Presidents Day 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧤⛸️ 

 🧤,⛸️and DNA:  The quad god ⛸️is human, Susan Guthrie is still missing, and the Orange One keeps broadcasting his plans to steal the midterms and any that follow. Hopefully, Ilia Malinin will find his footing because while mortal, he is an awesome skater and, while the Susan Guthrie situation remains sad, maybe (well maybe) those gloves 🧤 will reveal some useful DNA. We can’t do anything about the skaters or the gloves, but we can and should pushback hard against Trump and his very devious election plans which include pressuring Republicans in the Senate to dispense with the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act already passed by their House colleagues and, if that doesn’t work, his plans to issue an executive order mandating voter ID and other voter suppressions. On the face of it, ID requirements, like naming election security legislation The SAVE Act doesn’t sound ominous but don’t be fooled, the whole point of the legislation is to controls who gets to vote. Most notably, the Act limits what type of ID can be used, requiring passports or birth certificates, rather than student IDS, driver’s licenses, or cards like the ones New Yorker’s are sent before each election.  Only 48% of Americans have a passport, the fee for getting one for the first time is $165, and assuming you have a copy of your birth certificate, it would only count as an acceptable ID if it’s in your birth name, an impediment for married women who’ve changed theirs. While supporters of the SAVE Act argue that IDs are necessary to keep non-citizens from voting, the reality is that non-citizens don’t vote and no one can cite legitimate statistics that they do.  Study after study by conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute have found few non-citizen voters because “People largely aren’t willing to risk their status in the United States for the ability to cast one more vote out of hundreds of thousands or millions in a state and hundreds of millions in the country.”  The SAVE Act would however impose a hefty poll tax on those who can least afford it, making voting expensive and inaccessible to those segments of the population who traditionally tilt independent or blue. It’s no coincidence that Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski who relies on a coalition of voters that includes her state’s indigenous population is against the Save Act while Maine’s Susan Collins whose voters are composed of more traditional whiter and older Republican voters came out in support of it this weekend.  As to Trump, he says that he will impose the SAVE Act requirements, and other voting impediments like banning or severely limiting vote by mail and the counting of postmarked votes that arrive after election day, by edict.  That’s probably not Constitutional but then again, the current Supreme Court doesn’t seem to mind that lots of what he does isn’t. Trump is pushing hard for these election changes because of how poorly he and Republicans are doing in the polls across a wide range of issues and voter groups. Polls indicating how fed up the majority of Americans are over how the INS and Border Patrol behaved in Minnesota, rather than the “successfully completion of the mission,” are why most immigration agents have been pulled from the state.  Likewise, polls are probably the reason that Republicans for the first time won’t field a candidate for Senator in the upcoming New Mexico Senate race. As to ICE Barbie Kristi Noem, the DHS Secretary who according to the WSJ fired her pilot for failing to transfer her blanket from her expensive love nest government jet to another one, her statement that “when it comes to election day, we’ve been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country” should be taken very seriously because though she’s saying the quiet part out loud to impress Trump and keep her job that doesn’t make it any less frightening especially since the INS and Border Control militias are under her control. Democrats have a lot on their plate, they’re being wildly out paced by Republicans on the fundraising front, and as usual they’re having a hard time acting in lock step when it comes to messaging because that’s who they are but if they can get it together and pushback against Trump’s threats to the election the midterms should be theirs to lose, well hopefully. On that note, Virginia has gotten the go ahead to vote on a redistricting plan that could result in giving Democrats another leg up in the House race because it increasingly looks like the gerrymandering war that was started by Republicans in Texas is backfiring on them.   

Epstein, Epstein 😱:  During last week’s House hearing AG Pam Bondi who never met with any of the Epstein victims couldn’t even find it within herself to acknowledge their presence at the hearing.  That says about all you need to know about how she’s been handling the release of the Epstein files. Every time we learn something horrible about someone in Trump’s orbit, we learn more about someone who isn’t or whose appearance in the files is incidental and has nothing to do with Epstein’s crimes. The bottom line remains that lots of people did really horrifying things or turned their eyes away from people who they knew were doing those things for business reasons or just to remain part of Epstein’s elite crowd, a crowd that included Steve Bannon. One item that continues to rear its head relates to an accusation from an underage girl about being raped by Trump.  It’s not proven but then again it doesn’t seem to have been investigated but one thing is clear, Bondi and her team redacted as many references to Trump as they could. Another group of files reveal mundane by comparison things such as how Epstein who lured lots of his prey by promising modeling gigs also promised acceptances into institutions of higher education, making generous contributions to get at least one of his girlfriends, Belarusian Karyna Shuliak, into Columbia University’s School of Dentistry.  Shuliak, who had overstayed her visa later secured citizenship by entering into a short-term sham marriage with another one of Epstein’s girlfriends, a woman named Jennifer, after receiving advice from Epstein’s lawyers that the marriage would solve her immigration woes.  The woman may be the same Jennifer that Epstein set up with Elon Musk’s brother Kimball.  The Columbia University officials involved with accepting Epstein’s girls has been removed and Kimball has now resigned from the Burning Man Project Board over these disclosures. Does make you wonder how another famous woman got her Einstein visa?    

