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.  🤯🤯 

 

 
Calling Maxwell Smart 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

Peak Stupidity:  Just when you’d think or at the very least hope that things couldn’t get more stupid, they have, bigly.  Yesterday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer who despite knowing better continues to behave as if he still is his personal lawyer announced that the DOJ had obtained an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey. Handed down by a North Carolina grand jury, the indictment concerns Comey’s May 2025 instagram (X) post in which he posted a picture of bunch of seashells on a North Carolina beach which had been positioned to form the number 86 followed by the number 47. The DOJ’s position is that the devious and dangerous Comey’s shell formation was a clarion call for someone to do away with the wannabee king also known as the 47^th president.  That the indictment was revealed on the same day that a real King, one whose very limited power relies on respect and tradition rather than spiteful retribution makes it that much more absurd. Most legal pundits, or at least those not serving as mouthpieces for right wing politicians or media, do not believe that Comey’s case will make it to trial.  For the record, the Merriam Webster dictionary defines 86 to mean “to eject or ban” or “remove’ a customer or a menu item.  You have to go far down their list of synonyms before you find anything close to the threat that the DOJ asserts Comey meant with his silly shell formation.  Not so coincidentally James Comey wasn’t the only Comey in the news yesterday.  A federal judge in New York ruled that his daughter Maureen can proceed with her wrongful termination lawsuit against the Trump administration. Maureen who had been a highly regarded senior prosecutor in the DOJ’s Southern District of New York office responsible for a number of high-profile cases including the successful prosecution of the maybe soon to be pardoned Ghislaine Maxwell argues that she was fired for political reasons. The James Comey indictment wasn’t enough stupid for one day, the State Department announced that to commemorate the US’s 250^th birthday, US passports featuring a prominent picture of Trump’s face will be made available shortly. No other country has a picture of their “dear leader” on their passports. Don’t panic if you need to renew your passport before 2028 because the Trump passport isn’t mandatory, it will only be available by special request. And because passports and seashell indictments weren’t enough stupid for one day, shortly after Trump announced that he wants ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel 86’ed immediately for a joke he made on Thursday night before the WH Correspondent dinner attempted shooting but really because he hates that Kimmel mocks him all the time, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr announced that he is opening an investigation into all of ABC ‘s TV licenses purportedly over their “discrimination practices” as in DEI, but really to curtail free speech and by free speech think anything that criticizes or mocks Trump whose approval according to yesterday’s Reuters/IPSOS poll is down to 34%.     

Gerrymandering Update: The redistricting pendulum which started in Texas and has swung back and forth all year, may be swinging back towards the red.  Though they haven’t yet ruled on the constitutionality of Virginia’s voter approved redistricting amendment,  Virginia’s Supreme Court declined to pause a lower court ruling that blocks election officials from certifying the results of last week’s redistricting special election, as they consider the Republican lawsuit seeking to nullify the vote altogether.  Meantime, even though Florida actually has a law on its books that prohibits the drawing of congressional maps that favor one political party over another, at the request of soon to be ex-Governor Ron DeSantis who is trying very hard to get back into Trump’s good graces, perhaps because he wants a cabinet appointment or even a SCOTUS seat, Florida is on the verge of approving a new map intended to shift the state’s congressional representation from 20 Republicans/8 Democrats to 24 Republicans/4 Democrats. The new map makes significant changes to the districts held by Democrats: Kathy Castor, Lois Frankel, Darren Soto, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz while also moving Jared Moskowitz to a new district. Assuming the new map is passed by the Florida legislature, and it will probably pass even though a few Republicans aren’t happy about it, it will be litigated. Even if it withstands legal scrutiny, it’s not clear that the map will gain Republicans the intended four seats because it pushes a few Republican seats towards “swing-land,” a problem for the GOP given the overperformance by Democrats in some recent elections combined with Republican concerns that Trump’s immigration policies and anti-Pope rhetoric could result in some Hispanics who moved red returning to blue.

