for the hypothesis. This article comes with all the details on all the nasty stuff that fed the MAGA tourists and the Elephants at the Republican Zoo. You have to pay a bit to read this, but you will come away with a deeper understanding of the people we ignored for way too long. The conspiracy theorists and provocateurs are reaping what they sowed. I especially liked the story of Candice Owens, who always seemed like an over-the-top Con Artist and turn-coat.

You can also read more on the infighting via MSNOW’s Mychael Schnell.” ‘It’s awkward for everybody’: Inside the Trump-Thune relationship. The president and the majority leader are increasingly finding themselves in standoffs.” Trump is still doing a lot of damage, however, so I wonder if this is actually affecting any real change. Is minimal change doing anything?

On June 4, as Senate Republicans finally began debating their immigration enforcement bill, President Donald Trump called Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., with a demand: Attach the SAVE America Act to the legislation.

During the call — according to a source familiar with the conversation — Thune told Trump there wasn’t enough support for the hardline voting bill. But, as a concession to the president, he said Republicans would try again.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., drafted an amendment exactly as Trump requested. And Republicans put it on the floor for a vote.

It failed 48-50, with four Republicans joining Democrats in opposition.

Despite one of those stubborn realities in the Senate — math — Trump has continued pressing for the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship and photo identification to vote while sharply restricting mail-in voting.

Trump’s insistence on pursuing a bill that lacks enough support, and his tendency to fault Thune when it fails, has only deepened tensions between the president and the Senate majority leader.

One GOP senator, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal dynamics, said Trump and Thune “have an awkward relationship.”

“It’s awkward for everybody,” the lawmaker said.

Sources stressed that Trump and Thune still maintain a functional working relationship. One person familiar with their interactions said they don’t speak every day, but “when they need to talk, they talk a lot.”

Still, the limited communication is increasingly becoming a problem.

One of the clearest signs of that dynamic came last week, when Trump instructed his director of national intelligence nominee not to show up for a confirmation hearing, prolonging a lapse in U.S. spying authority. That morning, Thune said he hadn’t heard from Trump.

When Thune was asked last Wednesday why Trump had unexpectedly derailed his nominee’s hearing, the South Dakota Republican’s frustration was palpable.

“Good question,” he said.

Part of Trump’s discontent with Thune appears to be rooted in the contrast with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. While Johnson often advances Trump’s priorities through the simple-majority House, Thune must navigate a Senate where most major legislation requires 60 votes. As a result, Thune frequently finds himself delivering unwelcome news about what can and can’t pass.

“Thune and the speaker obviously have different ways of communicating with Trump, both in style and in substance,” the source familiar with the Trump-Thune dynamic said.

“When it comes to Thune, he doesn’t sugarcoat the truth,” this person added. “He tells the president exactly what he needs to know — the raw and unvarnished truth — even if it isn’t always the answer the president wants to hear.”

This Washington Post analysis (gifted) shows Orange Caligula’s troubles extend to the Supreme Court. “Why Trump has been attacking the Supreme Court, with 3 key rulings ahead. As the court prepares to rule on several of the president’s priorities, tensions are running high — even with his own appointees.

One recounted how Gorsuch became upset when Davis lashed out at Justice Amy Coney Barrett, calling her a “rattled law professor” for siding with the court’s liberals in a pair of rulings against Trump. The other said Davis was angered by Gorsuch’s vote to block Trump’s use of a wartime authority to deport Venezuelans.

The people differed on whether Gorsuch had asked Davis not to come to his clerks’ gathering or he chose not to. Either way, the rift highlighted the growing conflict between Trump, his MAGA allies and the justices, which has burst more fully into public view in recent months.

That turbulence makes for a tense backdrop in the waning days of the Supreme Court’s 2025-26 term, as the justices prepare to rule on three signature Trump initiatives: limiting birthright citizenship, firing the heads of independent agencies and reshaping the Federal Reserve.

Many legal experts believe that the justices have signaled they will rule against Trump on two out of the three, blocking his bid to deny citizenship to those who were born to parents here illegally or lacking permanent residency, as well as his effort to remove a governor of the Fed board.

“It seems like almost 100 years since you’ve had a clash approaching this level between the president and the court,” said Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford University. “You’d have to go back to the New Deal to have any kind of an analogue.”

During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the court by expanding it from nine justices to 15after the court struck down key parts of the New Deal. The plan ultimately failed, but not before the court began upholding some policies that Roosevelt championed, possibly in response to his threats to add justices.

Davis, who declined to comment on his relationship with Gorsuch, said in an interview that if the court rules against Trump on birthright citizenship,

“When the Supreme Court gives Chinese birth tourists birthright citizenship, it’s going to destroy its legitimacy with a broad swath of the American public,” Davis said, referring to people who ostensibly travel to the United States to have American children. “They are following politics and vanity projects instead of the law.”

Defenders of birthright citizenship note that the 14th Amendment says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

In another major case on Trump policies, the court will decide whether the president can remove without cause the heads of roughly two dozen independent agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, that Congress set up to be insulated from political influence.

In addition, the justices will rule on whether Trump can fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook while a lawsuit over her removal plays out in the courts. A ruling for Trump would give the president far greater control over the powerful central bank.

These rulings, and other major decisions, are likely to come in the next week or so as the justices sprint toward the end of the term in late June or early July.

The disaffection with the Supreme Court among Trump’s allies is notable because the president reshaped the court in his first term with three staunchly conservative appointees, who have delivered major victories for conservatives on abortion, affirmative action, religious rights and more.

This term, the justices have handed the administration a string of wins on the emergency docket, allowing Trump policies on limiting immigration, freezing foreign aid and dismantling the Education Department to move forward for now.

Trump appointed Gorsuch, who did not respond to a request for comment, along with Brett M. Kavanaugh and Barrett.

The wins have not satisfied Trump, who has attacked the court — including his own nominees — in increasingly caustic and personal terms that legal scholars say have little historical precedent; Trump has called the justices “bad,” “stupid,” “weak” and other epithets.

All three of these articles are long reads. I’m not sure if they give me a glimpse of hope, given all the idiots involved, but I do feel the more Trump feels he’s under attack by his own, the more he’ll turn his mind from other things, like the ridiculous crap he’s done at the White House.  I don’t know, though. I am fully aware that I might be wrong on that. It may be just chaos without meaning or impact.

Here are some other things that truly depress me. This is via CNN this morning. “Exclusive: Trump administration plans to use homeland security funds to pressure states into election changes.

The Trump administration is threatening to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funds from states unless they adopt a sweeping set of election changes, according to multiple sources and internal documents obtained by CNN.

The move is part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to root out alleged voter fraud — despite studies showing it’s far rarer than he claims — and exert more federal influence over how elections are run. It comes as multiple states have passed laws that seek to prevent the federal government from interfering with elections.

Under new rules governing several homeland security grant programs, states must take a number of steps, including phasing out certain electronic voting systems and moving to hand-marked paper ballots. They must also run their voter rolls through a controversial Department of Homeland Security citizenship verification database.

If not, states would lose out on some funding from DHS. These grants, expected to total more than $1 billion in the current fiscal year, are one of Washington’s main vehicles for helping state and local governments prevent terrorism, protect infrastructure and prepare for major disasters.

For years, the DHS grants, which states apply for, have required that at least 3% of the funds be spent broadly on election security. But the new guidelines, which CNN obtained and are expected to go out to states later this month, impose a set of mandatory reforms and steep penalties for noncompliance. States that refuse would lose 20% of the grant money — potentially millions of dollars in security funds.

This is more bad news via NPR.  It’s more garbage from SCOTUS. “Supreme Court allows a ruling that ends a tool to protect minority voters in 7 states.” Hansi Lo Wang has the lede.

By declining to take up a lower court ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt another blow to the Voting Rights Act.

The court announced Monday that it will not review an Arkansas-based lawsuit, leaving in place a 2025 appeals panel ruling that ends a long-used tool for protecting minority voters from discrimination under the landmark law in seven mainly Midwestern states.

That ruling found that in the states covered by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota — private individuals and groups do not have the right to sue to enforce what’s known as Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which generally allows voters with a disability or inability to read or write to get help with voting from a person of their choice.

The Supreme Court’s move comes almost two months after its conservative supermajority issued a major ruling that further weakened the Voting Rights Act, setting off a groundswell in redistricting across the country.

When will the press stop calling these people “conservative”? This has nothing to do with conserving anything traditionally Constitutional in this country. Okay, this is all I can handle on Monday. May the week ahead give us more hope.  I’m going to go watch more soccer games and hope for the best.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #chaos #ChaosSupremeCourt #SenJohnCornyn #SenateMajorityLeaderJohnThune #SenateRepublicans #TrumpChaos

Finally Friday Reads: Chaos Times

“We’re on the cusp of discovering how the battle against the Deep State is progressing. Who controls the weather? The day formally known as Flag Day, now recognized as The Birthday All Will Celebrate, is fast approaching. Last year, a rather lame and uninspiring parade left us underwhelmed. This year, really sweaty men will do battle for the pleasure of our Grifter in Chief under the threat of severe weather.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Headlines today show that everything Trump touches does, indeed, turn to shit. The Iran War is still hot, but Trump insists there’s peace in the making. Our Nation’s Capitol has turned into a gross example of what it looks like to destroy a planet, a culture, and a democracy. The real death and destruction come into play with the policies thought up by the most hapless group of people ever appointed to lead a department.  Meanwhile, government spending, inflation, and stock markets are providing us with numbers to worry about. The polls show the people hate it all. But, will they turn out to vote the people responsible out of office?

The New Republic has a take on those polls. “Trump Hits Record-Breaking Low in Polls as Aides Leak: He’s ‘Furious.’  As Trump arrives at a negative poll milestone that no other president has reached, a Democratic strategist explains how we’ll know it if his travails start translating into a serious midterm rout.” The analysis is provided by Greg Sargent and his guest, Christina Reynolds, in the podcast linked below.

Donald Trump’s polling just crashed to new lows. He’s hit a net approval on inflation of negative 50 points in numerous surveys, something no other president has done—ever. Trump also is at 80 percent disapproval on gas prices. And this is the first time Democrats have led Republicans on inflation since the 1970s. It’s no accident that this comes as sources around Trump tell CNN that he’s “furious” because the media didn’t make his latest Iran bombing look strong and powerful. These stories are linked: His failure to force Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is causing the very cost spikes that are tanking his approval and his party’s chances in the midterms. We talked to Democratic strategist Christina Reynolds, who has extensive experience in midterms. She explains how Trump’s travails are translating into new pickup opportunities in surprising places, parses a new poll showing Democrats up 10 in the generic House matchup, and explains why 2026 reminds her of Democratic routs in 2006 and 2018. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

An interesting take on this, Trump’s growing unpopularity, is provided by outgoing Senator John Cornyn from Texas.  “After Senate Loss, Cornyn Predicts ‘Miserable’ Final Two Years for Trump. In his first extensive interview since his defeat by a Trump-backed challenger, the Texas Republican said the Senate was in for a “bumpy ride” as he and others flex new political freedom.” The interview is reported today in the New York Times by Carl Hulse.

Senator John Cornyn was not consoled when President Trump professed on social media that the senior Republican from Texas would “remain my friend for a long time to come” after the president had enthusiastically endorsed the man who defeated Mr. Cornyn, ending his Senate career.

“If that’s the way friends treat you, you wonder about his enemies,” Mr. Cornyn said this week in his first extensive interview since his loss two weeks ago to Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, an opponent Mr. Cornyn labeled corrupt and unfit for the Senate.

Mr. Cornyn said he had come to terms with his defeat, a stinging loss he attributed in part to public disillusionment with extreme partisan politics that led to low voter turnout. Now the Trump administration might find itself having to come to terms with Mr. Cornyn as he flexes new political freedom, joining a handful of other Senate Republicans not seeking re-election or defeated in primaries at Mr. Trump’s behest who now have added room to maneuver.

“I think it is going to be a pretty bumpy ride for the next seven months,” Mr. Cornyn said during a wide-ranging conversation in his Capitol office as he reflected on the tumultuous Texas election and his nearly quarter-century in Washington.

“It does give some of us a little more freedom, and certainly leverage,” he said, before invoking Mr. Trump’s notoriously heated Oval Office meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last year. “As the president told President Zelensky when he was in his office a year or so ago — he said, ‘You don’t have any cards.’ Well, we’ve got some cards to play.”

Mr. Cornyn said he is not a “wounded bear” seeking retribution or revenge. He is determined that Republicans hold the Senate because he said he feared they would lose the House in November.

But in the interview, he gave voice in starkly candid terms to a growing sentiment among Senate Republicans that Mr. Trump was hurting his own party with self-serving decisions and his insistence on “slavish” loyalty, ultimately setting himself up for a midterm “disaster” that would pave the way for “the most miserable two years of his life.”

And in the interim, Mr. Cornyn said, he reserves the right to choose “where I’m going to — or going to not — defer” to Mr. Trump.

One of those areas appears to be the special protection from I.R.S. scrutiny that the Justice Department granted Mr. Trump and his family and businesses as part of a settlement of a lawsuit over the leak of his tax data, an exemption Mr. Cornyn said needed to be overturned.

At least most of the Judges on the federal benches have held the line. Michael Kunzelman has this headline for the AP. “Judge extends block on Trump’s $1.8 billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’.”

A federal judge agreed on Friday to extend a court-ordered block on the Trump administration’s creation and operation of a $1.8 billion settlement fund for compensating people who claim to be victims of a weaponized government.

Earlier this month, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that the government is scrapping its plans for the fund in the face of a fierce bipartisan backlash, and government attorneys have argued that lawsuits challenging the fund are now moot. But plaintiffs’ attorneys aren’t satisfied by Blanche’s assurances that the fund won’t move forward.

Neither was U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who ruled that the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” will remain blocked until further notice from the court.

“The (government’s) mootness argument, in my view, doesn’t go anywhere,” the judge said.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has not publicly and unequivocally endorsed the fund’s cancellation. He has continued to express support for it in remarks to reporters.

Brinkema gave the parties a week to negotiate an agreement for Trump administration officials, including Blanche, to submit a sworn declaration that the administration won’t revive the fund.

Brinkema previously agreed to temporarily block the administration from proceeding with the fund for at least two weeks. Her May 29 order was due to expire on Friday.

Trump’s Republican administration created the fund to resolve his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

Plaintiffs who sued to block fund payouts argue that the government can’t legally divert taxpayer money into what they argue is a slush fund for compensating Trump’s allies.

In a separate case on Wednesday, a different judge in Washington, D.C., rejected a government watchdog’s parallel request for a court order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from forging ahead with the fund. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said he accepts Blanche’s representation that the fund is now moot.

This next attempt to twist rulings and laws is simply astounding. I’m not shocked, but wow, how obviously corrupt and butt-hurt can one old man be? This is from Lawyers, Guns, and Money. “Trump trying to “void” his first two impeachments.” Paul Campos has the analysis.

A couple of days ago I was asked to comment on the possibility of impeaching Trump after the midterms. I hadn’t really thought about that at all, and I concluded that it was hard to say whether it’s going to happen, given the fecklessness of Jeffries and Schumer. This new report from the WSJ highlights why this very much should happen, whether or not the Guardians of the Guardrails want it to:

U.S. President Donald ​Trump and ‌his allies have ​discussed pushing ​lawmakers to pass ⁠a ​resolution aimed ​at voiding his first-term impeachments, ​the ​Wall Street Journal reported ‌on ⁠Thursday, citing people familiar ​with ​the ⁠matter. . . . The Journal reported that Trump and his team want lawmakers to ‌pass ⁠a resolution aimed at voiding the impeachments.

White House officials have strongly urged forward progress on this issue, the White House official told reporters. . . . the resolution would allow ​Trump to claim ​a symbolic ⁠victory on a matter that has dogged him since his first term, but would have ​little legal significance since the Constitution provides ​no procedure ⁠for undoing an impeachment.

“Little” here means “none.”

This absurdity illustrates how narcissistic injury is something that somebody like Trump can’t ever escape or overcome, which is all the more reason to injure him in the same way again, not to mention that he deserves to be impeached on the merits for almost countless reasons at this point. As a matter of principle I personally would put the ongoing war crime that is the Iran “excursion” at the top of the list, recognizing of course that as a pragmatic political matter there are far more attractive options for impeachment resolutions. But this very much needs to happen early in 2027.

We all realize that the Constitution and laws are meaningless to Trump, the judges that he’s appointed, and those in his administration. This is one of the most significant acts of social justice you can sign on to.  The strike, as reported by the Guardian, is growing.

Nearly 40 women detained at Delaney Hall join striking men and outline demands ‘rooted in basic human rights’

— Guardian US (@us.theguardian.com) 2026-06-12T12:49:09.908Z

Dozens of women detained inside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility in New Jersey announced their participation in a hunger and labor strike, advocates announced on Thursday.

The women, detained in unit 1 of the contentious privately run facility, also released a new list of demands. They are calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release women under 21, women with medical conditions and mothers. They are also demanding improved conditions inside the facility and for their immigration cases to proceed more quickly.

The Delaney Hall detention facility, run by the private prison company Geo Group, has in recent weeks become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s efforts to engage in mass deportations. A group of more than 300 men launched a hunger and labor strike last month, leading to demonstrations in support of the strikers and an aggressive police response.

The announcement that detained women in Delaney Hall were engaging in a strike came just one day after Trump signed a $70bn spending bill for immigration enforcement agencies and as immigrants in other detention centers participate in strikes of their own.

On Thursday morning, advocates, religious leaders and family members with detained loved ones gathered in front of the Delaney Hall facility to announce nearly 40 women were signing on to the strike. A series of speakers decried the conditions inside.

“Today, we stand with the women demanding release, safe living conditions, medical care, legal representation, family visitation, safe drinking water and protection from abuse,” said Archange Antoine, a minister with the Clergy Coalition for Liberation. “These are not radical demands – these are demands rooted in basic human rights.”

On 22 May, a group of detained men inside Delaney Hall announced a hunger and labor strike, making a list of demands including meeting with the New Jersey state governor, improved conditions, the release of sick and elderly detainees and for their cases to proceed in immigration court. At the time, a few women inside the facility joined in that effort, advocates told the Guardian.

Soon after the 22 May strike was announced, protesters outside the facility gathered in support of the striking detainees. Lawmakers have also come out in support of the striking detainees and to conduct oversight visits.

ICE officers responded to the protests by deploying pepper spray and using Tasers and batons. But later, amid national attention on the heated protests, New Jersey’s governor and Newark’s mayor deployed the state and local police forces who deployed teargas and arrested dozens in an effort to disperse the protesters.

Carol Leonnig of  MS NOW reports that “FBI raids Ohio voting rights organization. Sources tell MS NOW that agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at staff members’ homes.” Shouldn’t they be working on something real, like the victims and perpetrators listed in the Epstein Files?

FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state, three people briefed on the search told MS NOW.

Agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at the homes of the group’s leaders and staff members, carrying some subpoenas and seeking information and electronic devices, according to the three people briefed, two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive ongoing investigation. Members of the group contacted lawyers on Thursday to determine their legal options, the people said.

Prentiss Haney, a board member of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, told MS NOW Thursday night that agents approached people with connections to the group, including some who had performed basic canvassing and volunteer work, and pressed them for information.

Agents were “basically trying to fish for information,” Haney said.

“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders’ and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask,” Haney said, adding that agents “asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.”

Some of the people said the agents approached without warrants, according to Haney.

“Just straight-up intimidation tactics,” he said.

Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday night.

The sources briefed on the search said they are concerned this new effort in Ohio is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to sow doubt and distrust in voting integrity in key swing states ahead of the midterm elections.

Here’s another horrifying action by RFK jr to turn health care into just another way to kill people.  This is from the Guardian and reported by Ed Pilkington. “Autistic children being injected with unapproved stem cell treatments supported by RFK Jr. Desperate US parents paying up to $20,000 a session for a procedure scientists say could be bogus.”

Autistic children as young as 18 months old are being injected with human stem cells derived from umbilical cords in unapproved, unproven and potentially harmful “treatments” that scientists warn are proliferating across the US under the active encouragement of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Clinics in Florida, Texas and other states are selling what they bill as “regenerative medicine” to families with autistic children who have intensive care needs. Parents who have taken their children through the process talked to the Guardian about their hopes and fears for a therapy that appears to be gaining ground in the US.

The procedure, which can involve the child being sedated with ketamine before receiving intravenous doses of millions of stem cells, costs up to $20,000 each treatment. Families are often advised to return for regular top-ups.

Profoundly stressed parents are being wooed to the clinics with promises that a high-dose infusion of umbilical cord stem cells can lead to dramatic improvements in their children’s ability to speak, socialise, or avoid aggressive or self-harming behaviour. Yet there is no scientific evidence that the procedure works – the most comprehensive clinical trial staged so far, a placebo experiment conducted by Duke University, found insignificant benefits for most of the 180 children tested.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) directly cautions parents that if they are being offered stem cell treatments outside an approved clinical trial, “you are likely being deceived and offered a product illegally”.

Though the Duke trial found minimal safety concerns with properly administered stem cell infusions, authorities continue to highlight the potential risks of under-regulated therapies.

The FDA warned in 2021 that it had received reports of complications following applications of umbilical cord stem cells and other related unapproved products leading to “blindness, tumor formation, infections and more”.

In his 16 months as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services within the Trump administration, Kennedy has undercut established scientific endeavors. He has fired thousands of federal health officials, dismissed longstanding scientific advisers, defunded $31m in autism-related research and attempted to shrink the recommended list of childhood vaccinations.

At the same time, largely unnoticed, he has given his backing to alternative health providers moving to fill the gap. Kennedy appeared by video link at the first two annual summits held in San Diego by Autism Health, a leading advocate of stem cell infusions for autistic kids.

At the summit last year, he told the audience that “your issue is no longer on the fringe”. At this year’s gathering in April, he promised to “create opportunities that extend across a lifetime” and to work with the stem cell providers “to drive solutions together”.

Those providers included Mike Chan, a Malaysian physician who presented the San Diego summit with a protocol that he practices from his clinic in Bangkok. It involves injecting autistic children in the buttocks with high doses of stem cells extracted from slaughtered sheep and rabbits.

I do not believe that anyone could come up with a Trump appointment that actually knows what they’re doing in the job they’ve been given. It’s pathetic and dangerous. Anyway, there are more headlines out there about the administration and the Iran War that could fill at least one post. This is all I can handle for the day. Have a peaceful weekend.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #BogusAutismTreatment #FBIRaidOnVotingRightsOrganization #ICEAndDelaneyHallStrike #RFKJrAndAutisticChildren #SenatorJohnCornyn #TheChicksNotReadyToMakeNice #TrumpJ6SlushFund #TrumpSinksInPolls #TrumpTryingToNegateTwoImpeachments

Finally Friday Reads: Chaos Examiner

“I have an urge to stockpile toilet paper.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m going to start with something a little different. This is Heather Cox Richardson’s conversation today. The Historian’s headline caught my eye. She was asked a question and provided her answer. “What would have to happen for me to concede that the United States is beyond hope?” Her answer was simple. “The end of the world.” She explained that we have the ability to try to make the world a better place. I agree.

She’s right to argue that democracy and humankind have always been deeply flawed. And yet, we persist. In the long term, from a historical perspective, our ancestors have persisted. I always feel that I would fail the six direct relatives of mine who signed the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington, whose stepson is also a direct relative of mine. The Custis family has always been a group of fighters, and they were right there in the movement and the war to free slaves. I think about them a lot these days. Perhaps it is because of my age. More likely, it’s because I need to remind myself that it’s my turn to protect the family. I do not want to leave this shit to my grandchildren or anyone else’s.

In fact, I wonder what the world would be like if all these however great-grandfathers of mine had just shrugged it off. Or the farthest back, however, great-grandfather MacDuff had not killed Macbeth. For that matter, I have my father who bombed NAZIs out of France and Belgium to help liberate Europe from Fascism, or the great-great-grandfathers and uncles that fought for the Union during the Civil War. What about all the women who fought the war by doing everything their sons and husbands couldn’t help with anymore? And yet, they all persisted. So, I can and must too.

I hope her words give you the motivation to carry on.

https://bsky.app/profile/hcrhq.bsky.social/post/3mnj2dwlrk22e

And now, more on what we’re fighting against!

This is from the Washington Post. Meryl Kornfield has this essential read today. “Trump officials planned to mark 2.7 million living people as dead, whistleblower claims. A former Social Security executive said the plan, which was not carried out, would have used a death database to pressure immigrants to leave the country.”

The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts, according to a former senior Social Security executive.

The previously unreported plan, which the Social Security Administration said was not carried out, would have used one of the government’s most consequential identity databases to effectively erase people from the financial system, potentially cutting them off from wages, banking, government benefits and other services.

Jeremiah Schofield, who worked at Social Security for 25 years and helped lead the agency’s IT modernization efforts before leaving in October, said he refused to help implement the plan after agency lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead could violate federal law. Schofield said he realized the plan’s possible intent — to intimidate and worsen the finances of immigrants — as well as its potential unlawfulness after taking a sample of people from the 2.7 million and discovering they were all alive. Some were U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, teenagers and senior citizens, including one widow who was a legal permanent resident receiving survivor benefits.

Schofield has provided details on the plan in a 49-page whistleblower disclosure to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is on the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The disclosure was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it offers the most detailed account yet of howofficials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sought to use Social Security data in service of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In an interview with The Post, Schofield said he is speaking publicly for the first time because he believes Americans need to understand how government data can be misused and, in some cases, already has been.

Social Security carried out a smaller version of such an effort last year, The Post previously reported, moving 6,100 immigrants into its “Death Master File” — a database used by banks, employers and government agencies to determine whether someone is alive. Some of those people later showed up at Social Security field offices to prove they were alive and were restored in agency records.

In a written statement, a Social Security spokesperson who did not provide their name said the agency “did not add a list of 2.7 million names to the Death Master File. SSA maintains the highest level of internal controls. This includes having all appropriate policies and procedures in place to maintain the integrity and accuracy of agency records.”

Schofield’s whistleblower complaint describes a tumultuous period inside Social Security, as career officials questioned the legality of such efforts and watched DOGE officials gain access to some of the government’s most sensitive databases. In one meeting, Schofield said, a DOGE official working with the Department of Homeland Security described the goal of declaring 2.7 million living people dead: making immigrants so miserable that they self-deported or went to Social Security offices for help, where they could be arrested.

“That call was one of the most disappointing calls I’ve been in in my 25-year career,” Schofield told The Post. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

CNN has this disturbing headline this morning. “Trump’s intel choice had no intel experience. He didn’t even have security clearance.”

Before he was announced as President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US intelligence community, Bill Pulte did not have a security clearance granting him access to highly-classified information – meaning he lacked what has long been considered a basic prerequisite for the job he will soon occupy, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

On Thursday, days after Trump’s announcement that Pulte would serve as acting director of national intelligence, the office he is expected to lead – at least temporarily – initiated the vetting process for his security clearance by requesting a background investigation, one of the sources told CNN.

Pulte — a wealthy businessman who was confirmed as Federal Housing Finance Agency director last year— already appeared to be an unusual choice for acting DNI given his lack of demonstrated experience in national security matters. A staunch Trump loyalist, Pulte played an extraordinary role in pushing the Justice Department to pursue some of its most eye-popping cases against the president’s personal foes.

Evidence that Pulte did not have access to classified material before he was announced as Trump’s top intelligence official this week underscores just how atypical his credentials are compared to nearly every other DNI that came before him.

“The director of national intelligence has access to all of our most classified intelligence,” Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, told CNN.

There is no evidence that Pulte “would respect those classifications,” Warner said.

Sources told CNN there is no evidence that Pulte previously maintained even the lowest form of security clearance before he was tapped as acting DNI.

Incompetence and lack of basic knowledge of your job are not even part of the vetting process for Orange Caligula. Wicked amounts of blind loyalty and eye-popping stupidity appear to be.

And of course, it wouldn’t be Trump if he wasn’t out to destroy every American monument, institution, and historical and nature-based asset of the country. This is from Torrence Banks writing at NOTUS. “Trump Is Eyeing Control of Smithsonian’s Budget. The administration is creating a conflict with how Congress intended its money be spent.” He can’t stand anything that’s not saturated by his presence. He also has no respect for the separation of powers. Feeding his narcissism and insecurity is the basis of all decisions.

A directive from the Office of Management and Budget could force the Smithsonian Institution to change its spending plans to match President Donald Trump’s priorities — or risk not getting some of the money Congress appropriated for its operations.

An apportionment — documents that direct federal agencies on how to spend congressionally approved money — approved by OMB in May is aimed at compelling the Smithsonian to spend congressionally appropriated funding in a way that’s “consistent with the FY 2026 President’s Budget” in order to receive it. The president’s budget differed widely from what Congress ultimately chose to fund.

OMB also instructed the Smithsonian to submit a request “specifying each activity and the associated estimated federal obligation amount.”

Trump has repeatedly tried to reshape the Smithsonian, insisting its prior offerings were too “woke” and insufficiently patriotic. The May directive puts the Smithsonian in a major bind, creating hurdles to access congressional funding, experts said.

“The budget guys at the Smithsonian, it puts them in a ridiculous position,” a former Hill staffer and appropriations expert who would only talk on the condition of anonymity told NOTUS. “If they spend money that OMB tells them to spend, then they’re in violation of the Antideficiency Act, which dates back to the Civil War. It involves an agency or a person spending money that’s not been appropriated, and it has criminal fucking penalties, man.”

“And if they don’t spend money Congress told them to spend, then they’re in violation of the Impoundment Control Act, which does not have criminal penalties. But it’s a pretty good constitutional crisis.”

Speaking of Constitutional amendments, check this one out. This is from The Religious News Service. “Defense Department to drop atheists, pagans, 175 others from list of military faiths. The new list includes 31 recognized faiths, most of them Christian denominations.”  Weird cultural indoctrination, anyone? Adelle M. Banks and Yonat Shimron share the lede.

The Department of Defense is substantially reducing the number of religions it officially recognizes, reportedly excluding atheists, pagans, humanists and New Age faiths, an independent military-focused news website reports.

The reduction of recognized faith groups represents the first time the military has revised the list since 2017, when it vastly expanded the list of recognized faith groups to about 211. The new list includes 31 recognized faiths, as first reported by Military.com on Thursday (June 4).

The outlet said its report was based on a May 20 memorandum it obtained after it was issued by the undersecretary of defense.

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request from RNS for additional information, including the specifics of who was included on the list and how such decisions would affect military members of other faiths who might desire assistance from a chaplain.

But the report seems to reflect developments previously announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

In a March video, he introduced upcoming Pentagon plans relating to reforms of the chaplain corps and recognition of religions.

“The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes,” Hegseth said. “It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all.”

“Our internal review committee recommended that going forward the department use 31 religious affiliation codes,” he added.

Molly Jong-Fast put a smile on my face with this Op Ed at the New York Times. “It’s No Wonder Grads Are Booing Their Commencement Speakers.”  Now there’s our sweet freedom of speech value.

Commencement address season hasn’t been going well — for the commencement speakers.

I’m sure you’ve seen the videos on social media. The big shots who have been brought in to inspire a next generation of graduates have used their speeches as opportunities to extol the limitless possibilities that artificial intelligence will bring. They’re speaking to graduates who are entering a shaky job market and are already burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. However, companies of all stripes are using A.I. as an excuse to slow entry-level hiring and lay off workers. Tech executives have been warning (though it sometimes seems as if they are bragging) that their technologies will be job destroyers.

Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive who spoke at the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities, told graduates that “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.” Scott Borchetta, the chief executive of the record label Big Machine, told the graduates of Middle Tennessee State University that “A.I. is rewriting production as we sit here.” In each case, the students expressed their displeasure at the speakers’ blatant A.I. boosterism the best way they could: with loud boos.

When Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google, told graduates at the University of Arizona about their A.I.-shaped future, the shouting got so intense that he paused and said that graduates feared “that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.” Mr. Schmidt told them to make the best of it. “The question is not whether A.I. will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.”

Mr. Schmidt’s solution to world-upending technological change is … what? To pull yourself up by your bootstraps? His approach is peak billionaire brain, directed at the young people who have, for the better part of a decade, been treated as woke, lazy, avocado-toast-eating snowflakes. All these speakers just don’t get it. The problem isn’t woke; the problem is work. It’s a lack of social mobility. It’s that college may no longer elevate a graduate to the middle class. It’s that nobody even bothers to pretend that a house, a good job and the ability to start a family are at all guaranteed.

Think of this from the graduates’ perspective: Wealthy old people telling you your future is being pulped by acres and acres of electricity-sucking, water-guzzling data centers feels dystopian because it is. Companies are trying to automate your future away. No wonder you’re furious.

Young people are facing what M.I.T. Technology Review calls a “looming crisis in entry-level work,” and college, once assumed to be a prerequisite for a secure job, no longer feels worth it. The general gestalt coming from a certain sliver of affluent Americans is that college graduates are more liberal trouble than they’re worth and perhaps could be replaced by bots. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and G.O.P. megadonor, mused to Joe Rogan that a bot “never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high” and “never files H.R. complaints.” (It never boos a smug commencement speaker, either.)

I highly recommend reading this thought-provoking Op-Ed. The link is gifted. I also proffer this. The only expendable thing in this country that matters right now is Orange Caligula.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

This video performance features Keith Richards and my dear friend and neighbor, Washboard Chaz. His dog and Temple are bestest of buddies, too.

“Get Up, Stand Up! Stand up for your Rights! Get up, Stand up! Don’t give up the Fight!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biGm7nUgisA

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #BillPulte #DepartmentOfDefenseDelistingReligions #GetUp #GradsAreBooingTheirCommencementSpeakers #HeatherCoxRichardson #IsTheUnitedStatesBeyondHope #SocialSecurityAdministrationDelistingLivePeople #StandUpForYourRights

Katurday Reads: Associated Chaos

“In case you’re wondering why former Attorney General Pam Bondi was allowed to be “questioned”, not under oath and in private, after being subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight Committee about the Epstein File Coverup. John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

You’re seeing me today because of three days of fasting and a dreaded hospital procedure. Nothing serious. Just no fun at all. It’s kind of like living in this country under Orange Caligula’s craziness. Thankfully, BB came to my rescue yesterday! Now my doctor has to determine the intent of five polyps. She’s not expecting anything bad. Too bad we can’t say the same about the Trump Administration.

We still have a mostly functioning Judicial System. This New York Times headline is a keeper. “5 Takeaways From a Kennedy Center Ruling That Angered Trump. A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to take President Trump’s name off the building. What happens next?” Too bad we can’t get some court to stop the damage to the White House and the surrounding grounds. This analysis is by Zach Montague and Julia Jacobs.

In his ruling that President Trump’s name must be removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a federal judge turned his attention to the statute passed by Congress in honor of the slain president.

Signed into law in 1964, only two months after Kennedy was assassinated, the legislation renamed what was first known as the National Cultural Center after a leader who had championed the performing arts.

“The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, designated by this Act,” the law read in part, “shall be the sole national memorial to the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the city of Washington and its environs.”

In his ruling on Friday, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington found that the president’s effort to rebrand the building after himself flew in the face of lawmakers’ original intent. He ordered that the 18 new letters added to the center’s white marble facade — which currently reads the “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” — be removed.

The order also temporarily blocked the center from beginning a two-year closure for renovations, drawing a scathing rebuke from Mr. Trump, who has made the institution a centerpiece of his effort to transform Washington’s cultural landscape.

Here’s what the ruling, the result of a lawsuit by a U.S. representative, may mean for the future of the Kennedy Center:

Congress must be consulted on any name change.

The judge’s decision — released on Kennedy’s birthday — boiled down to a straightforward application of the 1964 law.

“Congress made clear that the Kennedy Center would serve as both the nation’s premier performing arts center and a living memorial, the sole one dedicated to the late president in the Washington, D.C. area,” Judge Cooper wrote. “The center has played those roles for over five decades.”

But as with other projects championed by Mr. Trump, such as a ballroom for which he ordered the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, the plans to overhaul the Kennedy Center did not receive the approval of lawmakers.

While the ruling left open the possibility that the president could pursue and support some aesthetic changes at the center, it professed little doubt about the law surrounding its name, which Judge Cooper said was “crystal clear.”

It’s a long read but well worth it. The link has been gifted, so you may read the entire thing.  Another bit of Trump overreach is going back to court. This is from Politico. “Judge launches inquiry into Trump-IRS settlement that led to ‘anti-weaponization’ fund. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams asked Trump’s lawyers to respond to a call for her to explore the deal that led to the $1.8 billion fund.”  The job market must be booming for lawyers.  The leded here is shared by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein.

A federal judge is demanding answers to allegations that President Donald Trump defrauded her court by filing a lawsuit against the IRS as a pretext to reach a settlement that resulted in a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to make payouts to his political allies.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams launched the inquiry Friday, after closing the lawsuit on her docket last week. The Miami-based Obama appointee cited a request by 35 former federal judges who urged her to reopen the case to determine whether Trump’s effort amounted to “serious misconduct” and an abuse of the court system.

It’s the latest wrinkle in a developing scandal that has drawn bipartisan outrage on Capitol Hill, multiple lawsuits aimed at blocking the “anti-weaponization” fund and demands for further investigation by government watchdogs and courts.

Earlier this year, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns by a private contractor in 2019 and 2020. The lawsuit immediately triggered questions about conflicts of interest: How could the Justice Department and IRS now controlled by Trump appointees defend against a lawsuit brought by their boss?

But before the lawsuit advanced, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed that a settlement had been reached. Instead of a payout to Trump, the settlement would result in the establishment of the nearly $1.8 billion fund to make payouts to people described in the settlement as victims of government weaponization.

The announcement generated particular excitement among hundreds of people Trump pardoned for their roles in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with many announcing their intention to pursue payouts. Police officers who defended the Capitol and former Justice Department prosecutors who pursued Jan. 6 defendants sued to block the fund altogether, with another judge earlier Friday ordering a two-week pause on its establishment.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In her four-page order Friday, Williams indicated that she’s considering reopening the case. She also noted the former judges’ suggestion that Trump’s attorneys knew from the start that their lawsuit had no merit and filed it solely to justify a purported settlement that the administration wanted to announce.

This doesn’t mean that the J6 rioters are paying any attention to this ruling. This headline is from the AP. “Capitol rioters clamor for payouts from Trump’s new ‘anti-weaponization’ fund despite backlash.”  Michael Kunzelman has the story.

David Johnston was a licensed attorney when he illegally entered the Capitol with a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. More than five years later, the South Carolina man is offering to help fellow “J6ers” apply for payouts from the Trump administration’s nearly $1.8 billion new fund for people claiming to be victims of a weaponized government.

He’ll do it for a 10% cut of any award, capped at $5,000 apiece.

“I think the narrative is changing” about how the history of that day is being told, Johnston said in a video he posted to social media. “I think good things are happening for us.”

Hundreds of Trump loyalists pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol, admitting under oath that they broke the law. Now pardoned by Trump, many hope to capitalize on their crimes by tapping into the $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate the Republican president’s allies who believe they were politically prosecuted.

A bipartisan backlash to the fund and a legal roadblock have not dimmed the celebratory response from Jan. 6 rioters clamoring for a share of the taxpayer money. Some are staking claims even though the government has not established an application process and a judge has frozen the fund’s formation, at least temporarily.

As usual, you may read more at the link. The Orange Caligula slush fund continues to horrify most Americans. This analysis is provided by Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson writing for Public Notice. “A new low” — watchdog sounds off on Trump’s J6 slush fund. “It’s an effort to signal to the violent element of his base.”

As a weekend bonus for subscribers, we connected with Donald Sherman, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), for his take on President Trump’s most corrupt move yet — the theft of nearly $2 billion from taxpayers for an insurrectionist slush fund he can operate with impunity.

Sherman characterized Trump’s self-dealing “settlement” with his own government as “corruption on a scale without precedent in America,” and argued its purpose is to incentive political violence.

“It’s an effort to absolve himself and his supporters from the insurrection he incited and to signal to the violent element of his base that if you engage in violence in support of him, you will not just be safe from prosecution, but made whole and then some,” he said. “So it’s not just backward-looking, it’s forward-looking. And it follows his pardoning of the January 6ers, which was another signal.”

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xnsrdn7a72siprdxibk5ltri/post/3ml7dagew522t?ref_src=embed

This is the article upon which the interview was based. It’s from Citizens for Ethics. The investigation was led by Miru Osuga and Caitlin Moniz.  There’s absolutely nothing that the Trump Grifting Syndicate can’t try to monetize.

In the first fourteen months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Trump Store launched at least 622 products, costing nearly $43,000 all together, to profit off the presidency. This is an unprecedented level of monetization of the presidency, even by the standards of Trump’s own first term.

The Trump Store’s launch during his first year in office in 2017 immediately attracted ethics scrutiny as the Trump Organization—the for-profit Trump empire that directly benefits Trump and his family—found another avenue to profit off the presidency. And if sales are any indication, it’s now a well-oiled grifting machine, with Trump’s last released financial records showing that in 2024, the store brought in approximately $8.8 million, more than double the amount the store made in 2023—and more than 17 times the amount it made in its first full year of operation.

While the red “Make America Great Again” hats may now seem like the store’s obvious cash cow, during the first Trump term, these hats and others that referenced the presidency were only sold through the campaign store–a largely symbolic separation between Trump the president and Trump the businessman. But after Trump lost the 2020 election, any appearance of separation, slight as it may have been, was shattered as the store began to stock MAGA hats and never stopped.

A supporter now could buy one of each currently in-stock product and spend $91,145.12 on 1,492 items. They would receive at least 99 items that include reference to the presidency costing $7,511.28, with additional items commemorating actions that Trump took as president like a $55 “Space Force” hat or a $50 “Gulf of America – Yet Another Trump Development” ballcap.

More concerningly, they would also receive a number of items that sell the idea of an unconstitutional third presidential Trump term, including a “Four More Years!” hat, “Trump 2028” hats and can coolers, and “Trump 2028 (Rewrite The Rules)” shirts. The body of a Trump Store marketing email with the subject line “Four More Years | Trump 2028” reads: “Manifesting the future…Four More Years…A Hat for the Next Term.” There’s really only one way to take the explicit calls for a “next term” and “four more years” one year into a second presidential term: as a call for an unconstitutional third term.

You should read this article and then proceed to the interview. It’s really exceptional journalism and nothing you’d see in the legacy media these days.

We’ve all wondered about Trump’s obviously failing health. This CNN  News article should not be a surprise.  “White House breaks from precedent by not releasing Trump’s medical report.” Adam Cancryn has the lede.

The White House has yet to release any results from President Donald Trump’s most recent physical exam, a break from its own past practice that’s likely to fuel further questions about his health and fitness.

Trump, who is the oldest president to be inaugurated, declared on social media that he was in perfect health following an hourslong visit on Tuesday to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

But despite promising to provide a summary of the checkup in “the next day or so,” the White House has since offered no additional information — nor has it confirmed that Trump’s physician plans at any point to offer a public readout.

The three-day silence marks a departure from the White House’s handling of Trump’s prior physical exams. After a visit to Walter Reed last April, personal physician Dr. Sean Barbabella summarized the results in a memo released two days later. When Trump returned for another exam in October, Barbabella’s declaration that he remained in “exceptional health” was published later the same day.

This time, Trump has so far served as the only source of information about his own health just weeks out from his 80th birthday.

“It’s unimaginable to me that the White House would not release a statement about the president’s health — even the most basic statement,” said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor at The George Washington School of Medicine & Health Sciences who was the longtime cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney. “It’s going to really spark concerns about the president’s fitness for office if the White House refuses to disclose his medical report.”