 

Casey Jones Toilet Edition🎈😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿🎈

Attack🎈🎈:  The good news is that El Paso’s airport and airspace reopened after “only” four hours rather than the ten days that had been announced early Wednesday morning. The absurd news is that reason for the closure was that without alerting the FAA, members of the Border Patrol used an untested high-tech military laser in the active civilian airspace around El Paso to down a few party balloons that they mistakenly took for Mexican drug cartel drones.  The FAA thought an attack from Mexico was in process and reacted by closing the airport. The newfangled laser which had been gifted to ICE Barbie Noem’s Border Patrol forces by Secretary of War and Beer Pete Hegseth was used by Noem’s yutzes who thought they had detected an incoming attack from Mexico. Adding to the incompetent insanity, for a while the White House stuck with the deceptive drug cartel story with Attorney General Pam Bondi citing the extraordinary success of the mission during her opening remarks to the House Homeland Security committee in what turned out to be an insanely contentious hearing in which she answered few questions, but did attack anyone who asked her anything of substance, especially anything about the Epstein files.  She called Vermont Congresswoman Becca Balint, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, an anti-Semite and repeatedly shifted blame for her efforts to redact Trump’s one million (!) mentions in the Epstein file to Merrick Garland, Biden, and Obama.  During her testimony Bondi repeatedly checked the notes in her ridiculously thick binder. Through the lens of a particularly sharp photographer, it was revealed that the binder included data about which of the “unredacted” Epstein files members of the committee had accessed when they had been allowed to visit the super secure SCIF where the files are being held.  And really, who is surprised that Trump’s goons are spying on the RINOS and Democrats looking through the files?  Even Speaker Johnson who forgives Trump for everything thought that wasn’t a good idea. As to Epstein, the files reveal that Center for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Dr. Oz was another one cozying up to Epstein. In 2016, well after Epstein had served time in a Florida jail, Oz and his wife Lisa invited the convicted pedophile to their Valentine’s Day Party. In case you are counting, Oz is the ninth member of Trump’s immediate circle whose name appears in the files.  In addition to Trump the others are wife Melania, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Navy Secretary John Phelan, US Rep for Global Partnerships and Model Agency executive who brought Melania to the US Paoli Zampoli, RFK Jr, Federal Reserve Chairman nominee Kevin Warsh and Elon Musk. As to anti-Semitism, it’s a real problem but no one should for one moment believe that Trump sees it as anything more than a cudgel to use against his enemies especially given the number of people in his administration who keep getting caught spewing white supremacist and Jewish hate.  One of those people is Jeremy Carl who served in the Department of Interior in Trump’s first administration and who Trump has nominated to serve as the State Department’s Assistant Secretary of International Organizations.  Yesterday, Utah Senator John Curtis, the Republican who replaced Mitt Romney,  announced that after reviewing Carl’s record which included “insensitive remarks about Jewish people,” he would vote against his nomination.  Senator Curtis’ vote is expected to scuttle Carl’s nomination. How is it that Trump who keeps calling his enemies out as anti-Semitic has so many anti-Semitic associates?  Trump gets away with his hate and, so far, is mostly getting away with his Epstein association but the same can’t be said of Kathy Ruemmler, the Goldman Sachs lawyer who advised Epstein and was also the recipient of some Hermes and Fendi gifts from him announced she will depart Goldman in June.  

