Cuba Libre? 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢

International Tripping:  Trump is on his way home from China where he was feted by a Chinese military band’s rendition of the Village People’s YMCA but accomplished next to nothing other than getting a few promises that China’s Xi will likely “forget” as well as a few photo ops.  While most attention was on China, CIA head John Ratcliffe was in Havana meeting with Cuban officials “offering” assistance to Cuba in exchange for “fundamental changes” to its communist political regime.  Cuba is in desperate straits.  It’s economy, never robust, is in shambles, a victim of Trump’s takeover of Venezuela’s oil sales and a US blockade. The island nation is now experiencing daily daylong blackouts.  Trump who, at different times during this term, has called for Greenland, Canada, and/or Venezuela to become the US’s 51^st state may have finally found a starving nation whose desperate citizens are suffering enough to take up him up on his offer, an offer that probably won’t include citizenship, the right to vote, access to social benefits, and if Stephen Miller has any say, the right to move to the mainland.     

Peeps Plus:  The Wall Street Journal reports that Natalie Harp, otherwise known as Trump’s human printer, is the source of the content of many of his unhinged late-night Truth Social Posts. The 35-year-old Trumpette provides him with stacks of right-wing articles and racist political cartoons for his nighttime perusal. Harp, who provided him with the racist cartoon that depicted Michelle and Barack Obama as apes, also writes a few of his posts. The WSJ implied that Harp’s works nights, but let’s not go there.  Efforts by the White House staff, presumably Susie Wiles, to curtail Harp’s efforts have failed because as Harp puts it, she reports to Trump and only Trump. While Harp appears to have job security, others not so much. Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks was forced out yesterday.  Banks had been a favorite of Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowki.  His ouster comes weeks after the right leaning Washington Examiner reported that six current and former border patrol employees had credibly accused him of regularly paying for sex with prostitutes during official trips to Colombia and Thailand while bragging about it to colleagues.  There are no reports that Ka$h Patel hung with prostitutes but videos of him bragging about his affinity for beer keep popping up. Lots of people like and drink lots of beer but none of them are the director of the FBI, a position that requires round the clock sobriety.  Additionally, yesterday the AP reported that he went on a VIP snorkel around the USS Arizona during an official government trip to Pearl Harbor even though snorkeling around the sunken battleship is forbidden. These disclosures probably explain why he announced yesterday that he’d established a new specialized FBI unit being referred to as the “payback squad.” The squad will be tasked with investigating political cases, presumably involving those on Trump’s enemy list, especially those involved in the “grand conspiracy” against Trump, whatever that is.  Along similar lines,  ABC reports that Trump plans to drop his extremely bogus $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration’s alleged weaponization of the legal system including the 1600 individuals charged in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol.  The basis for Trump’s lawsuit was the leaking by a since fired and punished IRS contractor of some of his tax returns. Other people whose returns were included in the same leak received a formal public apology from the IRS but did not receive any form of financial compensation. Had Trump followed precedent and released his returns, the leak, had there been one, would have been moot. Notably, Trump is still not releasing his returns.  In other questionable financial news, the cost of Trump’s ball room, the renovation of the DC reflecting pond and all of his other vanity projects, all of which have been awarded without abiding to normal government contracting procedures, continue to climb.  It’s our money, why should he care?       

Jim Crow Update:  Despite a decision by Republicans in South Carolina’s state senate to hold off on redistricting away the states one Democratic House seat, held by Jim Clyburn, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster has other plans.  He’s called for a special session where he plans to force a public vote that will likely result in the elimination of Clyburn’s seat. However, in a bit of good news but only for the midterms, the Governors of Georgia and Mississippi plan to defer their redistricting until after the November elections and Louisiana has opted to “only” eliminate one of its two Black majority districts, for now.   