Trump has long been cagey about any personal health problems, placing a great deal of value on portraying himself as a pinnacle of strength and vitality. On the campaign trail and in the Oval Office, Trump has made his vigor core to his political identity, boasting frequently about his mental and physical well-being. Past medical readouts often reflected this attitude: In Trump’s first term, then-presidential physician Dr. Ronny Jackson effusively praised his “incredible genes” during an hour-long press conference solely about Trump’s health, held at the president’s insistence.

But as he approaches his eighth decade, Trump’s visible signs of aging — and at-times erratic behavior — have nevertheless intensified scrutiny of his health and demands for more disclosure. And after intense doubts swirled about the mental acuity of former President Joe Biden, the American public is perhaps particularly sensitive nowadays to questions about the commander-in-chief’s physical and cognitive health.

So, it’s business as usual on steroids at the White House. This story in Lawfare isn’t shocking in Trump time, but wow, would it be unusual under any other President? “The Justice Department Erases History; Lawfare Restores It. Last week, the Justice Department deleted thousands of press releases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection and other matters. Here they are.” Tyler McBrien, Michael Feinberg, and Benjamin Wittes show us their homework.

Last week, the Justice Department began systematically removing material from its web sites regarding the many indictments and convictions related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The operation started without fanfare or formal announcement and proceeded largely unnoticed. Until, that is, journalists such as the Washington Post’s Meryl Kornfield took notice of certain press releases and other materials that had conspicuously disappeared from http://www.justice.gov.

“The Trump admin is quietly deleting info about the Capitol attack from the DOJ website as it prepares to give funds to J6ers,” Kornfield posted. “This week, DOJ deleted a press release about one man with an ongoing child solicitation case who came to the Capitol with bear spray.”

Then, with typical bombast, the Justice Department responded by taking issue with one particular aspect of Kornfield’s characterization. “Nothing ‘quiet’ about it,” the DOJ Rapid Response account replied. “We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”

We are not erasing history quietly, the Justice Department seemed to suggest. We are erasing history loudly and proudly.

At Lawfare, we have restored the vast bulk of what was deleted. We have also started to preemptively archive a raft of material that has not yet been deleted but probably will be, given its thematic relationship to the material that was 86ed.

The Jan. 6 investigation was one of the largest investigations and collections of prosecutions in Justice Department history. In the FBI’s Washington Field Office alone, agents and analysts worked shifts to maintain a 24/7 posture identifying perpetrators. For more than a month after Jan. 6, there was never a time during day or night when roughly a third of the office was not investigating the insurrection or analyzing evidence.

All other FBI field offices, while not dealing with the same volume as the Washington Field Office, also surged agents to help identify, investigate, and apprehend any participants who had traveled to Washington, taken part in the insurrection, and then left town. Record numbers of leads and tips were provided to the FBI, and every single one of them was examined—and if merited—used to predicate a case.

For its part, the Justice Department stood up an entire new branch of prosecutors tasked specifically with these events. Assistant United States attorneys were also brought in from around the country to augment efforts.

This is the record the Justice Department is now trying to delete.

Any effort to erase history and replace it with lies warrants concerted pushback. In this case, the department has deleted a large repository of accessible public information about the storming of the Capitol and the individuals who did it. That data, unlike the court documents that lay beneath them, are in lay language. They are easily digestible by anyone interested. And they contain fair-minded summaries of evidence that—in the overwhelming majority of cases—was either proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt or pleaded to by defendants who ultimately conceded their truth.

Again, please read the details at the link. I’m pretty sure all this J6 build-up has something to do with the midterms and the next presidential election. Are they planting the seeds for more insurrection? Your guess is as good as mine!

Well, that’s it for me today. Time to get back to work on the kathouse! Hope you have a great weekend!

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlAQuvb4huU

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CatsAgainstTrump #DOJEvidenceErasure #j6SlushFund #TheKennnedyCenter #WhereSOrangeCaligulaSMedicalReport

Memorial Day Reads: The Chaos Globe

“Hopefully, funded by seizure of Trump’s ill-gotten gains.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

It’s another Memorial Day where we recognize and show our gratitude for the 1.3 million soldiers who died in the service of our country. We’re still not savvy enough to stop the wars. We’re now in a hot one started by the idiot who told us the black lady would take us to war. This war is not going well.

I’m going to start with this analysis by Dr. Paul Krugman. This is his contribution on his SubStack today. “Donald Trump’s Ego-Driven ‘Excursion’ Has Crashed Into Reality. Trump lost his war, bigly. Why?”

“Many questions, few details in latest Iran peace proposal,” read the headline on a New York Times report Sunday. As the subhead explained, “It is too early to tell what exactly Trump and Iran have agreed to, or if they have agreed to much at all.” The article, by the way, was written by David Sanger, who Trump called “treasonous” over his clearly accurate reporting on how badly the war was going.

But, in fact, Trump’s Iran war may be over, or virtually over. America lost.

Iran may or may not agree to exercise restraint in its control over the Strait of Hormuz and its nuclear program. But as Donald Trump of all people should know, agreements can be broken. At a fundamental level Trump, who began by demanding UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER and trying to impose a subservient new regime, is now slinking away, leaving Iran’s hard-liners empowered — and America’s reputation shattered.

How did that happen? America is a superpower, Iran a middle-sized regional power at best. Spending isn’t the only determinant of armed might, but even so a comparison of the two government’s military budgets is ludicrously one-sided:

Yet the Iranian regime is not only still standing, it is stronger than before. Meanwhile, Trump is running away.

Trump’s disastrous leadership isn’t the sole factor behind this debacle, although it’s a large part of the story. In my view there are four main reasons Trump’s Iran “excursion” is ending in humiliation.

First, this was a fundamentally unwinnable war.

You may read his rationale at the link. The funniest thing is that the regime in Iran just will not let Trump tell lies about their situation.  This is from NBC News. “Iran says no deal ‘imminent’ despite progress in talks with U.S. Secretary of State. Marco Rubio said earlier Monday that an agreement could be finalized ‘today,’ though he cautioned that if talks fail, Washington would find ‘another way’ to resolve the situation.” Yuliya Talmazan has the story.

Iran warned Monday that an agreement to end the war launched by the United States and Israel was not imminent, after President Donald Trump raised and then lowered expectations that a deal may be close.

While Tehran acknowledged progress but played down the idea that an announcement could come soon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a deal was still possible Monday.

An agreement could be finalized “today,” Rubio said during a trip to India. He cautioned that if talks fail, Washington would find “another way” to resolve the situation.

As a flurry of diplomacy unfolded from the Middle East to China, Iran’s top negotiators were in Qatar — an increasingly central player in the accelerating efforts to secure a deal that would end the three-month war and restore shipping through the crucial Strait of Hormuz trade route.

On Monday morning, Trump warned that while negotiations were proceeding “nicely,” fighting would resume “bigger and stronger than ever before” if the talks failed.

Trump had said Sunday that he would not “rush into a deal,” a step back from earlier public statements from the president and officials from both nations that indicated an announcement may be close.

Trump also explicitly linked an Iran deal with the Abraham Accords, calling on a number of nations in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to join the breakthrough agreements between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Orange Caligula is basically ill and beyond incompetent. Tom Nichols has this analysis at The Atlantic. “Trump’s War Is Staggering to an Incoherent Defeat. Even the president’s supporters are alarmed.” The Presidential Venn Diagram over there sums it up nicely. The buzz has really gotten to him. It’s obvious he can’t make a decent deal. It completely blows his image

No one yet knows the details of the Iran deal that President Trump has been teasing on social media for the past day or so. The president himself has admonished his followers not to “listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about.” But as this war stumbles to a close, it is clear that the president, too, is lost: He didn’t know what he was doing when he began it, and now he doesn’t know how to get out of it.

Only a day ago, Trump was trying to project confidence. Yesterday, he hailed an agreement with Iran as mostly done; it was, he said on his Truth Social site, “largely negotiated” and close to “finalization.” The Iranians, of course, immediately disputed this characterization, and by the next day, Trump was backpedaling. “If I make a deal with Iran,” he posted this afternoon, “it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon.” The agreement that was only a day earlier “largely negotiated” was now only a notional memorandum, and Trump griped that it was unfair to criticize it because “nobody has seen it, or knows what it is,” and it “isn’t even fully negotiated yet.”

By this afternoon, Trump was reduced to posting a meme of a jet carrying a bomb under its wing with Thank you for your attention to this matter written on it.

Many of those most alarmed about what Trump might end up accepting to get out of this dead-end conflict in Iran are not his critics, but his supporters. Trump’s enablers may not have access to the details of an agreement, but they’re clearly worried: Senators Lindsey Graham, Roger Wicker, and Ted Cruz were all posting expressions of shock and dismay on social media. Graham said that any deal that caves to Iran “makes one wonder why the war started to begin with”; Wicker said that a possible 60-day cease-fire would be a “disaster.” Cruz gently suggested that the tsar does not know what his devious boyars are up to, describing the deal as “being pushed by some voices in the administration.”

Even Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser, posted a long screed warning Trump not to make a deal. “I know you want to get out of this mess,” he said. He then counseled the president to “give it some thought.” Trump’s former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo weighed in as well, comparing the possible outline of a deal to the kind of thing Barack Obama’s team might have come up when designing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and warning that it could mean that America would end up paying “the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world.” Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, during his first term, and he regularly speaks of the JCPOA (and Obama) with contempt; Pompeo’s comparison was sure to infuriate the Trump team.

And sure enough, Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, responded almost immediately to Pompeo—and gave the world a glimpse of what appears to be some sweaty panic building inside the White House. “Mike Pompeo has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about,” Cheung posted on X. “He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know?” (Cheung also kept posting updates about Trump working in the Oval Office on a Saturday, as if this were an amazing illustration of the president’s work ethic.)

Trump’s worried sycophants probably know that the details of an eventual agreement likely do not matter very much at this point. As my colleague David Frum noted earlier today, the war has already ended with America’s strategic defeat by the Islamic Republic of Iran, an outcome for which Trump is directly responsible. How much Iran will get away with, and how much humiliation the United States will endure, has yet to be ironed out by the negotiators, but the war is now almost certain to end with Tehran’s theocrats firmly in power, and with a stronger chokehold both on their own people and on the international economy than they had three months ago.

There’s definitely a pattern here. The smell of failure is everywhere. This is from The Hill. Steff Danielle Thomas has the lede. “Trump urges Gulf allies to join Abraham Accords amid US-Iran talks.

President Trump on Monday called for Gulf allies to join the Abraham Accords amid talks between the U.S. and Iran to bring an end to hostilities in the Middle East.

The pressure comes as the two nations are reportedly working on a deal to extend the ceasefire in the region and reopen the Strait of Hormuz — while also laying the groundwork for broader talks over Tehran’s embattled nuclear program and potential sanctions relief. Officials on both sides have cautioned that key elements remain under negotiation.

“Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are proceeding nicely! It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before — And nobody wants that!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

The president said he spoke with multiple regional leaders over the weekend, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

“I stated that, after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords,” he continued, acknowledging that the UAE and Bahrain were already members.

“It may be possible that one or two have a reason for not doing so, and that will be accepted, but most should be ready, willing, and able to make this Settlement with Iran a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be,” Trump added.

The Abraham Accords were established in 2020 under the first Trump administration to broker ties between Israel and the Gulf states.

In his Memorial Day post, the president pressed Saudi Arabia and Qatar to join first, “and everybody else should follow suit.”

“If they don’t, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intension,” he added.

As negotiations between U.S. and Iranian officials continue, Trump said Sunday that his administration would not “rush” into any deal, adding “time is on our side.” The emerging framework, however, is drawing intense criticism from Republicans, who compared parts of it to the Obama-era nuclear agreement.

Meanwhile, Trump’s still trying to kill us by not allowing our doctors and researchers to take part in any sort of international collaboration on any potential global health issue. This story comes from Sarah Owermohle, reporting for CNN. “Exclusive: Trump admin shutting key US researchers out of global virus response talks, documents and sources reveal.”

Key officials responsible for leading US research on infectious disease threats have been barred from speaking directly with the World Health Organization — effectively shutting some of them out of the global discussions on virus outbreaks, according to documents and multiple sources who spoke to CNN.

The Trump administration issued the directive stopping individuals at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from communicating with the WHO.

The federal health subagency was led for decades by Dr. Anthony Fauci and oversaw developing treatments for public health emergencies including HIV/AIDs and Covid-19.

The prohibition has been in place during an outbreak of hantavirus that some Americans have been exposed to. The communication limits were relaxed slightly in the past week as another virus outbreak — an unfolding Ebola epidemic centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo — intensified.

Now, some NIAID officials can attend virtual WHO meetings, but only in small groups and only in a “listening capacity,” according to a May 18 email from a senior NIAID official to staff obtained by CNN. Any follow-up to those meetings would be handled by the Department of Health and Human Services, NIAID’s parent agency.

“We’ll be operating in the same manner for Ebola as we have been doing for Hantavirus, assembling a small groups of experts — no more than three — to participate,” the email said. “Should we have legitimate research questions or countermeasure testing ideas, we can bring those up through the proper chain of command.”

The restrictions hobble quick cooperation with global counterparts, multiple current and former health officials said. One staffer characterized it as unheard of during a US response to emerging public health emergencies.

The directive is part of a broader Trump administration retreat from participation in global health forums — the US withdrew from WHO in January at President Donald Trump’s direction, a move that was widely criticized by public health officials — and as many US health agencies are operating with interim heads.

Among the vacant positions are the director of the infectious disease agency; surgeon general; head of the Food and Drug Administration; deputy health secretary; and head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a leadership vacuum that observers say is unprecedented.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said it “engages with the WHO to support information sharing and coordination during infectious disease outbreaks” through the CDC — which is on the ground in disease outbreaks — and it is “fully equipped to protect Americans and mitigate risks.”

“Teams across the Department coordinate on key response areas, including contact tracing, diagnostics, and medical countermeasures, to avoid duplication and reduce confusion in outbreak response efforts,” the spokesperson said.

Trump has once again tried to make a presidential-sounding speech on Memorial Day. I’m running late on everything today, and I’m lucky I missed it. However, the news reports are coming in. Here’s the take from Lee Moran at HuffPost. “Donald Trump Marks Memorial Day With Early-Morning Online Rampage At

Donald Trump kicked off the Memorial Day holiday on Monday in what has become something of a tradition in recent years by taking aim at his political opponents on social media.

The president began posting on his Truth Social platform at 6:10 a.m., slamming critics of a potential deal with Iran to end the war he launched in February as “losers.”

Eight minutes later, at 6:18 a.m., Trump offered a “Happy Memorial Day” message, including to whom he called the “Dumocrats,” his latest nickname for Democrats, who he claimed, “disrespect our Military and all of the tremendous success that it has had over the last year.”

“God Bless those that have made the ultimate sacrifice. I love you all!” added Trump, whose military strikes on Iran have killed 13 U.S. troops.

I’m putting up this crazy Truth Social post by Trump because it really shows how crazy and obsessed he’s become. It even contains a reference to my soon-to-be-out-of-a-job Senator, Bill Cassidy.  Isn’t this about the most pathetic thing you’ve ever read?

So, the rain is relentless here. Everything is drenched, and even my garden looks waterlogged.  I’m basically going to stay home and do something quiet and relaxing.  Peace always starts by keeping the TV News off.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

This is one of my favorite anti-war songs, sung by Glen Campbell and written by one of my favorite songwriters, Jimmy Webb.  It was one of the great hits in 1969 with a very Americana style about the Vietnam War.

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CadetBonespurSIranWar #MemorialDay2026 #OrangeCaligula #TrumpDumpsMedicalScience #TrumpSLostTheIranWar

Mostly Monday Reads: The Chaos Journal

“Upon further reflection, the Rededicate 250 National Prayer thing now makes huge sense. He Is Risen!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The one thing you can depend on every time Orange Caligula gets the reins of government is that things will always get worse, except for democracy backsliding. It’s just a matter of how shocking the next thing is. How many of us are in a constant state of being stunned that we aren’t the least bit surprised by the news, even though we still find the actions stomach-churning? Well, hang on!  It’s been a week of WTF moments.

Today’s Tit-for-Tat announcement shows just how brazen the entire administration has gotten. This is from Time Magazine. It’s reported by Rebecca Schneid. What kind of monster thinks these things up?

President Donald Trump has withdrawn his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) amid reports that he struck a deal with his own Justice Department to create a $1.7 billion fund to compensate political allies who claim they were wrongly targeted by the Biden Administration.

The alleged plan, first reported by the New York Times and ABC News, would be paid for with taxpayer funds and is being fast-tracked, but has yet to be officially approved. If approved, the fund would be used to pay damages to people who say they were harmed by the Biden Administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Court documents showed Trump withdrew his lawsuit against the IRS, a move that could herald a private deal between the president and the agency he controls, while skirting legal oversight of the deal.

In a lawsuit filed in a Miami federal court in January, Trump and other plaintiffs accused federal agencies of failing in their duty of stopping a former IRS contractor from illegally obtaining and disclosing tax returns to the New York Times, ProPublica, and “other left-wing media outlets,” between May 2019 and September 2020.

The funds would also be used to settle his request for $230 million in legal claims from the Justice Department for the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and investigation into alleged ties between his campaign and Russia

As part of the settlement, Trump would also reportedly ask the IRS to public1pologize for the disclosure of his personal financial records and to waive an IRS audit

According to the Times, the Justice Department would model the program after the historic $760 million settlement fund stemming from the Keepseagle v. Vilsack class-action lawsuit, settled in 2011, which alleged that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) systematically discriminated against Native American farmers and ranchers in its farm loan and loan servicing program.

We know someone who can sum this up nicely.  This is how Hillary put it this morning.

Trump didn’t just pardon his followers who stormed the U.S. Capitol. He’s now set them up for payments through a slush fund he created to reward his allies—out of your tax dollars. You could not make this up.

— Hillary Rodham Clinton (@hillaryclinton.bsky.social) 2026-05-18T16:29:16.603Z

Robert Reich had some additional thoughts and analysis. He elucidated them on his SubStack this morning. “Has Trump’s Republican Party Become a Criminal Enterprise? Trump’s purge of all political opponents, including Senator Bill Cassidy, leaves it with no purpose other than helping Trump achieve his lawless goals.” Trump puts us in a Mafia State every time he’s elected. Grifting is his only talent, and he’s been rich and influential enough to find ambitious and greedy toadies to carry out his wishes. We’ve known this forever here.

robertreich.substack.com/p/is-trumps-…

— @democracy4u.bsky.social 2026-05-18T16:32:07.768Z

On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other Republican senators who have stood up to Trump — such as North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Utah’s Mitt Romney — saw the writing on the wall and didn’t seek reelection.)

Trump’s purge of Cassidy comes in the wake of Trump’s purges of House Republicans who stood up to him, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney.

Trump’s next Republican target in the House is Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, who had the guts to oppose U.S. military involvement in Iran, demand release of the Epstein files, and criticize Trump’s spending bills for adding to the national debt. Massie appears likely to be defeated by a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary.

Trump has also purged state legislators who have refused to do his bidding, such as the seven Indiana Republicans who refused to redistrict the state as Trump demanded they do, and who Trump insured were defeated in their recent primaries.

The message is clear to every current or aspiring Republican politician: Be a toady to Trump, or you’re out.

In his concession speech Friday night, Cassidy stated the obvious reference to Trump:

“Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution. And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”

Nicely put but sadly irrelevant because Trump — who’s clearly serving himself rather than the American public — now possesses all levers of power in the official Republican Party.

As Republican senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday on Meet the Press, “There’s no room in this party to destroy [Trump’s] agenda.”

There’s more at the link. My question is, what the hell can the rest of us who don’t support him do? I voted Saturday morning, wondering which candidate I had voted for would even have a chance under the new gerrymandering.  That doesn’t even consider that we couldn’t even vote for our Congressional representatives, given the Supreme Court decision and the quick fix redraw of our map to ensure maybe one black person will retain their seat.  The only good news to come out of the election was that all five constitutional amendments proposed by Governor Klandry were voted down.

Will these latest bits of news set up another J-6 self-coup?  There will certainly be a rabid MAGA candidate sitting in Cassidy’s seat come next January. This is from NPR. “Louisiana senator who voted to convict Trump loses Republican primary.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of seven Republican senators who voted to remove President Trump from office after the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, lost his bid for reelection.

Louisiana’s Senate primary on Saturday was the latest test of Trump’s hold on his party. The president recruited a challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow, and urged supporters to defeat Cassidy over his vote.

“His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now part of legend,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post about Cassidy. “And it’s nice to see his political career is OVER.”

Cassidy finished third in a three-way race, according to the Associated Press. Letlow and another candidate, state Treasurer John Fleming, will advance to a June 27 runoff.

In conceding the race, Cassidy hinted that he would not finish his second term quietly. But in an apparent dig at Trump, he also said he wouldn’t contest his loss.

“You don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim that the election was stolen,” Cassidy told supporters on Saturday night. “You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you’ve had that privilege. And that’s what I’m doing right now.”

Cassidy told voters they should cast their ballot based on the present and the future, not the past, a subtle discouragement from re-litigating the 2020 election six years on. But for many primary voters, Cassidy’s move to convict felt like a betrayal, and Trump’s endorsement was paramount.

“I’m the type of person, if you cross me, I probably won’t trust you anymore,” retired sheriff deputy Kevin Dupree said earlier this month. “I think his political career in Louisiana is finished.”

My friend Robert Mann, a former Journalism Professor at LSU, has something poignant to say about the loss. This is from his SubStack. “Enjoy your tarnished legacy, Bill Cassidy. You earned it.”  It’s a good lesson: while all politics is local, it can be influenced by a cult of personality.

Although he pandered shamelessly to Trump and MAGA to the bitter end, Sen. Bill Cassidy could have written a different ending to his political career.

He could have left office with his head held high, proud and satisfied that he’d remained true to his principles and the Hippocratic Oath.

He could have protected our families by blocking Trump’s efforts to destroy our public health system.

He could have legislated (and campaigned) as the moderate he told me and others he truly was.

He could have put the state of Louisiana — and the nation — ahead of his desire for another U.S. Senate term.

He could have been our senator, not Donald Trump’s.

He could have done all this and more, but Cassidy lacked the courage, the imagination, and the decency to put you and me ahead of his political ambition.

To quote James Carville in the New York Times earlier this week, “Bill Cassidy sold his soul to the Devil, and he didn’t get anything for it.”

Except that’s not entirely true.

What Cassidy received in return for his soul is eternal shame and a well-earned legacy of cravenness.

I hope Cassidy enjoys his earnings.

I hope he also feels the harsh judgment of history that will be reserved for a Trump critic turned shameless toady who sold out to the worst, most corrupt president in American history—and still lost.

Bill Cassidy could have written a different story for himself and his state, but he just didn’t have it in him.

Speaking of Mafia-like behavior, here’s a little something on the Don’s Greenland Grab. This is from the New York Times. “In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland. Greenlandic officials worry about the direction of the negotiations aimed at defusing President Trump’s threats to seize their island. But they have little leverage.” The story has a number of contributing reporters.

With the conflict in Iran still smoldering, President Trump’s obsession with Greenland seems like a forgotten sideshow.

But for the past four months, negotiators from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, have been holding confidential talks in Washington about Greenland’s future.

The talks were meant to give Mr. Trump an offramp to his threats of a military takeover of Greenland and to scale back a crisis that risked breaking apart the NATO alliance. But Greenlandic leaders are worried about what is being proposed, which is a much larger U.S. role on the Arctic island. And they fear that if the conflict with Iran winds down, the president will swing his aggression back on them.

Some Greenlandic politicians say they have even circled a date on their calendars to be wary: June 14, Mr. Trump’s birthday.

An investigation by The New York Times, based on interviews with officials in Washington, Copenhagen and Greenland, has discovered:

• The United States is trying to modify a longstanding military arrangement to ensure American troops can stay in Greenland indefinitely, even if Greenland becomes independent. The notion is basically a forever clause, and Greenlanders do not like it.

• The United States has pushed the talks beyond military matters and wants effective veto power over any major investment deals in Greenland to box out competitors like Russia and China. Greenlanders and Danes strongly object to this.

• The United States is discussing cooperation with Greenland on natural resources. The island is loaded with oil, uranium, rare earths and other critical minerals, though much of it is buried deep beneath Greenland’s ice.

• The Pentagon is rapidly moving ahead on plans for a military expansion and recently sent a Marine Corps officer to Narsarsuaq, a town in southern Greenland, to inspect the World War II-era airport, the harbor and places where American troops could be housed.

The American demands are so steep, Greenlandic officials fear, that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty. Despite all of the talk from Danish and American officials that Greenland’s future is up to the island’s 57,000 people, Greenlandic officials said the American demands would tie their hands for generations.

If the Americans get everything they want, said Justus Hansen, a member of Greenland’s Parliament, there will never be any “real independence.”

“We might as well raise our own flag halfway,” he said.

There’s a lot more at that gifted link. Jeer Heeter has this description of our Grifter-in-Chief in his article in The Nation. “Trump Gloats About “Making a Fortune” While Americans Suffer. As his war in Iran wreaks havoc, Trump is fixated on personal glory and enrichment.”

Donald Trump is annoyed that he can’t celebrate the massive profits oil companies are making due to the war he launched in the Middle East. Left to his own druthers, Trump would be exulting in the hundreds of billions of dollars produced by skyrocketing oil prices—if it weren’t for the pesky fact that it comes at the expense of ordinary Americans, who are now paying roughly 40 percent more every time they fill up the gas tank than they were before Trump started bombing Iran nearly three months ago.

We know this thanks to Trump’s endless dedication to saying the quiet part out loud. Speaking with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Thursday, Trump chortled that because far less oil was coming out of the Middle East, “people are finding other places to buy oil, like Texas.” Trump added, “So I don’t want to say we’re making a fortune, you understand that? Because if I say that, they’re going to say ‘oh, he forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.’”

The juxtaposition between “making a fortune” and the “little man” suffering at the gas station underscores just how obtuse Trump and his allies have become in their economic message. Their response to the harm caused by Trump’s policies is not to reverse those policies, or even to appear sympathetic about their effects. It’s to express their total indifference to the suffering of the American people. At the same time, Trump is obsessively focused on his real priorities: enriching himself and his family, and creating gaudy monuments to himself such as a new White House ballroom and a Triumphal Arch that will squat in the middle of Washington, DC. In response to a reporter’s query as to whom the arch would celebrate, Trump pointed to himself and said “me.”

Trump twice won the White House on a message of economic populism, promising in his 2025 inauguration that he would “bring prices down.” Today, he sings a very different tune, with a message that amounts to the apocryphal words misattributed to the French Queen Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake.”

Speaking to reporters last Monday, Trump said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.” He also said that concern for the financial suffering of Americans would not be a factor in making a deal with Iran “not even a little bit.”

Under normal political circumstances, the Republican Party would be wise to separate itself from Trump’s callousness. But the GOP has become a hollowed-out operation mainly concerned with tending to Trump’s cult of personality. On Saturday, Trump won a major victory against critics in the party when Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy came in third in his party’s Senate primary race, losing to a candidate Trump had supported. Cassidy’s loss underscores a lesson Trump has taught the GOP again and again over the last decade: There is no future in the party for anyone who defies his will.

So, rather than distancing themselves from Trump’s “let them eat cake” message, Republicans are embracing the president’s self-defeating rhetoric. On Thursday, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan told CNN that oil prices were “were coming down until we had to deal with this situation, but, you know, that’s life, that’s dealing with…the world we live in.”

It’s going to take hard work and a lot of voting to get rid of this monster and all the dregs of humanity he’s put in charge of the country.  It appears they have all been profiting from insider news on the Iran War.

1. What I found in Trump's new 113-page financial disclosure report. It doesn't look good.

— Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social) 2026-05-18T13:58:00.133Z

This is from Jude Legum’s SubStack. “The smoking guns in Trump’s new financial disclosure, Trump publicly praised companies the same day he bought their stock.”

On March 11, President Trump took a tour of a manufacturing facility in Reading, Ohio, owned by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a medical supply company. During the tour, Trump lavished praise on Thermo Fisher which uses the facility to manufacture prescription drugs on a contract basis. “It’s a great honor being here. It’s a great company,” Trump said, appearing alongside CEO Marc Casper. “You have done a fantastic job and I’d like to congratulate you.”

Later, Trump asked another Thermo Fisher executive to share “some great information about this incredible company.” The executive talked about how Thermo Fisher is producing drugs for Merck and others at the facility. Trump then explicitly encouraged other pharmaceutical companies to contract with Thermo Fisher to “on-shore” more jobs. He claimed that some pharmaceutical companies were building their own U.S. manufacturing facilities but said “they can get here a lot faster by using this great company.”

Trump did not mention that, the same day of the tour, March 11, he purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 of Thermo Fisher stock. (Federal disclosure rules only require filers to list their transactions in broad ranges.) Trump did not publicly disclose the purchase until May 14. It was listed on page 38 of a 113-page document cataloging Trump’s stock purchases in 2026.

Trump also purchased between $51,000 and $115,000 worth of Thermo Fisher stock about one month before his visit on February 12. He made another purchase of Thermo Fisher valued between $15,000 and $50,000 on March 2. So at the time of Trump’s effusive remarks about Thermo Fisher, he had purchased as much as $215,000 worth of the company’s stock over the previous month.

The fact that Trump visited a Thermo Fisher facility on the same day he purchased the company’s stock — and bought Thermo Fisher stock repeatedly in the weeks before his visit — has not previously been reported.

The disclosures reveal that Trump has been a highly active trader in 2026, executing thousands of transactions — many in individual stocks impacted by his administration’s policies. In response to criticism, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization claimed that the trades were completely separate from Trump’s official duties and managed by an independent outside financial advisor. “President Trump’s investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions,” the spokesperson said. “Trades are executed and portfolios are balanced through automated investment processes and systems administered by those institutions.”

The fact that Trump purchased stock in Thermo Fisher the same day that he toured its facility undercuts this claim. Further, the March 11 purchase of Thermo Fisher stock was marked “UNSOLICITED” in the document. An “unsolicited” trade is one that is not recommended by a broker, but initiated by the customer.

At least three immigrant children were taken into custody and restrained with zip ties at the San Antonio Immigration Court. The children were between the ages of 9 and 12.https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/a…

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) 2025-06-07T14:26:03.649Z

Brookings reminds us that there are still thousands of families with children experiencing horrible detentions and deportations because of the MAGA obsession with keeping America as white as possible.  “The administration has detained 400,000 immigrants: What do we know about their children?” Is this really the kind of country you want to live in and that you thought you grew up in?

The Trump administration has made detention and deportation the centerpieces of its immigration policy. Around 60,000 people are being held in detention currently, and around 400,000 people have been booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention from an interior arrest since the administration began. Detention capacity is likely to expand, with $45 billion allocated to expanding detention facilities in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Though it is mostly adults who are detained and deported, many children are impacted by separation from their parents. However, there are no reliable data on how many detainees or deportees have children in the U.S., nor on what happens to them once their parent is taken into custody. Here we focus on detainees, about whom we have better information than deportees. Even a short separation from a parent is likely traumatic for a child, but a majority of detentions are not short-lived separations. A ProPublica study following ICE arrests of mothers of U.S. citizen children over the first seven months of the administration found that 60% had been removed and 17% remained in custody at the study’s conclusion.

To estimate the number of children affected by parental detention, we rely on demographic characteristics of detainees matched with likely unauthorized immigrants in the American Community Survey. Our analysis (detailed below) suggests that more than 145,000 U.S. citizen children have likely experienced a parent booked into detention since the administration began, with more than 22,000 of those experiencing detention of all their co-resident parents. In the accompanying interactive, we allow users to explore how the estimates change when the underlying assumptions are varied. Regardless of the assumptions used, it is clear that tens of thousands of children have faced parental detention since January 2025.

Please use the link to read the details.  The time and research it took to find out all this was amazing and hard to believe.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

I can’t even explain what kind of crush I had on Cat Stevens in ninth grade. I could basically play his entire songbook. He’s an amazing songwriter and musician.

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CadetBonespurSIranWar #DonTheCon #IcelandGrab #SenatorBillCassidy #SlushFundForJ6Traitors #TheTrumpFamilyCrimeSyndicate #TrumpSIRSLawsuit #TrumpSRepublicanParty #WhereDoTheChildrenPlay

Finally Friday Reads: The Chaos Morning Post

“Apparently, trump and a bunch of rich rodents arrived in China to discuss global grifting.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The USA shitshow went on the road to Beijing this week. The clown show included business leaders but few diplomats. The AP had this headline early this morning. “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang takes food tour of Beijing.”  The President of Boeing was there to line up deals, too.  Reuters had this headline. “Trump says China to buy 200 Boeing jets, order could rise up to 750.”  As an afterthought, there were a few discussions on Taiwan and a nuclear pact between Russia, China, and the U.S. The Financial Times had a great headline to sum up the mess. “Boeing shares slide as Donald Trump’s China summit deals disappoint.”  All in a few days grift.

Meanwhile … Epstein Files … High Oil Prices due to Iran War … Record Level Federal Budget Deficits … Rotten Apple appointed to head Fed …  There’s a lot of missing news out there. Let’s look at a CBS News Report that asks the question of the day, imho. “Why are so many U.S. CEOs in China with Trump, and what do they want?” Aimee Picchi and Megan Cerullo share the lede.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. CEOs traveling with President Trump to China that it will open further to American business, a key goal for corporate leaders eager to expand their presence in the world’s second-largest economy.

Xi spoke with the delegation of chief executives, which includes Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to a statement on Thursday from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The executives — whose combined net worth approaches $1 trillion — lead companies with major interests in China, despite years of trade disputes between the world’s two largest economies.

China’s pledge to welcome more foreign business comes after years of escalating trade tensions with the U.S., including the Trump administration’s move last year to raise tariffs on Chinese imports to as much as 125% after Mr. Trump said China “was taking us for a ride.”

Yet U.S. companies continue to see China’s expanding middle class and massive consumer base as critical growth markets, even as it has become harder to wring profits from financially struggling consumers in the U.S. and other developed economies.

The White House said that several American business leaders participated in a portion of a broader meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials.

“The two sides discussed ways to enhance economic cooperation between countries, including expanding market access for American businesses into China and increasing Chinese investment,” a White House official said in a readout of the meeting.

The CEOs accompanying Mr. Trump include:

• Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm
• Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
• Lawrence Culp Jr., CEO of GE Aerospace
• Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock
• Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup
• Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia
• Ryan McInerney, CEO of Visa
• Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron Technology
• Michael Miebach, CEO of Mastercard
• Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX
• Kelly Ortberg, CEO of Boeing
• Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone
• Brian Sikes, CEO of Cargill
• David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs
• Jacob Thaysen, CEO of Illumina

“It’s so nice to see the president back on the world stage with his father.” John Buss, @repeat1968

#FARTUS also begged the Chinese President to buy more soybeans from America’s financially strapped farmers hurt by Trump’s Trade War.  However, Bloomberg/Yahoo Financehad this headline. “Soy, Cotton Fall as US Comments Fail to Lift China Trade Hopes.” The lede is shared by Hallie Gu and Ben Westcott.

Soybean futures fell, reversing course after comments from US officials during their China trip offered little beyond existing pledges and few new details on potential agricultural purchases. Corn and cotton futures also slumped.

…

Soybean and corn futures in Chicago flipped to losses. Farmers and traders have been searching for more concrete details from the talks, including on volumes and timing of crop purchases, with prices falling the previous day.

Cotton futures in New York dropped as much as 2.7%. US cotton shipments to China have lagged rival exporters like Brazil and Australia, leaving traders closely watching the Trump-Xi meeting for signs of a boost.

Thursday’s sharp drop in soybean prices — futures closed nearly 3% lower — reflected disappointment that there were not more announcements or specifics on China’s crop imports from the US at the Trump-Xi meeting, said Tobin Gorey, a strategist at Cornucopia Agri Analytics. The minor rebound earlier on Friday suggests the markets are moving on quickly, he added.

“Once the talks conclude, the market can move on from this event risk,” he said.

I do think it’s very funny that the one little person on the trip who got all the buzz was Elon Musk’s son.  “Eye on the tiger: how Elon Musk’s son’s bag became a hit with Chinese public. Product quickly sold out online after the child was pictured carrying a product inspired by traditional Chinese culture in Beijing.”  This was the headline in the South China Morning Post.

Product quickly sold out online after the child was pictured carrying a product inspired by traditional Chinese culture in Beijing

A Chinese-made tiger’s head bag carried by Elon Musk‘s young son in Beijing has prompted a wave of interest online.

Musk’s six-year-old son X Æ A-Xii, dressed in a Chinese style silk jacket, was pictured carrying the brown shoulder bag with a tiger’s face when he visited the Great Hall of the People with his father in Beijing. The photo quickly went viral on Chinese social media.

The Tesla boss was part of a delegation accompanying US President Donald Trump on his visit to Beijing, which ended on Friday.

Musk’s son was also said to be studying Chinese which impressed every one in the People’s Republic of China. This was reported by Mashable India. This definitely is not your President Nixon’s trip to China. “Musk’s Son Goes Viral During China Visit With Billionaire Dad: Elon Says X Æ A-Xii Is Learning Mandarin. X Æ A-Xii shenanigan continues in Beijing.”

World’s richest billionaire, Elon Musk, arrived at a high-level diplomatic reception in Beijing flanked by his six-year-old son X Æ A-Xii. The Tesla chief executive joined a delegation of top American business leaders, including Tim Cook and Jensen Huang for talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, held alongside President Donald Trump’s visit to China.

Meanwhile, the young lad drew significant attention in a room full of suits, appearing in photos wearing dark pants, a white shirt, and a blue Chinese-style silk vest as he held his father’s hand inside the Great Hall of the People. A 360-degree tourist-style photo of the pair quickly circulated on Chinese social media, generating widespread engagement during what was otherwise a tense round of negotiations.

Reacting to one of the comments over their pictures on X/Twitter, Musk remarked in Mandarin that his son is learning the language of the land.

It was not the first time the child had appeared at high-profile events. He was previously spotted in the Oval Office and was seen on his father’s shoulders at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago election night gathering.

The Beijing summit carries significant stakes for Tesla. The company is seeking approval to launch its Full Self-Driving technology in China, the world’s largest auto market, while also pursuing regulatory clearance to transfer autonomous driving data overseas. Tesla faces intensifying competition from domestic manufacturers, including BYD.

I have only one thing to say about all this.  Well, not exactly me saying it, but anyway.

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different. ”

― F. Scott Fitzgeral

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a less sanguine take than Trump. “Trump weighs Taiwan arms package after summit aimed at steadying US-China ties. Trump and Xi Jinping wrapped up critical talks on Friday, claiming important progress in stabilizing U.S.-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he has not made a decision on whether to move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump’s comments on Taiwan — a self-ruled island that China claims as its own territory — came as he flew back to Washington after wrapping up critical talks in which both leaders said important progress was made in stabilizing U.S.-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran and Taiwan.

“I will make a determination,” Trump said. He added: “I’ll be making decisions. But, you know, I think the last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away.”

Trump’s Republican administration in December authorized a record-setting $11 billion weapons package for Taipei, but it has yet to move forward. Lawmakers also approved a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan in January, but the sale cannot advance until Trump formally sends it to Congress. China opposes such sales and has suggested that Washington’s relationship with the self-governing island is the key factor in U.S.-China relations.

Trump said Xi also reiterated China’s strong opposition to Taiwan’s independence. “I heard him out,” Trump said. “I didn’t make a comment.”

Trump’s consultation with Xi about arms sales to Taiwan may violate the so-called Six Assurances, a set of nonbinding U.S. policy principles formulated in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan that have helped guide the U.S. relationship with Taipei, according to analysts.

The second of the Six Assurances states that the U.S. “did not agree to consult with the People’s Republic of China on arms sales to Taiwan.”

Trump said the issue of the 1982 assurances came up in the talks with Xi.

Trump also said he raised a potential three-way nuclear deal that would involve the U.S., Russia and China. He wants each of the three countries to sign a pact that would cap the number of nuclear warheads in their arsenals. China has previously been cool to entering such a pact.

Beijing’s arsenal, according to Pentagon estimates, exceeds 600 warheads and is far from parity with the U.S. and Russia, which are each estimated to have more than 5,000 warheads. But Trump suggested Xi was receptive to the idea.

…

But the optimistic outlook collides with some difficult truths about the thorniest issues between the two superpowers.

Beijing has shown little public interest in U.S. entreaties to get more involved in solving the conflict in Iran, even though Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Xi had in their conversations offered to help.

In recent weeks, the U.S. State Department has accused Chinese firms of providing satellite imagery to the Iranian government, and the Treasury Department has moved to target Chinese oil refineries accused of buying oil from Tehran, as well as shippers of the oil.

Xi on Thursday warned Trump during private talks that their differences on Taiwan, if handled poorly, could hurtle the world’s dominant powers toward “clashes and even conflicts,” according to Chinese government officials.

But Trump, as he made his way home, said he was not concerned that the U.S.-China relationship was in danger. “I think we will be fine,” he said.

I’ll end with something to remind us that there are real consequences to the Trump Shit Show. This is from The Guardian.  I’ve been reading this newspaper in its earlier form, The Manchester Guardian, since high school. It never disappoints me. Here’s the headline: “13 men killed by US military boat strikes identified: ‘These were flesh-and-blood people’. All victims of US strikes in eastern Pacific and the Caribbean identified so far came from extremely poor communities.”

A five-month investigation has named 13 previously unidentified victims of US attacks on boats allegedly carrying narcotics in a campaign that has killed nearly 200 people in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

It is unclear if the US has ever identified any of its 194 victims before attacking them, and the names of just three had previously emerged, after their families launched legal cases against the White House.

The Trump administration has consistently sought to justify the killings, which began during last year’s military buildup towards Venezuela, by arguing those targeted were “narco-terrorists” transporting drugs to the US.

But a joint effort by 20 journalists led by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) this week published the identities of 13 of those killed, some of whom showed no indication of involvement in drug trafficking.

The CLIP’s report showed that all the victims identified so far, including those who may have had some involvement in drug trafficking, came from extremely poor communities across Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Despite the US claim that the strikes are fighting narco-terrorism, what is actually happening is that young people living in extremely precarious conditions, doing whatever work they can to support their families, are being targeted,” said María Teresa Ronderos, director and co-founder of the CLIP.

I can’t imagine a god blessing America under these circumstances unless it’s Hades or the Devil.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #ChinaUSRelations #CrazyFARTUSPolicies #ElonMusk #TradeDelegationOfBillionairesToChina #USAgriculture

Finally Friday Reads: Chaos Redux

“The Kings. Imagine if we had a Big Beautiful Bawlroom. I’m thinking Charles is grateful to be outdoors, just sayin’.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

This has been a bad week for our small d democracy. The Supreme Court attacked voting rights in a court case that basically decimated voting rights. Down here in Lousyana, our legislature and governor have raised the stakes. They’re delaying our election so they can gerrymander the state’s legislative district. They’ve also passed a law giving jail time to anyone smoking pot around a university campus.  Campus Potheads will likely wind up as state slaves out doing whatever local law enforcement needs doing, which has included some pretty shady things. It’s a lot like Jim Crow Redux. Is the South trying to rise again?

Then, there’s the Iran War. This has definitely reached Constitutional Crisis status.  Tess Bridgeman and Oona A. Hathaway from Just Security have this analysis. “At the 60-Day Mark, the Iran War is Triply Illegal.” Of course, should it head to SCOTUS, the right-wing justices will just make something up.