Making America Sick Again: Trump formally announced that since climate change isn’t a thing, regulating carbon emissions is no longer necessary.  Apparently, those genes he inherited from his brilliant MIT professor uncle provide him with more knowledge about the environment than any of the real experts and his EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin who lucky for New York never made it to the Governor’s Mansion is with him on that conclusion.  No comment from RFK who once cared about the environment because he and his advisors are too busy ensuring that we eat lots of meat and keep catching viruses.  Yesterday, we learned more about the FDA’s refusal to review Moderna’s new mRNA flu vaccine.  The decision was made by Vinay Prasad, the FDA administrator responsible for overseeing vaccines, who overruled the recommendation of the FDA’s scientists. Moderna which had received approval for its trial methodology from the FDA said that it will continue seeking approval from other countries which means that Europeans will get what is likely to be a more effectively targeted flu vaccine, one that can be designed to protect against the expected strains of the flu closer to the start of the flu season, while we won’t. It’s not just flu protection that we’ll be losing out on, this morning Moderna’s CEO announced that it will no longer invest in new Phase 3 vaccine trials for infectious diseases because “you cannot make a return on investment if you don’t have access to the US markets.”  As a result, vaccines for Epstein-Barr virus, herpes and shingles have been shelved. Epstein-Barr isn’t just the cause of mono, the “kissing disease,” it is now considered a “primary, essential, and sometimes initiating factor for developing multiple sclerosis.”  We knew that RFK’s confirmation would have dire effects, now we know it’s not just childhood diseases, the effect of his reign will be widespread and long lasting but he’s not worried, yesterday during an interview with podcaster Theo Von, he said “I’m not scared of a germ, you know. I used to snort cocaine off of toilets.”  UGH and WTF.

Other 💩:  The decision of the Grand Jury to vote against indicting the six Senators and members of Congress who spoke out about not following illegal orders was unanimous meaning that not a single one of them fell for Jeanine Pirro’s bull 💩. Unfortunately, Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin expects that Pirro, or another Trump US Attorney, will try again with a different grand jury. Since Pirro couldn’t get any experienced US Attorneys to present her case, she instead deployed a recent hire, a dance photographer who still runs an active studio because under Bondi the DOJ has gone from garage lawyers to insurance lawyers to dance photographers.  In other DOJ news, Bondi immediately fired the US attorney that the district judges in Northern New York appointed to replace one of her illegal interim attorneys leaving that spot vacant out of spite.  And at least for now Arizona’s Mark Kelly will not be demoted or see his retirement pay cut since DC District Judge Leon ruled that doing so would violate his First Amendment rights while setting a chilling precedent for all retired members of the military.   We are about to have another partial government shutdown.  This one will impact only the bloated and overfunded Department of Homeland Security, part of an effort mostly by Democrats to rein in the overreach of Ice Barbie’s militias. However, like last time, airports may be affected so check your flights.  On the tariff front, all Democrats except Maine’s retiring Jared Golden and six Republicans, including Nebraska’s Don Bacon, California’s Kevin Kiley, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, Colorado’s Jeff Hurd, Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, and Washington’s Dan Newhouse.  The Republican naysayers include some who are about to retire or come from swingy seats in states most impacted by the tariffs.  Trump is screwing around with the invitation list for this weekend’s annual Governors meeting.  At first it appeared that he was excluding all the Democratic Governors but now he says he’s “only” excluding Colorado’s Jared Polis and Maryland’s Wes Moore.  He didn’t invite Polis because he’s trying to pressure him to release convicted election breacher Tina Peters from Jail, he’s also cut crucial funding from Colorado as part of his pressure campaign.  He didn’t invite Moore, the nation’s only Black governor because he’s “foul mouthed,” also he’s Black.  Because Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt criticized Trump’s move, the orange one is now lashing out at him too, calling him just another RINO.  It’s not clear if any Democratic Governors will attend, it is clear that Trump is growing increasingly deranged and has three more years to go further down the rabbit hole. We still don’t know all the details, but it turns out that the Trump official that was being discussed by foreign players on the call that Tulsi Gabbard has been hiding was son in law Jared Kushner. Lastly, one piece of good news, most of the ICE and Homeland Security militias are leaving Minnesota.  Lots of damage has been done but at least Minneapolis residents will be able to start living their lives again except for Renee Good and Alex Pretti.   

 

 Butterflies Are Not Free 🦋 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🦋  

Morning Update:  Something very weird is happening this morning: the FAA has closed all air space over El Paso, Texas, cancelling all flights for ten days for “security reasons.” As of my writing, there is no explanation for this unprecedented except during 9.11 action. In other news, the person who was detained last night in the Guthrie case has been released and though the FBI says that they have identified other persons of interest, at this point no other information has been released.