More 💩:  Despite the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz blockade, War/Beer Pete managed to find the time to take his friend Kid Rock on an Apache helicopter joyride because of course he did and anyway he wasn’t chosen to be a member of Trump’s cabinet because of his military acumen.  As to that lack of acumen, The Atlantic reports that VP Vance isn’t happy about the Iran war. Based on sources close to Vance, maybe even Vance himself, they report that Vance “has repeatedly questioned the Defense (War) Department’s depiction of the war in Iran and whether the Pentagon has understated what appears to be the drastic depletion of US missile stockpiles.”  And lastly for today, and also very stupid, Trump is pushing hard for Congress to approve and allocate $400 million for his East Wing ballroom.  Odd because he’s told us repeatedly that the ballroom which is being constructed by a contractor who was awarded the job on a suspiciously generous no-bid basis, a no-no for government contracts, is being funded by donors not taxpayers. 🤯🤷‍♀️

 

 

Another Oy Weekend 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

Weekend Follies:  After first deciding not to include VP Vance with his negotiating team, Trump then cancelled real estate bro Witkoff and son in law Kushner’s trip to Pakistan so there’s little new to report on the war front except that overnight Iran sent in a proposal to end the war, leaving nuke negotiations for another time which kind of makes the pointless “excursion” that much more pointless.  The Strait of Hormuz remains mostly closed, a particularly gnarly problem for those countries that rely on their oil and fertilizer transiting past Iran but also for everyone else because of the impact on related commodity prices.  Oil shock aside, the bigger story of the weekend was the Saturday night shooting at the Washington Hilton, the hotel hosting the White House Correspondent’s dinner. Everything about the event was distressing.  First and foremost, no one should try to assassinate anyone and no one particularly an unhinged guy with murderous intent should have access to guns. That said, a lot was wrong about the Correspondent’s dinner, not just the apparently inadequate security at the hotel, but the fact that Trump and his team, the very same people who routinely attack the press, calling them traitors or worse, and as reported last week had launched a criminal investigation into Elizabeth Williamson, the NY Times reporter for writing about FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend, her FBI plane privileges and her government paid SWAT entourage, were in attendance, some hosted by the very same press outlets they routinely lambast. Sure, it’s normal for the White House to complain about press coverage but it’s not normal to routinely intimidate them and to ban mainstream outlets from the White House and Pentagon pools as this administration does. Much of the press keeps acting like an abused spouse, cowering, and subjecting themselves to more abuse rather than taking a firm stand against their abuser. Ironic but sadly not unexpected that during his quickly scheduled appearance on Sunday’s 60 Minutes Trump called Norah O’Donnell out as a horrible, disgraceful person who should be ashamed of herself when she asked about the contents of the attempted shooter’s manifesto while also saying it’s “the hate speech of the Democrats” that is “very dangerous” because while it’s cool for him and his team to viscously attack everyone, it’s not okay for Democrats to complain about him.  In case you missed it new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer who Trump routinely calls a Palestinian terrorist, a scumbag on Fox last week, and no one there even blinked.  Moreover, the White House line is now that Trump’s east room ballroom monstrosity is needed more than ever, because a security breach would never happen in his desired eponymous Fortress Trump even though it probably could and would in part because the team leading his security would still be largely made up of the people he appointed for their money and obsequiousness rather than their ability.    

Econ 101: Back in the before times there was Eastern Airlines which flew up and down the east coast of the US and to Latin America.  Eastern ran the original Shuttle which flew hourly flights between NYC’s LaGuardia, Washington DC, and Boston, putting on extra flights at particularly busy times. Early on you could even buy your ticket on the plane. Like a lot of airlines, Eastern which was not known for either its comfort or its financial acumen was merged out of existence but in 1989, before it disappeared it sold its prized shuttle business including its fleet of Boeing 727s and its gate rights to Trump for $365 million. Trump who of course renamed the shuttle the Trump Shuttle, refitted the outdated gas guzzling 727s with heavy gold fixtures, making them heavier and more expensive to fly, and then in 1990 defaulted on Trump Shuttle’s debt. The consortium of lenders who’d financed his purchase then took back the shuttle, selling it to US Air.  Trump now plans to use $500 million of our tax dollars to buy Spirit Airlines, the not so good airline which is struggling even more due to the rise in fuel prices attributable to the Iran war.  What could possibly go wrong? Spirit isn’t his only acquisition, Trump who is supposedly a free-market Republican keeps using our tax dollars to invest in businesses under the guise of national security and while some of those investments might be justifiable, barely, purchasing Spirit Airlines is not.  By the way, those tariffs he collected, his other brilliant economic move, the mechanism to return $166 billion of them is now in place.  The good news is that the administration is abiding by the Supreme Court decision that ruled the tariffs illegal, the not so good news is that Trump is trying to intimidate the companies who paid the tariffs, saying that it would be in their best interests, wink, wink, not to apply for the refunds they’re owed.  And the rest of us, who paid higher prices for tariffed products, forget about it.       