Today, May 1st, marks 60 days since President Donald Trump notified Congress that he initiated a war against Iran. The notification of Operation Epic Fury, which began two days earlier on Feb. 28, triggered the 60-day termination clock of the War Powers Resolution, a landmark statute passed by supermajorities in both congressional chambers over President Richard Nixon’s veto in an effort to reclaim Congress’s constitutional authority over decisions to wage war. Under that statute, Trump must now terminate the hostilities he began two months ago. He seems set against doing so. If he refuses, he will take a war that is already doubly illegal and turn it into a triply-illegal war.  He will also make it clear, if it was not already, that he regards the law as no constraint on his use of the U.S. military’s lethal power.

At the outset it should be made clear that President Trump’s war in Iran was illegal from the start. From the moment it began, Trump’s war with Iran violated the U.S. Constitution and the UN Charter.

First, the Constitution vests Congress, not the President, with the power to decide when the United States goes to war. The current conflict with Iran makes plain why placing this power in the peoples’ representatives, rather than the chief executive, was and remains so important. Democracy, it was thought then – and remains true now – is incompatible with the “one man decides” model in which a nation can be thrown into war on a single person’s whims. Requiring congressional authorization is not just a safeguard against potential incompetence, though that is plenty evident in the disastrous war of choice against Iran. It is also because the weighty decision to go to war should be made by the more deliberative branch of government, and the most politically accountable, that the authority to declare war resides in the list of Congress’ Article I powers, alongside a host of other powers on making, regulating, and funding war. (Of note, this war clearly crosses even the threshold the executive branch has set for itself on when it needs to turn to Congress to authorize force, though neither the Congress nor the courts have embraced the executive’s highly elastic test.)

Second, the war is a clear violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force except in legitimate self-defense against an armed attack (or imminent threat of one) or with Security Council authorization. Neither exist here. It is, put simply, a war of aggression. Other countries know this even if they have been nervous to call it out, fearing Trump’s wrath. It’s why we have so little international support–and why longstanding allies have refused even basic cooperation.

The manifest violation of the UN Charter also violates the U.S. Constitution: the president has a constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This duty applies to treaties that, under our Constitution, are the “supreme Law of the Land.” The UN Charter is clearly in this category, having earned Senate approval on an 89-2 vote.

While presidents have launched wars in violation of one or the other of these bodies of law in the past, the war in Iran stands out as a significant violation of both of these foundational laws at once. The President, in short, has claimed for himself the power to unleash the most powerful military the world has ever seen on the basis, as he famously put it, of his own morality.

Read more at the link to find out why it’s a triple threat today.  The outrage over the latest Supreme Court decision continues.  This analysis comes from Liberal Currents and is provided by Alan Elrod.  “The Supreme Court Delivers Another Victory for the Jim Crow Southernization of America. We must not forget how poorly buried the racial tyranny of the South’s past is in America’s present.”

In this context, the painful proximity of the Civil Rights Era and the Jim Crow abuses its reforms worked to end should be clear. And so the Roberts Court decision to effectively neuter Section 2 of the VRA, arguing that Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district is racially discriminatory—a ruling rooted in a view-from-nowhere, colorblind vision of race—lands as both profoundly unjust and historically illiterate. That it comes at a time when the Trump administration and wider MAGA movement are launching a frontal assault on the multicultural democracy built on the back of the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s threatens to plunge the country into a Neo-Jim Crow period of rights abuses and anti-democratic discriminations.

As Amy Howe wrote Wednesday for SCOTUSblog:

In a 36-page opinion, Alito explained that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race.” The question before the court, he said, is “whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act should be added to our very short list of compelling interests that can justify racial discrimination.”

As a general rule, Alito wrote, Section 2 of the VRA guarantees voters, including minority voters, an opportunity to cast a vote for their preferred candidate, but that candidate’s chances of success may be affected by the choices that the state is allowed to make when drawing a redistricting map – such as the desire to protect incumbents or increase the number of seats held by a particular political party. And under the Constitution, Alito continued, a violation of Section 2 only occurs when “the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred” – for example, when there are several possible maps that contain majority-minority districts, but the state “cannot provide a legitimate reason for rejecting all those maps.”

[…]

“In sum,” Alito concluded, “because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8. That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”

I argued last year at The Bulwark that the American South never truly took to liberal democracy, resisting the goals of both Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Era. Across the region, a culture of censorship, anti-LGBTQ policies, and draconian law enforcement and prison practices choke the dignity and pluralism that make free, diverse societies truly flourish. Under Trump and the contemporary GOP, a great national Southernization of politics appears underway. The Supreme Court’s decision this week threatens to help strengthen and accelerate this process. Consider what  Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent:

The Voting Rights Act is — or, now more accurately, was— ‘one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.’ It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality.

Kagan is right. As a Southerner, I am acutely aware of the blood spilt in the fight for human rights and dignity for Black people in America—the blood of soldiers, of activists and protesters, and of everyday people who had the temerity to exist in a white man’s world. One of the bloodiest racial massacres in our nation’s history took place in the Arkansas Delta, around the town of Elaine. A white mob set upon Black sharecroppers, with some estimates of the death toll reaching into the hundreds.

Read about “the context” at the link. Elrod writes about his own life experiences growing up in the deep South. He also discusses the events of the time. It’s a compelling read.  Greg Sargent, writing for The New Republic, has a must-read analysis about how bereft Trump is about what the Supreme Court decision really means. “Trump Has No Clue What His Supreme Court Has Just Unleashed. The Supreme Court decision on gerrymandering points in one direction only: Come 2028, Democrats have to declare a take-no-prisoners redistricting war on the GOP.”

Now that the Supreme Court has gutted yet another piece of the Voting Rights Act, this one concerning redistricting, here’s one thing we know for sure: Democrats will have to enter into a new era of procedural total war. That might make many of them uncomfortable, but when it comes to the future of the liberal agenda, the stakes are enormous.

With Donald Trump’s active encouragement, Republicans are already seizing on the ruling—which essentially dismantled protections against racial gerrymandering—to threaten to redraw maps in the South to eliminate numerous congressional seats with Black representatives. While it’s largely too late to do so this cycle, Republicans will likely launch mid-decade redistricting in many Southern states heading into 2028, eliminating as many as 19 more Democratic seats in hopes of locking in a near-permanent GOP majority.
In substantive and legal terms, this outcome is awful—see this overview from TNR’s Matt Ford for a full rundown—but in a purely political sense, is this Armageddon for Democrats? Not necessarily. The reason? Democrats can move to redraw maps in time for the 2028 elections in states where they control the legislatures.

Which points to one big takeaway from the court ruling: State legislative races—which already attract too little attention—just got a lot more important. Many races underway now will help determine the party’s long-term prospects in the scorched-earth conflict that’s about to unfold.

According to a new analysis by Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group, Democrats could redraw anywhere from 10 to 22 additional congressional seats for the party in time for the 2028 elections if they push hard with redistricting in seven blue and swing states. The analysis—which is circulating among Democratic leadership aides and outside groups and was obtained by TNR—concludes that being aggressive could theoretically offset Republican gains, even in a maximalist GOP redistricting scenario.

“Democrats have a clear path to neutralize this GOP power grab if they want to take it,” Max Flugrath, senior communications director of Fair Fight Action, told me. “This is the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ moment for American democracy.”

The range of potential Democratic gains is so broad because so much depends on which party controls key state legislatures after the fall elections. Strikingly, even if Democrats flip zero chambers, they can redraw up to 10 additional congressional districts for the party, the analysis finds, by maximizing gerrymanders in New York, Colorado, Oregon, and Maryland, where Democrats control governorships and state legislatures.

But even more strikingly, Democrats could redraw as many as 22 additional congressional districts for the party overall if they flip legislative chambers in other states and redraw aggressively in them, the analysis finds.

All of this shouldn’t distract from other stories.  The mainstream media has definitely dropped the conversation on the Epstein files. Other stories and questions still linger.   David Lurie writes this for Public Notice. “Trump’s Reichstag fire presidency is immolating. The media personality in the White House has been exposed as a crisis actor.”

The day after an alleged gunman tried to barge into the White House Correspondents Dinner, Todd Blanche — the nation’s chief law enforcement official — appeared on national television to denounce that act of political violence.

But during the very same news conference, Blanche also signaled the president may vacate the convictions of terrorists found guilty of scheming to attack the government of the United States on behalf of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021.

“They were convicted, but President Trump, as is his right and duty under our Constitution, commuted or pardoned those individuals,” Blanche said.

BASH: Do you plan to vacate convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol?

BLANCHE: That’s ongoing litigation. You’ll hear from us in the coming days. Their sentences were commuted by President Trump

BASH: You’re not ruling it out?

BLANCHE: No. We’re not ruling anything out

This perverse contradiction epitomizes the era of Late Trumpism, in which the rewriting of history and systemic abuses of power are ramping up while Trump’s political power is collapsing.

What follows is an amazing list of Trump performances likened to similar performances by Hitler. I used to shiver when anyone jumped the shark to compare someone to Hitler, but this is a truly amazing and long list of similarities. I also consider it a must-read today.  Meanwhile, American Citizens are losing access to their most basic needs. This is from the New York Times.  “Since Congress Let Obamacare Subsidies Expire, Millions Are Dropping Coverage. Americans can’t afford the higher health insurance premiums that resulted from Congress’s refusal to extend federal tax credits.” Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz have the lede.

Millions of Americans appear to be dropping Obamacare coverage in the months since Congress failed to extend the generous subsidies that had become a defining feature of the Affordable Care Act.

Initial sign-ups had already fallen by about 1.2 million people. But insurance companies, state officials and industry analysts are reporting that many more have lost Obamacare coverage now that people are facing long-term higher costs. The federal government has yet to report current enrollment data.

Many insurers and analysts are estimating overall declines of about 20 percent, dropping to around 19 million from the 24 million who were covered under the A.C.A. last year. Other indications suggest there could be even larger potential losses by the end of the year, a deep retrenchment for Obamacare coverage and a reversal of significant gains in the last several years.

The rising cost of health care has shown up as a top concern among Americans in several public opinion polls. Premiums are rising for Americans who get insurance through work, too, as health care costs have been increasing nationwide. Out-of-pocket costs are growing too, as plans with high deductibles have become popular.

Though health care has faded somewhat as a priority for the Republican-controlled Congress since lawmakers hit a stalemate over the subsidies at the end of 2025, it is likely to figure prominently in the midterm elections this year.

One analysis, by Wakely Consulting Group, a firm with access to detailed insurance industry data, estimates that coverage in the marketplaces will drop by as much as 26 percent this year compared with last year’s average enrollment.

In Georgia, where coverage had nearly tripled since Congress first authorized the extra financial help in 2021, state data show enrollment has fallen by more than a third, according to information obtained by the news organizations The Current GA and The Georgia Recorder.

The Georgia state insurance department did not respond to a request for comment.

Some Blue Cross plans lost 20 to 30 percent of customers this year. And many people are switching to plans with lower premiums but much higher out-of-pocket costs, said David Merritt, a spokesman for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. “We are waiting on official data like everyone else,” he said.

The insurers and state officials said early retirees with middle-class incomes, who faced the largest increases in premiums, appeared to be among the hardest hit. In some markets, the cost of insurance for this group rose by $1,000 a month or more.

Meanwhile, the horrid state of Nebraska, where I had lived before escaping to New Orleans, literally wants poor people to work themselves to death, one way or another. Here’s a headline from The Hill. “Nebraska faces challenges as first state to impose Medicaid work requirements under GOP bill.”

Nebraska on Friday is set to become the first state to impose Medicaid work requirements under the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, racing ahead of the national deadline by eight months.

Nebraska’s experience will be a key test for Republicans who have been championing work requirements, as it could be an indicator of what the rest of the country will face when the policy takes effect nationwide.

The only two states that have enacted similar rules — Arkansas and Georgia — found they did not increase employment, caused tens of thousands of people to lose coverage and cost the states millions of dollars.

In Nebraska, Medicaid advocates and health policy experts fear similar coverage losses as people get buried under a blizzard of red tape. The law’s implementation timeline was already compressed, and they said Nebraska’s decision to rush ahead will be disastrous.

For instance, the state just this week released hundreds of pages with key details about who will qualify for a “medically frail” exemption.

“Unfortunately, when we have a rush job, we usually see bad results, and this is shaping up to be the case,” said Sarah Maresh, the program director for health care access at the nonprofit Nebraska Appleseed.

Work requirements have been a priority for President Trump and congressional Republicans since his first term.

The GOP’s tax and spending megabill used work requirements to partially pay for its nearly $3 trillion price tag. The Congressional Budget Office estimated nearly 5 million people will lose their Medicaid over the next decade as a result, including many who are already working.

GOP officials argue work requirements are needed to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicaid program, and they will only target the “able-bodied” people who should be working but choose not to.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) has said he wants to promote self-sufficiency.

“It’s a key piece of giving the discipline for our families to be successful. It’s a key piece of self-worth. It’s a key piece of mental health and stability,” Pillen said in December when he announced the state would implement the requirements early.

All of this must be offset at the polls, even with the shenanigans set off by SCOTUS and the Republicans in Congress.  Heather Cox Richardson highlights polling numbers in her SubStack today.

Today G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted that Trump has hit a new low in overall job performance and in his handling of the economy, at -22.2 and -40.3, respectively. Those numbers reflect the percentage of people who approve of his handling of an issue minus those who disapprove. Indeed, Morris noted that Trump’s approval rating on the economy is so low it “literally broke the scale of this graph on my data portal.”

On Tuesday, Morris explained in Strength in Numbers that while Republicans have lately been arguing that they simply need to get people to show up to win the midterms, turnout is not their problem. Their real problem is that voters don’t like what Trump is doing.

An obvious symbol of Trump’s presidency is his unilateral decision to tear down the East Wing of the White House and replace it with a giant ballroom. A new Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll released today shows that Americans oppose the ballroom by a margin of about two to one. Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose it, while only 28% support it. Of those who oppose it, 47% oppose it strongly.

Dan Diamond and Scott Clement of the Washington Post note that people don’t like Trump’s proposed triumphal arch, either—52% opposed versus 21% in favor—or the idea of Trump’s signature on paper money. Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose that plan, while only 12% support it. Even Republicans oppose it 40% to 28%.

And then there is Trump’s war on Iran. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that only 34% of Americans approve of the strikes on Iran, while 61% oppose them. Gas prices continue to rise, with Brent crude futures today briefly topping $114 a barrel—the highest price since June 2022, shortly after Russia launched its attack on Ukraine. Senator Angus King (I-ME) noted on CNN today that these higher prices are currently costing American consumers about $700 million a day.

On his Substack today, economist Paul Krugman noted that the acronym “TACO,” for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” has been replaced by “NACHO”: “Not A Chance Hormuz Opens.” Krugman explains that Iran is unlikely to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil passed before Israel and the U.S. began airstrikes against Iran on February 28, 2026, until “the economic damage from its closure becomes much more severe.”

She has more good news, so we can end it here, and you may go read it all!

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T8Vy_PSawo?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&listType=playlist&list=RD1T8Vy_PSawo&w=590&h=332]

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CadetBonespurSIranWar #jimCrow #TrumpPollNumbers #votingRights

Finally, Friday Reads: Continued Chaos in Congress and American Policy

“So, since Trump has defeated Venezuela and Iran. Is the Vatican after Cuba, or is that Greenland? So hard to keep track.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’d like to thank JJ again for covering for me on Monday. I’m not sure what’s been going on with my stomach, but the daily news sure doesn’t help! Today’s biggest headline for me is a decision that will impact Louisiana and likely any part of the country where big oil continues to wreck the environment and sicken and murder people with their business practices. It’s a discouraging decision. I have always thought my own bout with an extremely rare form of cancer was due to oil leaking into the drinking water in Ponca City, Oklahoma, where I was born.

This story is from the Washington Post. “Supreme Court hands win to Chevron, Big Oil in environmental damage case. The decision puts into question a $745 million judgment against Chevron to help restore coastal wetlands in Louisiana that were damaged as long ago as World War II.” As you may know, the damage to the wetlands down here is immense, and it’s one of the reasons hurricane season is quite frightening. The industry is deadly for all forms of life. Julian Mark reports on the decision.

This decision seems to say that if they did what they did for a war the government ran, then it’s okay if they ruin our lives. That’s pretty frightening in my estimation. What other things could this apply to?  What would it have done to the Agent Orange victims in our military?

The Supreme Court on Friday sided with oil giant Chevron, ruling that it can fight an environmental damage lawsuit in federal court — a decision that could affect the outcomes of nearly a dozen other lawsuits that make similar allegations about the oil and gas industry.

The unanimous decision puts into question a $745 million state court judgment against Chevron to help restore coastal wetlands in Louisiana that were damaged as far back as World War II. Chevron had asked the Supreme Court to order the case moved to federal court.

At the heart of Chevron’s case was the argument that during World War II, the firm’s predecessors played a key role in the refinement of aviation gas, or avgas, to meet the demands of the war. Because the work was on behalf of U.S. government interests, the company and its backers have argued, claims regarding the actions at the time should be heard in a federal court rather than at the state level. The high court agreed.

“In this all-hands-on-deck, wartime context, Chevron needed to produce more crude oil as quickly as possible to facilitate more avgas refining, including its own,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority.

Chevron applauded the decision. “As the Court recognized, the plaintiffs’ claims are related to activities that Chevron and other energy companies performed under federal supervision during World War II,” company spokesman Bill Turenne said in a statement. “Those claims are flawed as a matter of both state law and federal law, and Chevron looks forward to litigating these cases in federal court, where they belong.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not participate in the case. Shortly before arguments in January, he recused himself, citing financial interests in ConocoPhillips, the parent of Burlington Resources Oil & Gas, a party in a related case.

Just a side note: ConocoPhillips was responsible for all the oil that leaked into my small Oklahoma hometown. This story is breaking, so be sure to follow up later as more analysis becomes available.

Lots of weirdness is happening in Congress this week as Democrats put a toe in the water to test the chances of yet another impeachment process. However, there is more afoot. Heather Cox Richardson discusses some of these issues on her Substack today.

Congress is back in session, and there is a frantic feel in the air. Republicans appear to be assessing the fall of Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán, Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior along with his abysmal job approval numbers, rising prices, and an unpopular war in Iran that currently does not appear to have a solution that will not result in the U.S. losing face.

In Hungary, incoming prime minister Péter Magyar is setting a bar as he appears to want no part of playing business as usual with Orbán’s cronies. A center-right politician, Magyar appeared as a guest on state television after his party’s dramatic win—Orbán’s state media had not let him appear on it before the election—and said he intended to suspend the station’s news service because state media does not provide the journalism that the country deserves. He said that he would end the state subsidies for Orbán’s right-wing-allied university and that Hungarian president Tamas Sulyok, a close ally of Orbán, was “unfit to serve as the guardian of legality” and “must leave office immediately.”

Republicans appear to be trying to grab all the turf they can before the midterm elections.

Today the Senate passed House Joint Resolution 140, a bill that overturns a 20-year mining ban upstream from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) in Minnesota. Representative Pete Stauber (R-MN) introduced the measure, which passed the House in January. It clears the way for a subsidiary of Chilean mining giant Antofagasta to engage in copper-sulfide mining, which produces sulfuric acid, above the pristine BWCA. Those waters include 1,175 lakes and over 1,200 miles of rivers and streams. According to outdoor writer Wes Siler, about 165,000 people visit the BWCA annually, generating $1.1 billion in economic activity and supporting 17,000 jobs.

The Republicans’ attack on the BWCA for the benefit of a foreign billionaire feeds President Donald J. Trump’s ongoing crusade against Minnesota. Trump’s secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, is targeting New York today as well, saying that the federal government will withhold $73.5 million from the state because it has refused to review the commercial driver’s licenses of almost 33,000 immigrants. New York officials say they are complying with federal law.

Trump is also continuing to try to exert his personal power over the government, threatening again to fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, whose term as chair ends in May but who has said he will continue on the board until the administration drops its trumped-up criminal investigation of him over alleged cost overruns on the renovations of Federal Reserve* buildings.

As Jacob Rosen and Olivia Gazis of CBS News noted, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is supporting Trump’s attacks on those he perceives to be his enemies by sending to the Department of Justice two criminal referrals yesterday. One is for the former government official who was the whistleblower over the July 2019 phone call in which Trump told Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky he would release money the U.S. Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s 2014 incursion…but only after Zelensky did him the “favor” of smearing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

The whistleblower told the intelligence community inspector general: “I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.”

Gabbard’s second referral is for the inspector general, Michael Atkinson, who found the complaint “credible” and “urgent” and set in motion the process of sharing it with the congressional intelligence committees, which led to Trump’s first impeachment.

As Representative Jim Himes (D-CT), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, noted, the effort to criminalize whistleblowing from 2019 for what was Trump’s well-established behavior is most likely an attempt to chill future whistleblower complaints.

There certainly appears to be concern on the part of MAGA loyalists that they are in danger of losing power, and that might mean legal repercussions. Testifying before the Senate Budget Committee today, Director of Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought denied that he had held back funds Congress had appropriated. Doing so is called “impoundment,” and it is illegal, but the administration has been engaged in it since it took office in January 2025.

There is a hell of a lot more in this piece, and it’s worth reading. I’m fairly jaded by now, so I don’t think it will actually amount to much. I’m still relying on voters. to come through. I’m into more election-related victories, including this one in New Jersey reported in Politico.  “Progressive Analilia Mejia coasts to victory in New Jersey special House election. The Democratic will fill the seat held by Gov. Mikie Sherrill.”  Madison Fernandez has the analysis.

Progressive organizer Analilia Mejia will succeed Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, adding to a run of party victories that suggest voter dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump ahead of the midterms.

Mejia defeated Republican Randolph Township Councilmember Joe Hathaway in Thursday’s special election, according to the Associated Press.

In a victory speech, Mejia labeled her opponent and Republicans such as Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, as well as billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, “radicals who are willing to upend our democracy, subvert our Constitution and act with impunity.”

“We must stop them,” she said. “These radicals will watch Rome burn with all of us within, and they are simply cowards — cowards unwilling to stand up to this madness. But we stand up, we resist, we will not allow it to continue.”

Hathaway conceded defeat but said he intends to challenge her again since there will be a regular primary in June and general election in November. He said he will keep a close eye on her voting record in the meantime and “will continue fighting for affordability, public safety, accountable government, and I will continue to stand up for the families of NJ-11.”

Mejia entered as the favorite for the affluent, blue-leaning North Jersey seat after an unexpected victory in February’s Democratic primary — a race that featured nearly a dozen candidates, including many who spent more and had higher name ID than Mejia.

In the primary, hefty outside spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee against former Rep. Tom Malinowski in part helped propel Mejia to a win. But outside groups on both sides of the aisle largely stayed out of the special general election — money that could have otherwise made the race more competitive.

Republicans — who are looking to rebuild after brutal losses in the state last year — tried to make the argument that Mejia was too far to the left of the district. Sherrill, a moderate Democrat, first flipped the seat in 2018 and won reelection handily in the years after that; former Vice President Kamala Harris won by around 9 points in 2024. Like in other races across the country, the GOP was eager to refer to Mejia as a “socialist” — a label she did not identify with — and compare her to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

But that message didn’t land among the electorate, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 60,000. Mejia also garnered support from Democrats across the ideological spectrum in her general election campaign.

Yesterday, in my social feeds, I started seeing references to a "Rape Academy" that's recently been exposed. This feels like something that should be a top headline at every news outlet. Completely inadequate news coverage of it. But at least some with a big audience are writing/speaking about it.

— Dave (@flowstateneworleans.com) 2026-04-17T16:14:03.012Z

Turnout is always key. Also, I have a feeling women voters will be hitting the polls hard between the Epstein files and the rampant misogyny in the Republican line-up. It’s likely why our votes are threatened by the Save America Act. Here’s some analysis by Al Jazeera. “What is Trump-backed SAVE America Act and what could it mean for US vote? Senate resumes debate on controversial bill requiring more proof of citizenship, which Trump calls top priority.” Yes, it attacks all immigrants, but it also threatens women who can’t document the name changes from birth to marriage(s).

Here’s what to know.

What would the SAVE America Act do?

The version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act passed by the House in February would require voters to provide proof of citizenship – a birth certificate or passport – when registering to vote. It would also implement stricter voter identification requirements for individuals casting ballots, whether by mail or in person.

Under the US Constitution, states administer elections, and currently have different processes for registering voters and confirming citizenship. Voting by noncitizens is already illegal, and all people registering to vote attest they are US citizens under threat of perjury.

The bill does not provide any funding for the new verification processes, which would be effective immediately upon the bill being signed into law.

The legislation would also require all states to run their voter rolls through a US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) “Alien Verification Eligibility” system to identify potential noncitizens already enrolled.

What has Trump said about the SAVE Act?

The US president has long maintained that elections in the country are marred by widespread fraud, including noncitizen voting, despite there being no evidence to support these claims.

Even the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has influenced many of Trump’s policies, has found only exceedingly rare instances of voter fraud over decades of US elections.

Trump’s focus on election administration dates back to his 2020 loss to former US President Joe Biden, which he continues to maintain was the result of the vote being “stolen”. Again, no evidence has emerged to back those claims.

The president has called the SAVE America Act “one of the most IMPORTANT & CONSEQUENTIAL pieces of legislation in the history of Congress, and America itself”.

Screenshot

Pete Hegseth is letting his freak fly over the incredible amount of negative media and public response to the Iran War. This is from NBC News.  “Pete Hegseth attacks ‘unpatriotic’ media and compares reporters to Jewish biblical group. The defense secretary has frequently attacked the media over Iran war coverage.” It’s really surprising to me how Orange Caligula and his weirdo cabinet members seem to think they know biblical texts better than anyone else, including the Pope. This analysis is written by Rich Schapiro. Also, aren’t the Pharisees supposed to be the bad guys in the Jesus story? At least, that’s what the Presbyterians taught me.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth escalated his attacks on the media Thursday, comparing reporters covering the Iran war to the Pharisees, the biblical Jewish group that opposed Jesus.

The comments came at a Pentagon press briefing in which Hegseth first described the American media as “incredibly unpatriotic.”

“I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling, despite the historic and important success of this effort and the success of our troops,” Hegseth said, referring to the Iran war.

“Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” he added.

Since the fighting began in late February, Hegseth, who is Christian, has frequently used religious rhetoric at news conferences and attacked the media over its coverage. But he went further Thursday by doing so with religious overtones.

Hegseth said he was at church on Sunday when his pastor read a Bible passage that described Jesus healing a man in front of the Pharisees, “the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time.”

“Our press are just like these Pharisees — not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press. Your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors,” he said.

Hegseth added: “The Pharisees scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation, only looking for the negative. The hardened hearts of our press are calibrated only to impugn. I would ask you to open your eyes to the goodness, the historic success of our troops, the courage of this president.”

Hegseth was a member of the media — a Fox News host — before President Donald Trump tapped him to lead the Defense Department. Like some other members of the Trump administration, his use of Christian rhetoric in public statements is a departure from the language used by his predecessors.

In celebration of my goal of better emotional and mental health, I have canceled my cable TV news subscription. I can no longer stand to watch any of these idiots speaking and moving around like they’re live human beings or something. I’m strictly sticking to the places where I can get a timeline without sacrificing my eyes and stomach. I’m hoping this helps the tummy and the budget, which is tighter than I’ve ever had it.

Wired is one media outlet that is on my keep list. David Gilbert writes this analysis today. “MAGA Is Increasingly Convinced the Trump Assassination Attempt Was Staged. Conspiracy theories about the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting have ramped up in recent weeks as once steadfast Trump supporters turn on the president.”

Are they really waking up? Finally?

In recent weeks, as criticism of President Donald Trump from his own supporters has reached a fever pitch, a new conspiracy theory has taken hold: Some of the president’s biggest supporters are now claiming, without evidence, that Trump staged the assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024 and is covering it up.

During an open-air campaign rally on July 13, 2024, Trump survived an attempted assassination when a bullet fired by a 20-year-old on a roof nearby clipped the top of his ear. Corey Comperatore, a Trump supporter sitting near the president, was shot and killed. The shooter was later killed by Secret Service agents. Conspiracy theories around the Butler assassination quickly permeated the internet, but for many Trump supporters, his survival was seen as a sign from God that he was the chosen one.

As Trump’s hold over MAGA has waned, though, an increasing number of his supporters have begun to push the narrative that the entire incident was staged.

“I think that maybe it was staged,” Tim Dillon said on his show last weekend about the assassination attempt. Dillon, who was previously a staunch Trump supporter, went on to share that Trump should now come out and say, “Some people are going to be upset by this, but we staged the assassination attempt in Butler to show people how important it was to vote for me and how far I was willing to go for them.”

Some of these claims began months ago. In November, former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson promoted the idea that the FBI was somehow involved in covering up the shooting, writing on X that the “FBI lied” about the shooter’s online footprint.

A day later, conservative pundit Emerald Robinson went further, posting on X that the FBI “did it.” (In the same post, Robinson claimed that the agency was responsible for everything from the January 6 attack on the Capitol to “Jeffrey Epstein’s blackmail tapes” and the “Gov. Whitmer fake kidnap plot.”)

But the claims that Trump had staged the entire thing really picked up steam when former US National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent appeared on Carlson’s podcast last month, one day after he resigned from his position over the Iran war.

During the interview, Carlson and Kent discussed the failure of the Trump administration to provide more details about the Pennsylvania shooter. Kent claimed, without providing any evidence, that investigations into the shooting had been shut down before they finished.

Kent also claimed that this vacuum of information about the incident would lead to more conspiracy theories. “If you don’t want to address that question, then you just go silent and say you can’t ask that question,” he said. “Which then creates people who come out of nowhere and they start drawing their own conclusions.” (This is in fact, experts say, one basic dynamic behind conspiracy theorizing.)

“If you cannot look at this story and use critical thinking skills and have at least some questions, you are the problem and we need you to snap out of it,” Trisha Hope, a GOP national delegate from Texas and former Trump supporter, posted on X about Butler this week.

As usual, more to read at all the links!

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTfYnRQgKgY?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=590&h=332]

 

#2026Midterms #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #BigOilAndSCOTUS #MAGAAndCongressTurnOnTRUMP #MikieSherrill #PeteHegsethWeirdoSexualAssaulter #SAVEAmericaAct #TrumpTheologicalWeirdness

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?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGx7JkFSp4?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=590&h=332]

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DonaldTrump #PamBondiWeirdo #TrumplicanMisogyny

Finally Friday Reads: Breaking Crazy

“One thing really stands out about trump’s latest Cabinet Love Fest, which can only be interpreted one way, he actually said something factual!” John Buss. @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

You don’t need to be a mental health expert to realize that something is very wrong with Orange Caligula’s brain. As usual, I didn’t watch or listen to his displays of dementia, narcissism, and stupidity because it’s its own form of torture. But I did see some cuts and takes on various social media outlets. I think it’s important to see just exactly how far his deterioration has gone and how that’s impacting policies that are extremely damaging for our country and the world.

The Guardian’s Andrew Feinberg reports the debacle this way. “‘Could only happen to Trump’: President hijacks Cabinet meeting to cry about lawsuits over his radical DC plans. President launches into extended stemwinder of grievances ranging from lawsuits over the Kennedy Center to the Justice Department’s failure to bring sham charges against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.”

President Donald Trump spent roughly 15 minutes of a cabinet meeting on Thursday complaining about a historic preservation group’s efforts to block him from shutting down the Kennedy Center for a purported preservation and grousing about the Justice Department being unable to prosecute the chairman of the Federal Reserve over their renovation.

The president was in the middle of a long soliloquy about fixing up the Washington, DC-based arts center — which was built in honor of assassinated President John F. Kennedy — when he began to claim the controversial renovation would be “under budget, ahead of schedule” and unfavorably compared the project to the long-running rehab of the nearly century-old Federal Reserve headquarters.

He quickly pivoted to airing a related grievance about the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a congressionally chartered nonprofit that has filed multiple lawsuits against his administration to block the construction of his planned White House ballroom after he ordered the historic East Wing reduced to rubble last fall.

“Everything I do, I get sued. Under budget, ahead of schedule, I get sued over a ballroom that’s going to be the most beautiful ballroom in the country … we get sued by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. They don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

He also complained that he’d separately been facing litigation over the Kennedy Center project and suggested the lawsuit was only attributable to the center’s board — made up of loyalists he appointed after taking office and sacking the previous leadership — adding his name to the name of the organization.

“Then I just found out we got sued by that group and another group … I guess on the fixing up of again, I’ll use the old name Kennedy Center — it’s going to be beautiful when you add the name Trump,” he said.

“But we got sued, and all I’m doing is fixing it up. We’re fixing broken marble. We’re putting on a roof because it leaks like a sieve. We’re fixing steel that’s broken. Same building, same exact building we’re fixing. It’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be so beautiful and safe … but think of it. I get sued because I’m fixing up the Trump Kennedy Center. We’re going to make it gorgeous and safe. We’re fixing new windows, do this, but just all fix up. I got sued by preservationists.”

“This could only happen to Trump,” he added.

The president eventually pivoted back to attacking the Federal Reserve renovation and the central bank’s chairman, Jerome Powell, with whom he has spent years feuding over Powell’s failure to keep interest rates low to help Republicans’ electoral prospects.

This PBS News headline shows the lies Trump’s spreading on the Iran War. “WATCH: Trump says in Cabinet meeting he doesn’t ‘know if we’re willing’ to make a deal with Iran.”

President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that Iran is “begging” to make a deal.

Watch in our video player above.

The president, speaking at the start of a Thursday Cabinet meeting, said he wanted to “set the record straight” that he isn’t the one pushing for a deal.

WATCH: Iran rejects Trump’s ceasefire terms and issues own demands as war continues

“They’re begging to make a deal, not me,” Trump said.

Iranian officials have denied that they’re negotiating with the U.S. as the war continues in its fourth week. Trump insisted they are.

“Anybody would know they’re talking,” he said. “They’re not fools, they’re very smart actually in a certain way. And they’re great negotiators. I say they’re lousy fighters but they’re great negotiators.”

What kind of crazy does it take to negotiate with this kind of language?  Lousy fighters?  Read more about the meeting at the link. People Magazine reports an incident that sounds like the sounds like the strawberry incident in The Caine Mutiny. “Trump Rambles About Sharpie Pens for 5 Straight Minutes During High-Level Cabinet Meeting amid Iran War. The president said he was sharing “a business story” near the end of his lengthy tangent.”

Donald Trump embarked on an unrelated and rambling story about Sharpie pens during a Cabinet meeting this week.

On Thursday, March 26, the 79-year-old president met with members of his Cabinet, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. During the meeting, they discussed topics ranging from the war in Iran to his decision to vote by mail in a recent Florida special election in his home district of Palm Beach.

At one point, Trump broke into a story about his use of Sharpie-brand pens while discussing renovations that are ongoing at the Federal Reserve. He blasted the project as being unnecessarily expensive, saying that he could have done it for much less and that “it would be better” than the current project.

After blaming “incompetent people” in the government for “a lot of problems” currently affecting the United States, he picked up a Sharpie on the table and started his story.

“See this pen right here? This pen is an interesting example. It’s the same thing. So, this pen is very inexpensive, but it writes well. I like it. But I can’t have the pen the way it was. You know what it is; I don’t want to give too much publicity, but they do treat me well. Sharpie,” he said.

Trump said that when he came to the White House they had “$1,000 pens” [of a different brand] and that he’d often give them away to as many as 30 or 40 people while signing autographs.

“They were $1,000 a piece. Beautiful pen. Ballpoint. Thousand. It was gold, silver, gorgeous. But I’m handing them out to kids that don’t even know what they … ‘What’s this, mommy?’ These kids, they’re getting a pen for $1,000. They have no idea what it is,” he said, adding that he felt “guilty” that he wasn’t saving the government money.

On top of being expensive, the pens “had another problem,” he said. “They didn’t write well. So I take it out, and I sign and there’s no ink. And I’ve got all you people [the assembled press] looking, and you’re saying, ‘There must be something wrong with Trump.’ And I’m signing and there’s no ink the pen and it costs $1,000.”

Irritated by what he implied was government waste, he said that he reached out to Sharpie and said he’d “like to use your pen, but I can’t have a gray thing with a big ‘S’ on it.’ “

Meanwhile, what does it say when you’re base want’s you impeached?

CPAC speaker: How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?Crowd: *cheers*CPAC speaker: No. That was the wrong answer. Let me try it again…

— Headquarters (@headquartersnews.bsky.social) 2026-03-27T15:54:35.229Z

Lisa Needham, writing for Public Notice, asks this great question. “What do you do when you can’t trust the government? The haze of contradictions and confusion is a feature, not a bug.”

We’re a month into President Donald Trump’s increasingly disastrous Iran war, and we have no idea what’s really going on.

In part, that’s because Trump is now nothing but a creature of pure id surrounded by enablers, running the country like an enormous out-of-control toddler. But it’s also because the administration is not at all interested in providing the American people with objective, reliable information.

That erasure of truth leaves us unmoored.

Trump’s increasing instability was always going to lead to chaotic, contradictory statements about the war, blurting out whatever ideas have taken hold in the nest of spiders inside his head.

TRUMP: "This war has been won"TRUMP MINUTES LATER: "People don't like me using the word 'war,' so I won't"ALSO TRUMP DURING SAME EVENT: "They call it a war. I call it a military operation"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-03-24T19:45:51.459Z

These constant reversals about what he plans to do next aren’t always random or delusional, but the sheer volume of Trumpian proclamations that seem divorced from reality does a terrific job of obscuring when something is deliberate.

That was the case at least until earlier this week, when Trump decided to use the Iran war to engage in a little light market manipulation. Well, some pretty hefty market manipulation, actually.

Heather Cox Richardson has some even more damning evidence at her SubStack.

In an interview with Reuters on Monday, Singapore’s minister for foreign affairs, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, put in bald language the change in the world order instigated by President Donald J. Trump.

“For 80 years,” Balakrishnan explained, “the US was the underwriter for a system of globalisation based on UN Charter principles, multilateralism, territorial integrity, sovereign equality.” That system “heralded an unprecedented and unique period of global prosperity and peace. Of course there were exceptions. And of course, the Cold War was still in effect for at least half of the last 80 years. But generally, for those of us who were non-communists, who ran open economies, who provided first world infrastructure, together with a hardworking disciplined people, we had unprecedented opportunities.

“The story of Singapore, with a per capita GDP of 500 US dollars in 1965. Now, [it is] somewhere between 80,000 to 90,000 US dollars. It would not have happened if it had not been for this unprecedented period, basically Pax Americana and then turbocharged by the reform and opening of China for decades. It has been unprecedented. It has been great for many of us. In fact, I will say, for all of us, if you look back 80 years.

“But now, whether you like it or not, objectively, this period has ended…. Basically, the underwriter of this world order has now become a revisionist power, and some people would even say a disruptor. But the larger point is that the erosion of norms, processes, and institutions that underpinned a remarkable period of peace and prosperity; that foundation has gone.”

In its place, as scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder said to me in a YouTube conversation yesterday, Trump is aligning himself with international oligarchs like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), and China’s Xi Jinping. Because of his position as the president of the United States of America, this means he is aligning the United States of America with this oligarchical axis as well, abandoning the country’s democratic principles and traditional allies.

Our foreign policy was never pristine.  All you have to do is look at the CIA during the post World War 2 years to see adventurism in South America, Africa, and Southeastern Asia to see that.  However, we did assert some global leadership that created some stability, peace, and trade agreements. Now, all bets are off with us under Trump.

The craziness just continues and the disruption to what once was a mostly functioning democratic republic is obvious. How about this bit of narcissim?  This is from today’s New York Times. “Trump’s Signature Is Set to Be Added to America’s Currency. President Trump is poised to be the first sitting president to have his signature appear on the U.S. dollar.”

Or just another story coming about some asshole cabinet member.  This one from the head of the “Department of War.”  It’s also from the New York Times. “Hegseth Strikes Two Black and Two Female Officers From Promotion List, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s highly unusual decision to remove officers from a one-star promotion list has spurred allegations of racial and gender bias.”

They’re rewriting the script on every value this country has held.

Well, I’m off to the long, wretched task of reworking my mortgage just so I can fix somethings on my house. As a person who has been a banker on all kinds of levels from the FED to a communithy bank I can tell you that I have never seen such a mess. I’m certain I have all this AI shit to thank for it. The documentation requirements are just unbelievable.

I hope your weekend goes well and that you can manage to stay above the news and the national fray.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Sweet Goddesses, I miss performaning this song in the Quarter. I need to go back to gigging.  Anything’s better than teaching Economics in this damn environment.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97hwNY3ni10?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=590&h=332]

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CadetBonespurSIranWar #OrangeCaligulaSCabinetCrazy #USMisleadership

Mostly Monday Reads: Presidents Day in a Lost Country

“The latest cabinet meetings aren’t televised for a reason. Fear not, our de facto leader is in control as the ethnic cleansing of the country formerly known as the United States roars ahead unabated. The must-see TV drama not being broadcast is Whose Turn Is It to Change the Old Guy’s Diaper?” John Buss, @repeat 1968

Good Day Sky Dancers!

As we stare down the 250th anniversary of the day our country started its journey from monarchy to democracy, we have to take a look at where we’ve landed today and utter some word of disappointment. The headlines today are filled with references to autocracy, and it’s not difficult to see how the MAGA/Trump overreach is playing out.

Politico sums up the current situation like this. “Trump’s second year: Whiplash. Even proposals that don’t ultimately move forward have consequences.” I’d just like a few more adjectives like weird, cruel, and inexplicably unnecessary.

President Donald Trump’s first year back in office was defined by sweeping upheaval that was largely plotted out during his four-year Florida exile. But the president has somehow intensified the volatility in year two with a succession of whiplash-inducing policy swings, several of which have almost immediately withered in the face of Republican opposition and public outcry.

The administration this week finally withdrew the thousands of federal law enforcement officers from Minneapolis, after violent and at times deadly clashes with protesters turned the tide of public opinion against the president’s immigration crackdown.

It came after Trump threatened to decertify Canadian aircraft, a move deemed “unjustified and dangerous” by a Washington-based aerospace trade union that the president soon dropped. Trump said in early January that he’d cap credit card rates at 10 percent, a move that would have upended the banking industry, only to change his mind and ask Congress for legislation.

Also last month, Trump’s administration paused millions in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for state public health infrastructure — only to reverse course roughly 24 hours later.

“The whiplash has real implications,” said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a forum of the leaders of metropolitan health departments. “It’s incredibly disruptive, even if you can get back to continuing the work, you know, two days later.”

The unpredictability of a presidency that prioritizes posting over process and often leaves friends and foes alike guessing whether pronouncements should be taken seriously, literally, or both, remains a feature, not a bug of Trump’s approach to governance. In many matters, especially negotiations with other countries, his mercurial opacity is often an attempt to gain leverage, but his threats seemingly lead just as often to backtracking as blowing things up, be they Iranian missile depots, Venezuelan drug boats or the transatlantic alliance.

The same often holds true for domestic policy. The president has made numerous pronouncements with emphatic declarations on social media, sometimes even suggesting he is governing by fiat in cases where legislation is required. But he has quickly moved on from many of them: a cap on credit card interest rates, 50-year mortgages and, according to a new Financial Times report, possibly even the sweeping tariffs on aluminum and steel that have led to higher costs.

We’re just beginning to explore the depths of depravity that Trump and his buddies will go to just feel powerful and get richer. This is from Robert Reich’s SubStack. “The Squalor of the Epstein Class. Happy Presidents Day!”

Here’s how Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie responded on Sunday, during ABC’s “This Week,” to a question about the Trump regime’s handling of the Epstein files:

“This is about the Epstein class …. They’re billionaires who were friends with these people, and that’s what I’m up against in Washington, D.C. Donald Trump told us that even though he had dinner with these kinds of people, in New York City and West Palm Beach, that he would be transparent. But he’s not. He’s still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration. And they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.”