More 💩:  The DOJ is planning to drop Biden era charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani who’d been indicted for conducting an elaborate bribery, fraud and corruption scheme that hurt boatloads of US investors. Not so coincidentally Adani is now promising to invest $10 billion in the US economy, a lot of money to most of us but pocket change to Adani, and that’s assuming he ever really makes the investment. DOJ’s reversal came after Adani hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr, one of President Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell. In other legal news, the Supreme Court agreed to let Mifepristone remain fully available by remote prescription while Louisiana’s legal case against it goes forward.  Naturally, Justices Alito and Thomas dissented from the majority’s ruling, with Thomas saying that the drug’s manufacturers are engaging in a “criminal enterprise” and Alito saying that the case was about a “scheme to undermine” Dobbs, the ruling that overturned the right to abortion.  On the hate front, Senator Rand Paul’s adult son William “hurled” a slew of anti-Semitic slurs at Hudson Valley, New York Congressman Mike Lawler at Washington DC’s Tune in Restaurant and Bar.  William Paul displayed his hate, which also included a tirade against gay people, in public for all including a team from the NOTUS media outlet to see.  The stunned Lawler who is Catholic not Jewish, pushed back at William Paul, a good thing that will also help him retain votes given that his swing district is the home to around 90,000 Jews.  That’s important for him because his district tops the Democratic flip list. William, whose work history includes stints with several Republican Congressman, was inebriated at the time.  He says that he plans to seek help for his drinking problem. Does anyone know if Alcoholics Anonymous or any other detox plans have treatments for anti-Semitism and LGBTQ hate?  

 

 

Road Tripping 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢

State of Play:  Trump is in China where he will be meeting with Xi. The focus of his trip is supposed to be trade, tariffs, and Ai, and to that end he’s brought 17 CEOs, including on again BFF Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s outgoing CEO Tim Cook, and as a last minute add on Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.  There are concerns that while he’s with Xi he will either intentionally or accidentally do or say something that puts Taiwan at risk of a Chinese invasion.  Anyone who doubts that is a possibility should consider that over the past few day’s he’s spent a significant amount of what should be his nighttime sleep time posting even more of his increasingly unhinged messages on Truth Social.  If she really had any influence over him, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles would lock his phone away and/or delete its apps but instead she’s been lecturing and sending memos to White House staff warning them to stop leaking to the press.  We know about the memo because immediately after she shared it with staff, someone or multiple someone’s leaked it to the press. As to those leaks, they are still coming as evidenced by today’s NY Times report that despite assurances from Trump that Iran’s military is in the crapper it isn’t, it’s stronger than we’ve been told and its missile capability, especially around the critical Strait of Hormuz, is almost completely intact.  Naturally, the Trump administration’s response to the reports is that those reporting on Iran’s capabilities are treasonous cheerleaders for the enemy. The White House announced that Trump’s annual physical, or his second or third annual physical this year will take place upon his return as will his annual dental check-up, not to be confused with the recent emergency visit that was characterized as “just a check-up.” They’ll probably quiz Trump on squirrels and rhinos again, or at least they should.

Peeps:  Ka$h Patel testified before the Senate yesterday.  He was combative and lied a lot, and why not because though lying to Congress is supposed to be a crime reports are that Trump has promised everyone who works within 100 miles of the White House that they will receive pardons.  Patel alleged that despite his public partying and branded bourbon he doesn’t drink or at least doesn’t drink much, that despite credible reports to the contrary he isn’t subjecting bunches of FBI Agents to lie detector/loyalty tests, and that all the Iran experts he fired right before the beginning of the Iran “skirmish” weren’t fired but if they were they weren’t really Iran experts. So far Patel is still the Director of the FBI which puts him one step ahead of the now former FDA head Marty Makary who was formally disposed of yesterday. Kari Lake who managed to dismember the Voice of America is now Trump’s nominee to become the US Ambassador to Jamaica and Doug Mastriano who may or may not have been launching another Pennsylvania gubernatorial run because the last one was such a disaster is now Trump’s nominee to become the US Ambassador to Slovakia.  RFK who remains the head of Health and Human Services has been quiet of late mostly because Trump doesn’t want to scare off any more voters than he and increasing inflation already have going into the midterms has been quietly conducting a “wide-ranging, behind-the-scenes inquiry into vaccine safety, prioritizing investigations into potential links between vaccines and chronic, neurological, or autoimmune disorders.”  Naturally, he already knows what he’ll conclude, and it won’t be good, for anyone who believes that polio, measles, whooping cough, shingles, COVID, and the flu are bad and who would rather not drink raw milk, snort coke off a toilet seat or rely on peptides to stay healthy.  Though the Department of Transportation has been having a hard time with funding freezes, plane crashes, a failing airline, and fuel inflation, apparently running the DOT hasn’t been enough to keep Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy busy which must be the reason that he, his wife and their nine children have been filming a cross country reality TV show like trip scheduled to air during Trump’s 250^th birthday celebration.  Duffy’s junket has been financed by some of the company’s that he regulates because, of course.                 

