The Supremes 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🚀🚢

Monday, Monday:  It was a mixed week of decisions for Trump and the rest of us.  On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear Trump’s appeal of the first EJ Caroll case.  As a result, the verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming her stands and she gets the $5 million she was awarded.  Trump who still claims he didn’t know “that woman” uttered something about appealing but this isn’t a Hebrew National commercial so there’s no one left to appeal to. Since the $5 million award was previously deposited into an account held by a District court, E Jean will receive it as soon as SCOTUS’s clerk’s office files the paperwork. Trump is still appealing the second separate $83.3 million defamation verdict.  By a vote of 5 to 4 with Justices Roberts and Coney Barrett joining liberal justices Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kagan, the Court handed Trump and the Republican Party a loss in their efforts to curtail mail-in voting by ruling that election officials in Mississippi and by extension in the eighteen other states and territories with similar election laws can count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day but not received by a specified grace period; in the case of Mississippi that grace period is five days. That doesn’t mean that Trump won’t try to find other ways to attack mail-in voting, he’s already ordered the Postmaster General to not deliver mail ballots in states that refuse to provide sensitive voter data to the federal government, and if all else fails he’s got that ICE militia at his beck and call.  A federal judge has blocked the order to the Postmaster from moving forward and judges in eleven states have ruled that the DOJ can’t force states to turn over their voter lists but Trump who has given up on winning elections with popular policies remains all-in on limiting access to those voters unlikely to vote for him and his party.  On the who can or cannot be fired by Trump edict front, the Court split the baby.  By a vote of 5 to 4, this time with Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh joining the three liberal judges, the Court held that Federal Reserve Governors can only be fired for cause.  The case in question involves Lisa Cook, one of the Black women that Trump’s Housing official/interim DNI Bill Pulte has accused of mortgage fraud. The Court’s decision means that Cook can’t be fired while she’s challenging the trumped-up case against and can’t be fired at all if the case is resolved in her favor.  Unfortunately, that limitation on Trump’s firing power only pertains to the Federal Reserve.  In another case involving Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter, by a vote of 6 to 3 with all six Conservative Justices lining up against the three liberals, the Court ruled that Trump can fire her and anyone else he wants, no cause needed.  That decision overturns the 91-year precedent established in the Humphrey’s Executor v the US case, giving Trump and presumably any presidents that follow, regardless of their party, “sweeping new authority over two dozen multi-member agencies that Congress intended to be independent.”  While it’s good for the financial markets and the economy that Trump can’t fire Federal Reserve Governors willy nilly, there’s little logic behind the different rulings.  Then again, this SCOTUS isn’t much for logic and precedent but is mostly all in on letting Trump do whatever he wants except when it hurts their personal portfolios.        

Ruby Tuesday:  Yesterday, on the last day of this term, SCOTUS finally released the much-awaited birthright citizen ruling.  By a vote that was kind of 6 to 3 but also kind of 5 to 4, the Justices struck down Trump’s day one executive order ending birthright citizenship. Five Justices, including Roberts, Barrett and the three liberals, ruled that Trump’s executive order violated the 14^th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.  The sixth Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, said that the executive order didn’t violate the Constitution but did violate Federal law.  Few expected that the decision would be so close and no one expected Kavanaugh to base his decision on Federal law rather than the Constitution. Naturally, the nativist crowd dissed “traitors Roberts and Barrett, instead hanging their future hopes on Kavanaugh’s twisted easter egg.  They’re now calling for Congress to pass some birthright citizen curbing legislation. The Federalist digital company co-founder Sean Davis, a prominent Trump supporter, actually proposed yesterday that the US "require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry." Presumably, he doesn’t mean any of those White South Africans that Trump has enthusiastically invited into the country.  While Trump lost on birthright citizenship, he did notch a victory on the campaign finance front.  By a vote of 6 to 3 with all the Conservatives hanging together, SCOTUS struck down long term federal limits on how much money political party committees can spend in direct coordination with candidates.  The decision means that parties won’t have to rely on all those mysterious PACS since they can now pay for campaign advertising, consulting, and travel for their nominees. The effect will be immediately felt for the midterms and since the RNC has boatloads of money on hand, far more than the DNC which actually is running a deficit as Democratic donors tend to contribute directly to their preferred candidate, the expectation is that the decision will benefit Republicans. Regardless of who gets the upper hand it’s also likely that there will be more corruption and expectations of quid pro quos as well as far more of those really annoying political ads.  In the last high-profile decision, by the usual partisan split of 6 to 3, the Court upheld Mississippi and Idaho laws barring the participation of transgender female athletes on girls’ and women’s sports teams. Twenty-five other states have similar restrictions on their books.  The decisions that essentially say that only “biological girls” should be allowed on girls’ teams were expected.  It’s fair to assume that no one in the majority has read Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex (great book) and/or gets that biology isn’t always straight forward.  It’s hard not to believe that some soccer moms (and dads) won’t insist that some of their daughter’s opponents be tested for being better athletes or for just being less feminine looking.