The Epstein Class. Not just the people who cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein or the subset who abused young girls. It’s an interconnected world of hugely rich, prominent, entitled, smug, powerful, self-important (mostly) men. Trump is honorary chairman.

Trump is still sitting on two and a half million files that he and Pam Bondi won’t release. Why? Because they implicate Trump and even more of the Epstein class. The files that have been released so far don’t paint a pretty picture.

Trump appears 1,433 times in the Epstein files so far. His billionaire backers are also members. Elon Musk appears 1,122 times. Howard Lutnick is there. So is Trump-backer Peter Thiel (2,710 times), and Leslie Wexner (565 times). As is Steven Witkoff, now Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s consigliere (1,855 times).

The Epstein Class isn’t limited to Trump donors. Bill Clinton is a member (1,192 times), as is Larry Summers (5,621 times). So are LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman (3,769 times), Prince Andrew (1,821 times), Bill Gates (6,385 times), and Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants (429 times).

If not politics, then what connects the members of the Epstein Class? It’s not just riches. Some members are not particularly wealthy, but they’re richly connected. They trade on their prominence, on whom they know and who will return their phone calls.

They exchange inside tips on stocks, on the movements of currencies, on IPOs, on new tax-avoidance mechanisms. On getting into exclusive clubs, reservations at chic restaurants, lush hotels, exotic travel.

Most members of the Epstein Class have seceded into their own small, self-contained world, disconnected from the rest of society. They fly in one other’s private jets. They entertain at one other’s guest houses and villas. Some exchange tips on how to procure certain drugs or kinky sex or valuable works of art. And, of course, how to accumulate more wealth.

Many don’t particularly believe in democracy; Peter Thiel (recall, he appears 2,710 times in the Epstein files) has said he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Many are putting their fortunes into electing people who will do their bidding. Hence, they are politically dangerous.

The Epstein Class is the by-product of an economy that emerged over the last two decades, from which this new elite has siphoned off vast amounts of wealth.

It’s an economy that bears almost no resemblance to that of mid-20th-century America. The most valuable companies in this new economy have few workers because they don’t make stuff. They design it. They create ideas. They sell concepts. They move money.

I’ve always argued here and in classes that the biggest economic policies of the Reagan and Bush years were tax cuts that made it more profitable to gamble on financial assets rather than to actually produce goods and services. The changes in tax policies that cut upper brackets, then treated capital gains as a tax slash, and other ridiculous policies mean that money never lands where it can actually do good. It also creates a lot of idle hands and minds.

China is beginning to look more modern, more concerned about actual economic outcomes, and the planet. The U.S. continues to race back to the Gilded Age with hints of the Great Depression years. This is from The Guardian. “The Guardian view on Donald Trump and the climate crisis: the US is in reverse while China ploughs ahead. Editorial. The president’s destructive policies enrich fossil fuel billionaires, while Beijing has bet big on the green transition.”

Devastating wildfires, flooding and winter storms were among the 23 extreme weather and climate-related disasters in the US which cost more than a billion dollars last year – at an estimated total loss of $115bn. The last three years have shattered previous records for such events. Last Wednesday, scientists said that we are closer than ever to the point after which global heating cannot be stopped.

Just one day later, Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, announced the elimination of the Obama-era endangerment finding which underpins federal climate regulations. Scrapping it is just one part of Mr Trump’s assault on environmental controls and promotion of fossil fuels. But it may be his most consequential. Any fragment of hope may lie in the fact that a president who has called global heating a “hoax” framed this primarily as about deregulation – perhaps because the science is now so widely accepted even in the US.

The administration claimed, without evidence, that Americans would save $1.3tn. Never mind insurance or healthcare costs; a recent report found that US earnings would be 12% higher without the climate crisis. The Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse called the decision “corruption, plain and simple”. In 2024, Mr Trump reportedly urged 20 fossil fuel tycoons to stump up $1bn for his presidential campaign – while vowing to remove controls on the industry.

In the same week as this reckless and destructive US decision, it emerged that China had recorded its 21st month of flat or slightly falling carbon emissions. As Washington tears up environmental regulations, Beijing is extending carbon reporting requirements. China remains the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, though its per capita and cumulative historical emissions are still far behind those of the US. But clean energy drove more than 90% of its investment growth last year.

The Carbon Brief website, which published the emissions analysis, says the numbers suggest that the decline in China’s carbon intensity – emissions per unit of GDP – was below the target set in the last five-year plan, making it hard to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement. The shift in emissions may not prove enduring. There is fear that China’s focus may change; the next five-year plan, due in March, will be key. Some subsidies for renewable power have already been withdrawn. The installation of huge quantities of renewable energy infrastructure has been accompanied by a surge in constructing coal-fired power plants, though the hope is that these are intended primarily as a fallback.

We continue to disregard the actual civilized nations and cavort with the worst of the worst. This is from France24.  “Rubio tells Orban ‘your success is our success’ during Hungary visit ahead of elections. During a visit to Budapest Monday, just weeks before Hungary’s parliamentary elections, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that the nationalist leader’s “success” was a success for the US. An ally of President Donald Trump, who has also maintained ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Orban lags behind the main opposition candidate in opinion polls.” The entire Trump cabinet is feckless, shameless, and incompetent. They are also enabling a backslide in democracy.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hailed Viktor Orban‘s leadership during a visit to Budapest on Monday, ahead of elections threatening the nationalist prime minister’s hold on power.

Rubio’s visit is the final stage of a whirlwind trip to Europe that also saw him address the Munich Security Conference and visit another right-wing ally, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.

US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his high regard for Orban, saying in a social media post on Friday that the prime minister had produced “phenomenal” results in Hungary.

But Orban, 62, has a fight on his hands for the April 12 legislative elections in Hungary. Polls suggest his Fidesz party is trailing opposition leader Peter Magyar’s TISZA.

“I can say to you with confidence that President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success,” Rubio said during a joint press conference with Orban after their meeting.

“The president has an extraordinarily close relationship to the prime minister, he does, and it has had tangible benefits,” he said.

Europe’s nations have read the writing on the wall, according to CNN’s Kasie Hunt. “Trump’s damage is done. Democrats – and Europe – are struggling to define what’s next.”

Many of the Democrats who came to the Munich Security Conference this weekend want to be president. But even if one of them can win the White House in 2028, they may find they can no longer claim the title every American president since the 1940s has borne: leader of the free world.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom went on stage to insist his state is more permanent than President Donald Trump. But he acknowledged in an interview with CNN that the leaders he met with believe the damage to the transatlantic alliance is irrevocable.

Progressive star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York came to pitch a left-wing populist foreign policy but made headlines for a massive stumble instead.

A number of Democratic senators hoping to burnish their foreign policy credentials ahead of possible presidential bids found themselves in a painfully awkward moment with the Danish prime minister, as some Democrats tried to smooth over pugnacious remarks Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham made at the start of the meeting that suggested Trump has not given up his designs on Greenland – a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.

And most members of the House of Representatives who planned to attend didn’t come at all after Republican Speaker Mike Johnson pulled the plug on the congressional delegation.

European thought leaders were reduced to offering a brief standing ovation to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose speech was far more conciliatory than the one Vice President JD Vance delivered at the same gathering last year. But Rubio had kicked off his trip telling American reporters: “The old world is gone.” He also left the conference to fly onward to Slovakia and Hungary, two countries led by strongmen sympathetic to Trump.

The conference’s opening remarks from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz crystallized Europe’s new reality in what seems to be rapidly becoming a post-American century.

“A divide has opened up between Europe and the United States,” Merz said Friday. “The United States’ claim to leadership has been challenged, and possibly lost.”

It’s more than just words. Merz has said he held “confidential talks” with France on European nuclear deterrence. It’s a stunning admission there’s no longer unconditional trust that the US will do what needs to be done for its transatlantic allies.

“What I’m hearing now is, even if we are able to repair these relationships, it’s going to take generations before they feel comfortable,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, of Arizona, a possible presidential hopeful who traveled to Munich not long after learning the Trump administration had tried and failed to indict him over a video he made telling troops not to obey illegal orders.

If this continues, the momentum and direction of the world’s political entanglements will change. Who knows what this will mean? This Op Ed piece from MS Now by Anthony L. Fisher discusses Trump and his attempts at an Imperial Presidency. “Libertarians warned about the ‘imperial presidency.’ Too few actually warned about Trump. A recent New York Times op-ed showed the blind spot many libertarians still have for President Donald Trump.”

When I saw the headline “Libertarians Tried to Warn You About Trump” atop a New York Times op-ed last Monday, I thought, “Hmmm, that’s not quite how I remember it.” Adorned with the striking image of the Gadsden flag’s “Don’t Tread on Me” snake about to get curb-stomped by an enormous black jackboot, the piece was written by Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor in chief of the libertarian magazine and website Reason — where I worked as a journalist for roughly six years. (I left shortly after President Donald Trump’s first inauguration.)

Sure enough, upon reading the column, I discovered the headline didn’t accurately reflect Mangu-Ward’s argument. She primarily made the case that libertarians have warned for years — under presidents in both major parties — about the dangers of ever-expanding executive authority, what’s been aptly coined the “Imperial Presidency.” Rather than claiming to have specifically warned “about Trump,” the writer boasted that libertarians had long sounded the alarm over the consolidation of such power — power now being used for nefarious purposes by a president who just happens to be Donald Trump. (The Times later that day amended the headline to the less specific but more honest, “Libertarians: We Told You So.”)

I can’t argue with that. To the extent most self-identified professional libertarians warned about Trump, they warned about the awesome powers that could be abused by a generic authoritarian president from either party.

But Trump is not a hypothetical. He always told us who he was. And there are far fewer of us who took (and continue to hold) the comparatively unpopular view among libertarians and other right-of-center fellow travelers that Trump presented as a uniquely authoritarian, vindictive, racist, corrupt and lawless demagogue — of which there isn’t remotely an analog on the other side of the aisle.

The problem is that, even now that Trump has proven us skeptics right on every one of those counts, too many libertarians continue to position themselves safely in a “pox on both your houses” perch — much too nuanced and enlightened to be dragged into partisan rancor. This position is how your movement ends up conflating the tyranny of overbearing, temporary Covid policies in Democratic-run areas as equal to (or worse than) the tyranny of a secret police force acting without due process for everyone when attempting to arrest suspected illegal immigrants, summarily executing Americans in the street and branding them “domestic terrorists” while their bodies are still warm.

All of these thoughts lead to one logical conclusion. The Midterm elections need to depose him and remove the spineless and the true believers, or whatever this is, from Congress.

Just to let you know, we’re having the most unkind Mardi Gras Celebration that even the police have seen. We seem to have been overrun by spontaneous groups of young men that are behaving a lot like the droogies in A Clockwork Orange. I may write about it on Friday; however, I’m busy listening to my friends’ experiences uptown and around the Quarter right now.

Peace, Love, and Understanding to you all!

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging Lists today?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Itgqc-8sF8?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=590&h=332]

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DemocracyBacksliding #TrumpianWhiplash #USEuropeRelations #VictorOrban

Finally Friday Reads: Jack is Back

“Jack Smith returns to Washington to testify publicly in front of Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Yesterday, the entire news cycle was dedicated to the testimony of former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who prosecuted the rotter in the White House for his election interference scheme. Many of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee were far from up to the task of diminishing Smith’s appearance and the merits of the case. At one point, Democratic Ranking Member Jamie Raskin and Republican Darrel Issa got into a shouting match.

PBS had this headline yesterday, along with a tick-tock of the day’s events. It was a strange thing to see that Republicans were part of what was a look at Trump’s Election crimes, which appeared to be less daunting to them than dealing with the Epstein Files. Anyone paying attention surely took the event and the testimony as yet another way Trump defies our Constitutionally defined form of government.

Jack Smith is set to testify in a House Judiciary hearing Thursday. It’s an opportunity for the career prosecutor to offer his inside perspective on the investigations into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The president was indicted in two federal cases, but both were scuttled once it was clear that Trump would return to the Oval Office, due to DOJ policy that prevents prosecution of a sitting president.

One of the things we learned is that the manner in which the case was dismissed lets a future Congress and DOJ go after him again. This was yesterday’s New York Times’ conclusion. “In Testimony, Jack Smith Defends Decision to Prosecute Trump. The former special prosecutor argued a case he was never allowed to in court: that President Trump “engaged in criminal activity” that undermined democracy.”  The leded is shared by
By Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer.

But the hearing also provided Mr. Smith with what was likely to be his best opportunity to challenge, in an official forum, Mr. Trump’s justification for ordering the Justice Department to pursue his enemies: that he was persecuted for his politics, not prosecuted for his alleged misdeeds.

“Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,” Mr. Smith said, sitting alone at the witness table with a water bottle, legal pad and white ballpoint pen.

He appeared wan and tired, speaking so softly at times his voice did not register with voice transcription apps. Before sitting at the witness table, Mr. Smith greeted four law enforcement officers who were attacked by the pro-Trump mob at the Capitol — Michael Fanone, Daniel Hodges, Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn.

Republicans repeatedly accused Mr. Smith of participating in a Democratic conspiracy to destroy Mr. Trump by investigating his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as his handling of classified documents after he left office.

Mr. Smith and his team interfered in the “democratic process by seeking to muzzle a candidate for a high office,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement, quoting from an editorial in The Washington Post.

But Republican lawmakers offered no new evidence to support that claim, and spent much of their time rehashing political arguments and grilling Mr. Smith about his decision to seek a court order for metadata about phone calls Mr. Trump and his allies made to nine Republican lawmakers as they sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

This may seem like more rehashing of old news, but remember, Trump is angling to interfere with the 2026 midterms. It’s a good refresher as to the criminal lengths he will go to retain power. The news today still reflects the regime’s abuse of constitutional rights. ICE is still in the headlines. The abuse is on full display in Minneapolis. This analysis of the last Constitutional Crisis nightmare can be found on Joy Vance’s SubStack, Civil Discourse. “Breaking the Fourth Amendment.”

Last night, we learned from a report in the Associated Press that ICE, contrary to longstanding Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, is taking the position that it can enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant. Instead, they believe that an administrative warrant suffices. An administrative warrant is a form signed by an “authorized immigration official,” which means an executive branch employee who can be fired if they displease the president. It’s not difficult to see the problem here.

The Fourth Amendment provides that: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” It’s the reason your home can’t be searched by the police without a search warrant that has been supported with probable cause to believe that evidence or fruits of a crime will be found there.

ICE seems to be arguing that if they think a non-citizen for whom there is a final order of deportation is in a house, they can blow right past the Fourth Amendment, take the doors off the house if they aren’t admitted voluntarily, and go right in. But the Fourth Amendment doesn’t change just because ICE says so.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that a search warrant must be signed by a “judicial officer” or a “magistrate.” Their signature on the warrant says that they have reviewed the evidence that the agents believe constitutes probable cause to justify a search, and they agree that it is sufficient to breach the wall otherwise established by the Fourth Amendment and allow law enforcement into a private home (or car, or private areas of a business, etc.). The idea is that a detached, neutral judge—not someone involved in investigating a case or “on the same side” as law enforcement—should evaluate the evidence before a search warrant or an arrest warrant is issued.

As the Supreme Court explained in Johnson v. U.S., in 1948: “The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.”

This report by The Washington Post shows how utterly evil, cruel, and lawless the agency has become. “ICE detains four children from Minnesota school district, including 5-year-old. Columbia Heights Public Schools district officials accused ICE officers of using the 5-year-old “as bait.” A 10-year-old and her mother were also detained.” Andrew Jeong provides the report.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota have detained at least four children from the same school district this month, including a 5-year-old boy, school officials in a Minneapolis suburb said Wednesday.

The events have inflamed tensions between residents and ICE officers, sparked by the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renée Good by an ICE officer this month. The Trump administration has sought to justify the presence of ICE personnel by saying that the officers are detaining immigrants convicted of violent crimes.

“Why detain a 5-year-old?” Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public Schools district, located just north of Minneapolis, said at a news conference. “You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, whom the Department of Homeland Security identified as Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias in an emailed statement, were detained in their driveway Tuesday afternoon, just as they were returning from the child’s school, according to a news release from Columbia Heights Public Schools.

The father fled on foot when ICE officers approached him, DHS said. “For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias,” it added.

After detaining the father, ICE officers then asked Liam to knock on the door to see if any other people were inside the home, “using a 5-year-old as bait,” according to the school district.

Another adult living in the home, who was outside at the time, “begged the agents” to leave the child with them, the school district said. ICE agents refused.

Liam’s middle-school-age brother returned home 20 minutes later to find that his younger brother and father had been taken away.

Liam and his father are now in San Antonio in the custody of Homeland Security authorities, the family’s lawyer, Marc Prokosch, said in an email. They are not U.S. citizens but “have been following the legal process perfectly, from presenting themselves at the border to applying for asylum and waiting for the process to go through,” he said.

The Substack Strength in Numbers of G. Elliott Morris has this true and frightening headline. “The consent of the governed has been withdrawn. One year into his second term, Trump has suffered the largest approval collapse of any modern president (except the one who resigned in disgrace). He is underwater on every major policy area.”  He’s so underwater that the numbers are worse than during the worst of the COVID pandemic.

One year ago this week, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. He entered office with a net approval rating of +5 in the FiftyPlusOne.news approval rating aggregate. Despite a tumultuous first term — which ended with the president posting his worst-ever numbers after the January 6 insurrection — voters, it seemed, were willing to give him another shot.

They are no longer willing to give him that chance. Trump sits at an -16 net job approval on average today, down from +5 on his first day in office. His 21-point drop is the worst first-year performance, in the eyes of public opinion, of any president’s first term going back to at least 1948. If you compare the last year to other second-term presidencies, Trump’s is still the worst first-year performance of any president in the modern polling, with one exception: Richard Nixon (who was consumed by Watergate and other national crises at this point in his term).

Either way, Trump is in historically bad company.

As The New York Times reported this week, Trump’s support among key groups he persuaded to vote for him in 2024 — notably, young, Black, and Latino voters — has now sunk below levels measured in the run-up to the 2020 election (which Trump lost to Joe Biden by 4.5 points in the national popular vote)

Let’s hope that turns into some momentum to get rid of Republicans in Congress. As noted before, the Trump Regime, plus many Republican Congress Critters, are truly afraid of what’s coming for them. Don Moynihan has this to say at his Substack. “Can We Still Govern? Past the breaking point. The violent occupation of an American city is more than a warning.”

We use words like “police state.” Then we see it happen. To watch is not the same as to experience it, of course. Of being afraid to leave your house. Or having a classmate, co-worker, or family member disappear. But the images make it more real. It removes any illusion that it could not happen here. It is happening here. We see it happening here, if we are willing to look.

In recent weeks, the paramilitary occupation of the Twin Cities has moved us past some invisible breaking points. About how we expect our government to treat us. And about what might be done about the government agencies that fail those expectations.

Lets step back: the primary purpose of this occupation is the selective use of government power to establish federal dominance over blue states or cities that President Trump dislikes. Thats it. Trump thinks Minnesota is the enemy, and so he unleashed an armed and masked paramilitary upon its people. There is no serious case that this is about the number of immigrants, or some level of violent crime not seen elsewhere. It is about the Department of Homeland Security, in the form of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Patrol, developing their skills as the President’s stormtroopers. It is about making an example of a community.

To make matters worse, Congress did not defund ICE thanks to a handful of turncoat Democrats. This is from Newsweek. “Seven Democrats Just Voted to Approve ICE Funding: Full List.”  This news is reported by Gabe Whisnant.

Seven House Democrats broke with much of their party to vote in favor of funding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), helping advance a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending measure in committee despite strong opposition from progressives.

The votes came during a markup of the DHS appropriations bill, with Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky casting the lone Republican vote against the funding, which passed 220-207 and will fund ICE as well as FEMA through September 30.

“Right now we are about to take a vote and that vote is on DHS and whether or not we will give more funding to ICE. Right now I am willing to shut it down. I am going to do what it takes instead of just kind of being a go-along to get-along lawmaker,” Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, told Newsweek ahead of the vote.

The seven Democratic representatives who voted yes to approve ICE funding were:

• Tom Suozzi (New York)
• Henry Cuellar (Texas)
• Don Davis (North Carolina)
• Laura Gillen (New York)
• Jared Golden (Maine)
• Vicente Gonzalez (Texas)
• Marie Glusenkamp Perez (Washington)

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

 

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #brokenGovernment #constitutionalCrisis #ICECrimesAgainstHumanity #JackSmithTestimony

Mostly Monday Reads: We are all Minnesotans Now

“The hypocrisy of this Trumplican administration continues to reach unfathomable levels. If you’re not paying attention, shame on you. If you’re paying attention but ignoring it, shame on you. Violent protest is what they are provoking. Contest the alternative so-called facts everywhere you can, woke is what they fear! Elon hasn’t funded a vaccine for the Woke Mind Virus, yet.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

My home and I have been going through a major streak of Danshari (断捨離) at the beginning and end of the year. It sure feels good to throw junk out and get down to the basic, simple life, but wow, is it time-consuming and brutally exhausting after living in a house for 25 years and letting things accumulate. My house is quite small, and still, stuff piles up. Time to toss out all the things that you don’t need, don’t want, and that really create a burden on your way of life and take up needless time.

This is how I feel about the Trump administration. We never needed them; the health effects of having their garbage pile up are devastating and exhausting. Time to toss them all out.

Having gone through a period of ICE Raids and watching other American cities suffer in similar ways, I have to admit that what’s going on in Minneapolis right now is beyond the pale. It’s like they used the rest of us to beef up their levels of assaulting normalcy, morality, and decency. Time to remove the real refuse and live a simpler, more productive life.

This first suggested read is from the AP. “Federal immigration agents filmed dragging a woman from her car in Minneapolis.” This is not the American Dream. It’s an American Nightmare.

A U.S. citizen on her way to a medical appointment in Minneapolis was dragged out of her car and detained by immigration officers, according to a statement released by the woman on Thursday, after a video of her arrest drew millions of views on social media.

Aliya Rahman said she was brought to a detention center where she was denied medical care and lost consciousness. The Department of Homeland Security said she was an agitator who was obstructing ICE agents conducting arrests in the area.

That video is the latest in a deluge of online content that documents an intensifying immigration crackdown across the midwestern city, as thousands of federal agents execute arrests amid protests in what local officials have likened to a “federal invasion.”

Rahman said that she was on her way to a routine appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center when she encountered federal immigration agents at an intersection. Video appears to show federal immigration agents shouting commands over a cacophony of whistles, car horns and screams from protesters.

In the video, one masked agent smashes Rahman’s passenger side window while others cut her seatbelt and drag her out of the car through the driver’s side door. Numerous guards then carried her by her arms and legs towards an ICE vehicle.

damn — CNN put together a video of Kristi Noem claiming ICE officers are "highly trained and skilled" and "gifted" alongside to a clip of them beating someone nearly to death in Minneapolis

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-16T16:18:45.610Z

Philip Bump, writing at MS NOW, has the Op-Ed up. “Trump could be close to unleashing the state violence he’s always wanted. President Trump suggested on Thursday that unrest in Minneapolis might prompt him to invoke the Insurrection Act. He’s wanted to do that for years.” He’s doing this while trying to win a Nobel Peace Prize, which still blows my mind. He’s also after protestors while telling Iraq we will attack them if they attack peaceful protestors. Go figure. You may remember that Bump was noticeably crying during the reporting on the death of Renee Good, imagining her small child and the backseat filled with stuffed animals.

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump suggested — not for the first time — that unrest in Minneapolis might prompt him to invoke the Insurrection Act, allowing him to deploy active-duty soldiers to combat protesters. The president’s musing about the Insurrection Act should not be understood as a reaction to what’s happening right now. It should instead be understood as the next link in a chain of events that Trump set in motion back in his first administration — and dramatically accelerated in his second.

Trump seems to have lingering regrets about not doing some of the things he wanted to do back in 2020, when protests following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis spawned unrest across the country and outside the White House.

When Trump was hurried to the bunker at the executive mansion one evening, it projected weakness. Members of his administration pushed back against his ambitions to unleash more forceful responses — such as deploying soldiers against protesters. This frustrated the president, contributing to his removal of Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

Trump returned to Washington last year even angrier at the establishment and his opponents, but now he’s well-versed in the levers of power and understands how flimsy the barriers to that power can be. Since early in his second term, he’s seemed eager to show that this time around, he won’t waste any time in using an iron fist against dissent. And he’s staffed his Cabinet with people who aren’t likely to object.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump and his allies insisted that immigration laws needed to be tightened and that people living in the country illegally needed to be removed. They often insisted that they would prioritize criminal immigrants, people who — Trump said — were known to law enforcement and could be rolled up quickly.

Once inaugurated, however, Trump and the Department of Homeland Security initiated sweeping dragnets, first in Los Angeles, then in Chicago and now in Minneapolis. Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, working with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (which includes Border Patrol), were given free rein to aggressively detain immigrants — and anyone who stood in their way.

Speaking to reporters in May, Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, warned Democratic leaders in blue states that they could expect to see federal agents in their cities.

“If we can’t arrest a bad guy in the jail … you’re gonna force him in the community to find him,” Homan told reporters last week. “If we can’t find him in the community, we’re gonna find him at the worksite. So we’re going to flood the zone, and sanctuary cities will get exactly what they don’t want.”

Comply or we’ll blanket your streets, Homan warned. And they did.

Notice that Homan framed the threat as being about criminals: If cities wouldn’t hand over criminals who were in custody, ICE would “flood the zone” everywhere else. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin repeated this framing in an interview on Fox News this week centered on the current operation in Minnesota.

“If [Gov.] Tim Walz and [Minneapolis] Mayor [Jacob] Frey would let us in their jails, we wouldn’t have to be there at all,” McLaughlin said. “Currently, there are 680 criminal illegal aliens [in the city] … people who, whether you’re Republican or Democrat, you would never want these people to be on your streets or your neighbors. That’s the people who we are targeting.”

This is untrue. There are numerous reports of federal agents in the city carrying out door-to-door sweeps and stopping or detaining American citizens, who definitionally aren’t criminal immigrants.

McLaughlin’s assertion is also untrue outside of the context of Minneapolis. Data released by DHS shows that more detainees in ICE custody have no criminal records than have criminal convictions or pending charges. A new report from the American Immigration Council, an immigration advocacy group, summarizes the shift since Trump returned to office: “The result of … changes in arrest practice has been a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record held in ICE detention on any given day.”

Those numbers alone give the lie to the idea that ICE is simply doing what it has always done. It isn’t. It’s doing something broader and more aggressive than what it has done in the past — at the direction of DHS leaders and with Trump’s approval.

Trumpian narratives are never backed by fact. They represent pure propaganda since these talking points are never true. Here’s a take from the Never Trumper Republican folks at The Bulwark. Yes, I’m quoting my strange bedfellow Bill Kristol again. “Fighting ICE’s Reign of Terror.”

The unjustified and indefensible killing of an innocent woman, Renee Good, by U.S. government agents; the lack of any recognition or acknowledgement by those agents or their superiors that what they did was wrong; the intensification of the government’s reign of terror in the streets of our cities and towns; the unabashed defense of brutality by the administration in power, and their wholesale lying about it . . . it’s horrifying.

But the less dramatic stories emerging from our reign of terror are also horrifying.

At around 3 p.m. Wednesday, four Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up for lunch at a small, family-owned Mexican restaurant, El Tapatio, in Willmar, Minnesota. They took a booth and apparently enjoyed their meal—though staff at the restaurant appeared “frightened,” according to a witness who spoke to the Minnesota Star-Tribune.

When the restaurant closed that evening at 8:30 p.m., ICE agents followed departing workers and detained three of them.

The agents presumably had a good laugh about this. Perhaps they relished their meal even more because the staff that served them was frightened. Humiliation of their victims, a kind of relish in their fear and misery, a kind of—let’s call it what it is—sadism has become a dominant part of the culture of ICE.

It does not, thankfully, appear to be dominant in the culture of the country. At least not yet. A Quinnipiac poll shows only 40 percent of Americans approve of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while 57 percent disapprove. In a CNN survey, 51 percent of Americans say they believe ICE is making cities less safe, while only 31 percent say ICE is making cities safer.

Those numbers in support of ICE are higher than they should be in a healthy and humane society. But still, in today’s polarized politics, a 17–20 percent margin is substantial. If only Democrats could win the national vote this fall by that amount!

White House border czar Tom Homan admits the administration has a problem. Not with the policy, of course. It’s just, Homan said yesterday, that ICE needs “to be better at messaging at what we’re doing.” Still, it’s good to see Homan on the defensive.

The question is whether the Democratic party is going to go on the offensive.

Yesterday Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar put out a statement: “Our local law enforcement, mayors, and community leaders all agree: The best way to restore order and safety in Minnesota is for ICE to leave our streets. This Administration is escalating rather than de-escalating and it needs to stop.”

ICE of course could care less about local law enforcement, mayors, and community leaders, who can do little to stop ICE’s terror. But ICE is an agency of the federal government. It operates under authorities granted and defined by Congress. It uses funds appropriated by Congress.

So if ICE needs to stop what it is doing, it’s Democrats in Congress who need to try to do their best to stop it. Which does not mean offering a couple of pro forma amendments that will lose. It does not mean failing to excoriate Republican senators, by name, for refusing to stand up to their dear leaders. It does not mean going on to approve government funding as usual.

Heather Cox Richardson’s latest offering on Substack, “Letters from an American,”  is bone-chilling.

You know what Americans aren’t talking about very much today after Trump’s threat to detonate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) this week and his threat this morning to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota?

They aren’t talking a lot about the fact that the Department of Justice has released less than 1% of the Epstein files despite the law, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Congress passed requiring the release of those files in full no later than December 19. Trump loyalists are trying to shift public anger at Trump over the files back to former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom QAnon conspiracy theorists believed were at the heart of a child sex trafficking scheme.

Representative James Comer (R-KY) has threatened to hold former president Clinton in contempt of Congress for refusing to appear for a closed-door deposition about Epstein. But in a scathing four-page public letter to Comer, the Clintons called the subpoenas invalid and noted that Comer had subpoenaed eight people in addition to the Clintons and had then dismissed seven of them without testimony.

They also noted that Comer had done nothing to force the Department of Justice to release all the Epstein files as required by law, including all the material relating to them, as Bill Clinton has publicly called for. They said, “There is no plausible explanation for what you are doing other than partisan politics.”

The Epstein files are the backdrop for everything else, but also getting less attention than they would in any normal era are the fact that an agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement shot and killed a 37-year-old white mother a little more than a week ago and that President Donald J. Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem all defended her killing by calling Renee Good and her wife “domestic terrorists.”

As G. Elliott Morris noted today in Strength in Numbers, more Americans disapprove of that shooting and the way ICE is behaving than approve of them by a margin of about 20 points. There is a gap of about 8 points between Americans who want ICE abolished over those who don’t. Morris writes: “Trump has turned what was nominally a bad issue for him (–6 on immigration and –10 on deportations, per my tracking) into a complete sh*t show in the court of public opinion.” Although immigration had been one of Trump’s strongest positions, now only 20–30% of Americans favor the way ICE is enforcing Trump’s immigration policies.

While Trump and administration officials insist they have had to crack down violently on undocumented immigrants because an organized arm of the Tren de Aragua gang has invaded the United States, Dell Cameron and Ryan Shapiro of Wired reported yesterday that they had obtained hundreds of records showing that U.S. intelligence described Tren de Aragua not as a terrorist threat, but as a source of fragmented, low-level crime. Although Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that Tren de Aragua “is a highly structured terrorist organization that put down roots in our country during the prior administration,” U.S. officials in 2025 doubted whether the gang even operated in the U.S.

In the wake of Good’s murder, the administration sent more agents to Minnesota in what appears to be an attempt to gin up protests that change the subject from Good’s murder and appear to justify ICE’s violence. Today, Minnesota governor Tim Walz asked Minnesotans to bear witness: “You have an absolute right to peacefully film ICE agents as they conduct these activities…. Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans, not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.”

Last night a federal agent shot and wounded a man in Minneapolis, setting off clashes in the area between agents with tear gas and flash-bang grenades and about 200 protesters who threw snowballs and firecrackers at the agents. What happened between the agent and the victim is unclear: Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Mitch Smith, and Hamed Aleaziz of the New York Times reported that a Minneapolis police supervisor told protesters he didn’t know what happened, saying, “It’s not like [the agents are] talking to us.”

This morning, Trump’s social media account posted: “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State. Thank you for you [sic] attention to this matter! President DJT.”

My friends in Minneapolis are experiencing the same kind of trauma that every city that has experienced an ICE invasion, but on a much larger scale. I wake up to read what is going on in their neighborhoods and their city, and I know the feel of those intense emotions. It freaks me out all over again.

This is the latest news on their latest reign of terror. It’s from the AP. “ICE says a Cuban immigrant died in a suicide attempt. A witness says guards pinned and choked him.

A Cuban immigrant died in a Texas immigration detention facility earlier this month during an altercation with guards, and the local medical examiner has indicated that his death will likely be classified as a homicide.

The federal government has provided a differing account surrounding the Jan. 3 death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, saying the detainee was attempting suicide and staff tried to save him.

A witness told The Associated Press that Lunas Campos died after he was handcuffed, tackled by guards and placed in a chokehold until he lost consciousness. The immigrant’s family was told by the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office on Wednesday that a preliminary autopsy report said the death was a homicide resulting from asphyxia from chest and neck compression, according to a recording of the call reviewed by the AP.

The death and conflicting accounts have intensified scrutiny into the conditions of immigration jails at a time when the government has been rounding up immigrants in large numbers around the country and detaining them at facilities like the one in El Paso where Lunas Campos died.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is legally required to issue public notification of detainee deaths. Last week, it said Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old father of four and registered sex offender, had died at Camp East Montana, but made no mention of him being involved in an altercation with staff immediately before his death.

This is exactly why the framers of the Constitution and the signers of the Declaration were obsessed with Due Process. Everyone should have access to a trial, to lawyers, to a judge, to a jury of peers, and to laws that protect everyone from unjust prosecution and punishment.  This is at the absolute core of our American Way of Life and system of Government.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #ICECriminals #ICERaidsAndCrimes #Minneapolis #ReneeGood

Finally Friday Reads:

“Rob Reiner was right about everything.” John Buss. @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m really late today! I started the first day of Winter Break. Additionally, I’ve been watching movies mostly over the last few days because the news has been too stressful to handle lately. So, let’s catch up on the week so we can all have a peaceful weekend. The latest revolting development from the rotter in the White House and his appointed stooges is the renaming of the Kennedy Center, which is actually against the law.

This is from the New York Times. “As Trump Puts His Brand on Washington, the Kennedy Center Gets a New Name. The board for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that it would now be named the Trump-Kennedy Center, although a formal change may have to be approved by Congress.” The story is reported by White House Correspondent Shawn McCreesh.

President Trump’s takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts reached its inevitable apogee on Thursday afternoon when it was announced that the center’s board of trustees had voted to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center.

Even though Mr. Trump had already been calling it that for months in trollish posts online, he acted shocked that his handpicked board had thought to do this for him.

“I was honored by it,” he told reporters at the White House. “The board is a very distinguished board, most distinguished people in the country, and I was surprised by it. I was honored by it.”

Earlier that day, he had called into a meeting of the board, which is now made up almost entirely of people who are loyal to him. (By law, there are a handful of members of Congress from both parties who sit on the board, as well.)

Unusually, the meeting was taking place not at the Kennedy Center but at the Palm Beach home of the casino magnate Steve Wynn, whose wife, Andrea, sits on the board.

Richard Grenell, the center’s Trump-appointed president, was there, and so was Lee Greenwood, who performed “God Bless the USA” at the meeting.

Another member who was in Palm Beach for it was Sergio Gor, a longtime aide to the president who was recently nominated to be the ambassador to India. It was Mr. Gor who proposed the name change.

But there was at least one person who was not down with the idea: Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio, who had called in to the meeting.

“It was such a surprise to me when they said we’re going to rename it,” she recounted in a phone interview. “I said, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and pushed my button. But then I was muted.”

She added: “Everything was cut off, and then they immediately said, ‘Well, it’s unanimous. Everybody is for it.’”

Ms. Wynn claimed in a phone interview that she was not aware that Ms. Beatty had been muted, and that she did not know who was responsible for it. As for how the president reacted to the name change?

“I think he was very happy,” she said.

Ms. Beatty described the meeting this way: “Everything was regurgitated about how awful anything with the center was, how run down it was, how everything was humiliating, and now they had come in as the great saviors of it.”

She added that the other members took turns praising Mr. Trump, who then pretended to be surprised when they voted to rename the joint after him. “He said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you all were going to name it after me!’” she said.

There is a law that actually has very strict rules about things like renaming the center. It was signed by LBJ.  The Center opened in 1971 with featuring Leonard Bernstein’s composition Mass.  My cousin Mary Bracken Phillips was one of the soloists. I remember all this very well. All of us were muscians at the time. It was a very exiting time and performance. I’ve linked to her solo and you can hear more of the original performances at the link.

This is from the AP. “Trump’s handpicked board votes to rename Washington performing arts center the Trump Kennedy.”

Center. Congress named the center after President John F. Kennedy in 1964, after his assassination. Donald A. Ritchie, who served as Senate historian from 2009-2015, said that because Congress had first named the center it would be up to Congress to “amend the law.”

Ritchie said that while Trump and others can “informally” refer to the center by a different name, they couldn’t do it in a way “that would (legally) stick.”

But the board did not wait for that debate to play out, immediately changing the branding on its website to reflect the new name.

Since returning to office in January, Trump has made the center a touchstone in a broader attack against what he has lambasted as “woke” anti-American culture.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that a name change requires legislative action.

“Only Congress can rename the Kennedy Center,” said the New York Democrat, who serves on the board as an ex officio member because of his position in Congress.

This is the headline from the Washington Post. “Kennedy Center adds Trump’s name to building. The new signage follows a vote by the board of trustees to rename the arts complex the “Trump Kennedy Center,” a dramatic change for the presidential memorial.

The Kennedy Center installed President Donald Trump’s name on its exterior Friday morning, a dramatic change to a building

On Thursday, the center’s board, made up of loyalists with Trump as chair, voted to rename the institution “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

A blue tarp was stretched across a portion of the building the next morning as a small team on scaffolding started the work. Loud drilling could be heard nearby. Inside the building, large letters spelling “Trump” could be seen on the floor of the entry hall, according to a photograph obtained by The Washington Post. Signage elsewhere around the exterior of the institution remained unchanged.

This is an affront on so many levels that it’s hard for me to put it into words. First and foremost, it disrespects the legacy of the late President Kennedy, whose name is relegated to an afterthought behind Trump’s. It disrespects all those involved in making the Kennedy Center a reality, including the artists who performed there and those honored there. It disrespects the goals of the Center and those who have worked to keep it as a shining beacon of American creative excellence. We have already seen the crap that happens there now that Trump has his vulgar fingers in it. It disrespects the best of our culture. The vulgar should not get these honors.

I’m going to quote something from the 5oth Annivesary of the Bernstein Mass’ celebration.

During his legendary tenure at the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969, Leonard Bernstein composed only two works, Symphony No. 3: Kaddish (1963) and Chichester Psalms (1965). He had dedicated Kaddish to the memory of John F. Kennedy shortly after his assassination, and when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis asked Bernstein to compose a piece for the 1971 inauguration of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., he was eager to honor the occasion with a new, large-scale work because he knew he had always wanted “to compose a service of one sort or another.” The son of Russian-Jewish parents, a social liberal, and lifelong activist, Bernstein made a surprising choice: the Roman Catholic Mass. But instead of a straightforward, purely musical setting of the Latin liturgy, he created a broadly eclectic theatrical event by placing the 400-year-old religious rite into a tense, dramatic dialog with music and lyrics of the 20th century vernacular, using this dialectic to explore the crisis in faith and cultural breakdown of the post-Kennedy era.

There’s some good news coming from the Justice System today. Let’s shift to the latest on that. First, we have this headline from The Hill. “Trump’s win streak on Supreme Court emergency docket breaks.” This is reported by Zach Schonfeld. It’s a significant headline, given the current composition of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court refused to intervene Friday in a battle concerning immigration judges’ speech restrictions, for now, snapping the Trump administration’s months-long winning streak on the court’s emergency docket.

It marks the first time since the spring that the court has rejected one of the administration’s emergency appeals. No justice publicly dissented, but the order left the door open for the government to try again once the case progresses further.

“At this stage, the Government has not demonstrated that it will suffer irreparable harm without a stay,” the one-paragraph order reads.

The case stems from restrictions on what immigration judges can say publicly. The restrictions require the judges, who are part of the executive branch, to obtain prior approval for speeches when the subject directly relates to their official duties.

The National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) claims the policy violates the First Amendment.

Those free speech issues weren’t yet before the justices, however.

The Trump administration went to the Supreme Court to try to halt an order allowing the lawsuit to proceed before a federal district judge. The administration argues it must go before the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), a specialty body that oversees certain federal employee disputes.

That question poses wider implications for other federal workers’ cases, too. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices the lower ruling would “indefinitely thwart the MSPB.”

“The answer to such prolific contravention of the Court’s precedents should not be to wait and see just how much instability will ensue,” Sauer wrote in court filings.

The lower court had acknowledged the MSPB’s purview. But in allowing the lawsuit to proceed, it pointed to President Trump’s firing at the board that left it for some time without a quorum, saying it raises “serious questions” about whether the MSPB “continues to function as intended.”

This also happened.  “Federal judge temporarily blocks HUD permanent housing cuts for homeless. The U.S. district judge questioned whether “chaos” is the point in homelessness funding overhaul.” This article is from Politico. It is reported by Cassandra Dumay.

HUD had withdrawn the new, transitional housing-focused notice before a court hearing last week, but the department said at the time it was “fully committed” to making reforms to the program and would reissue another version with “technical corrections.”

A HUD spokesperson said in a statement after the hearing that the department “remains committed to program reforms intended to assist our nation’s most vulnerable citizens and will continue to do so in accordance with the law.”

McElroy’s decision requires HUD to maintain the status quo in its funding for the Continuum of Care program, which partners with local organizations to connect people experiencing homelessness to housing and resources, until a new notice is released following a process that fits congressional statutes. The judge found that the plaintiffs, a coalition of 20 states as well as 11 local governments and nonprofits that sued HUD, had demonstrated they’re likely to succeed in challenging the department’s procedure for the policy change.

McElroy said HUD’s November decision to revoke the previous notice of funding and issue a new one that dramatically cut permanent housing grants likely conflicted with requirements under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. She said the law reflected Congress’ “prioritization of permanent housing and renewal stability and the formula based allocation scheme.” She also said HUD’s action last month likely conflicted with the statutory deadline for the issuance of a notice of funding.

One last thing.  We have yet another reason to think Bernie Sanders is a punk.  This is from The Bulwark.  It’s written by Sam Stein. “A Milestone Pediatric Cancer Bill Fails at the Hands of Bernie. The Vermont senator is holding out for a bigger health care package. Advocates are asking: Is the price worth it?”  Why on earth would any one punk kids with Cancer whose name isn’t Trump?

FOR YEARS, THE PEDIATRIC CANCER COMMUNITY has tried to pass a single piece of legislation that would allow for more comprehensive drug treatments to be given to young patients.

The process has involved agonizing setbacks, intense private negotiations, and a sudden, unexpected change in fortune thanks to the advocacy of a dying child.