Jim Crow Update: As expected given its other decisions, SCOTUS has ruled that Alabama can get rid of one of its two majority Black congressional districts.  In response, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey announced that she will bifurcate the state’s primaries, holding some as scheduled and others for the newly created now majority white districts in August even though some absentee ballots have already been cast for what were supposed to be May 19^th elections.  That’s not normal but is in keeping with what Louisiana’s Governor Jeff Landry is doing now that he’s gotten the go ahead from the Supreme Court to whitewash his state. Landry is tossing out 45,000 already cast absentee ballots saying it’s not a big deal and certainly not his fault that the Supreme Court ruled so late in the primary season.  Unlike Alabama and Louisiana some of South Carolina’s Republican state senators have voted against redistricting away Democrat Jim Clyburn’s seat, at least for now.  Apparently, they think it’s a bad look to redistrict this late in the primary season. For its part, Virginia, the state where voters actually approved their redistricting in advance of primaries,  is appealing its State Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate its redistricting election to SCOTUS. It will be interesting to see how the six conservative Justices justify upholding the Virginia court’s invalidation decision because odds are they will.        

More 💩: Something hateful is in the water at the NY Times.  On Monday, the paper published an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in which he claimed with suspect evidence that Israel used sexual violence against prisoners as “organized state policy.” The piece, an op-ed rather than a researched article, makes several grave claims about conditions in Israeli prisons, including about the alleged use of trained dogs to rape prisoners. Kristof based his op-ed on reports from Hamas and Hamas affiliated sources that have long spread lies about Israel. Israel has issues, there are out of control settlers but the tell here that the op-ed is worse than fishy and more like a blood libel is the dog assertion because that’s not a thing.  To quote one of the members of the founding members of the NYC Police Department’s Canine Unit “It’s absurd for many reasons: the sexual instincts of dogs, their anatomy, the actual physical concept of it.”  It’s probably not a coincidence that a fully researched 300-page report by the independent Israel Civil Commission on October 7^th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children that builds on prior investigations including by the UN that documented how Hamas used sexual violence and torture including rape to further terrorize the victims of October 7 was also released this week.  Unlike the Kristof op-ed the commission report relied on extensive testimony including lie detector tests of witnesses.  And keeping with the NY Times “something is in the water” problem, the paper also has a rather lengthy feature article about how Israel is using the Eurovision contest as a “soft power tool.”  Americans don’t focus much on the Eurovision song contest but it’s a big deal in Europe.  The winner is chosen by a popular vote.  It is usual for countries with smaller populations to lobby heavily among ex-pats and friends to boost their singers.  Apparently that’s okay when Sweden does it but not so much when Israel does.  And by the way, the Israeli competitors are quite good.  The NY Times needs to get a grip before they trigger a pogrom.

 

ET, Phone Home 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

Oy Virginia: Citing a procedural violation, on Friday Virginia’s Supreme Court struck down the congressional map recently approved by Virginia’s electorate.  The state court’s 4 to 3 decision is potentially devastating for Democrats. Together with the US Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v Callais decision which effectively dismantled what was left of the Voting Right Act it means that Republicans have won the redistricting war.  Safe Democratic seats, many with Black representatives, are likely to go red in November meaning that while there’s still a chance that Democrats win the House, gerrymandering has netted Republicans twelve more seats than Democrats and as a result could help them keep control of the House.  Democrats haven’t thrown in the towel yet on Virginia.  Some state lawmakers are considering imposing new age limitations that would force the retirement of some of the state’s justices in order to reverse Friday’s ruling.  That sounds kind of nuts but then again ruling against the outcome of an election while a bunch of other states impose new Republican friendly Jim Crow style maps without voter approval sounds nuts too.  

Wars, Etcetera: The Iran war/skirmish that Trump said would be over soon is not over.  Iran rejected Trump’s one page term sheet, providing an alternative of their own that Trump then said was totally inadequate.  Trump is threatening Tehran again and at least for now Iran’s leadership is not budging, not that we know who that leadership really is.  Also, the three-day ceasefire that Trump claimed to have worked out between Russia and Ukraine, it also went up in smoke rather quickly. Despite reports that Putin knows that he’s losing and that Russians have lost 350,000 on the battlefield, not to mention the inconvenience of losing access to the internet, he’s still fighting and sending supplies to Iran. So much for world peace, so much for fair elections.  Also, maybe not such a good time for RFK, whose mandate includes keeping us safe from things like hantavirus, to move forward with banning anti-depressants like Prozac, Zoloft, and Lexapro. His officials say that hantavirus probably won’t get us but then again, who believes RFK, the rudderless CDC or Trump, who once assured us that the coronavirus was under control while at the same time silencing the CDC’s Nancy Messonnier for saying otherwise.  