More 💩:  NJ Republican Congressman Tom Kean Jr returned to Congress after being mysteriously MIA for four months. He disclosed that he was hospitalized for severe depression, something that he didn’t want to share until now. While it’s sad that he was in so much emotional pain, it’s also sad that he was too embarrassed to share his diagnosis with his constituents who he rarely met with even before his hospitalization. Kean is facing reelection in a very competitive district.  Curiously, while severely depressed and hospitalized he managed to execute portfolio trades during his hospitalization (stock therapy?).  Trump who shares an affinity for stock trading and who measures happiness in dollars may not be well, but he doesn’t appear to be depressed perhaps because he is a whole lot richer.  His net worth has grown from approximately $2.3 billion to more than $6.5 billion since the beginning of his current term.  That may or may not include the going rate for pardons, estimated at $1.5 million a pop. Trump is expected to hand out 250 million more of them on July 4.  On the primary front, Melat Kiros another young anti-Israel and also likely more than a bit anti-Semitic Democratic Socialist, the latter indicated by her failure to condemn a fatal bombing of a group marching in support of Israeli hostages, won a primary over long-term 68- ear-old Democratic Representative Diana DeGette in Colorado yesterday. Also, Senator Michael Bennet who had until recently been seen as the front runner lost his bid for the Democratic Governor nomination to Colorado Attorney General Paul Weiser.  Bennett will remain in the Senate, alongside Colorado’s John Hickenlooper who easily won his primary for reelection and is expected to win the general election.   

 

 

Unfortunate Events 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🚀🚢

Drip, Drip, Drone:  The Iran peace deal is percolating, along the lines of an erratic coffee maker with one remaining broken K-cup. In other words, having a good cup of coffee by breakfast time, like smooth transit through the Strait of Hormuz and an absence of hostilities in the region is unlikely to happen soon, if ever.  Over the weekend, Iran shot projectiles at a few of the ships bold enough to move through the Strait, something about the Mullahs and the IRGC being pissed that those ships were using a route in Oman’s territorial waters rather than one under their control.  The US responded by striking Iran and then Iran responded by shooting a few missiles and drones at Kuwait and Bahrain.  Last night the administration said that what Trump had referred to as “unfortunate” attacks by Iran were over, since the two sides have once again agreed to “stand down,” by temporarily halting hostilities to move back to hammering out the terms of a peace deal, one based on the vague Memorandum of Understanding.  Iran responded by saying not so fast we didn’t agree to do that.  The US insisted that Iran was prepared to keep a scheduled meeting on logistics, Iran again said, not so fast, we’re not attending that meeting. The NY Times reports that officials in Tehran believe that despite their struggling economy and the damage to their infrastructure they have the upper hand for now.  Their assessment is that Trump doesn’t want to resume all out war with the midterms on the horizon, so they see no reason to make concessions or to give up control of their nukes especially since they also believe that once the midterms are in the rearview window, Trump is likely to ramp up hostilities. There will be little time to brew a strong cup of coffee on the Lebanon-Israel border either because while Israel and Lebanon have signed a US brokered framework agreement to end their hostilities, Lebanon doesn’t have much, if any, influence over Hezbollah, the source of those hostilities, who almost immediately declared the agreement “null and void.”  If only someone had told the East Wing, Arch d’ Trump, pond scum obsessed Trump just how complicated the Middle East was and will always be earlier 🤯.   As to that huge pond, the one with the blooming green algae problem, the paint manufacturer says that some peeling was always expected.  Also, it turns out that Trump’s geniuses removed the large filter boxes that were supposed to help keep the algae under control because they were ugly 🤦‍♀️and the orange guy didn’t want ugly things around during all his planned 250-year anniversary celebrations, like the one that took place this weekend that few people attended.        

Pride Celebration?  Last week while the rest of us were going about our lives, someone decided to seriously disrupt former Mayor, Transportation Secretary, and maybe future presidential contender Pete Buttigieg’s.  That disruption involved reporting to authorities that he had confessed to some random person that he had done horrible, twisted things to his now four-year-old adopted twins.  As a result of the anonymous report, Michigan State Police and Child Protective Services showed up at his home and removed his twins from his custody for 24 hours while they investigated what they quickly determined and then publicly acknowledged was most definitely a false and malicious report. It’s probably not a coincidence that the heinous accusation took place during pride month. Moreover, despite the conclusion that was reached by authorities that the accusations against Buttigieg were false and that he had been the victim of a twisted form of swatting, they hurt.  Buttigieg is an effective messenger who has been out on the campaign trail helping candidates around the country, he had to cancel a scheduled appearance in Arizona to deal with this slime. The accusations against him are an indication of how much someone, or some group of people, fear him but that doesn’t make them less damaging, a quick look at the crude, bigoted comments posted on Twitter and other social media sites shows how even false accusations can haunt.      