WTF:  Now onto the destruction of democracy.  Yesterday, Jeanne Pirro, the former Fox host who is now the US Attorney for Washington DC tried to get a Washington grand jury to indict Representatives Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, the six whose Fall video reminded active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders. The good news is that the grand jury refused to indict, the horrifying news is that Pirro, clearly following Trump’s orders, even tried. In response to the indictment attempt, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy’s called for “the CEOs and university presidents and other responsible leaders who have been biding their time and waiting for” Trump “to cross the magic red line before speaking up, maybe when he starts arresting Senators is a good time to get off the f---- sidelines.” Murphy is so right, yet the likelihood of concerted pushback from any of those complicit people remains remote. Worth noting, the failed indictment attempt is on top of War Guy Pete Hegseth’s ongoing efforts to censure Senator Kelly, a retired Air Force Captain, by reducing his rank and his retirement pay.  Kelly is currently suing Hegseth, the Department of Defense, and other officials, for violating his free speech and right to due process.  A Judge is due to rule on that shortly.

A Bridge Too Far:  On Monday, Trump threatened to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, a 1.5-mile new bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.  He posted on Truth Social that he “will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.” Michigan owns a part of the new bridge but the $4.6 billion funding for it was provided by Canada.  Yesterday, it was reported that Trump’s threat to prevent the opening of the new bridge wasn’t simply more of his anti-Canada saber rattling, it was also grift.  It followed a meeting between Commerce Secretary Lutnick and billionaire Matthew Moroun, a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family operates the competing Ambassador Bridge that also connects Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.  The Moroun family has long opposed and litigated against the construction of the new bridge.  Having failed to prevent its construction, they’ve now found a last-minute way to stand in its way. Could a contribution to one of Trump’s slush funds be involved?  In other irrational infrastructure news, Trump who loves coal plans to issue an executive order today directing the Department of Defense to buy electricity from coal-fired power plants.  The order comes as his administration plans to repeal the endangerment finding, the landmark climate ruling that determined greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. What could possibly go wrong except for more asthma, pulmonary diseases, and cancer with faster climate change thrown in as a kicker. Such a great gift for the next generation, the group that is also likely to suffer from more once preventable childhood diseases, like measles which leaves some with long term respiratory complications. On the subject of preventable diseases and respiratory distress, yesterday the FDA told Moderna that it will not review the company’s request to license a new, potentially more effective mRNA flu shot, even though the FDA had previously given the green light to the project.  Notably, RFK who prefers heroin and raw milk to vaccines, has a particular animosity for mRNA technology, so what if the technology is the wave of the future. 

Bad Math:  Despite his assertions that everyone loves him and that his poll numbers, like the economy, are better than ever, they’re not, even advisor Peter Navarro knows that which is why he previewed that this week’s job numbers are going to be really awful. Over the weekend, Louisiana Democrat Chasity Verret Martinez defeated her Republican opponent by double digits in a special election for a state House seat in a district President Trump won by 13 points in 2024.  Special elections are quirky and don’t attract as many voters as general elections so it would be easy to dismiss Martinez’ victory as just one of those local things.  The problem for Republicans is that the Louisiana result is not an outlier, Democrats have been overperforming all over the country which goes far to explaining why Trump is pushing for Congress to pass the SAVE Act, a catchy name for legislation intended to make it more difficult and more expensive for people, especially those who are likely to vote for Democrats, to vote.  It also partially explains why Trump had Tulsi Gabbard snatch those 2020 Fulton County ballots, partially because Trump is still fixated on everything related to his 2020 lost to “Sleepy Joe.”  Yesterday we learned that the “evidence” used to justify the Fulton County raid was provided by Kurt Olsen, an election denier whose claims about the 2020 election were previously disproved and that despite Gabbard’s involvement there was no credible international component to the allegations.  As to math, its not just the polling that’s a problem for Trump, the House, where the Republican majority might shrink by one more again this week if rumors that another Republican Congressman is considering exiting shortly ala Marjorie Taylor Greene are true.  Even at current levels, Speaker Johnson is having trouble managing his team.  Yesterday, three Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Kevin Kiley of California and Don Bacon of Nebraska, joined all Democrats to defeat a key procedural measure that would have prevented future votes on Trump’s tariffs, the ones cost each of us $1000 last year, an amount that is expected to grow to $1300 to $1500 this year. We are still awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs.  To the extent that they haven’t already decided how they’ll rule, Trump may have further damaged his argument that his tariffs are all about national defense by telling Fox’s Larry Kudlow that he imposed tariffs on Switzerland because he didn’t like the way their leader spoke to him.