More 💩:  North Carolina Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for having an improper relationship with a subordinate and for sexual harassment.  Another Republican, Trump endorsed Ohio Congressman Max Miller is accused of beating and burning his ex-wife.  Making things really interesting, his ex-wife is the daughter of Ohio’s sitting Republican Senator Bernie Moreno who Miller has accused of fueling the “rumors” against him to help his daughter with her custody battle. By the way, Florida Republican Cory Mills who allegedly beat up at least one ex-girlfriend, is still a sitting Congressman mostly because Speaker Johnson and Trump need his vote.  On the health care front, Trump’s fourth Surgeon General radiologist Nicole Saphier nominee has deleted a bunch of tweets in which she criticized Trump and RFK’s health care policies.  She’s still the nominee but others have been removed lesser tweets. Reports are that Trump has signed off on firing FDA chief Mark Makary.  Makary’s tenure has been controversial but ironically if he’s removed it may be because he opposed the approval of flavored vapes and has stood in the way of restricting abortion drug mifepristone.  And because a weekend wouldn’t be a weekend without Secretary of War/Beer Pete Hegseth picking another fight with Senator/Astronaut Mark Kelly, Hegseth is now asserting that Kelly should be investigated for expressing concern over the US’s diminishing stockpiles of weapons.  Hegseth’s claim is that Kelly violated his oath by “blabbing on TV” about what he learned in a classified briefing. Kelly pointed out that the state of the stockpiles was discussed by Hegseth in the same “public hearing“ where he said “it would take years to replenish” the weapons. It’s no wonder the administration is releasing UFO files; they need the distraction and those videos of Trump and his motorcade driving through the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to show off his new costly taxpayer funded paint job while bizarre are not distracting enough.                

 

 
Love Tap 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

Iran, Iran, Iran:  On Wednesday, the White House said that it was pausing Project Freedom, the escorting of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, because Trump’s team was very close to working out the terms of a war ending deal with Iran.  Like a lot of things coming out of this White House, that was a lie.  Project Freedom was paused because even after a last minute plea by Trump to Mohammed bin Salman the Saudis refused to allow the US to use its bases and airspace to provide the military escorts, the Saudis way of putting pressure on the US work to work out a permanent deal with Iran, regardless of what that deal entails.  Yesterday, the US launched “self-defensive” attacks on two Iranian targets after Iran targeted several US ships with drones and missiles. Despite all that Trump said the ceasefire was still on, a peace deal is imminent, and anyway those US attacks were just “love taps,” something that the multiply accused sex assaulter and adjudicated rapist knows lots about.  Love taps or not, Trump also said that if a deal isn’t made quickly and Iran continues to attack ships in the Strait he’ll turn Iran into “one big glow.”  Also yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the CIA has advised the Trump administration that Iran can withstand the US naval blockade for three or four more months before facing severe economic hardship, a bigly problem for Trump because Americans appear far less willing endure the “hardship” of  higher gas prices and more inflation especially during the summer holiday months in the run up to the midterms.  It’s not just Iran’s hardship tolerance that’s a problem; the CIA has also determined that Tehran retains about 70% of its missile capabilities. The thing about wars is that more often than not, they don’t go according to plan.  There’s a reason that the acronym SNAFU (situation normal all f-cked up) was originated by the military.

KA$H and Karry:  Kash Patel is also at war, his targets are anyone and everyone related to the Atlantic’s story about his drinking, partying, and other extravagances. Several news outlets report that the FBI has launched a criminal leak investigation focusing on Sarah Fitzpatrick, the Atlantic magazine journalist who wrote April’s unflattering account of Director Kash Patel’s work habits. That investigation involves subjecting FBI agents who worked or previously worked close to Patel to lie detector tests, a sure way to inspire loyalty and trust among his increasingly miserable troops. Journalist Fitzpatrick and her bosses at the Atlantic remain undeterred.  On the same day that the reports about the FBI going after her came out, the Atlantic published another one of her articles, this one detailing Patel’s practice of gifting personalized bottles of bourbon engraved with the phrase “Kash Patel FBI Director”  The bottles, pictures of which are all over Twitter, come from Kentucky’s Woodland Brewery.  They include an FBI shield with an eagle clutching the number 9 (Patel is the ninth FBI Director) as well as his name written as KA$H. So much for Patel’s assertion that he’s not all that into drinking. Fitzpatrick reports that she keeps getting contacted by people with more stories about Kash’s behavior so it’s highly likely that articles about him will continue. Yesterday, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor who was accidentally included on the now infamous Houthi bombing operation SIGNAL chat, wrote an editorial in which he repeated that the Atlantic stands by Fitzpatrick and has the legal resources to pushback against any and all legal actions by Patel and his abettors. It would be nice to think that Patel has better things to do than to lash out at journalists but then again he was appointed by Trump, the king of retribution, who sues everyone, wants all his “enemies” jailed, and who yesterday called ABC reporter Rachel Scott a bitch and even worse called for Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to be charged for inciting violence. It’s probably not a coincidence that both Scott and Jeffries are Black. 