More 💩:  So, is anyone surprised to learn that Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr and a few, if not all, of Commerce Secretary/Peace Guru Howard Witkoff’s sons are now significantly, as in multiple millions of dollars richer as a result of their proximity to power?  Their climb up the billionaire ladder is the result of some lucrative mineral contracts that businesses they are involved with have obtained and how those businesses have received more than one billion dollars of preferential loans from the US government.  The NY Times includes details of one of those deals, with a Kazakh entity. Apparently, Hunter’s real problem wasn’t that he benefited from his father’s name while his father was out of office but that he didn’t go big enough and didn’t go all in while his dad was president.  While they’ve been getting richer, Dad Trump is doing his best to make sure that the midterm elections and any subsequent ones are called into question. His interim Director of National Intelligence Pulte, whose remit is supposed to be the temporary oversight of the intelligence integration function while Trump’s new appointee Jay Clayton goes through his confirmation process, has hired Christina Norton, the former Director of the Republican National Committee and election denier who worked on election-related issues as his chief of staff. Norton’s hire is an indication that Pulte knows that Trump has no plans to get Clayton confirmed anytime soon.  She, like Pulte knows little if anything about intelligence, but that’s the point, her role is to “find” problems with the upcoming elections in order to disrupt them while casting doubt on their integrity.  We are cruising to disaster, in five alarm territory 🔥with few, if any, hoses. Our best hope at this point may be that Trump will prove as incompetent with his election disruption as he has been with his pool.

 

 

Strait Poker 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🚀🚢

Elusive Peace:  According to Trump the Iran deal is moving ahead swimmingly.  Unfortunately, that’s only true in his mind.  Yesterday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard attacked a Singapore flagged ship transiting through the Strait of Hormuz.  As a result, a number of countries have once again halted the movement of their ships through the Strait and the UN's International Maritime Organization has paused its Strait evacuation plan. Secretary of State Rubio keeps whistling into the wind that Iran has no right to charge any Strait transit fees or to dictate transit routes, but Iran appears to have other plans, and those plans include military action. Strikes or no strikes, Trump is keeping with his deception strategy, last night in an effort to rally support among US farmers Trump repeated his claim that Iran has promised to purchase US grown agricultural products including corn and soybeans with the funds that he agreed to unfreeze because unlike Obama when Trump frees funds it’s okay. If the crop purchase claim was true that would be a boon for farmers who’ve suffered from Trump’s tariffs.  The problem is that Iran insists that they have not agreed to use the funds to buy any American agricultural goods.  While Tehran is willing to call Trump out when he lies, it looks like two of the Republican Senators who voted to limit his war powers have caved to his threats. Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy who is on his way out of the Senate because he lost his primary after Trump endorsed his opponent changed his vote and now no longer supports crimping Trump’s war powers.  He asserts he flipped after receiving a convincing private briefing on the Iran deal, but more likely it’s because that briefing involved threats perhaps involving decapitated horses and beds 🤷‍♀️, that Trump would make sure that no one hired him for any lucrative lobbying jobs upon his departure.  Rand Paul, one of the other Republicans who had voted with Democrats shifted his vote to present, muttering something about since the hostilities are over, boat strikes aside, he changed his vote to enhance Trump’s negotiating position. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins stuck with their war powers votes. Murkowski because she frequently walks to her own drummer,  Collins because she’s got a pass to cross Trump on an as needed basis through November’s election.   

Legal Update:  We’re still waiting for the important SCOTUS ruling on birth right citizenship which may or may not come today.  However, a few opinions have been released. Yesterday the Court issued some anti-immigrant decisions.  In one of their 6-3 ideological decisions, written by the extremely conservative Justice Alito, the Court ruled that the government can legally turn away asylum seekers who attempt to reach a port of entry as long as they haven’t physically set foot on US soil. In another ideological decision, also written by Alito, the Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to remove temporary protected status (TPS) protections for citizens of Haiti and Syria under a federal program that allows foreigners to stay in the US when the US government believes that it is not safe for them to return to their homes. The bottom line is that though neither country is much safer than they were when their citizens were granted TPS, their citizens are no longer welcome here because they’re not white South Africans.  The legal news wasn’t all bad.  Yesterday, Boston based District Court judge Indira Talwani blocked Trump’s order for the US Postal Service to impose limits on voting by mail, a real problem because Postmaster General David Steiner has said that if Trump wants him to refuse to process likely blue ballots from states that decline to hand over sensitive data, as in bogus incomplete and inaccurate citizenship files, he would be happy to do so.  Of course, the Trump administration is expected to appeal because squelching votes, alongside political gerrymandering, is a key part of their midterm and future presidential election strategy.  On the Epstein front, in response to a lawsuit by attorney and journalist Katie Phang US District Court judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the DOJ to un-redact and produce more Epstein files by July 2 or show cause why the documents must remain blacked out. 