More Epstein💩:  Ghislaine Maxwell testified remotely, pleading the Fifth while promising to exonerate Trump if he provides her with clemency. Secretary Lutwick admitted to having had way more contact with Epstein, despite his earlier denials.  He acknowledged that he did visit Epstein’s Caribbean Island with his wife, children and nannies but wants us to know that he didn’t leave any of them on the island when he sailed away. Wyoming Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis said that until yesterday she thought that the Epstein stuff was a nothing burger, but after learning that one of Epstein’s victims was a nine-year-old she finally gets why people are so upset. Trump’s circle is pleased that the files reveal that he told a Palm Beach sheriff that he was glad that he was going after Epstein because everyone always knew he was up to bad things. The problem is that Trump’s call has CYA written all over it since it took place after Epstein had already been nabbed and there are thousands upon thousands of pages in the files where references to Trump appear to be redacted.  There’s so much more, not the least of which is the identification of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the Emirati businessman who was the recipient of an “I loved the torture video” email from Epstein. The sultan, who attended Trump’s first inauguration, also emailed about two of the women that Epstein had delivered to him.  As to those women, it appears that after his barely there Florida sentence ended, Epstein mostly shifted from abusing and trafficking young girls to trafficking those of legal age. In that capacity he “introduced” Elon Musk’s brother Kimball to at least one of his girlfriends. In addition, via Congressman Ro Khanna we learned that in addition to the Sultan, five other men named in the unredacted files are Victoria’s Secret founder Leslie Wexner, Nicola Caputo, Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, and Leonic Leonov.  Just the tip of a slimy iceberg because there is so much more there as well as a lot that we don’t know, yet.  And, because why not, Trump endorsed Congressman Cory Mills, a married guy who has credibly been accused of threatening and abusing his girlfriends, for reelection yesterday.

🦋 🦋 🦋 😭:  ProPublica published letters written by children incarcerated in Trump and Stephen Miller’s concentration camps.  They are sadder than sad and also evoke the poems included in the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly which were written by doomed children at Treblinka, one of the infamous Nazi Concentration camps.  The US is building more of those camps, presumably to be occupied by more children and their parents few of whom are guilty of any crimes beyond crossing the border. The immigration officials who testified before Congress yesterday refused to acknowledge any of the bad things they’ve done, like murdering Renee Good and Alix Pretti or spraying pepper spray directly into already subdued peoples’ faces.  What have we become?       

 

 

 Together We Are America 🧊 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊 🐰 🏈

🐰 🏈 🐰 🏈 Last night’s half time show was joyous, colorful, fun, and creative. The wedding was real and Lady Gaga was there, singing in English for those who needed to hear some English. Not classic rock but muy bien even for those of us whose Español isn’t. Bad Bunny took the high road, his message was about love and unity, so no one should be surprised that the orange wannabee king found his performance to be “an affront to the Greatness of America” in contrast to the racist hate message he re-Truthed in the middle of the night on Friday. Either Trump wrote his Bad Bunny slam before the show or was watching it rather than the Turning Point USA Kid Rock alternative he wanted everyone to view instead.  While a few million did watch Kid Rock, far more didn’t. With 133.5 million viewers, the Bad Bunny half time show set a new record for the most watched performance in the Super Bowl’s history. Maybe that was the Streisand effect, maybe it was because Bad Bunny is an extremely popular performer who has a worldwide appeal, or maybe it was a little of both. As to Trump’s racist Friday message, which depicted Michelle and Barack Obama as apes, it was defended by press secretary Lying Leavitt as okay because it was just a Lion King parody and who doesn’t like the Lion King and why does it matter that the real Lion King doesn’t include any apes?  Trump, who was surprised that any of his people, especially, “his” Blacks, were offended by it, never apologized but did eventually claim that one of his aides sent it which begs the question, which aide was with him in his bedroom in the middle of the night when he was busy Truthing 😩?  