MAHA Not:  We’re probably going to survive the hantavirus scare but then again, most of us shrugged off COVID before it turned into a pandemic and unlike COVID, hantavirus has a 40% mortality rate and it appears that the strain that infected some passenger on the MV Hondius cruise ship is particularly gnarly and also possibly can be transmitted through person to person contact. The World Health Organization (WHO) is on the case; the bad news is that Trump pulled us from WHO.  Also, reports are that our CDC is putting together a hantavirus working group; the bad news is that Trump, RFK, and our malevolent Uncle Elon slashed funding for infectious disease research and has far fewer employees, including disease detectives, to respond to outbreaks because those fired included the health officials responsible for investigating outbreaks on cruise ships.  The other good news is that we’ve got lots of ivermectin; the bad news is that despite the claims of the twitter-verse and the MAGA idiots ivermectin is not an effective treatment for hantavirus.  In other health news, the Trump administration which earlier blocked the publication of research documenting the safety of COVID vaccines is now also blocking the publication of research documenting the safety of the shingles vaccine. However, under pressure from Trump the FDA has approved the sale of flavored vapes, but only for adults as if that’s possible.  In keeping with the theme of okaying products that hurt people versus endorsing shots that save, tanning bed aficionado RFK plans to make it easier for teens to use tanning beds because what’s a little melanoma among friends and anyway, both the leather faced RFK and the orange guy will probably be long gone before any of the foolish teens they aren’t protecting die prematurely from vaping and tanning.

More 💩: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared for a closed-door interview, transcribed as opposed to taped, with the House Oversight Committee.  Republicans emerged from the meeting to say that he did a spectacular job, Democrats agreed to the spectacular part, saying that he was a spectacular liar. Former AG Pam Bondi is due to appear soon. The current plan is for her session to also be just an untaped interview.  Democrats aren’t happy about that, but so far haven’t managed to get the plan changed. Trump can’t be happy that the US Court of International Trade concluded that the global 10% tariffs that Trump imposed when his originally set of tariffs were overturned by the Supreme Court are unlawful.  And most depressing for today and maybe for years maybe decades to come Jim Crow is back as more southern states have moved forward with new maps that eliminate Democratic seats mostly held by Black members of Congress. Despite that Chief Justice John Roberts is lamenting public perception of the Justice as political actors. Justice Neil Gorsuch who appeared on Fox and Friends and on Megan Kelly’s YouTube this week, just doesn’t care.     

 

 

Squirrels and Rhinos 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

War TACO:  Press Secretary Lying Leavitt, due to have her second child momentarily is out on maternity leave.  She returned from her first maternity leave four days after having her first child and plans to do the same this time around.  That’s kind of nuts but then again nothing about this administration approaches normality and really, who needs maternity leave anyway? Given her plans, Trump has decided against appointing an interim fill-in and is instead rotating her role through his cabinet.  Yesterday was Secretary of State and many things Marco Rubio’s turn.  During his stint at the podium, he announced that Operation Epic Fury was over, replaced with Project Freedom, Trump’s moniker for his strategy of escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Rubio probably shouldn’t have bothered discussing Project Freedom because last night despite Secretary of War and Beer Hegseth’s assertion that all was going swimmingly with the plan and that Iran’s shooting at the transiting ships and their US sherpa boats wasn’t enough of a provocation for Trump to move forward with his threat to rain all hell on Iran if they attacked any of them, Trump announced that the short lived Project Freedom was on hold since he’s on the verge of striking a permanent peace deal with Iran.  That would be nice, especially for the 1500 to 3000 commercial ships stranded in the area, but who knows if “peace is at hand” or if having seen the polls and prices at the pump Trump who keeps bragging about how many times he’s passed a dementia test and that he can distinguish a squirrel 🐿️  from a rhinos 🦏 is just engaging in rhetorical spit balling.  This morning oil prices are down on the news. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Gerrymandering Chaos:  While Iran remains a mess, Trump did have some success yesterday in Indiana where at least five of the seven state’s Republican legislators he opposed lost their primaries to the MAGA opponents he’d endorsed.  Trump’s beef with the “losers” was over their failure to vote for a redistricting that would have netted Republicans at least one, possibly two, more House seats. It’s fair to assume that Indiana’s Republican led legislature will now have the votes to proceed with a redistricting in time for the 2028 election.  It’s growing increasingly clear that Republicans have given up on appealing to voters by developing policies they’d like.  Why should they bother when they can just gerrymander their way into control because while there’s still a good chance that Democrats will win the House during this year’s midterms, future Republican gerrymandering in states like Tennessee, Mississippi, and maybe even Georgia will make it increasingly difficult for Democrats to win House majorities in future elections.        