On Wednesday night, this long, laborious journey appeared close to ending with what advocates anticipated would be a triumph. The Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act (named after that dying child) was heading to the Senate floor, where it was expected to be passed by unanimous consent. Having already passed the House, it would then head to Donald Trump’s desk. And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the president would sign the measure and—as is his wont—take personal credit for it.

Pediatric cancer advocates scrambled to get to the Senate to watch the moment. Reporters who had covered the issue, including this one, were given the heads-up about its imminent passage. At least three kids who are bereaved siblings of cancer victims and one pediatric cancer survivor sat in the Senate gallery.

And then, it failed. A single senator stood in the way. It was Bernie Sanders.

In a dramatic, heated exchange on the Senate floor—caught by the C-SPAN cameras but largely missed by the news-consuming public—Sanders announced his opposition to quick passage for the bill. He did so not because he disagreed with its objective—which is to give the FDA the authority to push pharmaceutical companies to study combination drug therapies—but because he worried that extraneous provisions attached to it would make it harder to achieve other priorities. He argued that the Senate ought to be passing similarly important, bipartisan-supported health care measures along with it. His staff insisted to me that they would revisit the bill soon, and they seemed confident it would all get done in the new year.

But that’s not at all clear to the pediatric cancer community, which was left stunned by the vote.

“Everyone was just so exhausted and deflated and sad when we exited the gallery,” one member of the community told me. “It was a feeling of abandonment and confusion.”

The entire episode has raised a larger question about the motivations of lawmakers: What are their political and moral obligations in moments like these? Put another way: When is incremental legislative progress worth more than the continued pursuit of a bigger goal?

Read more at the Link about that last question.

So, I’m going to try to spend my Winter Break getting my house in order.  I hope you have a peaceful, warm, and gentle weekend.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Suprise he did do the Trump part in tacky gold lettering or neon. Still makes me want to throw up though.

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #BernieFuckYouAlwaysSanders #freedomOfSpeech #KennedyCenter #LeonardBernsteinSMass #PediatricCancerBill #TrumpCourtCases

Mostly Monda Reads: Merely Players

“He’s so excited! Donald gets a Peace Prize! Happy Happy, Joy Joy!” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I was sent this link to The Bulwark this morning by a Sister Resister at Indivisible NOLA. We’ve had our own contingent of international and national reporters down here for some time. Between Hurricane Katrina and the BP Oil Spills, we are generally both newsworthy and jazzy enough to get headlines. Tim Miller, his husband, and their daughter relocated to this area in 2023. He’s been out of the game for a long time, even as a Republican staffer for numerous campaigns. New Orleans, like many big cities, is a safe haven for people trying to live their lives their way without hiding while still retaining a small-town feel due to its strong neighborhood culture.

His analysis of that “Wee Man Greg Bovino Wants Headlines—Not Criminals” just fits so nicely with the South Park Narrative of Pete Hegseth and Kristie Noam and their search to hold onto “Content” and basically appear costumed whenever they pop up anywhere. Miller makes a great argument that Greg Bovino craves that same Mojo.

Tim Miller takes on the ICE raids unfolding in Louisiana, exposing how the operation leans on cruelty, spectacle, intimidation, and political theatrics instead of real public safety.

You may watch this analysis below at the link to the Bulwark above.

I agree with that. Miller mentioned an AP Report in the podcast that elucidates the drama that underlies this cruel policy. I suppose it’s a no-brainer that all these people involved with this are certifiable sociopaths and narcissists, and that besides grabbing the headlines, they also seek to grab the attention of the Hair Furor. However, there still may be a more devious motive behind all the headline-grabbing cruelty and drama. Are they using our city to distract from their self-created messes like the Epstein files, the Venezuelan War Crimes, SignalGate, or their vast history of major incompetence? Are these productions wrapped up in distractions for us and red meat for the base? Are we just an exotic backdrop for a massive content grab? Our we New Orleanian mere players strutting about? This level of produced cruelty has to be organized by Stephen Miller.

Here’s the AP headline. “Records reviewed by AP detail online monitoring, arrests in New Orleans immigration crackdown.”  The analysis is provided by Jim Mustian and Jack Brook.

State and federal authorities are closely tracking online criticism and protests against the immigration crackdown in New Orleans, monitoring message boards around the clock for threats to agents while compiling regular updates on public “sentiment” surrounding the arrests, according to law enforcement records reviewed by The Associated Press.

The intelligence gathering comes even as officials have released few details about the first arrests made last week as part of “Catahoula Crunch,” prompting calls for greater transparency from local officials who say they’ve been kept in the dark about virtually every aspect of the operation.

“Online opinions still remain mixed, with some supporting the operations while others are against them,” said a briefing circulated early Sunday to law enforcement. Earlier bulletins noted “a combination of groups urging the public to record ICE and Border Patrol” as well as “additional locations where agents can find immigrants.”

Immigration authorities have insisted the sweeps are targeted at “criminal illegal aliens.” But the law enforcement records detail criminal histories for less than a third of the 38 people arrested in the first two days of the operation.

Local leaders told the AP those numbers — which law enforcement officials were admonished not to distribute to the media — undermined the stated aim of the roundup. They also expressed concern that the online surveillance could chill free speech as authorities threaten to charge anyone interfering with immigration enforcement.

“It confirms what we already knew — this was not about public safety, it’s about stoking chaos and fear and terrorizing communities,” said state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat who represents New Orleans. “It’s furthering a sick narrative of stereotypes that immigrants are violent.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the intelligence gathering and referred the AP to a prior news release touting “dozens of arrests.” The agency has not released an accounting of the detainees taken into custody or their criminal histories.

I immediately get validated reports of what’s going on out there. There have been instances of citizens being chased while walking home from their neighborhood grocery store. Children are harassed at Day Care, Parks, and Elementary Schools. This is from NOLA.com.  “In Kenner, Border Patrol leader Gregory Bovino faces mixed reactions and police backup.”  That backup now includes many Louisiana Law Enforcement Agencies, including the State Patrol, the Fish and Wildlife Agents, as well as many local sheriffs and police.

As the U.S. Border Patrol conducted their third day of immigration raids in the New Orleans area, Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino, the agency’s leader, toured the streets of Kenner Friday to mixed reaction from the public, taking photo ops at one point to fielding protesters at another before ultimately using a Kenner Police blockade to leave the area.

Bovino and a team of at least six agents conducted operations at gas stations and in neighborhoods along Williams Boulevard, the main corridor of the city lined with Latin American restaurants and department stores. At one point Bovino’s team approached a vehicle at a gas station to question a passenger before letting him go. It’s unclear if they detained anyone on Friday.

Bovino and his entourage wore green uniforms and face coverings, and he dismissed a request Friday from New Orleans Mayor-Elect Helena Moreno, a Democrat, that federal agents remove masks as part of a broader demand for more transparency.

“I think this is about as transparent as it gets right here,” Bovino told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in response to Moreno’s demands.

At a Star Gas Station on Williams Boulevard where Bovino’s team stopped for a break, customers asked to take pictures with him while he waited to purchase pork cracklins and an energy drink. He offered to buy one of them their coke while a gaggle of photojournalists took pictures.

In the parking lot outside, a man in a camouflage jacket and a red “Make America Great Again” hat held up a makeshift metal sign saying “THANK YOU I.C.E ❤︎ U D.H.S. U.S.A!” in blue paint.

“We love you and we work for you,” Bovino told the man before entering his SUV.

But in Kenner, a suburban city of about 65,000, the political landscape is much different from its more progressive anchor. While having the largest Hispanic population per capita of any Louisiana city at 30%, its government is almost entirely Republican. Its police chief, Keith Conley, has in recent years complained about the increase in undocumented immigrants and is one of the only officials in the parish that’s been a vocal supporter of Border Patrol’s efforts in the city.

Our Mayor-Elect, Helena Morena, was born in Mexico.  The former news anchor is a formidable presence for the Sociopath Squad. As for me, I rarely leave the confines of Orleans Parish because I know the minute I do, I’m in Sleazy Steve Scalizelandia with all the KKK, Evangelical Fascists, and NAZI shit that implies.

Today’s headlines brought one from Boston that truely is truely cruel and unhinged. This is reported by People Magazine. “Immigrants Approved for Citizenship ‘Plucked Out’ of Line Moments Before Pledging Allegiance: Report. As of Dec. 2, USCIS is halting all applications for immigrants from the 19 countries the Trump administration has deemed high-risk.”

Immigrants were moments away from pledging allegiance to the United States in Boston — the final step of the long process to becoming a U.S. citizen — when government officials pulled them out of line, according to a new report.

The scene unfolded at Boston’s Faneuil Hall on Thursday, Dec. 4, according to the report from WGBH, a National Public Radio member station.

As people who were already approved to be naturalized — having completed the lengthy U.S. citizenship process — lined up to pledge allegiance, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials told them they could not continue due to their countries of origin, the outlet reported.

USCIS officials took individuals from the line because the federal agency has directed its employees to halt all immigration applications for nationals from the 19 countries that already faced travel restrictions since June due to a proclamation from President Donald Trump, per WGBH and NBC News. The Trump administration designated the list of largely African and Asian countries as high-risk.

Gail Breslow, executive director of Project Citizenship, a nonprofit that helps immigrants apply for citizenship, told WGBH that many of her clients received cancellation notices for their citizenship ceremonies and appointments — but for many, it was too little too late.

“People were plucked out of line. They didn’t cancel the whole ceremony,” she said of the Dec. 4 scene at Faneuil Hall, which WGBH noted is similar to instances playing out at naturalization events across the U.S.

One of the nonprofit’s clients, a Haitian woman who has had a green card since the early 2000s, “said that she had gone to her oath ceremony because she hadn’t received the cancellation notice in time,” Breslow told the Boston outlet.

Haiti is on the list of 19 countries with full or partial restrictions, which also includes Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

“She showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled,” Breslow said of her client.

“People are devastated, and they’re frightened,” she added.

You can also read more about this in BB’s post from Saturday. She directly quotes from the WGBH. This all is so awful that it deserves a thorough review.

This reminds me a lot of hearing the stories from my mother’s childhood in Kansas City, MO., where they frequently read in magazines and Newspapers that the Irish and the Italians shouldn’t be allowed in the country. That was because all Italians were characterized as Mafia Gangsters and all Irish were Drunk Brawlers. Oh, isn’t Bongino the kid of Italian immigrants? I also heard of them being called Papists. What’s the difference between this and getting ugly with Somali immigrants? Heather Cox Richardson finds the similarities astounding as well.  This is from her Friday post on Facebook.

In place of the post–World War II rules-based international order, the Trump administration’s NSS commits the U.S. to a world divided into spheres of interest by dominant countries. It calls for the U.S. to dominate the Western Hemisphere through what it calls “commercial diplomacy,” using “tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements as powerful tools” and discouraging Latin American nations from working with other nations. “The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity,” it says, “a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region.”

The document calls for “closer collaboration between the U.S. Government and the American private sector. All our embassies must be aware of major business opportunities in their country, especially major government contracts. Every U.S. Government official that interacts with these countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.”

It went on to make clear that this policy is a plan to help U.S. businesses take over Latin America and, perhaps, Canada. “The U.S. Government will identify strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region and present these opportunities for assessment by every U.S. Government financing program,” it said, “including but not limited to those within the Departments of State, War, and Energy; the Small Business Administration; the International Development Finance Corporation; the Export-Import Bank; and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.” Should countries oppose such U.S. initiatives, it said, “[t]he United States must also resist and reverse measures such as targeted taxation, unfair regulation, and expropriation that disadvantage U.S. businesses.

The document calls this policy a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, linking this dramatic reworking to America’s past to make it sound as if it is historical, when it is anything but.
President James Monroe outlined what became known as the Monroe Doctrine in three paragraphs in his annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. The concept was an attempt for the new American nation to position itself in a changing world.

In the early nineteenth century, Spain’s empire in America was crumbling, and beginning in 1810, Latin American countries began to seize their independence. In just two years from 1821 to 1822, ten nations broke from the Spanish empire. Spain had restricted trade with its American colonies, and the U.S. wanted to trade with these new nations. But Monroe and his advisors worried that the new nations would fall prey to other European colonial powers, severing new trade ties with the U.S. and orienting the new nations back toward Europe.

So in his 1823 annual message, Monroe warned that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” American republics would not tolerate European monarchies and their system of colonization, he wrote. Americans would “consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” It is “the true policy of the United States to leave the [new Latin American republics to themselves, in hope that other powers will pursue the same course,” Monroe wrote.

This is a replay of the Manifest Destiny era. It also erases many rights given to all by the U.S. Constitution.

So, this is the Project 2025 Agenda, the white christian nationalist agenda, and what appears to be parts of the Confederacy with its inherent ideas that only white men are truly equal, wrapped into one big bomb threatening our democratically-based republic.  This administration might as well be Sociopaths-R-US.

And, of course, the wrinkled old WIPO on the Supreme Court are playing for their billionaire pay again. This is from AXIOS. “Supreme Court seems ready to let Trump fire independent commissioners.”  Say goodbye to an Independent Federal Reserve Bank, among many others.

The Supreme Court appeared poised to allow President Trump to fire members of the Federal Trade Commission during oral arguments Monday.

Why it matters: A win for the president in Trump vs. Slaughter would be a major blow to a 90-year-old precedent that has kept the job of independent agency commissioners safe from being fired for political reasons.

Driving the news: Trump teed up the case when he fired Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, Democratic FTC commissioners, earlier this year.

• The case focuses on the precedent of Humphrey’s Executor, a 1935 ruling which holds that independent agency commissioners cannot be fired without specific cause.

What they’re saying: The conservative majority on the court seemed hesitant to deny presidents the power to fire agency commissioners.

• “Once the power is taken away from the president, it’s very hard to get it back in the legislative process,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
• Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not appear to support an argument that the protection of independent agency commissioners has gone back to the country’s founding. Chief Justice John Roberts said the FTC has a lot more power today than it did in 1935, making the precedent less powerful.
• U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, argued that Humphrey’s Executor, which has been weakened but not eliminated in recent years, limits presidential powers in an unconstitutional way. He described some agencies as “headless” and “junior varsity legislatures.”

Liberal justices asked why the court would overturn a longstanding precedent and imply the president does not trust Congress to give agencies the right amount of power.

• They also argued that independent agencies have roots in the country’s founding, and most are formed just like the FTC.
• “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said to Sauer. “Independent agencies have been around since the Founding…. This is not a modern contrivance.”
• “Once you’re down this road, it’s a little bit hard to see how you stop,” said Justice Elena Kagan, arguing that the “real-world consequences” of handing Trump a win here would give presidents too much power.

And this is only Monday morning.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

#johnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #corruptSupremeCourtJustices #danBongino #dueProcess #manifestDestinyOnSteroids #ourImmigrantsMakeUsStronger

Mostly Monday Reads: Cassandras Among Us

“Breaking news, literally!” John Buss, @repeat1968, cartooning the anti-Cassandra

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I always take the counsel of Kira, the wise and wonderful cat, and her muse, my friend Wildmoon. Dinah and Kristal are big fans. Kira had some reading recommendations this morning during her morning revelations. We’ve begun to see the extent to which the fish is rotting from the head. Remember, this autocracy has come about not just from the foibles of Orange Caligula, but the likes of the techboys, lawyers, and Dark Money/Bad Research organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. Maxwell and Epstein were both sex traffickers and abusers. However, as Kira tells us, there are these “elite muckitymucks.”  ‘Tis the season, so let’s see if a klatch of we crones can take them down.

Kira speaks.

As usual, Kira did my morning reading before I got up and was waiting on the heated pad to tell me about it.

“Two things,” she said. “That professor lady and Margaret Sullivan.”

“Heather Cox Richardson?” I asked.

“Yes yes professor lady with three names. She writes about how the Epstein emails are exposing an undercurrent of elite muckitymucks similar to the robber baron era and earlier, before that era got going, plus how they tried to stop the dismantling of it despite how it was obvious their focus solely on wealth and their own wellbeing was destroying human society.”

“Ouch. That’s harsh, little girl.”

“It’s truth. HCR doesn’t put it in those terms, but it’s real. Then Margaret Sullivan. She writes about how the New York Times is going all nostalgic about the elite monsters who populate Epstein’s emails, calling it a “lost world” (gack), while Will Bunch from the Philly Inquirer writes in an oped (not a news story mind you) wrote about ‘the much deeper rot that’s already been laid bare about the entire decrepit class of men (because they’re almost all men) who rule the world with atrocious grammar amid a non-stop booty call.’”

“Again harsh.”

“Again truth. Are you going soft on me?”

“Hardly. I just need coffee.”

“OK, get your coffee. Then read those two.”

So I did. I may have more to say about them later. I’ll say this now – this whole sordid affair is laying out into the open that “much deeper rot” that permeates the real “elites” MAGAts go on about all the time. MAGAts tend to think, somehow, that everyone who’s not a MAGAt is some kind of rich elite being paid by other rich elites to disagree with them. That’s not who the “elites” are.
The real elites are a bunch of men, but not always men (as Sullivan and Professor Cox Richardson both point out) who are sometimes filthy rich and who are all powerful or just want to be near the powerful (Noam “can’t wait to come to the Caribbean see you in 3 weeks” Chomsky, looking at you) because of the veneer of power they get.

This rot is waaaaaaaay deeper than the dumbfuck in chief and his band of merry idiots in the White House right now – this is about the motherfuckers who gleefully put him there while either “enjoying” the trafficked women and girls Epstein gleefully provided them or at the very least knowing full well about it and considering the damage done to those women and girls worth it.
And THAT, my friends, is what need to be destroyed. All of it. The Thiels and Chomskys and Dershowitzes and all of them – they all belong in the lowest depths of hell that can be imagined, worse than anything Dante wrote about.

For the survivors of those monsters.

That’s why I’m exploring Kira’s suggestions today and adding a few of my own. Margaret Atwood has been a symbol of so much of women’s lived experiences written in prose that sings to our souls. She’s finally written about herself. This New York Times interview with the author captures the spirit of “The Book of Lives.” Alexandra Alter interviewed Atwood for this article in early November. “For a Literary Saint, Margaret Atwood Can Sure Hold a Grudge. She had to be pushed to write her new memoir, “Book of Lives.” The result reveals the experiences (and a few slights) that have shaped her work.”

Margaret Atwood doesn’t like being called a prophet.

“Calm down, folks,” was the withering response when I asked why her fiction often seems eerily predictive. “If I could really do this, I would have cornered the stock market a long time ago.”

Still, she concedes she’s been right on occasion.

When she published “The Handmaid’s Tale” in 1985, some critics were skeptical of Atwood’s vision of a future authoritarian America, where the government controls women’s reproduction and persecutes dissidents.

Since then, events in the novel that once struck unimaginative reviewers as implausible have come to pass. Abortion has been outlawed in parts of America. The rule of law feels increasingly fragile. Insurgents attacked the Capitol. Censorship is rampant — Atwood herself is a frequent target.

When I point out these parallels to Atwood, she still brushes off the idea that she can sense where things are heading.

“Prescient is not the same as prediction,” she told me recently when we met for lunch in Toronto. “People remember the times when you were right, and forget the times when you were wrong.”

At 85, Atwood is as droll, slyly funny and blunt as ever, prone to turning questions she doesn’t particularly like back on the interrogator. “And?” she’ll say in her low, gravelly monotone.

There is nothing more interesting and rewarding than watching and listening to one of my favorite writers tour the country in support of a book. Finding out that she was both a Scorpio, like me, and the daughter of a narcissistic mother just brought her closer to my heart and mind.

An awkward child who had a caterpillar for a pet, Atwood sometimes struggled to fit in. At 9, she was tormented by a group of girls who subjected her to degradations, like leaving her out in the snow and burying her in a hole. She drew on the experience in her novel “Cat’s Eye,” about a woman who was viciously bullied by other girls as a child. But she always dodged when asked if the story was autobiographical because the “chief perp,” as she writes, was still alive (she no longer is).

Other villains from Atwood’s past escape public shaming. She describes a frightening night when she blacked out after her drink was spiked at a party, and woke up being groped by a boy on a couch in the basement: “I know your names, but won’t mention them here because it was a long time ago and anyway you are probably dead,” she writes.

Atwood got her start as a poet. She self-published her first book of poems, “Double Persephone,” in 1961, and sold copies for 50 cents. A few years later, she started to gain recognition when another poetry collection, “The Circle Game,” won a prestigious award.

Her provocative debut novel, “The Edible Woman,” a biting satire about a young woman who develops a strange relationship to food and struggles to eat, made waves in 1969. Some readers and critics saw it as a feminist manifesto — a framing that Atwood still disputes.

“I suppose if you squint really hard, you could say I was an early feminist,” she said. “But did I think the feminist movement was coming? No.”

Who among those of us at a certain age can’t relate to that? I remember reading a book in the choir room in high school, then being dragged to the riser by two boys much bigger than me, stretched across it, and being told that I needed Christ because I wasn’t humble enough. That was followed a few weeks later by a session with the school psychologist about the results of my Ben Sex-Role inventory, and I was told I was a definite outlier because I was a teenage girl with a huge level of ambition. That was the point in my life where I was determined to become a lawyer and prosecute crimes against women and children, as I sat doing volunteer work on a nascent Violence Against Women phone number and listened to stories while desperately trying to find sources of help for them in my rather thin notebook. Those, sadly, are just a few of my experiences. It wasn’t the last time I would be assaulted for Jesus either.

Heather Cox Richardson is someone whose Substack gets shared here frequently. This is from her entry yesterday. (P.S. Kira was right)

On Thursday, November 13, Michael Schmidt reported in the New York Times the story of the 17-year-old girl the House Ethics Committee found former representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) likely paid to have sex with him. The girl was a homeless high schooler who needed to supplement the money she made from her job at McDonald’s to be able to pay for braces.

Through a “sugar dating” website that connected older men with younger women, she met Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg, who introduced her to Gaetz. Both men allegedly took drugs with her and paid her for sex, allegedly including at a party at the home of a former Republican member of the Florida legislature, Chris Dorworth.

The Justice Department charged Greenberg with sex trafficking a minor and having sex with a minor in exchange for money. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a decade in prison. The Justice Department did not charge Gaetz. In 2022 the girl’s lawyers asked Gaetz and Dorworth about reaching a financial settlement with her. She didn’t sue, but Dorworth sued her, sparking depositions and disclosure of evidence. Dorworth dropped the case. That material has recently been released and made up some of Schmidt’s portrait of the girl.

Schmidt’s story added another window into the world depicted in the more than 20,000 documents the House Oversight Committee dropped from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein the day before. Those emails show a network of elite people—mostly but not exclusively men—from politics, business, academia, foreign leadership, and entertainment who continued to seek chummy access to the wealthy Epstein, the information he retailed, and his contacts despite his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

When accusations against Epstein resurfaced in 2018, along with public outrage over the sweetheart deal he received in 2008 from former U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta—who in 2018 was secretary of labor in Trump’s first administration—Trump ally Stephen Bannon and Epstein worked together to combat the story. As Jason Wilson of The Guardian notes, Epstein and Bannon treated the crisis as a publicity problem to fix as they pushed Bannon’s right-wing agenda and supported Trump.

As David Smith of The Guardian put it, Epstein’s in-box painted a picture of “a world where immense wealth, privileged access and proximity to power can insulate individuals from accountability and consequences. For those inside the circle, the rules of the outside world do not apply.”

On Tuesday, November 4, Elizabeth Dwoskin of the Washington Post described the ideology behind this world. She profiled Chris Buskirk of the Rockbridge Network, a secretive organization funded by tech leaders to create a network that will permit the MAGA movement to outlive Trump. Dwoskin wrote that political strategists credit the Rockbridge Network with pushing J.D. Vance—one of the network’s members—into the vice presidency.

Dwoskin explains that Buskirk embraces a theory that says “a select group of elites are exactly the right people to move the country forward.” Such an “aristocracy”—as he described his vision to Dwoskin—drives innovation. It would be “a proper elite that takes care of the country and governs it well so that everyone prospers.” When he’s not working in politics, Buskirk is, according to Dwoskin, pushing “unrestrained capitalism into American life.” The government should support the country’s innovators, network members say.

We have heard this ideology before.

We all recognize that there is a huge circle of extremely privileged, mostly white men in this country where the rules of law and civility just do not apply at all. Here’s another Substack post. This time it’s Steven Beschloss. “Can America Avoid Moral Collapse? Even as Trump reverses himself and calls for the release of the Epstein files, he and his enablers may have already damaged our nation beyond repair.”  This is in response to Trump’s call to release the Epstein Files. Those are the same files he’s been covering up since even his last term in office.

Make no mistake: Trump’s reversal is not a sign that he intends to come clean about his involvement with sex traffickers and child molesters Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell—not after he’s worked so aggressively to deny any role. On Friday, intensifying his effort to avoid accountability, Trump demanded Justice Department investigations of high-profile Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton. This was an obvious attempt to deflect attention from himself—look over there!—but also to serve up the classic schoolyard argument: They did it, too.

Of course, Trump was quick last night to further politicize and lie about what’s at issue. “It’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,’” he posted.

The reversal makes clear that the feral Trump grasped that he’s in trouble and feared humiliation. But we can assume that Trump is counting on enough uncertainties and confusion in a subsequent flood of files to enable him to spin his way out—as well as enough sycophants to support his interpretation of what the documents really mean. He also clearly figured out that he couldn’t hold together a GOP coalition of coverup supporters, not as many have now calculated that the growing firestorm would eventually burn them if they didn’t vote for the release. So, too, Trump may be counting on a failure of the needed 60 votes in the Senate, providing him continuing cover.

But let’s not lose sight of what’s really happening here. This is a corrosive, criminal story involving profound immorality that will only deepen this week when the House votes.

The stench will linger: The man who holds the highest office in the land maintained a long-time relationship with convicted pedophiles and may well have committed pedophilia himself. The blight on our identity and our future as Americans is at stake.

We can say this is about Trump, not us. We can insist this is about Trump’s America, not our America. But there comes a point where any nation’s identity is defined by the values and behavior of its leaders, even leaders that are only supported by a minority of the population.

You and I and the majority of Americans can reasonably insist that he doesn’t represent us, but at what point does that become insufficient? In other words, is there a point when we cannot overcome the accelerating moral collapse resulting from his repugnant actions?

How much longer can we the people sit back and watch the body of evidence grow—the emails and text messages that make clear Trump “knew about the girls” and likely much more than that—before we become complicit by doing nothing to remove him from office?

What I want to know is how we make this happen, and who will actually make a thoughtful, strategic, and successful move on it? We see some progress with the courts, but then what happens when it hits the corrupt group of autocrats on SCOTUS? Here’s the latest on the vengeance indictment of Comey. This is from Reuters.  “US judge orders DOJ to turn over Comey grand jury materials, citing ‘misconduct’.

 A U.S. judge on Monday found evidence of “government misconduct” in how a prosecutor aligned with President Donald Trump secured criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and ordered that grand jury materials be turned over to Comey’s defense team. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzgerald of the Eastern District of Virginia found that Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney leading the case, may have made significant legal errors in presenting evidence and instructing grand jurors who were weighing whether to charge Comey. “The record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding,” Fitzgerald wrote in his ruling. Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges of making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation. He is one of three perceived political enemies of Trump who have been criminally charged by the Justice Department in recent weeks.

And yes, the Supreme Autocrats at SCOTUS are undoing Constitutional law, case by case. This is from the Washington Post. “Supreme Court to consider case that could limit asylum rights for migrants. The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review the question of what it means for a migrant to “arrive” in the U.S., in a case that could determine whether migrants intercepted before crossing U.S. borders can apply for asylum in the United States.” We continue to break international law that we’ve signed on to.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review the question of when a migrant actually arrives in the United States, in a case that could determine whether migrants intercepted before crossing U.S. borders can apply for asylum.

The Trump administration in July petitioned the Supreme Court to reverse a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which held that migrants stopped on the Mexico side of the U.S.-Mexico border have the right to apply for asylum in the United States and be screened for admission.

“The decision thus deprives the Executive Branch of a critical tool for addressing border surges and for preventing overcrowding at ports of entry along the border,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer and other Trump administration lawyers wrote in their petition.

The case arises from a class-action lawsuit filed in 2017 by 13 asylum seekers and the immigrants rights organization Al Otro Lado. They alleged then that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents were unlawfully “denying asylum seekers access to the U.S. asylum process” by turning migrants away at border ports of entry.

In 2022, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California held that the class of migrants who are turned away in the process of arriving in the United States are unlawfully denied their right to seek asylum. A divided panel on the 9th Circuit affirmed.

The case centers on a former practice called “metering,” which allowed border officials to stop migrants without documentation before they enter the United States. It was implemented in 2016 during the Obama administration. The first Trump administration continued the policy and, in 2021, the Biden administration rescinded it.

In a brief in October, lawyers for Al Otro Lado and the other respondents wrote that the case is not ripe for Supreme Court review because the policy was not in use.

We’re at the point where we should scrub ‘liberty and justice for all’ right out of the Pledge. One last bit for HCR blog on what the fuck we now seem to have back from the dreadful past of the Gilded Age. There are still folks who want to see slavery and servitude for everyone but themselves.

In 1858, in a period in which a few fabulously wealthy elite enslavers in the American South were trying to take over the government and create their own oligarchy, South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond explained to his colleagues that “democracy” meant only that voters got to choose which set of leaders ruled them. Society worked best, he said, when it was run by natural leaders: the wealthy, educated, well-connected men who made up the South’s planter class.

Hammond explained that society was naturally made up of a great mass of workers, rather dull people, but happy and loyal, whom he called “mudsills” after the timbers driven into the ground to support elegant homes above. These mudsills supported “that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement,” one that modeled itself on the British aristocracy. The mudsills needed the guidance of their betters to produce goods that would create capital, Hammond said. That capital would be wasted if it stayed among the mudsills; it needed to move upward, where better men would use it to move society forward.

Hammond’s ideology gave us the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, in which the Supreme Court found that Black Americans “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.”

In 1889, during the Gilded Age, industrialist Andrew Carnegie embraced a similar idea when he explained that the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few was not only inevitable in an industrial system, but was beneficial. The wealthy were stewards of society’s money, administering it for the common good by funding libraries, schools, and so on, to uplift everyone, rather than permitting individual workers to squander it in frivolity. It was imperative, Carnegie thought, for the government to protect big business for the benefit of the country as a whole.

Carnegie’s ideology gave us the 1905 Lochner v. New York Supreme Court decision declaring that states could not require employers to limit workers’ hours in a bakery to 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. The court reasoned that there was no need of such a law for workers’ welfare or safety because “there is no danger to the employ[ee] in a first-class bakery.” The court concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution protected “freedom of contract”: the right of employers to contract with laborers at any price and for any hours the workers could be induced to accept.

In 1929, after the Great Crash tore the bottom out of the economy, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon did not blame the systemic inequality his policies had built into the economy. He blamed lazy Americans and the government that had served greedy constituencies. He told President Herbert Hoover not to interfere to help the country.

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” he told Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

Mellon’s ideology gave us “Hoovervilles”—shantytowns built from packing boxes and other salvaged materials—and the Great Depression.

Today, an ideology of “aristocracy” justifies the fabulous wealth and control of government by an elite that increasingly operates in private spaces that are hard for the law to reach, while increasingly using the power of the state against those it considers morally inferior.

We’re in trouble. That’s certain, and most of us feel it in our hearts, minds, and guts.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging lists today?

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no

And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who care about evil
And social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend?
I need a friend

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #BackToTheGildedPast #Brotacracy #HeatherCoxRichardson #HowCanPeopleBeSoHeartless_ #Polycrisis #PublicIntellectuals #StevenBeschloss #TheWiseAndWonderfulKira #Wildmoon

Mostly Monday Reads: I come to Bury CBS, Not to Praise It

“How can we tire from all this winning?” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

60 Minutes premiered on September 24th, 1968, with Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. I was barely a teenager when it premiered, but even then, I was growing into fully all the fringed suede and tattered blue jeans I could find with my guitar set filled with the likes of Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. However, I realized that I was watching something I’d watched for a very long time. Next year, I would buy that Woodstock Guitar strap and cut my first real studio audition. My best friend and I recorded a cover of “One Tin Soldier,” which was requested by Billy Jack for his second movie. Music and the News were the only things that got me through the banality of my life at that point. (Omaha, UGH!)

I spent my entire childhood watching and reading the news with my Dad, through the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and all those crazy times in the 1960s. It was a pivotal moment that led me to become the social justice activist I am today. Reasoner described 60 Minutes as a type of News Magazine, and we had just about all of them that went from our house to the customer service area of my Dad’s small Ford Dealership in a small town in Iowa. It was difficult to get the Washington Post during Watergate, but 60 Minutes was there in living color.

I haven’t really watched in a long time because so much has gone missing. Ever since I got my first newspaper subscription to the Manchester Guardian in High School, I have to say it was part of my education, right through to Graduate School. Now, during the time when I have ever been the least sanguine about our country’s future, I can only say RIP 60 Minutes. These are indeed bleak times. The U.S. Media has a grand old tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin. It has lost its way to the same evil it sought to expose during World Wars and other events. It has a history of struggle between the powerful entities that seek to control the narrative and the writers who research and reveal the truth. In the age of Techbros and MAGA, Crypto and Virtual Cash, we see a barren landscape destroyed by greed.

I’ll start with the offending program, then offer some perspectives from a number of folks who used to have a place on TV news and are now relegated to the New Deal Blogosphere. I should mention that during that same period of becoming who I am, I wrote for both an underground Newspaper (The Aardvark) and two school newspapers. This blog is an extension of those of us who became very interested again in discussing the news during Dubya’s adventures in the Middle East and the hope we had of simply seeing a woman become president.

This is from CBS News, the former home of everyone’s Uncle Walter, and my personal favorite, Edward Bradley, who always showed up for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, sat with me in monitor world to hear his beloved jazz after I’d put all the microphones in their proper places and dealt with the talent. He always remembered to ask about my daughters by name. It hurts that the overseers used a woman to do this. “Read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump here.”

Editor’s note: On October 31, 2025, correspondent Norah O’Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation. They started by discussing the president’s recent meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, we get along great, and we always really have. We had the COVID moment, which was not– attractive as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t so happy. But outside of that, we have always had a great relationship. He’s a powerful man. He’s a strong man, a very powerful leader.

And– we’ve always– had the best of relationships, probably the best of– I could– I think I could speak for him, just about as good as it gets from his standpoint and from my standpoint. And having that is important because of the power of the two countries.

NORAH O’DONNELL: What did you get out of this deal that you wanted?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I got sort of everything that we wanted. We got– no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone. We have tremendous amounts of– dollars pouring in– ’cause we have– very big tariffs, almost 50%. We never had anything in terms of tariffs, although I put tariffs on China, but Biden let it lapsed by the– by the fact that he gave exemptions on almost everything, which was just ridiculous.

By this time, the fact-checking should’ve begun, and some good old-fashioned interrupting with follow-up questions. It went on with none. Instead, we got mealy-mouthed clarifications.

But– we have– billions and billions of dollars coming in, and we have a very good relationship. I mean, we have– a great relationship with a powerful country. And I’ve always felt if we can make deals that are good, it’s better to get along with China than not, if you can’t make the right kind of a deal than not, because, you know, China, along with many other countries (they’re not alone in this), they’ve ripped us off from day one.

They’ve ripped us so much. They’ve taken trillions of dollars out of our country. And now they’re– it’s the opposite. I mean, we’re doing very well with China, and hopefully they’re gonna do very well with us. But I do think it’s important that China and the U.S. get along, and we get along very well at the top.

NORAH O’DONNELL: This trade war, though, was hurting Americans. I mean, our soybean farmers. China had stopped buying the soybeans.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

NORAH O’DONNELL: As you mentioned, they were– China was withholding these rare earth materials that you need for everything from smartphones to– to build submarines.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.

NORAH O’DONNELL: What– what was the crucial thing? I mean, how tough of a negotiatior–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, when you say hurting–

NORAH O’DONNELL: –is President Xi–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –it was a temporary hurt. It was a hurt because– I was takin’ in a lot of money from China. We’re doing very well against China. And all of a sudden they said, “You know, we have to fight back.” And so they used their powers. The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they’ve been accumulating it and– and really taking care of it for a period of 25, 30 years.

Other countries haven’t. Now we are. I mean, we have tremendous rare earth, and it’s going to be– you know, it’s going to be– it’ll be a strength, but it won’t really be a strength if everybody has it. Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon.

`I would call this full-throated propaganda allowed air time for way too long.  Here’s another example before I start telling Norah there’s something brown growing on her nose. It’s further on down the page. I’m just glad I didn’t watch it.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think in two years, we’ll start opening up plants and we’ll have a very substantial portion of the chip market. Right now we have almost none. We should have had a hundred percent. If we had par– if we had presidents that knew anything about business or knew what they were doing, because, frankly, they didn’t.

We lost 50% of our automobile business. It’s all coming back. We lost a hundred percent of the chip– you know, it used to be all Intel and other companies. And what happened is other countries came in, and they stole our chip business, and we didn’t charge tariffs.

If we would have charged let’s say a 100% tariff, none of those companies would have left. But they all left. Now they’re all coming back, Norah, because the only way they avoid the tariffs is to build in our country. If they build in our country, make their plant and make their product in our country, then it’s a very simple thing. They– they don’t have any tariff to pay.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Uh-huh.

Well, she’s certainly not an heir to the Murrow Boys. Like so many, Medhi Hassan left a big desk on a 4-letter network because someone saw him as being a bit too much of a journalist and one of color. He has his own spot out here on his own website.

It’s similar to the choice of my first Newspaper: The Manchester Guardian, which I still read daily as The Guardian. His site, named Zeteo, can be found on Substack on the web, alongside other banished reporters and what used to be known as “Public Intellectuals” rather than influencers. Today’s offering is ” Factchecking Trump on ’60 Minutes’.” He’s taken the place of the major legacy newspapers. The lede is divine. ’60 Minutes’ of Shame and Submission.’

Having watched the whole ‘60 Minutes’ interview and read the entire transcript, too, I genuinely can’t decide what was worse: Trump’s endlessly dishonest answers or O’Donnell’s non-stop softball questions.

I kid you not, here is a short selection of some of the questions this award-winning, highly-paid, veteran news anchor chose to ask the most powerful man on Earth in her limited time with him:

• “Have some of these [ICE] raids gone too far?”
• “Who’s tougher to deal with, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?”
• “Why won’t Putin end this war?
• “Do you worry about an AI bubble?”
• “What do you hope to accomplish in the next three years?”

Ooooohh! Tough stuff! The new owner of CBS, David Ellison, and the new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, must both be so proud. This is the kind of ‘balanced’ coverage I’m sure they were waiting for. Then again, to be fair to them, O’Donnell has a long history of softball interviewing that predates the recent takeover of her network by a MAGA billionaire. Remember her love-in with Saudi crown prince MBS in 2018?

But this isn’t just about O’Donnell or CBS. The ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Trump showcased everything that is wrong with US political interviews in general. The deferential tone. The lack of preparation. The failure to ask follow-up questions or dig deep into an interviewee’s answers. The inability (unwillingness?) to fact-check in real time.

At one point, Trump asked O’Donnell whether she knew “how many presidents have used the Insurrection Act,” to which the CBS anchor simply responded: “Tell me.” Trump then proceeded to lie about the proportion (“Almost 50% of ‘em,” he said, when the real proportion is 38%) and the absolute number (“some of the presidents, recent ones, have used it 28 times,” he said, when the most was actually only six times, and back in the 1870s).

But O’Donnell said nothing. She just moved on.

There were so many falsehoods and half-truths, and so little pushback, that after a while, I gave up. I stopped counting. Here’s what I did manage to catch, in terms of brazen lies, all of which were left unrebutted, uncorrected, unchallenged, by O’Donnell:

• “We had nine wars on our planet. I solved eight of ‘em.” I have debunked this nonsensical claim before.
• “We have no inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
• “It’s at 2%. It’s– it’s the perfect inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
• “Right now [grocery prices are] going down.” Grocery prices are up 1.4% since Trump came to office.
• “A year ago, we were a dead country.” Not only did the US have the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in both 2023 and 2024, but the Economist magazine called it “the envy of the world.”
• “11,888 murderers were let into our country.” Not only is this number inaccurate, but many of the non-citizens convicted of homicide either here or abroad came in during Trump’s first term.
• “Washington, DC, was… almost like a crime capital of the world.” In 2023, per PolitiFact, “at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
• “[Biden] hardly went anywhere. Guy couldn’t leave his bedroom.” Not only did Joe Biden visit roughly as many countries in his term of office as Trump did in his first term, but Biden was the first US president to visit an active warzone – Ukraine – not under the control of US forces.
• “I made Middle East peace. For 3,000 years, they couldn’t do it.” There is no peace in Palestine, no peace deal in place, and it isn’t a 3,000-year-old conflict.
• “Communist, not socialist. Communist. He’s far worse than a socialist.” Zohran Mamdani is not a communist.
• “I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.” The Trump/GOP claim that Democrats want to give free healthcare to undocumented immigrants has been repeatedly debunked.
• “They emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums– into the United States of America.” Asylum seekers don’t come from “insane asylums.” Obviously.
• “One thing I can tell you, the 2020 election was rigged.” It wasn’t. The courts agreed.
• “And a lotta people say when it’s rigged you’re allowed to do it again.” A lot of people don’t say this. The US Constitution doesn’t, for sure.

Please read it. The next section lists the questions O’Donnell should have asked as a follow-up. I will say that I believe Mehdi’s follow-up questions in every interview I’ve watched him do are stellar. He points out exaggerations and falsehoods, zeroes in on exactly what the issue with the response is, and just delivers it deliciously. I’m a Fan grrrl. And me, the teenage girl who had to sneak her friend Cathie into the Journalism workspace so she could lust after Kurt Anderson to keep her from going on about him all lunchtime long.

CNN had a more traditional take on said Interview by Daniel Dale. “Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ‘60 Minutes’.”

Trump told his usual lie that the free and fair 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied again that grocery prices “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell informed him they are up. He declared once more that there is now “no inflation,” though there certainly is, and then that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” though the most recent available Consumer Price Index figure is now up to 3%.

The president also deployed multiple other fictional numbers during his exchanges with O’Donnell, which were recorded Friday and released by CBS on Sunday.

• He falsely claimed “$17 trillion” is being invested in the US “right now,” though the $17 trillion figure is nearly double the White House’s own wildly inflated figure.
• He falsely claimed each alleged drug boat the US has attacked in recent weeks “kills 25,000 Americans,” though experts note this figure plainly does not make sense.
• He falsely claimed some recent former presidents invoked the Insurrection Act “28 times,” though no individual president has invoked it on more than six occasions with this record set by President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1800s.
• He falsely claimed he has ended “eight wars,” though his list includes two situations that were not wars at all and at least one war that continues.
• He falsely claimed CBS aired an edited interview with Trump’s 2024 opponent Kamala Harris “two days” before the election, though it was actually more than four full weeks before Election Day.
• He falsely claimed former President Joe Biden gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine (the real number is well under half that) and allowed in “25 million” migrants (the real number here is well under half that, too).

And Trump made a variety of additional false claims on several subjects, including the government shutdown, the artificial intelligence boom, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former legal battle with “60 Minutes” itself.

I really wonder how many people besides you and me actually read this stuff and bring it up in normal conversation. I know that the MAGATs will never read or hear it.  I saved the best for last. This is from my precious Guardian reporting about the heavy-handed editing given to this latest 60 Minutes interview with Trump. Quelle Suprise, y’all! “CBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, cutting boast network ‘paid me a lotta money’. Trump said Paramount’s sale to David and Larry Ellison was ‘greatest thing that’s happened in a long time’ for free press.” This is reported by Jeremy Barr.

The CBS News program 60 Minutes heavily edited down an interview with Donald Trump that aired on Sunday night, his first sit-down with the show in five years.

Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.

The edits are notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election.

While many legal experts widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, CBS settled with Trump for $16m in July. As part of the settlement, the network had agreed that it would release transcripts of future interviews of presidential candidates.

At the beginning of Sunday’s show, O’Donnell reminded viewers that Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit, but noted that “the settlement did not include an apology or admission of wrongdoing”.

During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.

“Actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said. “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”

During another un-aired portion of the interview, Trump praised the sale of CBS to the Ellison family and said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was a “great new leader”.

The US president said he didn’t know Weiss, but told O’Donnell: “I hear she’s a great person.

Well, this is getting long for a meager WordPress blog post.   “And that’s the way it is.” Can you believe he signed off when I was getting my first graduate degree?  Wow!  I’m old!

 What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968 #JohnBuss #NorahODonnell #SixtyMinutes #TalesOfATeenageReporter #TheLegacyMediaSucks #WalterCronkite

Mostly Monday Reads: Another reason to boycott the NFL

“Seems one of trump’s top advisors excited the frogs. This would have never happened if Biden was president.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Today, I’m going to suggest we give up on the old Greek saying “Don’t speak ill of the Dead” and replace it with “Speak honestly about the Dead.”  I’ve just about had it with all the forced piety behavior surrounding the death of a person well known for his antisemitism, racism, GLBTphobia, and keeping women subservient. I’ve already printed my reaction yesterday on my blog. If we are not honest about the actions and words of the dead, we start sounding like this … I’d better speak badly about Putin now because when he’s dead, I’ll be breaking some ancient Greek saying.

I’m sorry, students, if I have to, I can’t speak badly of Pol Pot since he’s dead, but we should learn about what he did in Cambodia, so we just have to avoid mentioning him.

You know, George Wallace did questionable things to black people while governor, but we mustn’t talk about him… speaking ill of the dead and all is not allowed to speak ill of the dead. So, let history forget about all that.

Yeah, let’s talk about the hypocrisy in those piety performances … sounds a lot like sick right-wing Political Correctness to me. From the Link:

“How the concept of ‘don’t speak ill of the dead’ is typically utilized is fraught with dismissal and erasure. Every time someone problematic dies, it is nearly inevitable to hear statements of “don’t speak ill of the dead,” but who does that idea serve? What benefit does it have? Certainly, if we want to learn from the past and honor those who have been harmed by people now deceased, we must speak honestly of the dead, even if being honest means speaking ill.”

So, does not speaking ill of the dead Hitler erase the Jewish community and the holocaust experience, or what? I guess that probably doesn’t apply to Stalin or Saddam Hussein, though.  They’re on the official approved right-wing Slander List.

Opps, my bad … I’m so politically correct, but I must not speak ill of the dead! Or is not speaking ill some sort of contorted “political correctness” that shows your “woke” to hatred in the name of right-wing politics?  I really hoped we’d seen the last of making a martyr of someone who hid behind the First Amendment to normalize hate speech. He even dropped out of college and spent time studying the career of Rush Limbaugh, whose antics included taking trips to Latin America to purchase children trafficked for sex.

The thing that pushed me over last night was reading that the NFL mandated a pre-game tribute for Kirk. It appears that only five teams ignored the order. I would like to announce that the Saints are dead to me now. I dumped my one jersey that I bought after the Hurricane Katrina season in the trash this morning. I was still wearing it up to yesterday. It’s gone where my shrimp scales and tales go. It’s gone where all of the worthless things go. It’s in my trash can.

My Saint shirt is on the way to the New Orleans Garbage Dump. It’s cotton, so it should disintegrate nicely.

This is from Heavy.com, and I still can’t believe I’m reporting on sportsball anyway. “Five NFL Teams Don’t Hold Moment of Silence for Charlie Kirk.

Among the 13 NFL home teams that held a game on Sunday, five chose not to hold a moment of silence for slain political organizer Charlie Kirk.

Just a day after he was shot on a college campus in Utah, the NFL chose to hold a moment of silence for Kirk before the “Thursday Night Football” between the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.

The NFL said it was a league decision not a team decision, but Sunday’s decision to hold a tribute would be left to the franchises.

“Last night’s moment was the league’s decision,” the league said in a statement Friday. “It’s up to the clubs for this Sunday’s games. There have been a variety of moments of silence and tributes in-stadium and on-air in all games or a game immediately following events that rise to a national level. Clubs also often hold moments following a tragic event that affects their community.”

The Saints team reportedly added all victims of gun violence to the tribute but did not feel the need to even show the pictures of the 168 children (ages 0-11) who were killed by gun violence, and 716 teenagers (ages 12-17) who were killed, according to the Gun Violence Archive   as of September 15, 2025.  Team owner Gail Benson has also been involved in the Archdiocese of New Orleans pedophile priest scandal. This scandal has been adjudicated and active since 2018, but the Archdiocese still hasn’t provided any of the compensation required by the courts.

The New Orleans Saints say they only did “minimal” public relations work on the area’s Roman Catholic sexual abuse crisis, but attorneys suing the church allege hundreds of confidential Saints emails show the team’s involvement went much further, helping to shape a list of credibly accused clergy that appears to be undercounted.

New court papers filed this week by lawyers for about two dozen men making sexual abuse claims against the Archdiocese of New Orleans gave the most detailed description yet of the emails that have rocked the NFL team and remain shielded from the public.

“This goes beyond public relations,” the attorneys wrote, accusing the Saints of issuing misleading statements saying their work for the archdiocese involved only “messaging” and handling media inquiries as part of the 2018 release of the clergy names.

Instead, they wrote, “The Saints appear to have had a hand in determining which names should or should not have been included on the pedophile list.”

It appears that some Saints Fans did not approve of the so-called tribute. This is from marca.com. “NFL fans reportedly boo during moment of silence honoring Charlie Kirk and victims of gun violence. An eyewitness report from the Saints’ game suggests a divided fan reaction, though broader video confirmation has yet to emerge.”

At the New Orleans Saints’ home game, KADN News15 sports director Will Herren reported that the team did observe a pre-game moment of silence. According to Herren, who was in attendance, “some fans booed, while others cheered” during the pause before the national anthem.

His account remains one of the few on-the-ground reports, as no widespread video evidence has yet surfaced to corroborate the extent of fan reaction. Renowned X.com account MLFootball reported the same.

Several teams, including the Jets, Cardinals, Dolphins, Saints, Steelers, Titans, Chiefs, and Cowboys, held moments of silence. Some displayed images of Kirk on stadium screens.

Others, such as the Bengals, Lions, Colts, Vikings, and Ravens, opted not to take part in the tribute.

The Saints’ game has drawn the most attention due to the reports of booing. Fans online seized on the reported boos as evidence of growing divides over how public tributes intersect with political identities.

Others argued the cheers, which Herren also noted, highlighted that not all fans reacted negatively. There are also unconfirmed reports that San Francisco 49ers fans had filled home areas of the Saints’ stadium.

Still, the lack of broad, independent video confirmation leaves uncertainty about how widespread the reaction truly was. Most social media claims of booing come from individual users and have not been backed by national outlets.

This reeks of forcing religion-specific enforced prayer when it’s not your religion or belief system. Right-wing political correctness has shown itself boldly this week. The Washington Post steps in its shit by firing Karen Attiah.  This is posted on her blog, The Golden Hour. “The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced. I spoke out against hatred and violence in America — and it cost me my job.”  Right-wingers only let wipipo define what hatred and violence are.

Last week, the Washington Post fired me.

The reason? Speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.

Eleven years ago, I joined the Washington Post’s Opinions department with a simple goal: to use journalism in service of people.

I believed in using the pen to remember the forgotten, question power, shine light in darkness, and defend democracy. Early in my career, late Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt told me that opinion journalism is not just about writing the world as it is, but as it should be. He told me we should use our platform to do good. That has been my north star every day.

As the founding Global Opinions editor, I created a space for courageous, diverse voices from around the world — especially those exiled for speaking the truth. I was inspired by their bravery. When my writer, Global Opinions columnist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered by Saudi Arabia regime agents for his words, I fought loudly for justice for years, putting my life and safety on the line to pursue accountability and defend global press freedom. For this work, I was honored with global recognition, prestigious awards and proximity to the world’s most powerful people.

As a columnist, I used my voice to defend freedom and democracy, challenge power and reflect on culture and politics with honesty and conviction.

Now, I am the one being silenced – for doing my job.

On Bluesky, in the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Utah and Colorado, I condemned America’s acceptance of political violence and criticized its ritualized responses — the hollow, cliched calls for “thoughts and prayers” and “this is not who we are” that normalize gun violence and absolve white perpetrators especially, while nothing is done to curb deaths.

I expressed sadness and fear for America.

Do not ever forget that Charlie Kirk used his First Amendment rights to spread hatred and bigotry. This is from The Guardian. “Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’, The far-right commentator didn’t pull his punches when discussing his bigoted views on current events

How Charlie Kirk turned campuses into cultural battlefields – and ushered in Trump’s assault on universities

Charlie Kirk’s death raises fears of ‘beginning of a darker chapter’ for US violence

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

The far-right commentator didn’t pull his punches when discussing his bigoted views on current events

• • How Charlie Kirk turned campuses into cultural battlefields – and ushered in Trump’s assault on universities
  •  Charlie Kirk’s death raises fears of ‘beginning of a darker chapter’ for US violence

Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.

If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.

Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.

On race

If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023

<snip>

On gender, feminism and reproductive rights

Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.

– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.

– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024

On gun violence

I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023

On immigration

America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024

This huge compilation of quotes was provided by Chris Stein. There are pages more of it on things like Islam, debate, and religion.  Charlie Boy had no respect for the U.S. Constitution.

There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022

This man was a hero only to the vast White Nationalist Basket of Deplorables. I have one more to share, which specifically focuses on his bigotry against Black Americans. This was written by Vernellia Randal at Race, Racism, and the Law.  Charlie Kirk, White Supremacist, Dead at 31.”

Charlie Kirk built himself into the face of a conservative youth movement through Turning Point USA (TPUSA). Behind the branding of “patriotism” and “freedom,” the record shows a pattern of rhetoric, organizational culture, and alliances that echoed white supremacist and Christian nationalist ideologies. The Southern Poverty Law Center documented how TPUSA repeatedly framed immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and racial justice advocates as existential threats to “white Christian America,” warning followers that their families, religion, and entire way of life were under attack. In later years, Kirk openly embraced Christian nationalist language, claiming that liberty was only possible with a Christian population—a narrative tying freedom to demographic dominance, a cornerstone of supremacist logic (SPLC).

On race, Kirk was blunt and dismissive. He denied the existence of systemic racism, called white privilege a “racist idea,” and vilified critical race theory as dangerous indoctrination. In one speech, he called George Floyd a “scumbag,” showing open contempt for a man whose death triggered a national reckoning on race and policing (WHYY). These rhetorical choices were not accidental—they functioned as a political strategy to delegitimize Black pain and deny the realities of structural racism in America.

Inside TPUSA, the culture reflected the same hostility. A New Yorker investigation described the workplace as “difficult … and rife with tension, some of it racial.” One African American staffer reported being the only person of color when hired in 2014, only to be fired on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The organization’s then–national field director, Crystal Clanton, was exposed for texting, “I hate black people. … End of story.” TPUSA claimed it acted after the texts surfaced, but the damage was undeniable—the rot reached the top (New Yorker).

Kirk’s movement also courted or tolerated figures openly tied to the far right. Political Research Associates documented cases where TPUSA chapters hosted or aligned with Nick Fuentes and his white nationalist followers. Kirk’s allies relied on antisemitic tropes, praising authoritarianism in Israel while denouncing “liberal Jews” in the United States (PRA). TPUSA severed ties when public exposure threatened its reputation, but the repeated associations revealed how far Kirk was willing to go in pursuit of influence.

The mainstream press tracked this trajectory. The Guardian reported that Kirk’s rhetoric increasingly mirrored white supremacist and authoritarian themes, while campus watchdog groups chronicled repeated incidents of racist, homophobic, and transphobic speech at TPUSA events (Guardian; AAUP). This was not about “a few bad apples.” It was a culture, nurtured by leadership, that normalized bigotry and dressed it up as “truth-telling.”

The evidence remains overwhelming: Kirk and TPUSA did not need to wear hoods or wave Confederate flags to advance the logic of white supremacy. By denying systemic racism, vilifying movements for justice, and legitimizing extremists, Kirk and his organization reinforced the architecture of racial dominance in America. That was the through line of his political project. He positioned himself as a defender of liberty, but the liberty he envisioned was conditional—anchored in whiteness, Christianity, and exclusion. His legacy is not simply conservatism. It is a record of advancing ideas and practices that aligned with white supremacy, even if he never wore the label himself.

The deepest irony of Kirk’s legacy came in the manner of his death. In 2023, he declared that “it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” framing gun deaths as a tragic but acceptable price for liberty (Wikipedia). Two years later, he was killed by gunfire at one of his own public events (AP News). His own words came back in the most devastating way, embodying the very cost he had justified. For critics, this was not just irony but a brutal illustration of how the normalization of preventable violence eventually consumes even its defenders. For supporters, his death was framed as tragic but consistent with the risks of freedom. Yet the broader truth remains: when a society accepts death as the “price” of a constitutional right, it abandons any serious effort to build policies that protect life alongside liberty. Kirk’s fate exposed the hollowness of his argument. He did not just preach the acceptance of gun deaths as a cost of freedom—he became that cost.

I’ve spent enough time on the literal white-washing of Charlie Boy. I’m likely to the point where I may be testing my University’s Academic Freedom and Diversity policies. I just cannot sit aside while someone so vile and dangerous is being sanctified to rile up a base needed for the midterms. Tolerance only works so far for me. You may have different political views, but hatred of others is not a political view. It’s a sign there’s something seriously evil working inside your brain. This one was a cold-hearted snake. I don’t care if you’re dead or alive. The truth about you shall set the rest of us free.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CharlieBoyKirk #gunViolence #hateSpeech #NFLPoliticalPandering #religiousHateSpeech #RepublicanPartyOfHateAndBigotry

Mostly Monday Reads:

“What happened was…” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Well, I know I’m not sleeping well at night. How about you?

JJ sent me the link to this horrifying story. It gave me my first share, but now I’m wondering if I’ll actually be able to eat lunch today. This is from the New York Times.  “Inside Trump’s Decision. The Times pieced together the days and hours leading up to President Trump’s decision to strike Iran. It’s a story of diplomacy, deception, and a secret that almost got out.”  We don’t have to worry about him being around to take that 3 am phone call. The Pentagon was worried about him putting the entire attack plan on Truth Social. I’ve gifted the link to you so you can read the entire thing. You know the Missouri Bombers he blathered about?  One fleet was a ruse. Aaron Fritschner, Deputy Chief of Staff at Congressman Don Beyer, tweeted it out.

Inside the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command, military planners worried that Trump was giving Iran too much warning about an impending strike. So they worked up their own ruse: They had two fleets of B-2 bombers leave Missouri at the same time, one flying east and one flying west. Flight trackers spotted the westward planes, which offered some idea of the timing of a possible attack. But those planes were a decoy.

The eastbound planes crossed the Atlantic undetected, joined with fighter jets and flew into Iranian airspace. At 2:10 a.m. local time yesterday, the lead bomber dropped two of the bunker-busters on the Fordo site. By the end of the mission, 14 of the bombs had fallen.

You may read about the details of the attack at PBS if you aren’t overwhelmed already by the thought of Sex Pest and Drunk, Pet Hegseth being a part of this. This headline from The Hill won’t make you feel any less queasy. I’m assuming you knew that #FARTUS was also posted that he would help Iran Make Iran Great Again.  That was while Hegseth and Rubio were busily telling the press that our hijacked country had no plans for regime change. Remember, if his lips are moving, he’s telling a big ol’ story. “Israel attacking government sites in Iran as Trump floats regime change.” The reporting here is by Sarah Fortinsky.

Israel said it is carrying out attacks on Iranian government sites and “regime targets” — including the notorious Evin Prison — as President Trump muses publicly about a regime change in Tehran.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a social media post at noon local time on Monday that Israeli forces are “currently striking with unprecedented force regime targets and governmental oppression entities in the heart of Tehran,” according to an English translation of the Hebrew statement.

He said those targets include the headquarters of Basij, the paramilitary volunteer militia within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Evin Prison, used to incarcerate political prisoners and opponents of Iran’s leadership; and the “Destroy Israel” clock in Palestine Square.

Katz said the attacks are also striking “additional regime targets,” including internal security headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards and the ideology headquarters.

Throughout Monday morning, meanwhile, the Israeli military said sirens were sounding across the country as Iran continued to launch missiles targeting Israel.

That sure sounds like a war to me. Peter Nicholas, NBC News, reports that Democrats in the District are finally sounding some kind of alarm. “‘Biden didn’t start any wars’: Democrats sharpen their arguments against Trump’s foreign policy. In the wake of the U.S. airstrikes on Iran, Democrats are pointing to Trump’s own promises that he wouldn’t ensnare the country in foreign conflicts.”

Democrats are seizing on Donald Trump’s surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities to make the case that the world is becoming more dangerous on his watch, not less, and that he is reneging on a promise to avoid foreign military interventions.

The argument strikes at Trump’s contention that his blend of negotiating skills and toughness is enough to keep the United States safe.

In the space of a few days, Trump has made the United States a combatant in another Middle East war that exposes soldiers to potential deadly reprisals, Democrats contend.

In a statement, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin pointed to Trump’s inaugural address, in which he said he would measure his success by “the wars we never get into.”

Yet, Martin said, “against his own words, the president sent bombers into Iran. Americans overwhelmingly do not want to go to war. Americans do not want to risk the safety of our troops abroad.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Several lawmakers said Sunday that they will press the Trump administration for clarity about the attack on Iran and the endgame he envisions. But they are also using the moment to try to undercut Trump’s standing with those who voted for him in the hope he would not get entangled in foreign wars.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said Trump’s commitment was “to get us out of foreign wars.”

“Say what you want about Joe Biden, Joe Biden didn’t start any wars,” Smith said. “He got us out of the one war that we were in [in Afghanistan]. Trump has now started a war with Iran.”

The Guardian has a headline today that’s spot on. George Bush got led on by his own advisors. Trump’s advisors said no to the mission. Evidently, Trump was taken by strongman Benjamin Netanyahoo! After all that speechifying about Hillary getting us into another World War and how he’d never drag us into something like Dubya did to Iraq and Afghanistan. Here we are. “Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie. The Iraq War was built on a lie. Now history is repeating itself.”  Mohamad Bazzi has the analysis.

In May 2003, George W Bush landed on the deck of a US aircraft carrier to deliver a triumphant speech, declaring that major combat operations in Iraq had ended – six weeks after he had ordered US troops to invade the country. Bush spoke under a now-infamous banner on the carrier’s bridge that proclaimed: “Mission Accomplished”. It would turn into a case study of American hubris and one of the most mocked photo-ops in modern history.

As Bush made his speech off the coast of San Diego, I was in Baghdad covering the invasion’s aftermath as a correspondent for a US newspaper. It was clear then that the war was far from over, and the US was likely to face a grinding insurgency led by former members of the Iraqi security forces. It would also soon become clear that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was built on a lie: Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not intent on developing them. And Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, despite the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to connect Hussein’s regime to al-Qaida.

Today, Donald Trump has dragged the US into another war based on exaggerations and manipulated intelligence: the Israel-Iran conflict, which began on 13 June when Israel launched a surprise attack killing some of Iran’s top military officials and nuclear scientists, and bombing dozens of targets across the country.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that Israel had to attack because Tehran was working to weaponize its stockpile of enriched uranium and racing to build a nuclear bomb. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” Netanyahu said, as the first wave of Israeli bombs fell on Iran. “It could be a year. It could be within a few months.”

Before dawn on Sunday, US warplanes and submarines bombed three major nuclear facilities in Iran. In a speech from the White House, Trump declared the operation a “spectacular military success” and said the sites had been “totally obliterated”. Trump added that his goal was to stop “the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror”.

But does Iran pose the immediate threat that Netanyahu and Trump have claimed?

US intelligence officials, along with the UN’s nuclear watchdog and independent experts, say that while Iran has dramatically increased its supply of uranium enriched to nearly weapons grade, there is no evidence it has taken steps to produce a nuclear weapon. In March, the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that America’s intelligence agencies continued “to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. She added that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”.

I’m sure none of this is lost on us. Mark Landler writes this analysis for The New York Times. “Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow. Through revolution and upheaval, the program has become intertwined with the country’s security and national identity.” Let’s hope all of this sinks in before Trump’s Folly starts costing American lives.

By joining Israel’s military campaign against Iran, Mr. Trump has greatly raised the costs for Iran’s leaders in refusing to accept stringent curbs on their uranium enrichment program. Yet, however this conflict ends, he may have given them even more compelling reasons to seek a nuclear deterrent, experts say.

“Any strategic thinker in Iran, present or future, realizes that Iran is located in the Middle East, that its neighbors are Netanyahu’s Israel, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and M.B.S. in Saudi Arabia,” said Professor Alvandi, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

To that list of threats, Iran can now add the United States.

The American bombardment likely inflicted serious damage on the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo, and the research complex at Isfahan. Earlier Israeli strikes killed several of Iran’s prominent nuclear scientists, as well as damaging installations. Taken together, that could set back Iran’s program by years.

But bombs alone cannot erase the knowledge that Iranians have accumulated over nearly seven decades, since 1957, when Iran first signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the Eisenhower administration. The United States was then encouraging countries to engage in the peaceful exploration of nuclear science through President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative.

In 1967, with American help, Iran built a small research reactor in Tehran that still exists. A year later, it signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a symbol of the shah’s desire to be accepted into the club of Western nations.

Flush with cash from 1973 oil shock, the shah then opted to rapidly expand Iran’s civil nuclear program, including developing a homegrown enriching capacity. He sent dozens of Iranian students to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study nuclear engineering.

The shah viewed it as a prestige project that would vault Iran into the front ranks of Middle Eastern countries. But that put him at odds with the United States, which worried that Iran would reprocess spent fuel into fissile material that could be used in a weapon.

“It was an icon of the country having arrived as a major power, with the side idea that if Iraq ever threatened Iran, it could be diverted to military uses,” said Professor Alvandi, who published “Nixon, Kissinger and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War.”

Everything old is new again. History repeats itself. Yup, another Republican steps on the detonator.  Historian Heather Cox Richardson has a bigger perspective at her Substack, Letters from an American.

In last night’s speech to the nation, Trump appeared to reach out to the evangelical wing of MAGA that wanted the U.S. to intervene on Israel’s side in its fight against Iran. Trump said: “And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

But while the evangelicals in MAGA liked Trump’s bombing of Iran, the isolationist “America First” wing had staunchly opposed it and are adamant that they don’t want to see U.S. involvement in another foreign war. So today, administration officials were on the Sunday talk shows promising that Trump was interested only in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not in regime change. On ABC’s This Week, Vice President J.D. Vance said explicitly: “We don’t want to achieve regime change.” On X, poster after poster, using the same script, tried to bring America Firsters behind the attack on Iran by posting some version of “If you are upset that Trump took out Obama’s nuclear facilities in Iran, you were never MAGA.”

This afternoon, Trump posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”

On ABC’s This Week, Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) said: “It’s way too early to tell what the actual effect on the nuclear program is, and of course, it’s way too early to tell how this plays out, right? I mean, we’ve seen this movie before. Every conflict in the Middle East has its Senator Tom Cottons who promise us mushroom clouds. In the Iraq war it was Condoleezza Rice promising us a mushroom cloud. And initially—and this is true of every one of these wars in Libya, in Iraq, and Afghanistan—initially, things looked pretty good. Saddam Hussein is gone. Muammar Qaddafi is gone. The Afghan Taliban are gone. And then, over time, we start to learn what the cost is. Four thousand, four hundred Americans dead in Iraq. The Taliban back in power. So bottom line, the president has taken a massive, massive gamble here.”

There are already questions about why Trump felt obliged to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites right now. In March, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who oversees all U.S. intelligence, told Congress that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. and Iran have been negotiating over Iran’s nuclear program since April, and when Israel attacked Iran on June 12, a sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to begin just two days later, in Oman.

White Christian Nationalists have been at the heart of the big problems in just living your American life, extending their warmongering, hateful, bigoted selves into a second century. Meanwhile, back in the USSR, the bear awakens.  Has Trump changed his fealty? This is from the Washington Post.  Will he give up his position as RasPutin Fangirl and such to Netanyahoo? “Russia condemns U.S. strikes on Iran but takes no concrete actions. Iran’s foreign minister is in Moscow seeking support, but other than condemning the attack, Putin has not taken any major moves to back Tehran.” I was last night years old when I read that a Russian official told the press there were lots of countries willing to send actual nukes to Iran. It was part of the reason I didn’t sleep last night without a hefty dose of Benadryl.  I didn’t snore either, from my poor stuffed sinuses suffering from the humidity and pollen here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday condemned the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran ahead of a meeting with Iran’s top diplomat, describing the strikes as “absolutely unprovoked,” but he has so far stopped short of any more concrete measures to assist Russia’s regional ally.

The U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have underscored Putin’s declining capacity to influence events in the Middle East — once a key plank of his foreign policy — with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria last year, Moscow’s cooler relations with Israel and Putin’s failed effort to convince President Donald Trump that he could be a mediator in the Iran crisis.

In comments Monday to military graduates, Putin said Washington’s involvement was dangerous and a sharp escalation. “Non-regional powers are also being drawn into the conflict,” he said, referring to the U.S. bombings. “All this is bringing the world to a very dangerous point.”

The conflict has demonstrated the limits so far to Russia’s willingness to assist Iran militarily — after both sides signed a strategic agreement in January without a mutual defense clause.

I’m going to start wrapping things up, but I wanted to share a few of the reporters outside the beltway. Jude Legum writes this for Popular Information. “A new war based on manipulated intelligence. More than two decades after the Iraq War commenced, history is repeating itself.”  Even the weirdos he put in his cabinet saw the intelligence and just thumbed their noses at them. He “knew” better and used his instincts.

On March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush began the bombing campaign in Iraq, justifying the attack with manipulated and bogus intelligence. Twenty-two years later, history is repeating itself.

The clear judgment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not authorized a nuclear weapons program. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the nation’s top intelligence official, said so publicly on March 25, 2025. “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard asserted in her opening statement.

Last Tuesday, asked about Gabbard’s testimony on Iran, Trump said, “I don’t care what she said.” On Friday, as his rhetoric became more bellicose, Trump was reminded of that March assessment and asked: “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon?” Trump did not say that the intelligence community had gathered new information since March. Rather, Trump said that “my intelligence community is wrong.” He also publicly rebuked Gabbard again, adding, “She’s wrong.”

Now, to justify the bombing of several sites in Iran, top members of the Trump administration claim Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, Vice President JD Vance said that the administration believed “the Iranians were rushing toward a nuclear weapons program.” That directly contradicts the March assessment by the IC that no such program had been authorized, much less commenced.

Vance dodged questions on whether the intelligence has changed since March:

KRISTEN WELKER: Why launch this strike now? Has the intelligence changed Mr. Vice President?

VANCE: A couple things about that Kristen. What Tulsi said back in March is that Iran was producing highly-enriched Uranium that was only consistent with them wanting to build a nuclear weapon.

The transcript of Gabbard’s Congressional hearing reveals Vance’s characterization of Gabbard’s remarks is false and misleading. She did say that Iran was enriching Uranium, something that has been true for many years, and that its enriched uranium stockpile was higher than that of other nations without nuclear weapons. But she was clear that they had not taken steps to build a nuclear weapon, nor had such a program been authorized.

On Sunday, in an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the intelligence about whether Iran had decided to build a nuclear weapon “irrelevant.”

Margaret Brennan: Are you saying there that the United States did not see intelligence that the supreme leader had ordered weaponization?

Rubio: That’s irrelevant. I see that question being asked in the media all the time. That’s an irrelevant question. They have everything they need to build a weapon.

Brennan: No, but that is the key point in U.S. intelligence assessments. You know that.

Rubio: No, it’s not.

Brennan: Yes, it was.

Rubio: No, it’s not.

At a Pentagon press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also avoided answering whether the intelligence assessment had changed since March …

Jennifer Ruben, now writing at The Contrarian, has the term I’ve been using for at least two weeks. “Trump’s wags the dog. Risky military action disrupts the political dynamic.  He’s been trying to get us off the topics of Doge, the Big Beautiful Budget-Busting bill, and the incredible cuts floating around the Senate.

Donald Trump, without authorization from Congress and without substantive consultation, took a fateful step in ordering the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites, based on the false pretext that Iran was on the verge of completing a nuclear weapon. The consequences of this move have yet to unfold, and the breathtaking array of outcomes—from another forever war to a failed state in Iran to a quickly negotiated nuclear deal—makes it impossible to predict how this will affect Trump’s agenda and his ongoing assault on democracy.

His failure to get authorization for a strike in a war in which the U.S. was acting offensively, despite there being no immediate threat (no one with sense believes Trump’s contradiction of our own intelligence that Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) raises grave constitutional and political consequences.

Despite Trump’s war-talk Saturday night, Vice President JD Vance insists we are not at war. That, as even this crew understands, would require congressional action. On one level, such an assertion is preposterous—as we have indeed become combatants in an extended, ongoing war.

Whatever fiction the administration advances, as Tom Nichols points out, “the enemy gets a vote.” The most likely scenario, he suggests, is not as tidy as Trump would have us believe:

The Iranian regime will be wounded but will likely survive; the nuclear program will be delayed but will likely continue; the region will become more unstable but is unlikely to erupt into a full-blown war involving the United States.

Should we get bogged down in an extended war or face retaliation, Trump’s unilateral action based on a lie (not even DNI Tulsi Gabbard thinks Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) will be viewed as a gross error and a constitutional overstep.

I’m ready for No Drama Obama to make a comeback.  Trump is an exhausting and soul-snatching miscreant.  I’m so tired but yet I cannot sleep. How are you doing? We shall live in Peace someday.

What’s on your Reading and Blogging list today?

#BlabbermouthTrump #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #FARTUS #iran #israel #TrumpSFolly #WeShallOvercome

Mostly Monday Reads: Of Wars and Kings

“A good time was had by all.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The contrast between weekend events could not have been more glaring. All over the country, in cities big and small, as well as rural areas, people turned out for the No Kings event. Then, there was a very boring, sparsely attended military parade in Washington, D.C. Another contrast was the protest, which was peaceful except for a few Police officers who couldn’t seem to control themselves.  Then, there were the political assassinations in Minnesota, where the suspect has all the components of today’s Republican Party and MAGA Domestic Terrorism.  Minnesota Law Enforcement caught up to him last night, and his resume is replete with activities you’d expect of a lone wolf shooter’s wet dreams.

This is from the AP this morning. “Friends say Minnesota shooting suspect was deeply religious and conservative.” I think those two words don’t mean what they’re supposed to imply.  The Pope is deeply religious without the need to kill and hate people who disagree with him.  I’m not even sure how to define conservatism anymore, but it seems to be ever-evolving as we march backward to fascism.  This man was a monster and could’ve been profiled as such if anyone was paying attention.  I guess it’s easier for Republicans to demonize folks by color, ethnic background, religions not of their choosing, and women who won’t be enslaved. His actions and words should have caught attention much earlier.

The man accused of assassinating the top Democrat in the Minnesota House held deeply religious and politically conservative views, telling a congregation in Africa two years ago that the U.S. was in a “bad place” where most churches didn’t oppose abortion.

Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was captured late Sunday following a two-day manhunt authorities described as the largest in the state’s history. Boelter is accused of impersonating a police officer and gunning down former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home outside Minneapolis. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz described the shooting as “a politically motivated assassination.”

Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, were shot earlier by the same gunman at their home nearby but survived.

Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota where voters don’t list party affiliation.

Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon

Lisa Leur, writing in this Morning’s New York Times, also states the sad facts. “Like School Shootings, Political Violence Is Becoming Almost Routine. Threats and violent acts have become part of the political landscape, still shocking but somehow not so surprising.”  All of this has sent me back to 1992 when my toddler and I were stalked by them and continually harassed.  They’ve been bombing clinics and horse barns and murdering health care workers.  Timothy McVeigh would thrive in this environment. His type of people are just out in the open now. (“Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was spotted Saturday at a No Kings protest near the Torch of Friendship in downtown Miami.“)  The continual escalation of this has not been difficult to predict. The FBI, prior to Yam Tits, continually warned Congress of the issue.  The Republicans charged them with being politically motivated. They have evolved a completely useless definition of law and order these days.

“Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America,” the president said.

And yet the expanding club of survivors of political violence seemed to stand as evidence to the contrary.

In the past three months alone, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence while Mr. Shapiro and his family were asleep inside; another man gunned down a pair of workers from the Israeli Embassy outside an event in Washington; protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colo., were set on fire; and the Republican Party headquarters in New Mexico and a Tesla dealership near Albuquerque were firebombed.

And those were just the incidents that resulted in death or destruction.

Against that backdrop, it might have been shocking, but it was not really so surprising, when on Saturday morning, a Democratic state representative in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home, and a Democratic state senator, John A. Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, were shot and wounded.

Slowly but surely, political violence has moved from the fringes to an inescapable reality. Violent threats and even assassinations, attempted or successful, have become part of the political landscape — a steady undercurrent of American life.

For months now, Representative Greg Landsman, Democrat of Ohio, has been haunted by the thought that he could be shot and killed. Every time he campaigns at a crowded event, he said, he imagines himself bleeding on the ground.

“It’s still in my head. I don’t think it will go away,” he said of the nightmarish vision. “It’s just me on the ground.”

The image underscores a duality of political violence in America today. Like school shootings, it is both sickening and becoming almost routine, another fact of living in an anxious and dangerously polarized country.

Catching actual criminals is not on the radar with this administration. In fact, they’re doubling down on their anti-immigrant antics despite recent polls showing it highly unpopular.  “New poll: Trump and deportations unpopular with voters, Dems up 8 in House vote. More: 60% see ethics/corruption problems in Trump administration, and the “Abundance Agenda” is popular (except zoning reform).” This is from the substack of G. Elliot Morris.  However, the White House is not watching those polls.  The AP has this report today. “Trump directs ICE to expand deportations in Democratic-run cities, undeterred by protests.” My guess is that he was pissed by the lack of interest in his parade and wants more cities to experience the chaos that he brought L.A. with marines and National Guard interference.  This is reported by Aamer Madhani.

President Donald Trump on Sunday directed federal immigration officials to prioritize deportations from Democratic-run cities, a move that comes after large protests erupted in Los Angeles and other major cities against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Trump in a social media posting called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”

He added that to reach the goal officials ”must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”

Trump’s declaration comes after weeks of increased enforcement, and after Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said ICE officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.

At the same time, the Trump administration has directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels, after Trump expressed alarm about the impact aggressive enforcement is having on those industries, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

This seems to verify that Yam Tits’ policy depends on who he talks to last.   Also, the police in most large cities are bad enough. Why up the stakes with military with no crowd control training?

Protests over federal immigration enforcement raids have been flaring up around the country.

Opponents of Trump’s immigration policies took to the streets as part of the “no kings” demonstrations Saturday that came as Trump held a massive parade in Washington for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.

Saturday’s protests were mostly peaceful.

But police in Los Angeles used tear gas and crowd-control munitions to clear out protesters after the event ended.

Officers in Portland, Oregon, also fired tear gas and projectiles to disperse a crowd that protested in front of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building well into the evening.

This term has already been a lesson on why Trump basically runs every business to bankruptcy and begging to renegotiate the terms of his debt. Trump’s pet projects are massively expensive and have never been funded by Congress.  As I mentioned last week, ICE is running out of funds.  This is from AXIOS as reported by Britanny Gibson.  “ICE’s cash crisis deepens amid immigration crackdown.”

President Trump‘s immigration crackdown is burning through cash so quickly that the agency charged with arresting, detaining and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out of money next month.

Why it matters: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is already $1 billion over budget by one estimate, with more than three months left in the fiscal year. That’s alarmed lawmakers in both parties — and raised the possibility of Trump clawing funds from agencies to feed ICE.

• Lawmakers say ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is at risk of violating U.S. law if it continues to spend at its current pace.
• That’s added urgency to calls for Congress to pass Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which could direct an extra $75 billion or so to ICE over the next five years.
• It’s also led some lawmakers to accuse DHS and ICE of wasting money. “Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the DHS appropriations subcommittee.

Zoom in: ICE’s funding crisis is being fueled by Trump’s team demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day — an unprecedented pace ICE is still trying to reach.

• Its detention facilities — about 41,000 beds — are far past capacity as DHS continues to seek more detention space in the U.S. and abroad.

The intrigue: If Trump’s big bill isn’t passed soon, he could use his authority to declare a national emergency to redirect money to ICE from elsewhere in the government — similar to what he did in 2020 to divert nearly $4 billion in Pentagon funds to his border wall project.

• “I have a feeling they’re going to grant themselves an exception apportionment, use the life and safety exception, and just keep burning money,” a former federal budget official told Axios.

• “You could imagine a new emergency declaration that pertains to interior enforcement that would trigger the same kind of emergency personnel mobilization statutes,” said Chris Marisola, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and a former lawyer for the Defense Department.

• “These statutory authorities authorizing the president to declare emergencies” … unlock “a whole host of other authorities for these departments and agencies [that] are often written incredibly broadly and invest a lot of discretion in the president,” Marisola added.

Everything he wants is a national emergency to this guy.  He’s a toddler. Give him a blankie and a Nuk! I suppose we’re going to the courts some more for lessons in the U.S. Constitution.

One of the big stories that’s never in the mainstream news is that researchers are looking for other places to carry on their work, and Europe is happily recruiting them. France is making a big effort to attract the kinds of minds that used to flee to the U.S. for freedom, knowledge, and research funding. This is turning into something more than just a brain drain. It’s blowing up our entire Brain Trust, which is the number one thing we’ve excelled at in the world. We fund innovation and encourage it.  Well, not anymore.

Nature, one of the two premier science research publishers in this country, has an intriguing article about the search to move researchers out of the United States.  “Some US researchers want to leave the country. Can Europe take them? As the Trump administration steps up attacks on US universities and scientific institutions, the European Union is campaigning hard to attract scientists from the United States. But how many can the bloc take?”

In early May, European politicians and university leaders gathered in Paris at Sorbonne University to deliver a message to US researchers affected by cuts made by the administration of US President Donald Trump: move here instead.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and French President Emmanuel Macron announced a 2-year funding package worth €500 million (US$571 million) to support researchers who want to move to the continent, as part of a scheme named Choose Europe.

Although von der Leyen didn’t name the United States or its president explicitly at the 5 May gathering, she said that parts of the world were questioning “free and open research”, describing that attitude as a “gigantic miscalculation”.

In April, the French government announced that money from the country’s €54-billion France 2030 strategic investment initiative had been set aside to fund international researchers who would like to work in France. Macron confirmed at the Sorbonne meeting that the separate €100-million cash boost would fund half of the costs of scientific projects involving international researchers moving to France.

We’ve already discussed how many US professors have left for Canada. Here’s an interview from the pair we featured earlier.  This is especially true of those who specialize in research around democratic backsliding and fascist takeovers in formerly democratic countries.  This new Interview from The Guardian. It’s authored by Jonathan Freedland. “Why a professor of fascism left the US: ‘The lesson of 1933 is – you get out’.” If only I could. I’ve even searched for universities in France.

She finds the whole idea absurd. To Prof Marci Shore, the notion that the Guardian, or anyone else, should want to interview her about the future of the US is ridiculous. She’s an academic specialising in the history and culture of eastern Europe and describes herself as a “Slavicist”, yet here she is, suddenly besieged by international journalists keen to ask about the country in which she insists she has no expertise: her own. “It’s kind of baffling,” she says.

In fact, the explanation is simple enough. Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.

Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald Trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”

Since Shore, Snyder and Stanley announced their plans, the empirical evidence has rather moved in their favour. Whether it was the sight of tanks transported into Washington DC ahead of the military parade that marked Trump’s birthday last Saturday or the deployment of the national guard to crush protests in Los Angeles, alongside marines readied for the same task,recent days have brought the kind of developments that could serve as a dramatist’s shorthand for the slide towards fascism.

“It’s all almost too stereotypical,” Shore reflects. “A 1930s-style military parade as a performative assertion of the Führerprinzip,” she says, referring to the doctrine established by Adolf Hitler, locating all power in the dictator. “As for Los Angeles, my historian’s intuition is that sending in the national guard is a provocation that will be used to foment violence and justify martial law. The Russian word of the day here could be provokatsiia.”

Let’s read about a different angle.

In the 1940 movie The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin gave a speech against fascism that is just as relevant today as it was back then.Right-wing Americans don't recognize fascism, even when it's right in front of their face, because they have been brainwashed by fascists their entire lives.

— Bad Choices Make Good Stories (@badchoices.us) 2025-06-16T00:32:17.149Z

The introduction to Chaplin’s speech is written on the SubStack of Oliver Marcus Malloy.  Since many Holocaust survivors compare Trump’s pogroms to Hitler, it’s a good chance to see this classic movie again.

The Great Dictator (1940), directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, is a satirical comedy that mocks Adolf Hitler and fascism.

Chaplin plays dual roles: a ruthless dictator named Adenoid Hynkel and a kind-hearted Jewish barber, who looks just like the dictator.

As Hynkel plots world domination, the barber, mistaken for the dictator, delivers a powerful speech advocating peace and unity.

The film blends slapstick humor with poignant political commentary, offering a timeless critique of tyranny and intolerance.

Meanwhile, Trump’s foreign policy continues to threaten world stability as everyone considers him and the United States as useless fools these days.

Russian Tass state media has just published the following on its Telegram channel:"The parliament of Iran has approved a strategic partnership agreement with Russia. This was reported by the Embassy of the Islamic Republic in Russia."Very curious timing.

— Anton Gerashchenko (@antongerashchenko.bsky.social) 2025-06-15T21:59:27.164Z

So yes, Reuters reports that Russia has entered the hot war between Iran and Israel, initiated by Israel. “Russia urges Israeli restraint, says Iran has right to defend itself.”  Also reported by Reuters is this headline. “Russia says US has cancelled next round of talks on easing tensions,”

Russia said on Monday that the United States had cancelled the next round of talks between the two countries, an apparent setback in a process launched by presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to improve bilateral ties.

In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova did not say if Washington had given any reason for the break in the talks, which began after Trump returned to the White House in January.

We cannot afford a bimbo for President who drifts from one policy approach to another. It’s fucking dangerous to the country and to our allies.  I usually have a strict no video of Yam Tits and defintely not with him speaking rule, but I’m putting this up. It’s short, at least.  Trump is in Canada today for the G7 meetings.  You can see the enthusiasm in the Canadian PM’s face as Trump announces he’s a “tariff guy.” He thinks the PM’s ideas on the economy are complete,x so they’re going to look at both. The PM of Canada is a fucking economist you moron!

Q: What is holding up a deal with Canada?TRUMP: I'm a tariff person

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-06-16T15:41:26.396Z

Here are some links to follow the G7 summit.

From the BBC: “Trump says expelling Russia from G7 was a ‘mistake’ as he meets Carney.”

From NBC: Live updates:  “Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at G7 summit amid trade tensions.  The president said he expected to reach new trade agreements at the summit.”

From Fortune:  “G7 summit in Canada won’t release a joint statement as world leaders focus on not riling a Trump they disagree with.”

From AP News: “G7 leaders want to contain the Israel-Iran conflict, as Trump calls for talks between the countries.”

I guess we’re not the only ones who desperately want to get rid of him for good. I can only imagine what the footage will look like during the news this evening.