Other 💩:  The administration is now seeking $1.4 billion to help combat Ebola because it turns out that the DOGE boys’ decision to defund those efforts was incredibly short sighted and ignorant.  In a similar vein, all the branches of the military are once again requiring new recruits to get flu shots. On the personnel front, Gregg Phillips the third ranking FEMA official in charge of disaster response has been ousted, something to do with his repeated claims that he had been teleported to Waffle Houses.  On more serious note, War/Beer Pete has ousted Chris Donahue, another four-star General, General Donahue had been the Army commander in Europe.  Apparently decapitating the military by eliminating its most competent and experienced leadership is his thing. Similarly, Bill Pulte, the housing official with no intelligence experience who is the acting Director of National Intelligence because Trump is holding up the confirmation hearing for his less controversial permanent pick Jay Clayton in an effort to get his voter squelching SAVE Act passed has started firing DNI staff as one does when the concept of coordinating intelligence among the various intelligence agencies to avoid another 9.11 is no longer prioritized. Similarly, Trump cancelled the signing of a bi-partisan passed Housing bill claiming there are parts of it he who is an expert in all things housing suddenly doesn’t like but really because he is holding it hostage to get the SAVE Act passed.  The Senate doesn’t have the votes to pass the SAVE Act but Trump doesn’t like taking no for an answer and though it’s hard to see how he could get the SAVE Act passed, he did just get two Senators to flip their war powers votes so we shouldn’t totally discount the chance that he’ll force something, something bad.   

 

 
Duck, Duck, Goose 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🚀🚢 🦆 

Deflecting Pool:  The Reflecting Pool is still green, the algae is still blooming, at least one duck 🦆 maybe even  🦆 🦆🦆  are dead, and without credible proof Trump, the lamest 🦆 of all, is blaming his $16 million plus folly on Democratic aligned antifa radicals claiming that a horde of them slashed the pool’s lining, a lie that Fox and the other right wing media outlets that are viewed by the MAGA and MAGA curious universe are amplifying. Even Trump admits that since the pool which is now being “protected” by fences, a variation on the way that the Kennedy center’s signage sans Trump’s name is still covered by tarps, needs to be drained again and is unlikely to be repaired in time for his July 4^th 250^th anniversary celebration/MAGA political rally. Things are also going swimmingly on the Iran front with Trump asserting that the Iranians have “fully and completely” agreed to allow nuclear inspections and Veep Vance saying IAEA inspectors could be back in Iran as early as this week while Tehran asserts that they have no plans to allow any of those inspectors to return to its enrichment sites. Similarly, though some ships are now transiting through the Strait of Hormuz and fuel prices are improving, traffic remains way below normal. On the domestic front, with Republicans Susan Collins, Rand Paul, Bill Cassidy, and Lisa Murkowski joining all Democrats except for Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman the Senate finally joined the House in voting for a largely symbolic war powers resolution directing Trump to end the Iran war.  Naturally, Maine Senator Susan Collin’s vote was symbolic too, part of her usual election year dance. Former Senate Leader Mitch McConnell remains MIA.  

 

Primary Results:  It pains me to report that in New York City, Mayor Mamdani’s endorsed House candidates won their Democratic primaries in districts where winning the primary is tantamount to winning the general election, all but ensuring that while Dan Goldman, possibly one of the most competent members of Congress won’t be returning to the House in January, a group of Mamdani’s socialist, anti-Semitic dog whistling favorites will be in the House’s freshman class, proof that Republicans aren’t the only ones who send crazies to Congress.  That’s alarming because should Democrats retake control, this new crowd is likely to make Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ life that much more difficult, especially if his Democratic majority is a small one and given how Republicans have won the gerrymandering war, his majority, assuming he wins one, is likely to be smaller than it would be had all the partisan redistricting not taken place. In one piece of rational news, in the more normal but very expensive NY 12 primary for the seat being vacated by the retiring Jerry Nadler, Micah Lasher won, edging out his closest competitor Alex Bores and trouncing nepo Kennedy Jack Schlossberg while also leaving George Conway, the former Republican/spouse of Kellyanne, in the dust. Of course, Trump celebrated his nemesis Conway’s poor showing. It’s not just that the outcome of most of the New York City primaries that was disappointing, it’s the process itself that leaves a lot to be desired because by their nature closed primaries in one party dominated districts, particularly those held late in June, attract so few voters and by definition exclude independents.  Shifting south, in South Carolina, where Trump endorsed both of the candidates in the Republican gubernatorial runoff, Alan Wilson rather than Pamela Evette, who he endorsed in South Carolina’s first round, won. Naturally, Trump celebrated that his candidate had won.  Don’t try to make it make sense because it doesn’t.  