Epstein, Epstein, 😩:  More details keep emerging from the Epstein files, or at least those that have been released because despite the DOJ’s insistence that all of them are out, they aren’t.  It’s clear that Epstein was a twisted sexual predator, Ghislaine Maxwell’s participation makes her just as evil and the damage that was done to all of the victims is unimaginable. It’s sickening that the names of lots of those who participated in Epstein’s worst crimes have been redacted while the names of some of the victims have not. It’s very disturbing that so many who, even though they didn’t participate in Epstein’s awful crimes, were willing to turn a blind eye to what he was doing.  However, that said there are degrees of blame and responsibility, and it’s increasingly obvious that the worst offenders remain protected, either as a result of their orange power or because of some airtight NDAS while lesser names and people on the fringes are suffering consequences. Over the weekend more information about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s ties to Epstein were revealed. Lutnick, who once volunteered that he distanced himself from Epstein early on was in business with Epstein and there’s even a memo in the files that suggests that Epstein helped him source his nanny. So far Lutnick still has his job. While they’re still trying to get a commitment for their testimony to be aired in real time, the Clintons are planning to testify.  The NY Times reports that the Clinton Global Initiative was advised by Ghislaine Maxwell and received funds from Epstein all before he was indicted, and we’ve known for some time that Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane, not to his island but to places assisted by his initiative, there doesn’t appear to be anything about Hillary in the files, but still they as opposed to Trump have been called to testify. Protective political power appears to be a US phenomenon for those in the orange one’s circle.  It doesn’t help political figures in the UK where both British Ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson and a key aide to Prime Minister Keir Starmer who had a role in Mandelson’s hiring have been forced out. It’s not working in Norway either where the Crown Princess’ suitability to be Queen is being questioned and where Mona Juul, the country’s Ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, was shown the door this weekend. There’s so much still to be uncovered but a few peculiar items that came to light this weekend are truly weird: the files contain a draft press release announcing the death of Epstein, what’s odd is that the release was dated the day before Epstein committed suicide; and late last week there was a report that a video showing a previously unshared “orange blur,” possibly another person, near Epstein’s cell right before his “suicide.” The conspiracy theories write themselves.

Other 💩: The Tulsi Gabbard story isn’t going away. The whistleblower report that she covered up instead of sharing with the intelligence committees was about an intercepted call between two foreign nationals discussing someone in Trump’s inner circle regarding Iran right before last June’s airstrikes. Gabbard shared it with Susie Wiles and then it was squelched, at least until now.  On the health care front, Trump revealed his new TrumpRX program to much fanfare last week.  It turns out that half the drugs on the TrumpRX site have a cheaper generic version on the market and most people will get better pricing for most of the drugs included in the program through insurance.  As to the growing measles problem, Dr. Oz who says that he’s supportive of measles vaccines also wants us to believe that RFK is too.  He’s not. Lastly,  the DOJ is having a hard time holding on to US Attorneys because so many don’t want to pursue Trump’s illegal objectives.  They’re seeking new hires but only want those willing to do Trump’s bidding to apply.       

 

 
Democracy Dies in Darkness 🧊 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊  

Menacing the Midterms:  It’s cold, the Super Bowl is this Sunday, and figure skating has begun at the Milan Olympics, so November’s midterms are probably not in the forefront of your mind.  They should be because they appear to be front and center in what’s left of Trump’s.  Yesterday, while addressing a group dominated by orange idol worshipers at the National Prayer breakfast, the kleptocrat in chief once again went off on a tirade about how he’d won each and every election he’d ever run in, that all those elections, even the ones he actually won, had been riddled with fraud and chock full of alien voters, and that he’d won the popular vote in 2016.  To state the obvious, he lost in 2020 and though he did win the popular vote in 2024, he did not win it in 2016 and aliens don’t vote. Trump’s solution for the election fraud problem involves the nationalization of elections, a process that would allow him to limit, even eliminate early voting except by overweight orange Floridians with cankles, while doing the same to voting by mail, or at the very least the counting of qualified mail-in ballots that arrive after election day especially in California.  Steve Bannon who should be in jail but isn’t, is loudly calling for Trump to send INS troops, those nice guys who’ve been beating up citizens and immigrants mostly in Democratic cities across the country, to “protect” polling places. By the way though around 700 of them have been removed from Minnesota, 2000 remain so don’t be fooled by CAVA bag guy Homan.  As proven over and over again by lots of audits, non-citizens rarely vote, Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger’s audit found only nine alien casted votes in his state in 2020 while a Michigan audit found only twenty in 2024, so there’s no reason to station immigration stormtroopers outside of ballot places unless of course the purpose of doing so is to influence election outcomes through voter intimidation and the rounding up of brown people and the white people who come to their defense. Trump is laying the groundwork for his election nationalization and militarization by relitigating the 2020 Georgia election.  That’s why DNI Tulsi Gabbard spent last week lurking around Fulton County. The Trump team is having trouble getting their story straight about who deployed Tulsi, depending on the hour her probe was either self-initiated, ordered by Trump or AG Pam Bondi, or maybe even by Putin, but the bottom line is that the FBI now has all of Fulton County’s 2020 ballots and related paraphernalia though Fulton officials are suing to get them all back. Although those ballots have been counted multiple times, no one should doubt that someone in Trump’s orbit, maybe the same crew who moved his boxes with the purloined top-secret documents around Mar a Lago would be willing to stuff the requisite 11,000 ballots in among the legitimate ones. Oddly enough, Tulsi has also obtained and “tested” Puerto Rico’s ballot counting machines to see if they had been manipulated by dead or arrested Venezuelan dictators. Despite being US Citizens, Puerto Ricans who reside in Puerto Rico can’t vote in presidential elections but maybe Tulsi, like Trump doesn’t know that and has forgotten the large monetary settlements that some voting machine companies have won to date? The bottom line, Trump’s polls are bad, he fears a Democratic takeover of the House, not to mention the more remote but possible loss of the Senate, so if the nationalization and militarizing of the midterms can keep him in control, he will go that route, or at least he’ll try very hard and with no staff acting as guardrails, who in his orbit will stop him? He keeps telling us his plans, yesterday he even referred to “15 states” that should be taken over, we need to listen and push back hard.  It’s not just “radical” Democrats who are concerned, the WSJ, is taking him seriously too. Today their editors wrote  “Trump’s call to nationalize elections is a mistake for the GOP, since Democrats will be only too eager to try again, on their terms, the nanosecond they regain power. Instead, Democrats should thank their lucky stars for America’s decentralized system. They say Mr. Trump is a budding authoritarian, yet the Constitution gives him little power over the 2026 midterms that could be a Republican wipeout.” Sure, the WSJ writes in Republican-ese and always manages to throw in a barb about what Democrats could do in the future, but their message is clear, leave the elections alone!  As to Tulsi, the story about the whistleblower report that implicates her in something peculiar is still percolating. More to come, well maybe.