So, it’s continually raining here.  There was a crack of lightning last night that made the sky white, and the sound was so loud that Temple, while scrambling to hide under my desk, fell out of bed. I’ve had to lift her back up to the bed several times now. We’re going to the vet this afternoon for her annual.  I think she’s just a little store.  She’s walking around the house.

The Rooster has a girlfriend in a house 3 doors down from me. She’s caged him in the backyard and fenced in with a thick horizontal wood fence, but he sits at the same spot every morning just to be close to her.

The outdoor kitty still comes for breakfast. I’m not sure if she’s bringing friends, but an entire cup of food disappears pretty quickly.

I’m still here in New Orleans. I didn’t make it to the protest yesterday, but here’s the one in the Marigny neighborhood, which is next to mine.  Have a good week!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#NoKings #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #BrainTrustDrain #G7Summit2024 #ICERaids #IsraelIraqWar #Russia

Finally Friday Reads: Page Not Found

“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.

The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity.  The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it.  The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.

Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery.  This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description.  I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.

I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet.  Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe.  They governed during Watergate.  Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits?  Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!

I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder. 

Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts.  DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.

The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.

As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.

The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”

The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.

The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.

VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.

We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.

ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”

Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.

Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.

“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”

Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.

Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”

Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.

“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”

It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.

ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.

The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.

Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.

Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this. 

However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother.  (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”

The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.

The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.

Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.

The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.

Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.

“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”

How’s this for government efficiency?  The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.

There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government.  This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance.  That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people.  Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.”  Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines?  They fucked up folks!  Let’s bury the lede!

Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.

Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.

Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.

Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found

The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”

Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment.   It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson.  “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.

A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.

The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.

U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.

Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.

In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”

It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.

Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.

But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.

CBS shows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.

President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.

The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.

As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.

Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.

In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.

Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up

Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery.  Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.”  Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf!  What a surprise!

A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.

Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.

The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”

She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”

Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.

He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.

The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.

In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.

This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.

In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.

As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.

Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.

As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.

The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government.  How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”

The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.

At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.

In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.

Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.

The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.

The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”

Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.

It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.

One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.

On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”

But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.

Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.

Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.

Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.

This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.

And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.

Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.

It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh,  up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.

As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day.  There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.”  I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.

Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.

Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.

“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”

Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.

Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles.  We have allies.  At least at this moment.  This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DDay #ICEKidnappings #JudgesRuleAgainstTrump #TrumpAdministrationScrewUpsAndCrimes #TurningBackTheDogeDisasters

Finally Friday Reads: TACO Tales

“The most transparent administration ever..” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m hoping we’re entering a Golden Age of Journalism because the number of stories floating around out there today indicates that we need more investigative journalists than ever before. Because of that, I cannot seem to play the Wake Forest Commencement by Sixty Minutes‘ Scott Pelley enough.  His first statement rang true throughout the world.  “Our sacred Rule of Law is under attack.” The Speech was entitled “The Meaning of You.” 

The path to self-discovery starts with finding what kind of person you are when times get dark.  As I’ve said before, these times are very dark. Do you shy away from speaking out?  Do you take fighting action on whatever level you can?  Do you melt away?  Do you just go along or cheer it? I’ve come back to this speech this week because the headlines today show how important the press can be in exposing the dark times and the dark ones and their actions to light.  It is then up to us to do something about it and to get our elected officials on it.

The New Republic’s Parker Molloy briefly discusses the importance of the Pelley Speech and the evil MAGA’s response.  “Scott Pelley Warns Graduates About the Threats to American Democracy. The “60 Minutes” correspondent never mentioned Trump by name, but his call to defend democratic institutions was apparently too much for the MAGA crowd to handle.”

Earlier this month, journalist Scott Pelley delivered what should have been a fairly standard commencement address at Wake Forest University. The 60 Minutes correspondent spoke about seeking truth, defending democracy, and the importance of courage in difficult times—the kind of boilerplate inspiration you’d expect from a veteran journalist addressing graduates.

But because we live in very normal times, the speech went viral over Memorial Day weekend and triggered a conservative meltdown that’s been fascinating to watch unfold.

The fury started when a pro-MAGA account clipped portions of Pelley’s speech and shared them on X, writing “Scott Pelley raged at Trump in angry, unhinged commencement address at Wake Forest.”

What did Pelley say that sent the right into such a tizzy? Well, he had the audacity to suggest that “our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.” He warned of “insidious fear … reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts, the fear to speak in America.”

And perhaps most provocatively, Pelley criticized the administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, saying, “Diversity is now described as ‘illegal.’ Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends.” He also referenced “masked agents” who “abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana charged with nothing.”

Pelley’s speech comes as Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion over alleged “election interference” and CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon abruptly resigned, citing disagreements with the company amid the legal pressure.

What’s remarkable is how a fairly conventional call for civic engagement and democratic values could generate such hysteria. But then again, when you’re running an administration built on exactly the kind of authoritarian playbook Pelley described, I suppose any critique—no matter how measured—feels like an existential threat.

Reading the speech in full, it’s hard to see what’s so “unhinged” about urging graduates to be engaged citizens and defend democratic institutions. Unless, of course, you’re deeply invested in attacking those very institutions.

A complete transcript of the speech follows.  Also, you may listen to and watch Paley’s address here.  The headlines today may be bleak, but the important thing is that reporters and the people supporting the work investigate and can find unbelievable corruption, stark depravity, and many examples of bad human conduct, demeanor, and actions. Then expose it!

When I was born, and as I grew up and my family moved into the middle class, I was instilled with the importance of reading magazines and watching the news.  My Grandfather on my mother’s side always sent me books for my birthday and Christmas. My Nana on my mother’s side sent my sister and me subscriptions to National Geographic and The Christian Science Monitor.  We read the local newspapers and the Des Moines Register every morning and evening.  When I asked my Dad while I was in high school if I could get a subscription to The Manchester Guardian and to Paris Match, he didn’t even hesitate. I can tell you my show and tell performance, as well as my reports from newspapers, were altogether different from my Council Bluffs and Omaha friends.

When I hit university, all the foreign students whom I continually sought out for all dorm meals originally thought I was from Canada.  When my family travelled to Europe, I tried to blend in as much as possible and just observe.  It is perhaps this that makes me blog today, even though the only journalism classes I took were in high school. I wrote for the school newspaper, an underground newspaper, and the junior high newspaper.  I always assumed everyone was as news-hungry as I was growing up in some of the most boring and inane places on the planet. I couldn’t live with oatmeal after reading about Belgian waffles.  Can you imagine what happened when I got my first bite of one?

Knowledge of news is important for good citizenship, it’s important for making decisions that impact your household, and it’s important just because things are moving faster than ever.  So let me get down to my first suggested reads today.

One of the things I find most threatening these days is seeing my students, my university, and many places leave their brains behind and try to make things easy using AI. It may have a future, but presently, any good professor worth their salt can tell when someone uses it.  You should get good at spotting it on the internet, and you will be annoyed when you’re making an important call about something or chatting with some company, and even when it’s given a name, you can tell by the idiosyncrasies and the lack of niceties of American English, this thing ain’t human. 

I’ve noticed that the grammar check my University uses completely breaks down when dealing with nuances and colloquialisms.  It seems to excel mostly at filling my writing with commas and catching typos.  That’s okay by me and easy, but believe me, I can tell when a student overuses AI.  We’re being trained at spotting it as well as teaching students how to use it correctly.  However, someone who knows what they are doing from years of doing it can make a better decision about its use than those still on the learning curve. 

I say this because I watched a news program where the new AI installed at the Social Security phone line repeatedly ignored the question they asked, then kept squawking “Can I help you with something else?” endlessly.  This is the point where I hear my Nana’s voice telling little me, “Well, you can, but may you?”  AI does not grok manners and polite conversations.  It could be because human mutants like Elon Musk and his Dodge cluster have never quite figured that out either.  Garbage in, garbage out.  But, then maybe that’s what they want.  Cease being polite and just be technically acceptable.  Okay, it’s long but I’m getting there, I promise.

This phenomenon played out yesterday as one of RFK Jr.’s prodigal research adventures turned into something I wouldn’t even expect from an undergrad or, actually, even someone sitting in my high school or university composition class. He was, of course, a legacy student there because of his father. We also know he was the dorm’s drug dealer from my fellow Westside High School journalism classmate, Kurt Anderson.  One thing Westside always turned out was students who knew how to write. That skill got me through all the rest of my degrees because, damn I could write a good paper. Evidently, RFK Jr. did not get that skill.

It’s rather interesting given the difficult times Harvard is facing in protecting its foreign students.  Now granted, I helped many a colleague from distant lands to get their excellent research into prime American English form.  Everyone always sent them to me before they were sent to a journal for publishing, which bought me a cheap pub. But, every one of them took me farther down the path of being a numbers and stats guru.  Did you know kids in India start their calculus classes in like 5th grade? It was also easier for me to actually come up with a sweet hypothesis to test because I was taught to be both analytical and creative. That’s what a good public school can do for you.  A good university exposes you to what’s possible and exposes you to all kinds of interesting thinkers. But, again, I guess RFK Jr. was too busy with drugs to take advantage of anything like that. That’s why he’s likely never going to be part of a blog community, a book club, or a group that goes to the Saturday Night Midnight movies.

Okay, I really am getting to the read now.  At his advanced age, with his unlimited educational opportunities and his money, he cannot write a research paper.  And yet, it showed up in the public sphere because he was trying to prove his very wrong hypotheses at any cost.  He didn’t prove anything. He turned to all manner of things to argue his hypothesis. None of his antics were academically sound.   At first, the White House’s dumbest Press Secretary announced there were “formatting” errors. But, how could that be when, after investigating sources, reporters found them either made up or seriously in error?  The Make America Healthy Again report was just embarrassing.

MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki derided White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s defense of a “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report filled with errors and broken links.

NOTUS reported the paper, released under the administration of President Donald Trump and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cited at least seven sources that do not appear to exist. The news publication contacted epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who the MAHA report lists as the first author of a study it cited on adolescent anxiety, and discovered Keyes didn’t write the paper.

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”

NOTUS also reported two other studies pertaining to direct-to-consumer drug advertisements for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids appear nowhere “to be found.” Reporters also could not validate another section claiming 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. Additionally, the author of a corticosteroids study’s the MAHA report cited to support its arguments denied writing the study.

NOTUS reporter Jasmine Wright was in the White House briefing room Thursday and asked Leavitt: “does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted?”

“Yes, we have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS,” Leavitt responded. “I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed.”

Psaki, a former White House press secretary herself, did not contain her scorn.

Well, the nation’s biggest and most disappointing media of record investigated and found some interesting things in the MAHA report.  Let’s start with the Washington Post. “White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say. The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.”  Well, that’s typical of a lot of students.  If they can’t do it, they pay someone who can.  You can always tell this, though, because if you’ve seen any previous work, you recognize their voice and you know when something is different. AI is the most recent example of buying a paper online, but with a lower cost and perhaps a lower chance of getting caught because you won’t find a cheat paper by searching it verbatim with your student’s work. Believe me, the discussion on this in teacher lounges and faculty clubs is de rigueur these days. Evidently, RFK Jr. didn’t even know the most tell-tale of the signs.

Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.

Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.

Some references include “oaicite” attached to URLs — a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of “oaicite” is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company.

A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate — as well as the tendency to “hallucinate” studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real.

So, our Secretary of Health and Human Services is so bereft of research skills that he can’t even avoid the number one Rookie mistake.  Does he have anyone around him who knew better and could catch this?  I can tell you that a team of peers that checks every research paper headed to publication in an academically sound journal would never let this go through to print.  If you’re the main author, you try to avoid any humiliating mistakes for serious journals.

AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report.

“Frankly, that’s shoddy work,” he said. “We deserve better.”

“The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,” which addressed the root causes of America’s lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump.

The New York Times published the first media review pointing out made-up sources. “White House Health Report Included Fake Citations, ‘A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.”  Now, I’m not a scientist, but I lived with a Yale-educated Doctorate in Microbiology who published a lot of things on RNA transcription, ran a lab at a public university, and wound up with the NSF.  I have no idea if he’s retired or if he went with the current purge of scientists.  I read many of his works pre-publication, and he got published in all the big ones.  I think the science journals are more nerve-wracking to write for than the Economics and Finance.  Usually, it’s based on lab data rather than the Federal Reserve Beige Book or World Book data, which gets a pass even though the methodology and the model itself get the eagle eye. This report was a hot mess on all accounts.

The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues.

But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.

“It makes me concerned about the rigor of the report, if these really basic citation practices aren’t being followed,” said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was listed as the author of a paper on mental health and substance use among adolescents. Dr. Keyes has not written any paper by the title the report cited, nor does one seem to exist by any author.

The news outlet NOTUS first reported the presence of false citations, and The New York Times identified additional faulty references. By midafternoon on Thursday, the White House had uploaded a new copy of the report with corrections.

Dr. Ivan Oransky — who teaches medical journalism at New York University and is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks retractions of scientific research — said the errors in the report were characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence, which has led to similar issues in legal filings and more.

Dr. Oransky said that while he did not know whether the government had used A.I. in producing the report or the citations, “we’ve seen this particular movie before, and it’s unfortunately much more common in scientific literature than people would like or than really it should be.”

Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the report had relied on A.I., the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the department, did not answer a question about the source of the fabricated references and downplayed them as “minor citation and formatting errors.” She said that “the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic-disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”

The false references do not necessarily mean the underlying facts in the report are incorrect. But they indicate a lack of rigorous review and verification of the report and its bibliography before it was released, Dr. Oransky said.

“Scientific publishing is supposed to be about verification,” he said, adding: “There’s supposed to be a set of eyes, actually several sets of eyes. And so what that tells us is that there was no good set of eyes on this

So, after finding out about all of that, this should make you feel really at ease.

The Trump administration has quietly spread Palantir’s technology through U.S. agencies, paving the way to easily compile data on Americans. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since President Trump took office. nyti.ms/4dJfR0o

— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 2025-05-30T16:16:57.733Z

I think we can start making the Big Brother is watching you references now.  This is the subheading, which is startling IMHO.  “The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies.”   Getting your passport ready yet?

In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.

Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.

The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)

Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.

The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.

Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.

Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.

So, while all this is going on, we’re beginning to hear some interesting information on Elon Musk as he exists stage right.   This is from Forbes Magazine.  “Lucky” Susan Dorn got this assignment. “Musk Used Heavy Drugs Including Ketamine And Ecstasy While He Became Close To Trump, Report Says. Elon Musk used a copious amount of drugs—and travelled with a pill box that appeared to contain Adderall—last year as he ramped up his donations to President Donald Trump, according to a New York Times report that comes on his last official day at the White House.”  He’s the Wolf of Austin, I guess.

Key Facts

• Musk told confidants he was taking so much ketamine it affected his bladder, according to The Times, citing unnamed sources who said he also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.
• The Times also reported it obtained a photo that showed a medication box Musk travelled with containing about 20 pills, including Adderall.
• The alleged drug use overlapped with his campaign activity last year on behalf of  Trump—with an endorsement in July followed by $250 million to help elect him.
• The report comes as Musk is set to exit the White House Friday after announcing Wednesday his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency had come to an end.
• Neither Musk nor his lawyer responded to The Times’ request for comment, but Musk has said previously he was prescribed ketamine for depression.

The New York Times has more details. “On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama. As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous, and his drug use was more intense than previously known.”  Of course, they sent two women after this story, too.  Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey were the assigned reporters.

As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according topeople familiar with his activities.

Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.

It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.

At the same time, Mr. Musk’s family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews.

I’m not about to go to the Gossip Rag road, but there are rumors about Mush and Steven Miller’s wife if you’re interested.  This is from the Independent. “Stephen Miller’s wife leaves the White House to work for Elon Musk ‘full time’, Kate Miller was working as an adviser for Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency.”  I should eat some lunch, and I really will not ruin it by going any deeper into these. BLECH.

So, we lose a clown and gain one. Seriously, none of these Trump men are strangers to make-up. This is from ABC News. “Trump taps former right-wing podcast host Paul Ingrassia for key watchdog post. Ingrassia would replace Hampton Dellinger, who opposed Trump’s mass firings.”

President Trump announced Thursday night that he was tapping Paul Ingrassia, a former far-right podcast host, to lead the Office of Special Counsel — an independent watchdog agency empowered to investigate federal employees and oversee complaints from whistleblowers.

The Trump administration has previously taken aim at the Office of Special Counsel, firing the head of the agency, Hampton Dellinger (a Biden appointee) in February. Dellinger expressed opposition to the Trump administration’s firing of federal employees under DOGE-led cuts, noting that many had been fired or laid off without notice or justification.

Dellinger challenged his firing in court and was briefly reinstated to the post until a federal appeals court allowed for his dismissal. Dellinger decided to drop the challenge.

ABC News exclusively reported in February about how Ingrassia, in his role as White House liaison to the Department of Justice, was pushing to hire candidates at the DOJ who exhibited what he called “exceptional loyalty” to Trump. His efforts at DOJ sparked clashes with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top aide, Chad Mizelle, leading Ingrassia to complain directly to President Trump, sources told ABC News.

Ingrassia was pushed out of DOJ and reassigned as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, where he was serving prior to Trump announcing his new role, according to a White House official familiar with the matter.

In a post on X, Ingrassia wrote in response to his nomination: “It’s the highest honor to have been nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel under President Trump! As Special Counsel, my team and I will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch — with priority on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce and revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement.”

For the Senate-confirmed five-year term, Ingrassia will likely face tough questions over his lengthy history of media appearances and posts on social media promoting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as his ties to far-right media figures.

He was previously spotted at a 2024 rally hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes and has publicly praised figures like Andrew Tate — who has faced criminal charges for alleged sexual assault (Tate denies all wrongdoing).

All the best people, folks, all the best.  So, I know you just want to know the latest information on the American Soap Opera “As the Tarrifs and the TACO Turns.”  This is from CNBC. “Trump accuses China of violating preliminary trade deal.”  Dan Managan gets all the serious stories, you know.

President Donald Trump on Friday said that China has “totally violated its” preliminary trade agreement with the United States, and suggested he would take action in response.

“So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” Trump wrote in a social media post that said China had reneged on a deal that paused retaliatory tariffs between that country and the U.S.

Stock futures fell Friday morning on the heels of Trump’s statement.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a CNBC interview Friday morning, echoed Trump’s allegation, saying “we’re very concerned with” China’s purported non-compliance with the temporary trade deal.

The “United States did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance,” said Greer.

He called that “completely unacceptable and has to be addressed.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a Fox News interview on Thursday, said that trade talks with China “are a bit stalled.”

CNBC has requested comment from China’s embassy in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. and China on May 12 agreed to a 90-day suspension on most tariffs imposed on each other’s imports.

The agreement was reached after Trump slapped sky-high tariffs on imports from China into the U.S., and China retaliated in kind.

“Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger!” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social on Friday.

“The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World,” Trump wrote. “We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, “civil unrest.” I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen.”

“Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!!” the president wrote.

“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”

Trump posted his screed two days after he lashed out at CNBC reporter Megan Cassella at the White House when she asked about the term “TACO trade,” which refers to the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

The term, coined by a Financial Times columnist, suggests that stock pickers can make money by buying shares after markets fall on news of new tariffs imposed by Trump, knowing that he invariably will pause or reduce the tariffs, sending markets higher.

You had to know he had to have a bully story to cover up all the Court sha-la-la about his on-again, off-again tariffs.  Wow, my Grammarly got really dash happy there! Actually, I did it but wondered if it would notice anything and it did.  One missing comma.  I evidently have a thing against commas.

So, at least it’s the weekend!  Hope y’all have a great one!  I say TACO, they say TACO!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#FartusDeportUs #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DrugAddict #ElonMuskNAZI #kakistocracy #PalantirDataTheftSpecialists #ScottPelley #TACO #WhoAreYOU_ #WifeStealer

Finally Friday Reads: Free Speech Attacks, Incompetency, Cruelty, and Grifting Galore Characterize the Trump Regime

“A modern-day interpretation of a 1871 Thomas Nast work seems fitting to commemorate Trump’s secret crypto dinner.” John Buss, repeat@1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

As the old Buddhist and Hobbit saying goes:  “We live in Dark Times.” “Kali Yuga” is the Hindu expression.  Darkness has always been an expression of decline in European History, hence the label “Dark Ages” for the period from the 5th to about the 8th century.  Usually, these periods experience a decline in economic, intellectual, and cultural life.  One of the most prevalent things about these times is that there is a paucity of written records.  So, it’s difficult to capture the decline until a renaissance occurs. The breakdown of institutions occurred in these past times as well as the present. At the moment, we still have the ability to document the decline in the US. Many relate to it as a rebirth of fascist movements of the 20th century. It is a global feature at the moment, but no matter if it’s the Decline of the Roman Empire or the American Empire, there are signs.

The invention of the printing press is seen as one of the most powerful examples of an invention that can change the course of history.  Access to information directly, for personal consideration, tends to create a citizenry with low tolerance of being shut off from thinking for themselves.  Perhaps it’s why today’s dark leaders tend to go for education and the press, and why they attract “low information” and angry denizens.  They also attract a cadre of greedy followers willing to help attack and grab the wealth of those who are powerless.

These are indeed Dark Times.

The fight for the light in the newly filed Harvard case against the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students is a prime cause of denying  the citizenry access to anything that might cause them to question the goings-on here. But it also breaks into the tradition of the United States being the shining light of discovery, science, and reason. It’s why those of us who have had academic careers cherish and enjoy academic freedom.  The free exchange of ideas and opinions is essential.

We have traditionally had a small number of women in my field of economics. It was between 4 to 10 percent in the late 70s and early 80s.  It once rose to above 30%, but recently has settled on 27%.  The STEM fields still reflect the struggle for inclusion.  It’s even lower for Black Americans.  However, my career has led me to have colleagues from a variety of countries, which is wonderful.  In my early career, most of my women colleagues came from the Middle East or China. I was lucky enough to have a professor from Finland. She was brilliant.  Believe me. During my academic studies and life, the joy of having colleagues from all over the world who could share things was a blessing in my life. A colleague from the Punjab who now teaches in Canada helped me improve my math chops to get me through some of the most complex models that you could imagine. He stayed with me after Katrina until the campus got its FEMA trailers.  I also had a student from Taiwan staying with me.  My last biggest joy, however, was writing 2 letters of recommendation for two Black New Orleans students to Rice. The US cannot afford to fall behind in a vast world of research.  And, yet, here we are with a professional moron taking down the biggest academic center of research in the World.  America’s first University, Harvard.  If we do not train the world’s best minds, we will fall deeply behind in everything.

Today, we got the news of the Case Harvard filed against Trump.  “Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Admin From Revoking Harvard’s Ability To Enroll International Students.” This is from The Harvard Crimson.  Harvard turned out one of my favorite journalists, Joy Reid, and you can read this article knowing there are more good journalists headed to jobs.

A federal judge granted Harvard a temporary restraining order in its suit to block the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke its authorization to enroll international students.

The order was issued less than two hours after the University requested a halt to the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to end its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification. Harvard had described the move as “unprecedented and retaliatory.”

United States District Judge Allison D. Burroughs agreed that if the DHS’ move goes forward, Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”

The TRO will go into effect immediately and will likely last until a hearing in the case. Burroughs has scheduled a May 27 status hearing and a May 29 hearing on whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Harvard would need to file for a preliminary injunction to prevent the DHS’ directive from going into effect after the TRO expires.

Under the terms of the order, the DHS is barred from enforcing the Thursday move to strip Harvard of its SEVP status — and Harvard is no longer legally obligated to turn over the requested documents by Sunday.

Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, has adjudicated several cases relating to Harvard in the past. She oversaw a case brought by Harvard and MIT in 2021 against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s effort to force all international students who were enrolled online in the U.S. to leave the country. ICE ultimately rolled back the policy without a ruling from Burroughs.

Burroughs is also overseeing Harvard’s first lawsuit, filed in April, against the Trump administration over its nearly $3 billion funding cut.

You can see all of the destruction of the Age of Reason and the Scientific Age, and the Information Age, clearly in these actions and even more clearly in Trump’s appointments and the destruction of the Agencies most responsible for progress using science and reason.  BB shared this Substack today, and I thought I’d post it here.  It’s from Steven Beschloss, a journalist with a historian brother. “How Much More Stupidity Will Americans Endure? Reflecting on the escalating hostility to American values, principles, and decency in a 24-hour period.”  I personally cannot take much more of this.

I admit: The daily drumbeat of stupidity is exhausting. I wish it were enough for me to simply document the dangerous ignorance of Trump and his sycophants, confident that we’ll soon be free of this regime and its power to spread their poison and cancerous hostility across the land and around the world. But the midterm elections will not arrive for another 17 months. It’s hard to overstate how much damage Trump, his cabinet and his kowtowing Republican Congress can cause between now and then.

That’s why most days I ask myself: Could today be the day Americans decide they’ve had enough and demand change? I have thought that there might be a single event that triggers millions of Americans taking to the streets or committing to a national strike in a public, unavoidable show of solidarity. But I have come to see that the daily drumbeat is numbing too many people, causing them to adapt to the cruelty, the racism, the hostility to democracy, the arrogant rejection of the Constitution and the rule of law. The metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water is apt; by the time the frog’s figured out he needs to get out, it’s too late.

We’re not there yet. You can see that dedicated lawyers are filing suit against the corruption and criminality, judges are pushing back, outraged Americans are engaging in protests, some elected Democrats and other awake leaders are ringing alarm bells, a growing number of colleges and universities have refused to buckle under, some independent media are addressing the reality of authoritarianism in no uncertain terms. Americans have not surrendered their sanity or capacity to know what’s right and wrong, what’s true and false. The pot may be beginning to boil, but we can still see and feel what’s happening. We are still able to take action.

But I want to spotlight a series of events in a single 24-hour period that individually outrage me and, taken together, express a level of stupidity and sickness that should motivate more than a shrug of the head or an angry social media post. You may have already focused on—been outraged by—one or even all of these. But it’s important to not look at them as discrete events, but part and parcel of a single plot to convince us that we should accept a fascist regime bent on elevating white nationalism, oppressing people of color, silencing dissent and making the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer and sicker. This effort is led by a malignant racist and sociopath who’s convinced the people around him to do what he says, no matter how ugly, cruel, blatantly false—or just plain stupid.

Two of the four events were in the Oval Office Wednesday—our Oval Office, the place where real presidents have made some of the most momentous decisions that improved the lives of Americans, created a safety net to overcome the ravages of the Great Depression and soften cap italism’s turbulence, helped defeat the Nazis and fascism, built global alliances that made the world safer, more stable and prosperous, and demonstrated a commitment to bend the arc of history toward justice.

Into this historical place of honor came South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a calm and skilled diplomat who decades earlier had served alongside Nelson Mandela as his chief negotiator to end apartheid in South Africa. But just like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, he arrived for an ambush by a spiteful, narrow-minded man who spreads lies like Ukraine not Russia started the still-raging war. On this day he insisted with false information from fringe groups that South Africa, whose leaders are mostly Black, are committing genocide against white farmers, a false narrative that his top donor and South African-born Elon Musk has propagated.

At Trump’s urging, Ramaphosa answered a reporter’s question about what it would take to convince Trump there is no such white genocide. “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here,” he calmly said, referencing South African golfer Ernie Els who was in the room. “When we have talks between us around a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them.”

But South Africa’s president was being set up. Trump interrupted him to play a video pushing the lies, then he showed photos meant to “prove” how much death there was, even leading Trump to mutter, “Death, death, death, horrible death, death.”

Except the video clip showing a long line of white wooden crosses were not actual burial sites for white farmers, as Trump insisted, but were from a 2020 protest against farm murders over the years. Except the photo Trump showed of people lifting body bags, insisting they “are all white farmers that are being buried,” was actually of humanitarian workers burying bodies in Congo. Except for all the claims of genocide among white farmers, meant to justify bringing white Afrikaners as preferred refugees to America now, there were a total of 44 murders in farming communities last year, Reuters reports, with over 26,000 in the country overall.

President Ramaphosa came to discuss trade and economic partnership. Yet Trump brought him into the Oval Office to ambush and abuse him, push his white nationalist agenda, spread more widely his egregious lies and showcase that—while illegally deporting people of color—only whites deserve America’s protection from presumed persecution. “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around a table and talk about them,” Ramaphosa noted, but Trump was not listening.

There is a daily drumbeat of stupidity, airing of white grievances, and cruelty.  While discriminating harshly against everyone who is not white and Christian, this administration harbors supporters who carry torches and shout “Jews will not replace us,” and has bubble-headed Congress Critters who scream about “Jewish Space Lasers”.   Anti-semitism has become transactional. It has become a useful tool in the attack on Academia and the Democratic Party. It assumes that you can’t understand the history of the Jewish people without turning a blind eye to the punishing attacks on Palestinian women, children, and innocents in the Gaza Strip. I do not think there is a bigger way of showing disrespect for a group of people than using their historical struggles as a tool to encourage the murder of innocents.  But then, our #FARTUS is planning a Trump Tower, hotel, and golf course in GAZA.  The Trump Boyz–in between murdering endangered animals for sport–have been travelling the globe using the Tariff stick as a way to expand their Crime Syndicate.  All, at the expense of the United States and its economy.  This is from QUARTZ: “8 countries where Trump has been making new business deals, from Pakistan to Vietnam, Residential towers, golf courses, crypto — the deals didn’t stop on Inauguration Day.” This is the art of the steal in full display.  All we need to see is Eric and Don Jr. flying in the palace in the sky and sitting at Trump’s Crypto Fundraiser now.

Businesses spearheaded by President Donald Trump have struck numerous deals since Trump returned to the White House in January.

Leading the way is the Trump Organization, a conglomerate privately owned by the president. With more than 250 subsidiaries, it serves as a holding company for Trump’s various hotels, residential real estate, towers, resorts, and golf courses across the world.

World Liberty Financial, a decentralized protocol that merges financial services and cryptocurrency, has also brokered deals. A Trump business entity owns 60% of World Liberty and is entitled to 75% of all revenue from coin sales. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. manage the company.

Here are the countries where the Trump empire has been dealmaking. The slide show that follows lists Vietnam. It’s in Hanoi, which reminds me of the Hanoi Hilton and the late Senator John McCain.

The project consists of a golf course, hotels, and luxury residences, and is slated for completion by 2029. In addition, Eric Trump is scheduled to meet with officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday to discuss a possible Trump Tower in the city, Reuters reports.

In April, the president imposed a “reciprocal” tariff rate of 46% on Vietnamese goods. While that policy is currently on a 90-day pause, it would deal a major blow to the Southeast Asian country if resumed. Goods exported to the U.S. account for 30% of Vietnam’s economy, according to IMF estimates, the largest of all U.S. trading partners. As the specter of these crippling levies looms, Hanoi has pledged to buy more American goods, including Boeing (BA) aircraft and agricultural products.

Other countries include Serbia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, and Singapore.  Most of these discussions haven’t been covered by the Media other than Qatar, which came with the gift that “Palace in the sky” that will cause millions of dollars to refit before it’s handed over to Trump and his “library.”  If there’s a bigger oxymoron than Trump Library, I’m waiting to hear it.  Let’s just call it the warehouse facility for all the bribes and emoluments.  We have to discuss that big ol’ party Trump threw for his richest customers. This is from the New York Times. “Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes in Mind. The guests were the biggest investors in President Trump’s memecoin, and they were greeted with chants of “shame” as they arrived at Trump National Golf Course.”

President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.

The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.

At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”

It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations.

“The past administration made your lives miserable,” Mr. Trump told the dinner guests, referring to the Biden administration’s enforcement actions against crypto companies.

The gala attendees made whooping noises while Mr. Trump spoke, and applauded as the president declared: “They were going after everybody. It was a disgrace frankly,” according to a video provided to The Times by a dinner guest.

Mr. Trump promised to change that approach. “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto,” he said. “And we’re honored to be working on helping everybody here.”

That sure is different than the 2021 #FARTUS who told Fox News.  He just couldn’t wait to get into that scam, I guess.  This is from the BBC.  “Donald Trump calls Bitcoin ‘a scam against the dollar’. This is reported by BBC News Business Reporter Mary-Ann Russon.

Former US President Donald Trump has told Fox Business that he sees Bitcoin as a “scam” affecting the value of the US dollar.

“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,” Mr Trump said. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”

He added that he wanted the dollar to be “the currency of the world”.

As per usual, the biggest losers from any more normalization of cryptocurrency will be his own voters.  This is from the BBC. “The Bitcoin hum that is unsettling Trump’s MAGA heartlands.”  This was written by Mike Wendling.

Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.

The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.

But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.

“We can hear a constant buzzing,” says another Dresden resident, Lori Fishline. “It’s a constant, loud humming noise that you just can’t ignore. It was never present before and has definitely affected the peaceful atmosphere of our bay.”

Such is Ms Campbell’s annoyance with Trump’s Bitcoin backing, her political allegiance to the Republicans is being tested. “Right now I’m not real happy about that party,” she says.

So, build the nastiest factory in the backyard of the people least able to deal with it.  That’s the sound of these Robber Barons that should be familiar to anyone who knows US history from its early 20th-century business escapades.  The most interesting thing that’s popped up today is that Apple has got Trump in a lather, and the Equity Markets hate it.  This is from Yahoo Finance: “Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq trim losses as Trump threatens Apple, EU with new tariffs.”

US stocks fell on Friday, on pace for weekly losses as investors assessed President Trump’s latest tariff threats and what his giant tax bill means for the deficit and the economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) sank 0.4%. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) also fell roughly 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) backed off about 0.6%.

All three indexes trimmed steeper losses after Trump said on Friday that Apple (AAPL) must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones sold but not made in the US. The tech giant has begun shifting some manufacturing to India, with China, home to its key suppliers, locked in a trade war with the US. Apple shares fell 3% after Trump’s post on Truth Social.

At the same time, Trump threatened to hike the tariff on EU imports to “a straight 50%” beginning June 1 as trade talks between the two have stalled.

The president’s warnings shattered a more muted mood on Wall Street as investors wound down to the Memorial Day trading break on Monday.

It adds another supply chain complication for companies already worried about the potential hit to the economy from Trump’s tariff blitz. Earnings season has seen several companies hold off from providing full annual guidance thanks to uncertainty around tariffs.

All three major gauges are on track for a losing week. Stocks have suffered as deficit worries pushed up Treasury yields, intensified as Trump’s giant tax bill forged ahead. Wall Street is still weighing the economic impact of Trump’s revised bill, which cleared a key hurdle in the House vote for approval.

Well, I have always called him Orange Caligula.  It seems we have a mad emperor on our hands.  It didn’t help crypto either. “Bitcoin tumbles under $108K after Trump calls for 50% EU tariff. Trump’s tariff announcement sparks Bitcoin volatility, highlighting digital assets’ sensitivity to geopolitical events.”  This is from Crypto Briefing and Vivian Nguyen.

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $108,000 early Friday after President Donald Trump called for steep tariffs on EU imports and threatened Apple with similar measures. The digital asset briefly touched $107,300 on Binance, pulling back from session highs above $111,000 as traders responded to fresh geopolitical tensions.

The US president on Friday proposed a 50% tariff on all EU imports starting June 1, 2025, in a post on Truth Social. He cited trade imbalances and regulatory frictions as rationale for the move, declaring current EU-US trade dynamics “totally unacceptable.”

Apple is being threatened with 25% tariffs.  Wow, how free market is this?  Sounds a lot more like the old Soviet Command and Control model. Is he channeling Putin and Orban or just pissed about something Apple did at his party?  This is from CNBC. “Trump says Apple must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the U.S.” Does he not realize how long it would take to even set up a factory, let alone train everyone?  Doesn’t he know what this huge project would take to even break even?

President Donald Trump said in a social media post Friday that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the United States.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Shares of Apple fell about 2% on Friday after the post.

Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has been shifting manufacturing to India in part because that country has a friendlier trade relationship with the U.S.

Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that moving iPhone production to the U.S. would raise the price of the Apple smartphone by at least 25%. Wedbush’s Dan Ives put the estimated cost of a U.S. iPhone at $3,500. The iPhone 16 Pro currently retails for about $1,000.

This is the latest jab at Apple from Trump, who over the past couple of weeks has ramped up pressure on the company and Cook to increase domestic manufacturing. Trump and Cook met at the White House on Tuesday, according to Politico.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that he was not part of the meeting at the White House but that the Apple situation could be part of the Trump administration’s push to bring “precision manufacturing” back to the U.S.

“A large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure,” Bessent said.

Cook gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the inauguration in January. Apple has announced a $500 billion spend on U.S. development, including AI server production in Houston.

Apple declined to comment for this story.

So, I’m over 4200 words and probably have put you to sleep.  You know how I am about Rabbit Holes.   How much longer before the economy collapses?  I’m actually beginning to wonder that. I know every time I see or hear him act so insane, I just collapse on the couch.

You have a very nice Memorial Day weekend. Please spend your time appreciating the many folks who gave their life for this country and its democracy.  Don’t let the ones trying to destroy it get to you.  There’s always the June 14th Flag Day “No Kings” protests and actions to look forward to and participate in.  Just don’t watch that damn parade. The least we old folks can do is tank the ratings.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

How about a little Warren Zevon and Prince?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #academicFreedom #CryptoCurrencyPonziSchemeFromTrumpAndMusk #FARTUS #HarvardVTrump #NeoRobberBarons #NoKingsProtestOverFARTUSParade #TheHinduLoveGods #TrumpSoursApple #WeLiveInDarkTimes

Finally Friday Reads: It’s late but I took some ME time

“Well, I don’t know why I came here tonight
I’ve got the feeling that something ain’t right
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs” John Buss, Repeat1968 with h.t t;o Stealers Wheels

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I took some time today to enjoy a friend from FDL, sushi from Lin’s at St Roch Market, and the Bywater and Marigny right up to the edge of the Quarter. The only way to explore my neighborhood is by foot or by bus.  That way, you really get to know us. The stores on LA49 (better known as St. Claude Avenue) are small, locally owned, and full of surprises.  I don’t think I can ever emphasize how much I love this city. It’s probably why I stay here and don’t go elsewhere anymore.  I first discovered this because when I ventured around the state or country, I had dreams about not being able to find or go home, which ended immediately when I opened the front door. I really wish you this feeling. It’s amazing.

It gave me a breath from reading stuff today.  So, here I go, right into the thick of it.  This is from Dr. Paul Krugman’s Substack. “The Third-Worlding of America. How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months.”  Like all excellent economists, he’s got charts and numbers to prove it. I got all these degrees to help people understand financial markets and economic policy. Now, I live with knowledge; I just pray it still empowers people, even if it feels disheartening today.

Remarkably, the sanewashing continues despite the unprecedented craziness of the past 10 days. Many observers assert that Trump has backed down on tariffs and will speedily make a bunch of trade deals. The first assertion is just false, while the second is very unlikely.

In fact, savvy traders have realized that there’s no coherent economic strategy. There’s an old line about military analysis: “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics.” Well, when it comes to taking the pulse of financial markets, amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals talk about bond and currency markets. That’s because bond and currency markets are generally less driven by emotion. There’s no “meme gambling investing” in bond and currency markets. And these markets are both signaling major loss of faith in America.

First, about tariffs: It’s true that for the time being Trump has scaled back some of the tariffs displayed on his big piece of cardboard last week. For example, unless we have another policy swerve, the European Union will now face a 10 percent tariff over the next three months rather than a 20 percent tariff. But the tariff on China, our third-biggest trading partner after Canada and Mexico, has gone from 34 percent to more than 130 percent. And we still have high tariffs on steel, aluminum and so on. In effect, observers who claim that tariffs have gone down are missing the biggest part of the story.

Economists who have actually run the numbers, like those at the Yale Budget Lab, estimate that the April 9 tariff regime will raise consumer prices more than the April 2 regime because of the extraordinarily high tariff rate on Chinese imports. Specifically, the budget lab estimates that the latest version of Trump’s trade war will raise consumer prices by 2.9 percent. This is roughly ten times the probable impact of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.

It’s hard to overstate the craziness of announcing a radical tariff plan, then announcing a quite different but equally radical plan just a week later. Furthermore, the claim that the wild zigzags in policy were always part of Trump’s plan just adds to the destruction of the administration’s credibility.

But are these tariffs just an opening gambit for trade negotiations? I doubt it. Bear in mind that Trump and Peter Navarro, his tariff guru, start from the premise that other countries are cheating, that they’re taking advantage of America and treating us unfairly. In fact, however, most of them aren’t. Take the case of the European Union. The EU imposes an average tariff on U.S. goods of just 1.7%, and there aren’t any significant hidden barriers.

So what are we supposed to be negotiating about? Nations can’t promise to lower their trade barriers when there aren’t any barriers. Navarro has been claiming that value-added taxes are de facto tariffs, but they aren’t, and EU nations literally can’t afford to give them up.

I guess other countries might make fake concessions that Trump can claim as fake victories. This is what he did with China during his first term, claiming that it had made significant concessions — claims which were, in the end, false. In fact, American soybean farmers have never fully recovered the loss of market share. And remember too how Trump made minor changes to NAFTA and claimed to have negotiated a whole new trade pact.

However, Trump is now clearly high on his own supply. Even with the April 9 tariff regime, Trump is imposing high tariff rates on our three largest trading partners. Currency and bond market traders — no fools they — are certainly not acting as if we’re on a path to successful deals.

The Chinese are pranking Trump today. This is from the Washington Post.  “China raises tariffs on U.S. goods to 125 percent as trade war deepens. Beijing hit back in response to the Trump administration’s move to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent, saying it would “fight to the end.”  They can afford to. They’re making deals with South Korea and Japan, among other countries.  The only group this is hurting is US importers and Exporters. This includes farmers.

The response underscored China’s decision to stand firm in the face of pressure from Washington and deepened the showdown between the world’s two largest economies.

“If the U.S. insists on substantively damaging China’s interests, China will firmly retaliate and fight to the end,” China’sState Council said in a statement.

The move came after Trump increased the levies on Chinese goods to 145 percent on Wednesday, while also announcing that the tariffs he had previously imposed on more than six dozen other countries would be fixed at 10 percent during a 90-day pause.

The State Council derided Trump’s move to continue ratcheting up the levies and said it would ignore further hikes. The tariffs are a “joke” and “no longer have any economic significance,” its statement said, because the current levels make U.S. exports to China not financially viable. The new Chinese tariffs, which increased from 84 percent, are effective Saturday.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday, stressed that trade wars have no winners and called for China and Europe to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying,” according to state media. European leaders also emphasized the damaging effects of uncertainty beyond the 90-day pause.

Experts in Beijing expressed concern about the latest turn in tensions with Washington. “U.S.-China trade will soon be almost nonexistent,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at China’s Renmin University. “To ease tensions, Trump must first make concessions.”

Turmoil over tariffs drove fluctuations in global markets on Friday.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix indexes dropped by5percent, before trimming their losses to under 3 percent by market close. South Korea’s Kospi and Australia’s ASX 200 fell by less than1 percent, while Taiwan’s bourse kicked off the day with a fall of under 1 percent before logging a 2.5 percent gain. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and China’s Shanghai composite index were mostly flat, with the Hang Seng closing just over 1 per cent higher.

Major European markets fell slightly after opening on Friday, following rebounds the previous day. By 6 a.m. Eastern time, Germany’s DAX was down 1.62 percent, France’s benchmark CAC fell by 1.11 percent and London’s FTSE 100 was down around 0.3 percent.

It’s almost as if… and stay with me now… It’s almost as if Republicans aren’t as good at the economy as they claim to be! 🤷‍♂️

— Joey Blue (@jp262.bsky.social) 2025-04-11T15:49:19.451Z

CNN has this headline today for a story written by Ella Nilsen. “Trump’s budget plan eviscerates weather and climate research, and it could be enacted immediately.”  I guess I better hurry to put that Weather Station up in the Pergalo.