More 💩:  The Trump DOJ is going after the Southern Poverty Law Center, the legal advocacy organization that specializes in civil rights and public interest litigation.  The DOJ got an Alabama grand jury to indict the Law Center for fraud. The allegation is that the Law Center deceived their contributors by using donations to pay informants to assist them in doing what they do, exposing the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups. A large group of the Law Center’s donors have called B💩, saying that they’ve long been aware of where their donations go and that they’re fine with their money being used to unmask hate groups.  Moreover, my TV and podcast legal advisor Andrew Weissmann, of Mueller fame, says the Law Center’s activities are legitimate and that there’s a reason that the DOJ sought the indictment in Alabama. Trump who ties everything to his 2020 election loss to Biden has pointed to the indictment as proof that the election was stolen.  Don’t try to make sense of that because it’s nonsensical.  In other election related news, yesterday while it considers the RNC lawsuit that the Virginia redistricting passed by the state’s voters should be blocked, Virginia’s Supreme Court denied the RNC’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking the new congressional map.  And lastly, the DOJ kind of said that its pointless investigation of Fed Chair William Powell is over and as a result Republican Senator Thom Tillis who’d been holding up Trump nominee Kevin Warsh’s confirmation will now support him. Warsh by the way won’t come out and say that Trump lost in 2020, an indication that he is unlikely to be as independent as he says he will be. Also, Trump won’t say that he won’t have the DOJ restart its investigation into Powell.  And  Julia Varvaro, a 29-year-old Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism at DHS, was placed on administrative leave following allegations from an ex-boyfriend that she engaged in a "sugar daddy" scheme and extorted him for money and luxury gifts.  Only the best people protecting us from terrorist attacks.     

 

Counting Heads 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

War Chronicles:  We appear to have moved into the war of attrition phase of Trump’s Iran excursion.  There’s no question that the US has more military capability than the Iranians and has significantly damaged Iran’s military and infrastructure.  The challenge is that fueled by religious fervor, Iran’s leaders and the IRGC who are fighting for their lives and still have lots of missile capability, mines and small boats are convinced that despite Trump’s rhetoric, at some point he will declare victory and move on. As to that rhetoric yesterday Trump, who given current polls showing his approval ratings mired in the mid-thirties, knows that the specter of a prolonged war isn’t going over well on the homefront, responded to questions from reporters about his timeline by calling them stupid.  He went on to say “we were in Viet Nam for like 18 years, we were in Iraq for many, many years. I don’t like to say WW II, because that was a biggie. But we were four and a half almost five years in WW II.  We were in Korea for seven years.  I’ve been doing this for six weeks.”  Putting aside the inaccuracy of the historically challenged Trump’s timelines, comparing his Iran “excursion” to any one of those wars is probably not going to win him any popularity points.  On a more positive front, Trump announced yesterday that the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire has been extended by three weeks.  That’s good but ceasefires in and around Israel tend to be ephemeral, here today, gone tomorrow.  