 

Other 💩:  On the legal front, in Minnesota Federal District Court judge Patrick Schiltz, a George W Bush appointee, quashed subpoenas targeting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, state Attorney General Keith Ellison and other officials, saying there was “no doubt” that they were issued to harass Trump’s political opponents.  Elsewhere, the DOJ withdrew subpoenas that sought to compel reporters from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal to testify in front of a grand jury, part of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on leaks and press freedom.  Clearly, the DOJ didn’t do that because they care about press freedom but because they didn’t think that those subpoenas would get them the results they wanted.  In other legal news, we’re still waiting for some very important Supreme Court decisions to be announced. On the health care front or more accurately the no health care front, the number of reported cases of the flu at Lackland Air Force base is now up from 160 to 200 because eliminating vaccine requirements for young people living in close quarters is both stupid and irresponsible. On the vaccine front, a study on how the COVID vaccine reduced hospitalizations by 55% and trips to emergency rooms and urgent care clinics by 50% that the CDC refused to publish finally saw the light after it was published in JAMA Network Open, the monthly, peer-reviewed, open-access medical journal published by the American Medical Association (AMA).  On the stupid and disturbing front, the Education Department which Trump is working to eliminate has transferred special education management for nearly one million autistic students to RFK’s Health and Human Services. That’s a problem because RFK who has said that autistic children "will never pay taxes, hold a job, play baseball, write a poem, or go on a date" has a limited understanding of what autism is, how the definition of what constitutes autism has expanded over the years, and how valuable special education programs can be for so many of the people he has basically and quite erroneously labeled as worthless. To him autism is merely a term to be tossed around to justify eliminating vaccines. 

 

Fungus Among Us 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🚀🚢

Weekend Fungus:  First the reflecting pond, not because the green algae bloom matters much in the scheme of things, but because Trump’s incompetent, deceitful, and corrupt handling of its “fix” is so indicative of how he deals with everything else.  He hired and overpaid a Mar a Lago corrupt crony who looks like a rejected extra from a bad gangster movie to make it beautiful for his birthday party.  Until this weekend he insisted that the pond was a beautiful blue even as it became greener than ever. He’s now blaming Democrats, or in his word those radical “Dumocrats,” for dumping chemicals and peeling off his precious blue paint, even arresting a few including a former Olympian who had the temerity to pick up a piece or two of the floating blue detritus. Odds are that the arrested won’t be indicted because Washington DC juries aren’t stupid but still being arrested isn’t fun.  By the end of the weekend, Trump admitted that the pool would have to be drained again to repair the repair job, but of course that’s the fault of those radical Dumocrats and has nothing to do with his or his overpaid contractor/thug’s incompetence.  Now on to the Iran war which does matter, not just because people have been killed but because of its impact on the economy and inflation.  Trump sent Veep Vance to Switzerland to lead the talks promised in last week’s memorandum of understanding.  As Iran said that they were reclosing the Strait of Hormuz, Energy Secretary Chris Wright was appearing on Sunday talk shows insisting that it was open and that energy prices were on their way back to normal, whatever that means.  Trump also asserted that the Strait was open but then threatened Iran for closing it, adding that if they didn’t behave he’d restart the war, seize control of the Strait, and take a share of Iran’s oil profits. In response the Iranians, who made Vance wait and then refused to shake his hand, stormed out of the Swiss talks for a few hours.  We’re now supposed to believe that the talks which resumed after all that performative foot stomping were productive even though their focus appeared to be primarily on Lebanon and the battle between Israel and what Trump correctly called Iran’s “highly paid proxies” and not on the Iran’s nuclear facilities, the issue that was the impetus for the war.  If Trump lies about blue paint why should we trust him on Iran?  If Iran is still funding surrogates, why should they be rewarded with hundreds of millions of dollars of “reconstruction” funds?  Is the Strait really open to all, or is it, as the Iranians say, still blocked, or at least blocked for most? Much as Trump is blaming radical Dumocrats for his blue paint debacle, he’ll soon be holding Vance responsible for any Iran talk failures and, of course Bibi too, who both he and Vance will blame for forcing him into this situation because the contentious and irascible Bibi is an easy target, and as Hezbollah knows, so is Northern Israel.