More 💩:   Last week, the Department of Justice announced that the Southern Poverty Law Center (the SPLC) had been indicted, something about deceiving its donors about how their contributions were used to pay informants as part of their strategy of outing racist organizations like the KKK. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche doubled down, saying that neither the DOJ nor the FBI had any idea about the way that those “lawbreakers” at the SPLC were conducting their investigations, and really why should they want the SPLC or anyone to go after white supremacists.  The SPLC called that assertion out as bull, saying that the FBI knew what they were up to because they frequently kept them in the loop. The SPLC has brought Blanche’s deceptive public statements to the attention of the Alabama court, requesting a copy of the grand jury testimony used to get the inditement.  SPLC’s assertion is that the DOJ lied when seeking the indictment. In response, Blanche took to Fox to kind of tap dance around his lies.  This case could be on the way to imploding in the DOJ’s face, or at the very least it should be.   On the subject of deception, remember when Trump asserted multiple times that donors were paying for his East Wing ballroom project.  Apparently, they are not as evidenced by the $72 billion budget reconciliation bill presented by Senator Chuck Grassley to his Senate colleagues.  The bill includes $1 billion for “Secret Service security upgrades related to the White House East Wing Modernization Project,” in other words, Trump has or at least is trying to shift the full cost of his ballroom onto taxpayers, is anyone surprised?  In other ballroom news, the contractors who demolished the old East Wing dumped the associated dirt and debris, including lots of toxic chemicals, onto the East Potomac Park public golf course.  To add salt to that now festering wound, Trump is trying to take over the golf course turning it into a “lavish” Trump facility, albeit one sitting on lots of poison.  On a more positive note, for the moment Mifepristone is available again, at least until the Supreme Court renders a final decision on whether or not it should be. And because a week doesn’t go by without learning more about bad behavior by politicians, it turns out, that in addition to the girlfriend threatening Cory Mills, there’s another Republican one being investigated in the House. This one is Chuck Edwards who represents North Carolina, something about singling out female aides for “special attention.”                           

  

 
The New "N" Word 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

Gerrymandering Chaos:  As expected, last week’s Supreme Court decision eviscerating the Voting Right Act is reverberating. Jeff Landry, the Republican Governor of Louisiana has taken the unprecedented step of suspending his state’s already in process primary to rejigger his map in a way intended to deprive Black Louisianians of Congressional representation.  Now, a few other states including Tennessee and Alabama where primaries were set for May 19 are expected to immediately follow Louisiana’s lead.  The SCOTUS Justices had to know that their decision would be disruptive to already in process elections; they could and should have said that it was too late for Louisiana and other impacted states to change their maps for this year’s elections, they’ve done that in the past,  but they didn’t do it this time. In addition, Florida’s termed out Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to sign the redistricting map that he recently pushed through his state’s legislature. Not so surprisingly, an appreciative Trump who fears what a big blue wave midterms could bring is already talking about rewarding DeSantis with a cabinet seat, perhaps Hegseth’s Defense post. Though he’s about as conservative as they come, Georgia’s termed out Governor Brian Kemp, who has crossed Trump in the past, is showing a little restraint.  He applauded the Court’s decision, saying that his state should adopt a new map before 2028, but has no plans to do so now given that early voting in Georgia began on April 27.  It’s fair to assume that if Republicans retain the Georgia governorship his predecessor will do his best to cut a few Democratic seats by then.  The bottom line is that even with all this last-minute redistricting Democrats are still more likely than not to win control of the House in the midterms but if they do their majority will be smaller than it would have been without all the upheaval and these mulligans. However, going forward, the cards will be stacked against Democrats, making it harder for Democrats to retain House control in years without large blue waves.  And just in case you don’t think that overt racism, the thing that the Voting Rights Act was supposed to ameliorate, is still a thing, consider Trump’s speech and Truth Social posts. He regularly calls his Black opponents, including Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and even Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, “low IQ persons,” a slam that many of his social media adherents and like-minded obsequious defenders quickly applaud.  Trump’s shrewd enough to know that saying the “N” word in public is unacceptable but we and they all know that’s what he and they are thinking.  