The Trump administration intends to eliminate the research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, close all weather and climate labs and eviscerate its budget along with several other NOAA offices, according to internal documents obtained by CNN.

The documents describe the administration’s budget proposal for 2026, but indicate the administration expects the agency to enact the changes immediately.

The cuts would devastate weather and climate research as weather is becoming more erratic, extreme and costly. It would cripple the US industries — including agriculture — that depend on free, accurate weather and climate data and expert analysis. It could also halt research on deadly weather, including severe storms and tornadoes.

The administration intends to make significant cuts to education, grants, research and climate-related programs in NOAA, the plan says, which the administration believes “are misaligned with the … expressed will of the American people.”

While the phrase “climate change” refers to the manmade influence on the global climate system via planet-warming fossil fuel pollution, “climate” in NOAA parlance is simply the weather that has been observed over time.

CNN has reached out to the White House and the Department of Commerce, which houses NOAA, for comment on the plan.

Additionally, NASA is on the chopping block!  Does this include all that money going to Elonia?   This is from ars TECHICA‘s Eric Berger.  “Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA.  “This would decimate American leadership in space.”   #FARTUS seems dead set on sending us back to the Gilded Age. Even the best of the Modern Era is about to be erased.

This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.

This initial version of the administration’s budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency’s budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall topline of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more.

According to the “passback” documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency’s science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.

Among the proposals were: A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion.

Although the budget would continue support for ongoing missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, it would kill the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory seen as on par with those two world-class instruments that is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years.

We’re also unlikely to see other countries send their best and brightest to our US Universities with all this craziness. As some with with multiple degrees and ones that aren’t that easy to achieve, I would just like to say that my teachers, my students and grad assistants, and my colleagues and fellow students were consistently the best part of higher education school. I owe so much of my math chops to fellow students from India, Iran, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Taiwan. Both of my Doctorate advisors came here as students. One from India.  The other is from Bangladesh. This brain drain will put us on the road to mediocrity.

This is from the AP.  “Immigration judge finds that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported.”

Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be kicked out of the U.S. as a national security risk, an immigration judge in Louisiana found Friday during a hearing over the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the United States posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation, Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans said at the conclusion of a hearing in Jena.

Comans said the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.”

Lawyers for Khalil said they plan to keep fighting. The judge gave them until April 23 to seek a waiver. Meanwhile, a federal judge in New Jersey temporarily barred Khalil’s deportation.

Addressing the judge at the end of the hearing, Khalil mentioned that she said at a hearing earlier in the week that “there’s nothing more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.”

Let me just say that Jena, Louisiana, is a hell realm.

I don’t believe you is above contempt?! Right

— T GauthierⓂ️Ⓜ️🦋🦮🦮🦮 (@1redcupcake.bsky.social) 2025-04-11T21:09:49.330Z

Is it a Constitutional Crisis Yet, Momma?  Brad Reed has that Raw Story headline.

The United States Department of Justice said on Friday that it will not comply with an order from Judge Paula Xinis to reveal information on the whereabouts and status of deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

As reported by Politico’s Kyle Cheney on BlueSky, the DOJ information Judge Xinis that it would not be able to provide the information she requested on Garcia because the court set an “impracticable” deadline to do so.

Judge Xinis had originally demanded that the DOJ provide information about Garcia’s status by 9:30 a.m. on Friday after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration needed to facilitate bringing him back from the prison in El Salvador where he had been sent improperly.

The judge extended the deadline to 11:30 a.m. on Friday morning and scheduled a court hearing on the case for 1 p.m.

So, I hope you’re trying to stay positive and calm. I’m going to go walk Temple and feed the kitties. That’s something I can do right now without feeling depressed.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAIsqvTh7g

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DisastrousDon #economicImpactOfFARTUSTariffs #kakistocracy #MarketsContinueToCrash

Finally Friday Reads: The Incompetent and The Cruel

“Kristi Noem is so thoughtful.” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Cartoonist John Buss continues to blow me away with his renditions of all the monsters inhabiting the Trump Regime. You never know how far they will go.  Incompetency and cruelty are their defining parameters, and the only thing you know about this regime is that they are negatively correlated and huge. You know the negative impact on the country in a big way, but the actual actions leading to the outcomes are unimaginable.  You know they’re going to a new low that will be shocking and unimaginable.  I’m beginning to think that some are designed to take our eyes away from the dismantling of our government and democracy.

Today’s Featured Funny was more than I had hoped when I put this on his Facebook thread. “Hi! It’s your dark muse again. You have to do something about Kristin Noem doing a glam shot in front of all the shirtless, bearded men she likely sent to be tortured and enslaved. Abu Ghraib, but this administration has no shame!”  She had paraded down here in a similar outfit during the Super Bowl, but instead of looking like a slutty ICE agent, she looked like a Slutty police officer.  She just oozes psychopath, doesn’t she?   She’s LARPing all those war criminals that psychologically torture whatever they capture.  Just thinking about how the really bad ones torture animals first,  and her poor puppy.

This is from the Washington Post (article gifted). “How Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flash point. The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to her tour of a notoriously overcrowded mega-prison in one of Latin America’s poorest countries.”  I supposed she could wear that “I don’t care, do you?” jacket, but then everyone would miss her signature whitie tightie boob shot op. She must have a closet full of those.  She wore them daily during her Super Bowl tour.  This is reported by Drew Harwell and Alec Dent.

When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.

The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded a video for a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United States.

“If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said.

Noem’s choice of watch kicked off a race among internet sleuths to identify it and infuriated immigration advocates, who said the juxtaposition was insensitive to the harsh reality of mass imprisonment and deportation.

“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.

“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there’s “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the make of the watch in a statement, saying that “then-Governor Noem chose to use the proceeds from her New York Times best selling books to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children.”

While the #FARTUS purge of immigrants looks like an SS round-up. I fear escalation to  Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen (killing squads). It is difficult to predict if they will actually go that far.  We’ve already had children in cages and family separation.  We also have midnight raids that have spirited away graduate students who have taken part in demonstrations or written op-eds against the bombing of Palestinian civilians in GAZA.   This is from Mike Masnik from TechDirt. “Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds.”

For years, we’ve been hearing breathless warnings about a “campus free speech crisis” from self-proclaimed free speech warriors. Their evidence? College students doing what college students have done for generations: protesting speakers they disagree with, challenging institutional policies, and yes, sometimes attempting to create heckler’s vetoes.

This kind of campus activism — while occasionally messy and uncomfortable — has been a feature of American higher education since the 1960s. It’s how young people learn to engage with ideas and exercise their own speech rights. Sometimes that activism is silly and sometimes it’s righteous. Often it’s somewhere in between, but it’s kind of a part of being a college student, and learning what you believe in.

But now we face an actual free speech crisis on campus that goes beyond just speech. It’s an attack on personal freedoms, due process, and liberty. The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up.

The latest example of this authoritarian overreach is particularly chilling: Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts who was here legally on a student visa, was abducted by masked agents in broad daylight. She was disappeared without due process or explanation — only later did we learn she had been renditioned to a detention center in Louisiana.

The video of her kidnapping (because that’s what it was) is terrifying enough.

If you listen, you hear her quite understandably surprised reaction with a scream, and then she asks to call the police, only to be told “we’re the police.” None of them are in uniforms. Most of them are masked.

Her supposed crime? A year ago, she co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily criticizing her university administration’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not advocating violence. Not supporting terrorism. Not even criticizing the U.S. government. Just exercising core First Amendment rights by publishing criticism of her own university’s policies in a student newspaper.

The government has attempted to justify similar renditions (and there is a growing list of victims) by falsely painting targets as “terrorist supporters” — a dangerous conflation of political speech supporting Palestinian rights with support for terrorism. But even those cases typically involved people involved in public protests, which are themselves constitutionally protected activities. This case goes even further: disappearing someone over an innocuous piece of student journalism published a year ago.

Everyone should be alarmed. Everyone should be demanding that she (and others) be released and that ICE and DHS stop this horrifying and unconscionable practice. Everyone should be demanding that Trump and Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem stop this Gestapo bullshit.

Even if — especially if — you disagree with her views on Israel and Palestine. This isn’t about that. This is about the very concept of freedom. The rights everyone — even visitors — are supposed to have in this country. The right to speak your mind, even if (especially if!) it is opposed to those in power. The right to walk down a street without being kidnapped. The right to due process.

If the government genuinely believed Ozturk had violated immigration law or her visa terms (she hadn’t), there are established legal procedures to address such issues. Instead, they chose to send masked goons to disappear her without warning or due process — a chilling message to every other international student that their supposed right to express political opinions comes with the risk of rendition.

And, of course, the implied threat is that this won’t stop at international students.

I have taught university classes for decades.  Finance and Economic policy are inherently political.  We stick to established theory and mention policies in the past that did not work. The two big ones are Tariffs and Tax cuts for the very rich.  We have data that shows they don’t work and years of published papers. I fear that the Commerce and Labor Secretaries will kill the data, so we cannot teach the theory and the reality using current economic and financial data. Since I’m now technically retired and only teach as an adjunct, I worry a lot about the current faculty. The Republicans have been after tenure for years. Universities and research are a significant source of progress.  The attacks on research and the inability to run graduate programs and graduate Doctoral students we will not have teachers after we old folks retire will severely curtail our leadership in science and the exercise of free thought. That is their goal.

This is from Forbes Magazine. “Trump Orders Department Of Education Closure: What Happens Next.” The story is reported by Sarah Hernholm.

President Trump has issued an executive order to close the Department of Education, a move that will reshape federal education policy and affect America’s 49.5 million public school students. The order mandates redistributing the department’s functions across multiple federal agencies by the end of the year, marking a major change in how the federal government approaches education.

This decision, long championed by conservatives who believe education should remain primarily a state and local matter, has sparked disagreement about the federal government’s role in education policy, funding, and oversight.

The executive order outlines specific transitions for key education functions:

• Civil rights enforcement will move to the Justice Department
• Federal student loan programs will shift to the Treasury
• Special education oversight will transition to Health and Human Services

These changes will affect the management of federal education funding streams totaling over $150 billion annually, including:

• $18.8 billion in Title I funding for high-poverty schools, serving approximately 26 million students
• $15.5 billion in IDEA funding, supporting 7.3 million students with disabilities
• $120.8 billion in Federal Student Aid programs, helping 10.8 million college students

Educational stakeholders stress the importance of ensuring these resources continue without disruption during the transition period, particularly for disadvantaged students who rely heavily on federally funded programs.

This will hurt rural and poor urban schools that rely on the funding to offer help for disadvantaged students and students with disabilities.  I’m also wondering what will happen to ESL (English as a second language) teachers, programs, school nurses, and psychologists. These things are incredibly expensive.

“The backpedaling is something to behold..” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.social

Then there’s Pete Hegseth and his keystone cops LARPing military leadership. We got all the war moves and none of the conversation about what it means to target and bomb a civilian apartment.  Hey! Hey DOJ!  How many kids did they kill that day?  They’re all suggesting it was successful, but really? What has all that incompetence brought us?

This is breaking news from CNN. “Officials say texts sent by Waltz, Ratcliffe in Signal chat may have damaged US’ ongoing ability to gather intel on Houthis.” Evidently, the intelligence they got from the Israelis was from an on-site agent.  But of course, no heads are rolling in any of the meeting’s inept Cabinet.  They’ve declared war on The Atlantic instead. This story is reported by Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen,

Current and former US officials have told CNN they believe two texts sent by national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in the now-infamous group chat involving senior US officials discussing battle plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, may have done long-term damage to the US’s ability to gather intelligence on the Iran-backed group going forward.

Although messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailing the sequencing, timing and weapons to be used in a March attack on the Houthis have drawn the most scrutiny because they could have endangered US servicemembers if revealed, the messages from Waltz and Ratcliffe, in the chat Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to, contained equally sensitive information, these sources said.

In one of the messages, Ratcliffe told other Cabinet members who were discussing whether to delay the strikes that the CIA was in the act of mobilizing assets to collect intelligence on the group, but that a delay might offer them the opportunity to “identify better starting points for coverage on Houthi leadership.”

That text, according to the current and former officials, exposed the mere fact that the US is gathering intelligence on them — bad in and of itself — but also hinted at how the agency is doing it. The language about “starting points,” these people said, suggests clearly that the CIA is using technical means like overhead surveillance to spy on their leadership. That could allow the Houthis to change their practices to better protect themselves.

Then, in a later message, Waltz offered an extremely specific after-action report of the strikes, telling the thread that the military had “positive ID” of a particular senior Houthi leader “walking into his girlfriend’s building” — offering the Houthis a clear opportunity to see who the US was surveilling and potentially figure out how, thus enabling them to avoid that surveillance in the future, the sources said.

The Houthis have “always been difficult to track,” said a former intelligence official. “Now you just highlight for them that they’re in the crosshairs.”

Trump administration officials, including both Waltz and Ratcliffe, have repeatedly insisted that no classified information was shared in the text. Ratcliffe, in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, specifically referenced his text about “starting points.”

But current and former officials have disagreed vehemently with that assessment: The kinds of information in not just Hegseth’s texts, but Ratcliffe’s and Waltz’s, included very clear references to sources and methods. Even if it wasn’t an explicit or technical description, these people say, it is information that the US government would typically withhold because it might allow an adversary to make an educated interference about US sources and methods.

Ratcliffe’s use of the Signal app in this way is raising eyebrows inside Langley, current and former officials said.

“I think he is going to be viewed skeptically for using the app for that purpose,” one US official told CNN.

“(Ratcliffe) was basically talking as if he was in a SCIF,” said another former intelligence official, referring to a secure room hardened against electronic surveillance that is designed for discussions of classified material.

“He’s the director,” said the first former official, calling Ratcliffe’s text “irresponsible.” “He should know better.”

A CIA spokesperson told CNN, “Director Ratcliffe takes his responsibility to safeguard America’s ability to gather intelligence extremely seriously.”

“Nothing he conveyed in the chat posed any risk to any sources or methods,” the spokesperson said. “The only lasting damage is to the Houthi terrorists who have been eliminated.”

CNN has reached out to the National Security Council for comment.

The primary tool of Trump’s spokespeople is to lie and deny and protect FARTUS at all times.

Former Secretary of State penned this Op-Ed in the New York Times today.  “Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?”  Remember, it will get worse; we just can’t forecast how because only the incompetent and cruel can come up with such batshit crazy pogroms. Throw in narcissism and sociopathy, and it’s a forecaster’s nightmare.  Clinton’s name has been evoked recently because the same folks who were traumatized by her personal emails being released by their Russian buddies are taking this incredible breach of security cavalierly.

It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.

This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security. Firing hundreds of federal workers charged with protecting our nation’s nuclear weapons is also dumb. So is shutting down efforts to fight pandemics just as a deadly Ebola outbreak is spreading in Africa. It makes no sense to purge talented generals, diplomats and spies at a time when rivals like China and Russia are trying to expand their global reach.

In a dangerous and complex world, it’s not enough to be strong. You must also be smart. As secretary of state during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr. Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless.

Let’s start with the military, because that’s what he claims to care about. Don’t let the swagger fool you. Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries. Does anyone really think deleting tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen makes us more safe? The Trump Pentagon purged images of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb that ended World War II because its name is the Enola Gay. Dumb.

Instead of working with Congress to modernize the military’s budget to reflect changing threats, the president is firing top generals without credible justification. Five former secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats, rightly warned that this would “undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security.” Mass layoffs are also hitting the intelligence agencies. As one former senior spy put it, “We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.” Not smart.

There’s more at the link, which has been gifted.

It’s hard to get through the day without the next chain of what the hell did they do now coming out to beat us senseless.  They’re worried about the midterms because FARTUS sent Elise Stefanik back to Congress yesterday.  The poor woman won’t get that deluxe apartment in the sky now. This is from Politico. “Stefanik’s withdrawal suggests Republicans are sweating their thin margins. Democrats insist Republicans are panicking.”  Democrats shouldn’t be so complacent.

President Donald Trump’s decision to keep Rep. Elise Stefanik in Congress is the clearest sign yet that the political environment has become so challenging for Republicans that they don’t want to risk a special election even in safe, red seats.

A pair of April elections in deep-red swaths of Florida next week was supposed to improve the GOP’s cushion in the House and clear the path for Stefanik’s departure, until Trump said he didn’t “want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”

The decision to pull Stefanik’s nomination came as Republicans grew increasingly anxious about the race to fill the seat of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on April 1. Polling in the district, which Trump carried by 30 points, had tightened, and the president himself is hosting a tele-town hall there to try and bail out Republican Randy Fine.

An internal GOP poll from late March showed Democrat Josh Weil up 3 points over Fine, 44 to 41 percent, with 10 percent undecided, according to a person familiar with the poll and granted anonymity to discuss it. Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s pollster, conducted the survey. That result spooked Republicans and spurred them to redouble efforts to ensure a comfortable win in the district, according to two people familiar with internal conversations.

Some Republican strategists said it’s not worth taking the risk of losing Stefanik’s sprawling northern New York seat, which Trump won by 20 points in 2024.

“Can they defend her seat? Absolutely. But why do you do that right now?” asked Charlie Harper, who was a top aide to former Rep. Karen Handel on her successful 2017 bid in a special election in Georgia.

Harper is not the only Republican making that calculation.

“If we’re far underperforming in seats Trump won by 30 then there’s obvious concern about having to chance special elections in seats Trump won by a lot less,” said one top GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The juice is not worth the squeeze sweating them out.”

Okay, that’s enough shock and awe for now.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #abuGhraibTortureAndPrisonerAbuse #CabinetOfIncompetentImbeciles #DepartmentOfEducationBlues #EliseStefanikIsACunt #EveryOneGoesToElSalvador_ #FARTUS #higherEducation #HillaryClintonOnSignalGate #KidnappingGraduateStudents #KristiNoemSociopathAndCunt #PeteHegsethWeirdoSexualAssaulter #TheWhiskeyLeaks

Mostly Monday Reads: Woke meets Panem et Circenses

“Deleted earlier versions of this, as I found an error that surely would have upset AI bots. Let this one rip!” John (repeat1968) Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Wipipo are very confused by the Super Bowl halftime and complaining that it had no music. I still laugh at the fact that they think everything is all about them.  I didn’t watch any of it until the clips were available, but wow, the hassle and occupation down here were well worth the halftime performance. That is, if you weren’t one of the poor homeless folks who got sent to a broken-down warehouse in Gentilly. If you really want the opposite version of what really happened, it’s all over FARTUS’ social media.  That’s even more deluded than the MAGA cult themselves. It’s a Black History Month, for the records!

I have always loved to hear anything that Jon Baptiste does, but his rendition of the National Anthem made me actually enjoy listening to the song itself.  Who couldn’t love Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam?  Evidently, a whole bunch of whiny wipipo who want everything to look just like them, like their version of a supreme being, always does, no matter what the evidence or history suggests. This is from the New Republic. “MAGA Has Total Meltdown Over Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. The right is freaking out over a Super Bowl halftime show rife with American imagery.”This is written by Malcolm Ferguson.

Kendrick Lamar’s very normal Super Bowl halftime show had the MAGA faithful pearl-clutching and conspiracy theorizing.

The iconic Pulitzer Prize and 22-time Grammy winner livened up an otherwise uncompetitive game with a classic performance that centered hip-hop and Black American culture—and featured the likes of Samuel L. Jackson (dressed in American flag garb as Uncle Sam), Serena Williams, and SZA. It only makes sense that right-wingers hated everything about it.

“The halftime show you just watched is clearly the regime’s response to Trump’s historic gains with black men,” shamed former Representative Matt Gaetz wrote on X, even though Lamar was announced as the halftime show performer months before Election Day.

“Raise your hand if you survived the black nationalist Super Bowl LIX halftime show,” right-wing commentator Eric Daugherty wrote on X, even as Lamar’s stage and costume designs were rife with American flag imagery.

“Hey NFL, Trump won. We no longer let talentless mumbling pagan satanic cultists do halftime shows and pretend like people like it,” MAGA media shill Benny Johnson said. “Thanks, everyone.”

In reality, the halftime show was fine, and Kendrick Lamar is an excellent rapper. These people took issue with the show because it didn’t fit into their narrow “post-woke” vision of America—but neither does a very large chunk of this country. This isn’t the first time Kendrick Lamar has performed at the Super Bowl, and it isn’t the first time Blackness has been a major theme of the show. And yet MAGA continues to cry about it.

Let me pull some comments from my local station, WDSU.  “Kendrick Lamar Brought a GNX to His Super Bowl Halftime Show.” The Louisiana outback and Scalise burbs were restless.

A very special car made an appearance during the Super Bowl halftime show performance on Sunday night.

Kendrick Lamar’s most recent album is named after the most famous car, released in his birth year, 1987, and the sister car to the Buick Regal that his father brought him home from the hospital. Thus, it’s no surprise that he entered the Super Bowl for his halftime performance in a GNX.

The GNX becomes the symbol of a victory lap for Lamar, who won five Grammys last week for a diss track written in his ongoing battle with Canadian rapper Drake.

Now Kendrick sits atop one of the most American cars in history at America’s biggest sporting event.

That seems harmless enough. Right?  Not to these folks!

• Joe Delatte  “WORST OF THE WORST EVER.”
• Tanya Marie Lawson  “All I needed to know was how to change to another channel. It’s supposed to be entertainment…not political or an opportunity to attack your rival.”

(Evidently, Tanya sees an imaginary opponent of black culture and music in there that no one else saw.)

• Richard Thompson  Such a shame they don’t have music for the half time show anymore.
• Debbie Feigler Schexnaildre  So what about the car the performance was terrible we had no clue what he was saying!! Definitely not entertainment.

(Debbie, Debbie, Debbie!  Everything is always about Debbie but who knows how to pronounce those last names of her’s anyway?

• Kevin Romano Sr Isn’t that beef in rap music how a lot of them get assassinated.
• Adam Dawson It was filled with dis tracks against the rapper Drake, subliminal racism, and political innuendo, made to look like the main performers life was a video game. It’s sad that a teenager pointed this out to me. I spent time looking this up, hoping the teenager was wrong. The main performer sounded very monotone. Very poor performance. It didn’t need to be a Louisiana artist, but more family friendly and without the dis tracks, subliminal racism, and political innuendo, would have been nice. Weird AL Yankovic would have given a better halftime show. The NFL audience spans all political and ethnic backgrounds of America and the world.

(Adam had to white-mansplain everything to us! How else would we know that white men are the real victims of racism!)

For more racist takes, follow the link!  Or better yet, follow FARTUS! He spoiled the event for all sides of the fee fees.  From Lipstick Alley: ” Trump throws tantrum and leaves Superbowl early after his favorite team gets humiliated, cries salty tears that The Superbowl is ruined.”

The run up to the Superbowl was dominated by news that Donald Trump and his hangers on would make an appearance, the first for a sitting President.
Trump arrived at the stadium with Daughter – Wife Ivanka and took to the field with a mix of cheers and Boos.
Trump wandered the field as if dazed and confused but he had initially praised and predicted a Kansas City Chiefs win.
Trump is enamored with the Chiefs who were clearly the MAGA white choice especially with MAGA Mahomes and his hillbilly family being big Trump supporters.
The Philadelphia Eagles did not come to play, they came to slay and scalped the Chiefs early on, eventually winning 40-22.
Trump was not having it and got up and left after 10 mins of the second half or maybe the half time show was just too Black.
Strange that Hitler did the same thing when Jesse Owens dominated the 1936 Olympics.

Trump’s tweets today, as well as his behavior at the game, were total lessons in how to be a jerk. He was booed. However, you’d never know it if you listened to him.  He and Taylor Swift were booed by the Eagles fans.  Taylor used to be an Eagles fan. You can speculate on the other.  Here’s an interesting take from the rag The Mirror US. “Sore loser Donald Trump lashes out at Taylor Swift after fleeing Super Bowl. Donald Trump has continued his feud with Taylor Swift by sharing a video of the pop star being booed at the Super Bowl, while he was cheered by fans at the same event.”

Donald Trump couldn’t resist a swipe at Taylor Swift following the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl defeat, taking jabs even as he departed the event early. The current President hopped onto his social media haven Truth Social, posting while en route back to Florida aboard what was likely Air Force One: “The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift. She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving! ”

On his platform, Trump uploaded several clips including glimpses of himself amid celebratory fans and another clip purportedly capturing jeers as Swift and Ice Spice appeared on the stadium’s Skycam.

His contentious post, left without commentary, fired up discussions—was Trump implying that the crowd’s applause was for him and jeers for Swift, or were the reactions intertwined at the moment? Videos circulating don’t clarify whether the President received cheers, or simply joined in on crowd acclaim.

Former first Lady and Grandson definitely were given cheers. However, the stories are still being spun as I type. The worst thing is the entire focus on these things and not the impact on New Orleans.  You may read about a lot of it in my post here.

The panem et circenses in New Orleans look and feel like a military takeover. We've been #occupied. http://www.facebook.com/reel/5999453&#8230; No one can cross Canal Street without a search. They've thrown the homeless in an overpriced warehouse dump. There are military helicopters overhead and bomb dogs

— Kat Huff aka Dakinikat (@dakinikat.bsky.social) 2025-02-08T21:44:26.415Z

Trump says he has directed the Treasury to stop minting new pennies due to cost. No mention of his $15 million Super Bowl trip or his almost daily $3 million golf excursions.

— Molly Ploofkins (@mollyploofkins.bsky.social) 2025-02-10T16:25:48.791Z

I am waiting to see the actual economic impact on the city because up until Friday night, the military and police definitely had a bigger presence than tourists.  I’m hoping my friends finally made some money to tide them over until the Big Mardi Gras Parades startup.

So, let me pop a few reads up about the Muskanator and his gang of adolescent droogies. There are a lot of lawsuits going on, that’s for certain. This is from Public Notice‘s Lisa Needham. “Trump and his lawyers embrace the logic of dictatorship. And they’re not even trying to hide it at this point.”

Donald Trump is busy seizing power through executive orders and letting Elon Musk and his gang of racist DOGE bros run amok through America’s government agencies. It’s an unprecedented upending of the separation of powers, an authoritarian reshaping of America.

While Trump and his henchmen deconstruct the administrative state, his lawyers are embracing the logic of dictatorship. The core argument emerging in their legal filings and executive orders — one without support anywhere in the Constitution or the law — is that simply by being elected, Trump has the power to do whatever he wants.

The issue is not the use of executive orders as such. The authority to issue them comes from Article II of the Constitution, which vests executive power in the president and requires him to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Executive orders are meant to tell the executive branch how to implement existing laws. However, in part because Congress is now so routinely deadlocked, every president in the 21st century has issued scores of them that attempt to implement policies outside of the legislative process.

But executive orders aren’t laws, and the authority of presidents to issue them is not absolute. They can’t contradict or overturn existing statutes. Subsequent presidents can undo executive orders just by issuing a new executive order saying so. And federal courts have routinely struck down EOs for being unconstitutional or for exceeding the scope of the president’s authority.

When executive orders are challenged in court, government attorneys typically point to the underlying laws that give the president the authority to issue the order. Trump seems to have dispensed with that requirement, however.

Trump’s imperial ambitions have made for some laughably thin legal theories. As Just Security noted, the government’s argument in defense of Trump’s birthright citizenship EO does not reference any citizenship statutes nor point to any authority that would give Trump the right to undo birthright citizenship via the stroke of a pen. Instead, after quoting the relevant part of the Fourteenth Amendment — ”All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” — the EO just goes on to state that it “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”

The problem for Trump is that the Fourteenth Amendment has absolutely historically been interpreted to do just that. The EO attempts to say that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are magic words that have always excluded people whose parents were not citizens when they were born, but that’s nothing but a recent crackpot theory from election denier attorney John Eastman.

This is from Bloomberg. “DOGE-Backed Halt at CFPB Comes Amid Musk’s Plans for ‘X’ Digital Wallet.  Government-efficiency team’s initial ‘read-only’ access expanded quickly to encompass closely guarded data, internal emails say.”  This is reported by  Jason Leopold and Evan Weinberger.  I told you they were trying to tank the dollar and replace it with their cryptocurrency grift.

In another weekend takeover of a federal agency’s operations, staffers from an efficiency initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk helped to effectively shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — as they gained access to an array of the bureau’s protected information.

The actions began last Thursday, when four young staffers working under Musk for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, showed up at CFPB’s Washington headquarters. At first, they had what was described as read-only access to a limited array of documents, including the agency’s internal personnel files, procurement records and budgeting and financial data, according to an email shared among CFPB officials.

Then, late Friday night, the DOGE staffers were granted access to all the CFPB’s data systems, including sensitive bank examination and enforcement records, according to five people familiar with the matter and emails seen by Bloomberg News. The people asked not to be identified, citing concerns over potential retribution. By Sunday, the agency was a skeleton, with its funding limited and activities suspended.

Musk, whose social-media platform X has recently begun firming up plans to enter the online payments industry, had already predicted the demise of the consumer-watchdog agency. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The weekend’s events came after Russell Vought, who heads the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, ordered wider access for DOGE, according to an email to CFPB officials that was seen by Bloomberg. Vought sent the email Friday evening, about 90 minutes before news broke that he’d also been named acting director of the financial-enforcement agency.

Vought is an architect of the Heritage Foundation’s influential and controversial government-overhaul plan called Project 2025, which appears to have guided DOGE’s attempts to dismantle portions of the federal bureaucracy. Earlier this month, the team played a key role in the administration’s effort to shut down the US Agency for International Development, another longstanding conservative bête noire.

Bloomberg News sought comment from Musk, Vought, the DOGE team members and the White House. None responded.

It just gets worse, and there’s no accountability because the Republicans have gone all squishy.  And as usual, women and minorities are being deleted from American History and the recognition they deserve. This is from Popular Information and is written by Jude Legum and Rebecca Crosby. “The NSA’s “Big Delete'”

Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) is planning a “Big Delete” of websites and internal network content that contain any of 27 banned words, including “privilege,” “bias,” and “inclusion.” The “Big Delete,” according to an NSA source and internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information, is creating unintended consequences. Although the websites and other content are purportedly being deleted to comply with President Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion, or “DEI,” the dragnet is taking down “mission-related” work. According to the NSA source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, the process is “very chaotic,” but is plowing ahead anyway.

A memo distributed by NSA leadership to its staff says that on February 10, all NSA websites and internal network pages that contain banned words will be deleted. This is the list of 27 banned words distributed to NSA staff:

Anti-Racism
Racism
Allyship
Bias
DEI
Diversity
Diverse
Confirmation Bias
Equity
Equitableness
Feminism
Gender
Gender Identity
Inclusion
Inclusive
All-Inclusive
Inclusivity
Injustice
Intersectionality
Prejudice
Privilege
Racial Identity
Sexuality
Stereotypes
Pronouns
Transgender
Equality

The memo acknowledges that the list includes many terms that are used by the NSA in contexts that have nothing to do with DEI. For example, the term “privilege” is used by the NSA in the context of “privilege escalation.” In the intelligence world, privilege escalation refers to “techniques that adversaries use to gain higher-level permissions on a system or network.”

The purge extends beyond public-facing websites to pages on the NSA’s internal network, including project management software like Jira and Confluence.

I am really not sure I can take much more of this.

Anyway, I’d like to thank JJ for filling in for me with my various hospital appointments and the time I spent with Keely as she exited the Earthly Door. It has been a rough few weeks. Actually, this entire year has sucked big time.

I hope the courts stand firm and we figure out what to do if FARTUS ignores them.  Perhaps there are a few good men and women left in the Republican part of Congress.  I certainly hope that there are a few appointees to SCOTUS that do not want the country to go down in flames.

Take care y’all!

Be safe!

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #criminalizingHomelessness #JiveTurkeyElonMusk #NewOrleans #superbowl2025

Mostly Monday Reads: Narcissistic Chaos FARTUS-style (Felon Adjudicated Rapist Traitor of the United States)

“Making Imperialism Great Again.” John (repeat1968) Buss @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Well, this is the 4th time a Republican Policy has trashed my IRAs/403bs. Reagan in 1987. Dubya in 2007/2008. Trump today and 2020. The one today is completely based on Presidential policy. The others on careless deregulation and fraught banking practices. I saw each one coming.

Over the weekend, I almost pulled an all-nighter researching the futures market and the Treasury system break-in. There is still a flight to the dollar–not freaking bitcoins– so that’s a relief! None of these things are necessary or are in any way leading to anything but mass financial and economic problems in the US and abroad. Why would any group of people want to tank the economy?  I think they are trying to bring down the dollar. Instead, their Bitcoin Ponzi scheme forces us all into a risky asset with no value or function. Also, it brings them massive press and public attention. I’m actually now watching for signs of bank runs.

All of this behavior in Fartus and Elonia wreaks of Narcissistic Abuse.  They create chaos to gain and regain control. BB can tell you more about this since she has a doctorate in psychology.  I’m a dismal scientist who has been quite dismal the last two weeks.  I completely expected the implementation of tariffs to tank the markets. It did.  FARTUS manufactures chaos. They crave center stage, which is one of the hopes we have. They go after each other. They both want to be the main character in this disaster.

I was watching the Futures market last night, too late into the night, to see what was happening with stocks, Market Indices, and everything that impacted the stock market the next day.   BB sent this to me late last night. I agree with pretty much everything in Jonathan V. Last’s analysis provided in The Bulwark. “Follow the Money. The financial markets are the only thing that can stop Trump’s reign of chaos.”  It was clear when the markets started tanking today when Trump, Canada, China, and Mexico started setting up that his FARTUS, with his raging Id, needs a crusade of some kind or another.  Another good thing is that we haven’t hit any of the exchange’s circuit breakers.  That’s when you get a true crash. But it’s early in the week.

The main target today is USAID.  We won’t know the trade wars’ outcomes until some negotiations start. Currently, FARTUS has put most of the tariffs on hold for a month, so the markets are settling down. But remember shock and awe, and no one expecting the Elonia Inquisition is part of the fun for these sickos.  What the press is calling Musk’s ‘lieutenants’ and ‘enforcers’ is essentially a gang of incel, SS cosplaying boys doing the dirty work of infiltrating government systems. That’s so Godfatherish I don’t even know where to go with it. I spent a good deal last night with this article from Wired written by Vittoria Elliot. “The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover. Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.”

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

Did I mention that my job managing the TTL and TBond, TBill department of New Orleans Fed required me to go through fingerprinting, a security check, and an interview with some very grim Treasury Agents? All we did was process the stuff from our region and send it to the Treasury Systems using Fed Wire and other systems to the central processing locations.  We also checked the local transmission from the business sending their payroll taxes.

I can only imagine the view of the entire system from my low perch. They have the golden ticket to all banks, all Feds, and all their global counterparts.  They also have access to people’s social security and the federal employee base.  These are Children!  This is from LAProgressive authored by Ann Wright. “Musk’s DOGE “Proud Boys” Blitzkrieg Threatens All American. The billionaire oligarch and his henchmen are wreaking havoc in government offices with sensitive personal data of all U.S. citizens.”

In raids reminiscent of the “January 6” Proud Boys attack on the U.S. Capitol four years ago, unelected, unvetted, and without federal government security clearance, the Trump-anointed head of the yet-unapproved Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Elon Musk and his henchmen with enormous computing backgrounds are wrecking havoc in government offices with sensitive personal data of all U.S. citizens.

This past week, Musk’s blitzkrieg team gained access to sensitive Treasury data, including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems. Access to the system is closely held because it includes sensitive personal information about the millions of U.S. citizens who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds, and other payments from the federal government.

The responsibility for ensuring payments are accurate is on individual agencies, not the relatively small staff of civil servants at the Treasury Department’s Office of Fiscal Services, which is responsible for making more than one billion payments per year. The office disbursed more than $5 trillion in fiscal year 2023.

The previous weekend, Mr. Lebryk had been pushed by Tom Krause, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley company, Cloud Software Group and a member of Musk’s blitzkrieg team for entry into the federal payments system. Mr. Lebryk refused and then was subsequently put on administrative leave and then forced to resign.

In response to Lebryk’s resignation, Musk responded on February 1 to a post on his social media platform X: “The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.”

In Musk and Trump styles, Musk provided NO evidence for his allegation.

Also on Friday, January 31, in hearing of the DOGE raid on the Office of Financial Services, Senator Ron Wyden, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outraged that “officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy.”

Senator Wyden pushed back against DOGE operatives, “”I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

No matter how many needy people around the world are served by USAID, Elonia says he’s shutting it down- right to the point of stopping funds for a small Lutheran church feeding and sheltering children- and he says FARTUS approves it. How absolutely White Male Christian of them!  This is from The Daily Beast as reported by Matt Young.” Remember: 

Narcissists regularly:

1. Instigate crazymaking arguments

2. Ruin holidays & special occasions

3. Provoke jealousy & use triangulation

4. Give you the Silent Treatment

5. Steal your time & energy

“Musk: I’m Closing Entire Federal Agency Down Right Now. The tech billionaire made the announcement during a DOGE Spaces update on X.”  Notice how I just had to give free advertising to DOGE and X.  Two things I avoid like the plague.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is getting the chop, according to Elon Musk.

Musk’s highly anticipated DOGE Spaces debut on X put the rumors to rest after a day of criticism lobbed at the agency, including reports that two top security officials were removed Saturday after refusing to allow DOGE representatives into restricted spaces.

Musk confirmed the administration was in the process of shutting USAID down. “As we dug into USAID it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it’s hopeless,” he said. “USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple… that is why it’s gotta go. It’s beyond repair.”

Musk had declared earlier on Sunday, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” He continued to take aim at the agency, which has an annual budget of more than $50 billion, with several more posts on his social media platform.

An email sent to staff told them not to come into the office on Monday morning except those with essential on-site duties.

All my levels of Civics, Political Science, and American History oblige me to recall that part of the US Constitution that gives the power of the purse to the United States Congres.  They’ve created the Agency.  They’ve funded it.  They’ve had sign-offs from Presidents.  Who the fuck does he thinks he is? This is from the BBC, as reported by Sean Seddon.  “What is USAID and why is Trump reportedly poised to close it?”

The future of the US government’s main overseas aid agency has been cast into doubt as the Trump administration plans to merge it with the US Department of State after days of upheaval.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) would continue its function as an aid agency, but the plan involves a significant reduction in its funding and the workforce, CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, reports.

On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused USAID’s leadership of “insubordination” and said he was now its “acting head”.

US President Donald Trump and one of his top advisers, billionaire Elon Musk, have been strongly critical of the agency.

But the move to shut it down could have a profound impact on humanitarian programmes around the world.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was set up in the early 1960s to administer humanitarian aid programmes on behalf of the US government around the world.

It employs around 10,000 people, two-thirds of whom work overseas. It has bases in more than 60 countries and works in dozens of others. However, most of the work on the ground is carried out by other organisations that are contracted and funded by USAID.

The range of activities it undertakes is vast. For example, not only does USAID provide food in countries where people are starving, it also operates the world’s gold standard famine detection system, which uses data analysis to try to predict where shortages are emerging.

• Democrats say move to shutter aid agency ‘unconstitutional’: Follow Live
• Trump considers merging USAID into US State Department

Much of USAID’s budget is spent on health programmes, such as offering polio vaccinations in countries where the disease still circulates and helping to stop the spread of viruses which have the potential to cause a pandemic.

The BBC’s international charity BBC Media Action, which is funded by external grants and voluntary contributions, receives some funding from USAID. According to a 2024 report, USAID donated $3.23m (£2.6m), making it the charity’s second-largest donor that financial year.

According to government data, the US spent $68bn (£55bn) on international aid in 2023.

That total is spread across several departments and agencies, but USAID’s budget constitutes more than half of it at around $40bn.

The vast majority of that money is spent in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Europe – primarily on humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

The US is the world’s biggest spender on international development – and by some margin.

To put it into context, the UK is the world’s fourth-largest aid spender. In 2023, it spent £15.3bn – around a quarter of what the US provided.

Today, staffers at the Agency were told to stay out. This is from the AP. “Democrats push back after Musk says Trump agrees to close USAID and workers are kept out.”

Democrats have delivered a strong rebuke against the Trump administration’s attempt to gut an agency that provides crucial aid overseas to fund education and fight starvation and disease, calling it illegal, vowing a court fight and lambasting billionaire Elon Musk for wielding so much power in Washington.

Staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters, and officers blocked the lawmakers from entering the lobby Monday, after Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.

The fast-moving developments come after thousands of USAID employees already have been laid off and programs shut down in the two weeks since Trump became president. And they show the extraordinary power of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration. Musk announced closing of the agency early Monday, as Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was out of the country on a trip to Central America.

Trump said shutting down USAID “should have been done a long time ago” and was asked whether he needs Congress to approve such a measure. The president said he did not think so, and accused the Biden administration of fraud, without giving any evidence and only promising a report later on.

“They went totally crazy, what they were doing and the money they were giving to people that shouldn’t be getting it and to agencies and others that shouldn’t be getting it, it was a shame, so a tremendous fraud,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.

Rubio told reporters in San Salvador that he was now the acting administrator of USAID but had delegated his authorities to someone else. The change means that USAID is no longer an independent government agency as it had been for decades — although its new status will likely be challenged in court — and will be run out of the State Department.

I need to see more than a “strong rebuke” please.   He’s just stolen powers given to Congress by the Constitution.  “ArtII.S2.C2.3.6 Creation of Federal Offices.”

Article II, Section 2, Clause 2:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The Constitution gives Congress substantial power to establish federal government offices. As an initial matter, the Constitution vests the legislative power in Congress.1 Article I bestows on Congress certain specified, or enumerated, powers.2 The Court has recognized that these powers are supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause, which provides Congress with broad power to enact laws that are ‘convenient, or useful’ or ‘conducive’ to [the] beneficial exercise of its more specific authorities.3 The Supreme Court has observed that the Necessary and Proper Clause authorizes Congress to establish federal offices.4 Congress accordingly enjoys broad authority to create government offices to carry out various statutory functions and directives.5 The legislature may establish government offices not expressly mentioned in the Constitution in order to carry out its enumerated powers.6

The Appointments Clause supplies the method of appointment for certain specified officials, but also for other [o]fficers whose positions are established by [l]aw. Although principal officers must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, Congress may by [l]aw place the appointing power for inferior officers with the President alone, a department head, or a court.7 As this section will explain, the Supreme Court has recognized Congress’s discretion to establish a wide variety of governmental entities in the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches.

Congress’s authority to establish offices is limited by the terms of the Appointments Clause. The structure of federal agencies must comply with the requirement that the President appoint officers, subject to Senate confirmation, although the appointment of inferior officers may rest with the President alone, department heads, or the courts.8 More broadly, the Supreme Court has made clear that the Constitution imposes important limits on Congress’s ability to influence or control the actions of officers once they are appointed. Likewise, it is widely believed that the President must retain a certain amount of independent discretion in selecting officers that Congress may not impede. These principles ensure that the President may fulfill his constitutional duty under Article II to take [c]are that the laws are faithfully executed.9

Alright, I sound like I’m assigning homework and giving lectures again. I don’t mean to. But sometimes you’re just going to need a reference when some stupid person doesn’t know what’s real, what’s constitutional, and what’s totally off the wall.

I think that’s enough for today’s big swallow.  I’m off to take care of myself. Please do the same!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

To think, like 50 years ago, I was performing this.  Where has time gone?

#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968 #Brologarchy #ElonMuskIsANAZI #EloniaMusk #FARTUS #idiocracy #kakistocracy #malignantNarcissism #treasuryDepartment #TreasuryDepartmentHackedByMusk #unconstitutional #USAID