Peeps:  Stories about former DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s membership in an extreme secretive Hindu associated cult, the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), led by a guru named Chris Butler aren’t new but via the Washington Post more details about her allegiance to the cult and how she took directions from Butler were published over the weekend.  Apparently, Butler has been dictating Gabbard’s political positions and talking points for years, going back to the days when she represented Hawaii in Congress. The impending release of the Washington Post article is being cited as the reason behind Gabbard’s ouster from the Trump administration. By the way Gabbard’s parting shot as she departed was to further slime Virus hero Fauci. It’s also not much of a secret that Trump sells his pardons so it’s not surprising that GPB Capital CEO David Gentile who had been convicted for a $1.6 billion Ponzi scheme was pardoned and had his $15.5 million restitution obligation wiped out after serving only twelve days behind bars. What is surprising is that according to the NY Times, his pardon was brokered by a Catholic Priest from Queens who has long been friends with Trump. Even more surprising is that some federal attorneys from the Eastern District of NY were so upset that they had the nerve to open an investigation into the pardon scheme.  Naturally, despite their compelling evidence, including jailhouse conversations by Gentile in which he talked about the $2.5 million he’d spent on what was then his expected pardon, main Justice put the kibosh on their efforts.

The Big 🍎:  Though there’s no chance of Democrats losing any Manhattan and Brooklyn seats in November, there are a few seats that are for grab in tomorrow’s NY primary. Mayor Mamdani has taken the unusual step of endorsing a few candidates over established incumbents.  Races to watch include NY 10 where Mamdani’s choice is former NYC Comptroller Brad Lander who is challenging incumbent Representative Dan Goldman. Basically, Mamdani owes Lander a favor for cross endorsing him in NY’s ranked choice mayoral election but didn’t offer him a role in his administration because he really doesn’t like him that much. Mamdani dislikes two-term Congressman Goldman, who’s a really good guy who served as the Democrats counsel on Trump’s first impeachment trial, for being pro-Israel. Sadly, Goldman who shouldn’t be at risk, is in real jeopardy because of Mamdani.  Mamdani has also endorsed Democratic Socialist Avila Chevalier, another anti-Israel candidate with lots of hateful social media posts including a few crude ones in which she mocked Kamala Harris. Chevalier is seeking to oust longtime Representative Adriano Espaillat who is more established in his NY 13 district and will probably be harder to unseat than Goldman. In the NY 7 race for retiring Congresswoman’s Nydia Velazquez’ seat. Mamdani has endorsed Democratic Socialist Claire Valdez over the more mainstream Antonio Reynoso who has both Velazquez’ and NY AG Letitia James’ endorsement. Probably because his endorsement wouldn’t carry much weight,  Mamdani has not endorsed anyone in what is expected to be a close race in the NY 12 upper east side/upper west side seat that’s open because of long-term Congressman Jerry Nadler’s decision not to seek reelection.  The NY 12 race is between the Bloomberg/Nadler endorsed Micah Lasher, nepo Kennedy Jack Schlossberg, anti-tech guy Alex Bores, and Trump hater/one-time Republican George Conway.  For the record, I am team Lasher, that Bloomberg endorsement carries lots of weight with me.   

Primary Hijinks:  Federal Election Commission filings now confirm Democratic suspicions that Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and Blue California PAC have been purposefully boosting candidates perceived as weaker contenders in a general election in hopes of engineering more favorable November matchups for Republicans.  They haven’t always been successful, but they have had a few wins, though we won’t know for sure until November.  One example of their success is that they quietly backed Matt Dunlap, a possibly too progressive for the general election candidate, who went on to win the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Democrat Jared Golden in Maine’s 2^nd District.  Maine 2 is a purple district where Golden’s wins were always among the closest in the country. Trump carried it in 2024.  After Golden decided not to run for reelection, Cook Political Report shifted Maine 2 from a Toss-Up to Likely Republican, Democratic leadership, as opposed to the Bernie crowd, are now even more concerned that they will lose the seat in November.    

More 💩:  Over the weekend Trump, ever the diplomat, engaged in a war of words with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni who he offended bigly with his assertion that she’d begged him multiple times to take a photo with her during last week’s G7 economic meetings. Trump responded by questioning her popularity, she hit back, saying he should focus on his own.  Oof. Trump also engaged in another faux pas, pre-announcing that the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer would be resigning today. While Trump jumped the gun, Starmer did resign this morning.  He lasted longer than “head of lettuce” Liz Truss, but not the five years he’d hoped.        