Abortion Again:  Abortion drug Mifepristone is back in the news, and the news is not good.  On Friday, in response to a request in a percolating lawsuit by Louisiana, the very conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a severe nationwide restriction on the mailing of Mifepristone, the safe and effective medication used in nearly two-thirds of US abortions as well as for early miscarriage care. The ruling reinstated a nationwide requirement, lifted by FDA in 2021, that women obtain Mifepristone in person at a health center, rather than by mail or at a pharmacy after receiving care through telemedicine, while the Louisiana case proceeds. Two manufacturers of Mifepristone almost immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, requesting that the mailing restriction be put on hold. Despite all the states that have made it difficult, if not impossible for women to obtain abortions, the number of abortions in the US has increased since the Court’s abortion restricting Dobbs decision largely because of the availability of Mifepristone but restricting access to the drug, especially to women in states where abortion has been effectively outlawed would change that, which is the whole point of the Louisiana lawsuit.  It looks like abortion will be on the ballot again in 2026.  Just another reason that Trump and the Republicans are so desperate to restrict voter access, not just for minorities but also for women because if Trump’s SAVE Act is passed, married women who’ve changed their names will have to scramble to get new voter IDs that prove they are who they say they are in order to cast their ballots.       

More 💩: After saying last week that there was no need for Congress to take a War Powers act vote because the Iran war was either over or on pause, last night Trump announced that the US would “help” stranded ships transit through the Strait of Hormuz, warning that interference by Iran would be dealt with forcefully.  A cargo ship was attacked overnight in the Strait so we should know what that help will really entail shortly.  Maybe.  In the category of news that should make Putin pop a few champagne corks, Trump announced that he’ll be reducing US troops in Germany by 5000.  He’s long talked about doing that but didn’t because of pushback from his generals and some in Congress including both Republicans and Democrats but that was before War/Beer Hegseth fired lots of competent generals so this time he’ll probably proceed.  Also, Trump announced via social media that disbarred former NYC Mayor Rudy Guliani is in a Florida hospital in critical condition.  Trump being Trump, his announcement slammed radical left lunatic Democrats, “ALL because Rudy was RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!  They cheated on the elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did everything to destroy our Nation, and now look at Rudy, So sad!  At least, he didn’t blame Biden who his crowd, blamed this weekend for the demise of the long struggling Spirit Airlines, because as everyone knows, everything including inflation, airplane fuel,  gas and grocery prices, the Iran war, hangnails, warts,  you name it, is Biden’s fault and always will be.              

 

 
On the Bayou 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

Gerrymandering Update: With a big assist by the Supreme Court’s six conservative Justices the election pendulum has swung to the red side the result of SCOTUS’s Wednesday decision striking down Louisiana’s voting map.  The Court ruled that lawmakers had illegally used race when drawing up the state’s new majority-Black district. Given that Chief Justice Roberts has long been hostile to the Voting Rights Act’s protection of minority voting rights and has been leading the court into decisions that have dismantled it piece by piece, Wednesday’s decision wasn’t a complete surprise. However, its timing was particularly atrocious because by issuing the decision now rather than waiting until late June, SCOTUS set off a frantic “scramble” as Republican led states consider redrawing their maps so that new whitewashed ones can be in place by the midterms.  To that end, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has taken the unprecedented step of halting his state’s already in progress primary so that he can immediately oversee the elimination of its Black district. A few other states are likely to try to follow his lead with those unable to pull off a quick switcheroo putting new maps in place in time for the 2028 presidential year elections. States to watch now include Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. To be clear, each of these states have large Black populations but by slicing and dicing their maps in ways that disperse Black residents into neighboring white dominated districts, creatively nefarious map drawers can neutralize their votes, eliminating their election power and reducing the number of Democrats in the House. A few Democratically controlled states are likely to try to do some more gerrymandering of their own to counter some of the effects of Wednesday’s SCOTUS opinion.  To that end NY Governor Kathy Hochul said that she’ll start what is expected to be a two-year process. And just to rile the election waters even further, while testifying before the Senate yesterday, the agitated and particularly hostile Secretary of War and Beer, Pete Hegseth, refused to say that he wouldn’t send in troops to grab any ballots that Trump doesn’t like during the next two elections.