Military Peeps:  Trump fired John Phelan, the Secretary of the Navy, or more accurately had Secretary of War/Beer Pete deliver the pink slip on his behalf.  On the one hand, firing the Secretary of the Navy during a Naval war seems a bit disruptive, on the other hand Phelan, whose chief qualification for the job was that he was one of Trump’s Mar a Lago cronies and a donor, wasn’t all that qualified for the position in the first place. Today’s NY Times reports that he was fired for failing to come up with a quickly implementable plan to get a least one of Trump’s super big, powerful, and full of bells and whistles golden battleships built by 2028. While it’s true that Phelan had made virtually no progress, it wasn’t really his fault as military experts say that it would be impossible to even finish the plans for Trump’s desired battleship on that timeline.  Moreover, they all believe that Trump’s golden battleship plans will be tabled the minute he leaves office.  Today’s NYT also reports that we are running out of critical munitions so maybe that’s what Trump should really be focused on but what’s the fun in that, perhaps another reason that yesterday Trump was off on another tangent discussing his marble choices and plans for his reflecting pool project. As to Phelan’s replacement, the new Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao doesn’t really seem all that qualified either although given his earlier remarks about how Monterey California has turned into a Wiccan hellscape, something that true Christians shouldn’t tolerate, his religious beliefs seem to fit in well with Pete Hegseth’s.  In other military personnel news, yesterday US Army Master Sgt Gannon Ken Van Dyke, one of the US special forces soldiers involved in the capturing of Venezuela’s Maduro, was arrested for betting $23,000 on Maduro’s removal on Polymarket before news of the raid was made public. His winnings totaled $409,000.  Now would be a good time for the DOJ to look into the reports of the rumored bets that others within Trump’s proximity have reported to have placed on some of his other TACO decisions because some people have been winning big on stock and energy market movements.

Headcounts:  Democratic Georgia Congressman David Scott, the civil rights advocate who was 80-year-old, died this week just one day after casting what turned out to be his final House vote. Scott is the fifth member of the House and fourth Democrat to die while in office this year. Reports are that 57-year-old New Jersey Republican Tom Kean Jr is still among the living, but the Congressman has been absent from the House since March 5.  His office says that Kean who is running for reelection in what is expected to be a hotly contested race is dealing with a personal matter but has provided no other information about his unspecified health problems or whereabouts.  Iowa’s 90-year-old Republican Senator Chuck Grassley who like the energizer bunny keeps going and going had gall bladder surgery over the weekend.  He reported via one of his typically quirky tweets that he’s recovering well and though he missed a key vote on DHS funding this week will be back soon. His vote or lack thereof was cancelled out by Virginia’s Senator Mark Warner absence. Democrat Warner who also missed the key DHS vote was out mourning the death of his 36-year-old daughter Madison who died this week from long term health complications related to her juvenile diabetes. Lots of sadness but also a reminder that with headcounts as close as they are, every vote matters, particularly in the House where revolts by disgruntled Republicans are common. To that end, Republicans have sued to prevent this week’s Virginia redistricting from going into effect.  A lower Virginia state court has put the redistricting on hold however it’s expected (hopefully) that a higher state court will rule in favor of the redistricting in a timely fashion.  Of course, Trump called the Virginia election a hoax, once again citing his favorite last minute “dumping” of ballots arguments while also saying that even a genius like him couldn’t understand the language in the redistricting amendment. A preview of what he’ll be saying about the midterms.              

More 💩:  RFK Jr testified in front of the Senate Health committee during the week.  He stuck with his usual obfuscation, misquoting studies and denying some of his earlier outrageous statements. Though he finally said that it would be a good idea for children to get the MMR vaccine, he continues to assert that vaccines have had little to do with the reductions in the incidence of childhood diseases, instead citing improvement in living conditions as the only reason that diseases have declined.  He said that even though some of the vaccines he dissed became available long after the improvements in living conditions and sewage treatment took place and the impact of the vaccines on disease reduction is clearly quantifiable.  He denied his earlier incredibly outrageous and racist statement that because all Black children are on ADHD medications they should be “reparented” and placed in special farms even when presented with transcripts of his despicable statements.  And to cap the week, the acting head of the CDC Jay Bhattacharya took the unprecedented step of cancelling the release of a CDC study that documented the efficacy of the COVID vaccine using the now familiar RFK era excuse that the study didn’t follow the “right” protocol. Right in this case meaning that it didn’t provide the answer that the anti-vaccine, anti-mRNA crowd wanted to see.