 

 

Green is the New Blue 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🚀🚢 ⛹️ 🏀

Green Algae and Iran:  The blue paint that Trump had applied to the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as part of his overbudget $15 million renovation is peeling off helped by the gallons of peroxide that his cracker jack pool team poured into the pool to kill the algae that is making the pool appear greener than ever because it turns out that in addition to killing algae, peroxide removes paint.  In a few days Trump will tell us that green is the new blue and he will move on from the pond to one of his other vanity projects, like his planned Arc d’ Trump or the East Wing/ballroom monstrosity that was supposed to cost $200 million and be funded by private donors but will now cost $600 million with $350 million coming from taxpayer money that had been earmarked for the Secret Service and the White House Military Office. Given his pool failure and all those cost overruns, why should we be surprised that the far more complicated and impactful Iran war that Trump was “forced” into by Bibi who despite his persistence never managed to achieve similar influence over Trump’s predecessors is ending or ending for now with Iran emerging on top.  Nevertheless, Trump, the master of deception, insists that having achieved none of his nuclear, regime change, and missile goals, he’s achieved everything he wanted to achieve and that he’s done so in a manner far superior to that “stupid son of a bitch” Obama and Sleepy Guy Biden.  Trump’s capitulation involves unfreezing $25 billion of Iran’s assets; Obama got skewered for releasing $2.7 billion.  Trump’s deal involves $300 billion making its way to Iran for reconstruction, Obama’s deal zip. Trump has pushed off making a deal on Iran’s uranium stockpile and hasn’t done anything about Iran’s enrichment program. Obama’s deal involved a 98% reduction in the stockpile and capped the enrichment at 3.7%. Trump’s deal has opened the Strait of Hormuz but leaves it likely that Iran with the help of Oman will control the Strait and charge tolls at some point in the not-so-distant future.  Under Obama the Strait didn’t have to be reopened because it wasn’t closed and transit remained free.  Obama’s deal did nothing about Iran’s missiles, Trump gets points for eliminating some of them, but he basically blew that accomplishment out of the water by saying that “it would be unfair for Iran not to ​have ballistic missiles if ​other countries have them.” Obama, the guy who got trashed for wearing a tan suit never said it was okay for Iran to have ballistic missiles, nor would he.

 

Fractured History:  To cap things off, Trump affixed his signature to his memorandum of understanding with Iran in Versailles, where the disastrous treaty to end World War I, the treaty which is blamed for creating the German instability that facilitated Hitler’s rise, was signed. An optically awful location but then again the NY Times’ Haberman and Swan team report that Trump frequently compares himself to Hitler, citing the writings of an “important” historian who is really a golf pro.  Keeping with that idiocy, not just the vision of Trump supergluing gold “décor” on to WH walls or throwing out valuable WH silverware or tossing candy detritus on the floor, earlier this week Yale law school graduate VP Vance defended the Iran deal by saying that all wars including WW II ended with some kind of negotiation.  Apparently he missed that following Hitler’s suicide, Germany surrendered unconditionally to Allied forces and that Japan did the same after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked. JD is also blaming Israel for everything, something he wouldn’t be doing without Trump’s blessing. Netanyahu should have looked up the acronym ETTD, as in Everything Trump Touches Dies months ago. As to the rest of the Iran negotiations that are supposed to be completed in 60 days, Vance, Trump’s designated point person/blame cushion cancelled his scheduled trip to Switzerland last night either because Israel and Hezbollah are still attacking each other or because the Iranian travel team wasn’t ready or both.  Tan suit guy Obama did however have a great day yesterday.  With all previous live presidents and their wives, except of course for Trump and Melania, he celebrated the opening of his library. Milli Vanilli wasn’t there to help him celebrate but that’s okay because Bruce Springstein and Stevie Wonder filled in.  😊 🎶

 

More 💩:  New Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh held rates steady, opting to continue fighting inflation instead of providing Trump the rate cut that he covets.  The Federal Reserve’s decision was both appropriate and funny given that Trump still hasn’t forgiven Warsh’s predecessor for doing the same.  It turns out that War/Beer Pete’s decision to eliminate the flu shot mandate for troops is playing out as expected.  A major flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas has sickened 160 troops, with one of the afflicted dying, sadly joining the other 24,000 people who have died from the flu so far during the 2025-2026 flu season. Who but everyone could have possibly anticipated that a bunch of young, unprotected people sleeping in close proximity would get sick with a contagious disease that could be avoided, or at the very least made less lethal by a simple shot.  The Air Force is now requiring that everyone at the Lackland Base get their jab, better late than never?  No comment from Beer/War Pete perhaps because he’s in the midst of launching his review of NATO participants where he’s expected to punish members for not supporting our efforts in Iran because. To state the obvious, we’re living in truly bizarre and disheartening times.  