More 💩:  Apparently having his name on the soon to be “temporarily” closed Kennedy Center isn’t enough for Trump.  CNN, Politico, Axios and now just about every other media outlet reports that Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he’ll free up the funding he froze for the crucial and already begun rail tunnel between NY and NJ in exchange for Schumer’s support for changing the name of NY’s Pennsylvania Station to Trump Station and the name of Washington Dulles International Airport to Trump airport. The only thing that’s surprising about this extortion attempt is that it didn’t happen sooner.  It’s likely that someone in Schumer’s orbit leaked this story because it had to be leaked.  The Senator’s response was that “There was nothing to trade,” Trump “stopped the funding and he can restart the funding with a snap of his fingers.” On the economic front, Trump with the increasingly elitist sniveling help of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, continues to assert that the economy is doing great but that if it isn’t it’s because of Biden.  Yesterday, citing data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Bloomberg, the media outlet, not former Mayor Mike, reported that US companies announced the largest number of job cuts for any January since the Great Recession of 2009.  They noted an 118% increase from a year earlier.  Year over year hiring intentions slid 13%, marking the weakest total for any January since Challenger started counting.  So, if you or someone you know has been having a hard time finding a job, it’s likely not you, it’s the Trump economy. Naturally, Trump keeps insisting that his tariffs, the amount of which he keeps inflating, are about to come to the rescue.  He cites new manufacturing plants to “prove” his point.  They like his Paris friend Jim are mostly exaggerated and, in many cases, not real. Lastly, Erika Kirk’s Turning Point USA is hosting an alternative Super Bowl half time show featuring Kid Rock for those whose little, tiny egos and other things as well as their bigly biases make it difficult for them to watch Bad Bunny. How sad for her and them.     

Health 💩:  Measles appears to be everywhere including in at least one of the oversized, understaffed, and crowded INS concentration camps. None of that is surprising because once the highly contagious disease starts to spread it’s very hard to stop especially when those at the top of the health pyramid spread the word that vaccinations aren’t safe.  On the subject of pyramids, RFK has jumped on the keto bandwagon, saying that because a recent study suggests that some schizophrenic people might benefit from a keto diet, that all the disease’s sufferers should consider dispensing with their meds altogether, going keto instead. Why is it that RFK wants all vaccines tested and studied repeatedly but he’s good to go with “preliminary evidence” about keto diets and schizophrenia?  What could possibly go wrong if all the people afflicted with schizophrenia stop taking their meds at once?  