Peeps:  Trump has pulled the nomination of Casey Means, replacing his flailing and unlikely to be confirmed Surgeon General nominee with Nicole Saphier. Saphier who is Trump’s third Surgeon nominee, is a real doctor, she also has a wellness podcast and has appeared frequently on Fox News probably one of the reasons that Trump has chosen her.  She is the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Monmouth New Jersey branch. She’s viewed as a more conventional choice than Means but is MAHA adjacent as she has rejected vaccine mandates and wants the childhood vaccine schedule to be flexible enough to allow some parents to delay giving infants their shots.  That said, she’s on record saying that “when vaccination rates go down, preventable diseases come back.”  Trump blamed his inability to get Means confirmed on Louisiana Senator/Doctor Bill Cassidy who he hates because Cassidy voted him guilty during his second impeachment hearing.  However, Cassidy wasn’t the only Senator likely to vote against Mean’s confirmation.  Another one who, like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, was sitting on the fence was Maine’s Susan Collins.  It’s probably not a coincidence that Trump pulled Mean’s nomination shortly after Maine’s moderate Governor Janet Mills threw in the towel on her Senate run because though he doesn’t like Collins Trump really needs her to win reelection in November.  With Governor Mills out of the race, Senator Collins will face off against Oyster farmer Graham Platner, the left-wing media darling with an inconvenient Nazi tattoo and a history of ugly Reddit posts that he attributes to PTSD as one does when one wants to excuse saying disparaging things about victims of sexual violence.  Governor Mills dropped from the race because she was consistently polling significantly behind Platner. At the moment some but not all polls show Platner ahead of Collins.  We won’t know until November if Platner’s Mr. Unconventional shtick and his Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren endorsements work in Maine’s general election or if Collins, the so-called Republican moderate who mostly but not always votes with Trump and who Democrats, particularly progressive ones, love to hate can pull off another win in middle of the road Maine. It’s worth noting that Collins voted with Democrats yesterday to curb Trump’s war powers. She appears to be making the moves she thinks she’ll need to hold her seat and it’s likely that Trump will cut her some slack going forward, or not 🤷‍♀️.  In other confirmation news, now that North Carolina’s outgoing Senator Thom Tillis has removed his hold, it’s expected that Trump’s Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh will be confirmed but the man he’s replacing current Fed Chair Jerome Powell whose term as a Federal Reserve governor doesn’t end until 2028 says that he plans to stay on at least until the Supreme Court rules on whether or not Trump can remove Lisa Cook or any other Fed Governors that irritate him or happen to be Black.  Since decisions on interest rate changes are made by a vote of all the sitting governors, the highly respected Powell’s continued presence on the Fed Board is likely to influence future cuts or lack thereof.      

More 💩:  The decision to proceed with the indictment of Former FBI Director Comey was rushed out by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, part of his effort to get the acting part of his title removed.  Current FBI Director Kash Patel, another one who shouldn’t have his job but still does, says the investigation into Comey’s silly but not threatening “86 47” seashell social media post took nearly a year, a preposterous assertion but then again Patel had other things on his plate like attending and drinking his way through Olympic ice hockey matches and commuting back and forth to Las Vegas with his SWAT protected country music singing girlfriend.  As to those seashells,  Comey didn’t arrange them, he just photographed them and posted them on Instagram when he saw them laying on a North Carolina Beach.  On the funding front, Speaker Mike Johnson who is confident that Republicans will win in the midterms because they are the “adults in the room” 😂 finally caved on Homeland funding.  With Trump’s temporary order to fund DHS salaries about to expire, he allowed the House to vote on and pass funding all of DHS except for INS and Border Patrol leaving those already multi-year and  overfunded divisions to be included in the lower required Senate vote threshold reconciliation package that the Republicans plan to force through both the House and the Senate soon, or whenever they can pull it off.  And lastly, for now, Jeff Bezos Amazon is considering a reboot of The Apprentice starring Don Jr because he hasn’t already bent his knee enough and we need another Trump in the wings.  🤯🤯