  

 

Green Algae and Nukes 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🚀🚢

Deal or No Deal:  What’s going on at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool provides a good analogy for Trump’s Iran deal. The pool has long had a gnarly green algae problem.  All in on optics, Trump hired his swimming pool guy who was told a quick fix was needed.  The out of his depth pool guy filled in a few cracks and painted the pool’s bottom blue. Within days the algae returned in force, the pool is now greener and murkier than ever.  Trump now has his “expert” who may or may not know swimming pools, but who is clearly way out of his depth dealing with the problems of an enormous reflecting pool pouring gallon containers of hydrogen peroxide into the pool that’s not really a pool to create another temporary fix. And of course, it’s all Obama’s fault.  Like the pool, Iran has long been a problem.  Obama’s painstakingly negotiated JCPOA nuclear deal was far from perfect.  It limited Iran’s uranium enrichment for a while but kicked much of the nuclear problem down the road.  It didn’t address missiles or Iran’s funding of surrogate groups like Hezbollah, and it very controversially involved the releasing of some frozen funds.  However, the deal for all its imperfections was negotiated by genuine experts schooled in international diplomacy and nuclear science and did keep Iran from expanding its reserves of what Trump calls nuclear “dust.” Trump walked from the deal during his first administration.  Iran went back to enriching its uranium while building up its missile supply and funding its violent surrogates.  Trump went to war, saying he’d put an end to the nukes, missiles, and surrogate funding.  He inflicted lots of pain but apparently Iran has a high tolerance for pain and a Strait of Hormuz ace card.  Trump’s experts who aren’t experts have now negotiated a memorandum of understanding that few including Israel, which is supposed to walk away from Lebanon as part of the “cessation of all military operations” deal but won’t, have officially seen though maybe they have now since CNN just released what they say is the deal’s terms.  It involves Iran holding on to its uranium but promising not to build a bomb, the end of sanctions, financial relief in the form of Iran being allowed to return to the selling of its oil and other petrochemical products, the release of more funds than either Obama or Biden ever freed up, a large aid package from neighboring countries, the opening of the Strait for which Iran may or may not charge transit fees but nothing with regard to missiles and surrogates.  Reports are that Trump’s Kushner and Witkoff led negotiating team are now searching for nuclear experts to help with the nuke details that are supposed to be worked out in sixty days, as if that’s possible. Trump who is very good at convincing his base that what he says is true even when it is not, says his deal is way better than Obama’s ever was and anyway the current situation is all Obama’s fault, and Biden’s too.  The pool is greener than ever; Iran won the war.

Primary Update:  Representative Mike Collins, Trump’s preferred candidate easily won his Georgia Senate primary yesterday. Collins is an election denying MAGA who is currently being investigated by the House ethics committee for making ghost payments to an “intern” who was the girlfriend of his chief of staff.  In other words, he’s a typical Trump choice but maybe not so perfect for Georgia which of late has been voting for blue Senators.  Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff couldn’t be happier.  Trump and Governor Kemp’s preferred Governor candidate Lt Governor Burt Jones, another MAGA election denier lost to billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson who also positioned himself as a Trump supporter even though he didn’t have Trump’s endorsement.  Jackson will face off against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in what is likely to be a very expensive race since he’s still got lots of money to burn.   

More 💩:  Further feeding fears that the NY Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have obtained tapes of White House strategy sessions, the newest segment of their soon to be released book “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” previewed in the NY Times reveals that White House officials debated suspending habeas corpus in order to facilitate mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Habeas corpus is the Constitution given right that allows a person who is detained or imprisoned by the government to challenge the legality of their confinement in front of a judge. Advocated by White House strongman Stephen “Goebbels” Miller, the proposed suspension of rights, was ultimately put to rest, or put to rest for now, by Staff Secretary Will Scharf who wrote a series of confidential memos addressing its illegality.  Scharf is no liberal snowflake but apparently is one of those conservatives who still believes that the Constitution matters. The conversations detailed by Haberman and Swan also reveal that VP Vance who has been trying to soften his image in anticipation of a presidential run by appearing on programs like The View advocated for invoking the Insurrection Act to “quell” Minnesota’s anti-ICE protests. Keeping with the suppression and targeting theme California Governor Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential candidate, reported yesterday that his wife is being investigated by the Department of Justice, saying she’s being targeted for being his wife and is another victim of Trump’s vindictiveness. On the pettiness and vindictiveness front, early this morning Trump announced via Truth Social that he’s cancelled today’s Senate confirmation hearing for DNI nominee Jay Clayton, not because he’s cancelling Clayton’s nomination but because he wants to punish the Senate and House by keeping acting DNI/Housing guy Bill Pulte who no one trusts in place for a while, payback for the continuing hold up of the FISA surveillance extension, the failure to pass his SAVE voter ID/suppression bill, and also for subjecting Clayton’s replacement to the Southern District of NY US Attorney position to the blue slip convention that requires signoff from NYS’s two Democratic Senators Gillibrand and Schumer.