Fog:  The on again, off again US-Iran “peace” talks have been moved from Turkey to Oman at Iran’s insistence.  Iran initially said that they would only discuss nukes but nothing else, which sounds awfully familiar and was cited as the biggest failing of the JCPOA nuclear agreement of 2015, but this morning’s NY Times says that they’ve agreed to also talk proxy wars and missiles which IF true would be a good thing.  Last week Trump bragged about getting Putin to agree to stop bombing Ukraine for a few days due to the horrendously cold weather.  Putin said sure, then kept bombing. Ukraine and Putin are talking in the UAE; they’ve agreed to exchange 157 prisoners from both sides but nothing else so far.

The Nancy Guthrie situation is so scary. One of the things I’ve learned from watching too much Dateline is that six days is too long.  Oy. 🙏 🙏

RIP The Washington Post         

 

A Republic if You Can Keep It 🧊 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊  

Menacing the Midterms:  Remember when the conservative party line was that despite all his squawking Trump would gracefully depart the White House after Biden’s 2020 victory but instead, he staged a violent insurrection.  Well, it increasingly looks like he’s going to try to pull a fast one with the midterms and that he won’t stop there. It’s not just his bloated Homeland militia whose recent hires not so coincidentally come from the ranks of the January 6 marauders and his recent raid of Fulton County’s election facilities that are concerning in a five-alarm fire way.  Now, Trump is saying the quiet part out loud, calling for elections to be federalized.  The Constitution says that the responsibility for managing elections falls to the states which not only protects elections from being controlled by wannabee kings but also makes it far more difficult for foreign actors to manipulate databases and results but it’s not like Trump cares much about the Constitution. Trump is also pushing for Congress to pass the SAVE Act which despite its cutesy name would disenfranchise millions of voters by requiring citizens to show documents like passports or birth certificates to vote.  According to the Brennan Center twenty-one million Americans lack ready access to those documents, half of Americans don’t even have a passport, and millions don’t have access to a paper copy of their birth certificate.  The SAVE Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately as would married women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates and frequently aren’t on their passports but the disenfranchisement of those pools of more centrist and left leaning voters are the point. As long as the filibuster remains intact, the SAVE Act would need sixty votes to pass in the Senate which is why Trump is once again pressuring Senate Leader Thune to dispense with it.  At least so far Thune, who says that he doesn’t support federalizing elections or overriding the filibuster, is holding firm, but it’s early and Trump is persistent and knows where Thune and his relatives live so there’s that because Trump’s threats are scarily effective.  Marjorie Taylor Greene said that threats to her family after she came out in support of releasing the Epstein files heavily influenced her decision to leave Congress and this week Trump has once again been attacking Kentucky’s Thomas Massie over his calls to release more of the Epstein files, targeting the widowed Massie’s new wife, calling her a “radical left flamethrower.”  Massie’s wife voted for Trump three times so she’s hardly a leftist, and Massie has supported most of Trump’s agenda, but facts aren’t the issue with Trump who slimes, threatens, and primaries anyone who strays from his camp.

Tulsi, Tulsi, Tulsi:  Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard didn’t just lurk in the background during the Fulton County ballot box escapade, she also spent time on the phone updating Trump on its progress and has been meeting with him regularly. It turns out that though her responsibilities as DNI are not supposed to extend to domestic election oversight, she has been detailed by Trump to “prove” that the 2020 election was stolen which partially explains why she’s been absent from the decision-making surrounding Trump’s international adventures. The other reason for her absence is that she hasn’t been supportive of Trump’s international projects or his efforts at regime change. It’s not just her involvement in proving the unprovable 2020 conspiracy that’s of concern.  Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a whistle blower report about her has been hidden from view for eight months. The purported reason for keeping the report away from the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intel committees is that it involves something so top secret that even they shouldn’t be allowed to see it.  That’s hogwash but the decision about releasing the report falls to the DNI and since Tulsi is the DNI, she’s in control or at least was until the WSJ article appeared. It’s likely that the source for the WSJ scoop was someone in the whistleblower orbit who had grown frustrated by the report being squelched.  In any case, yesterday the report, which Tulsi’s camp insists is a nothing burger, was finally released to senior intel committee members. Its allegations are still a secret at least for now.  Maybe they detail Tulsi’s long rumored “relationship” with Putin, maybe they provide more information about the cult that she and her husband are members of (yes, they really are members of a Hawaii based cult). Maybe we’ll find out, maybe we won’t but whatever happens Trump plans to keep having Tulsi investigate the 2020 election which means she’ll be absconding with election files in other locations in swing states. Notably her Fulton County efforts weren’t abetted by a Georgia US Attorney because the relevant attorney resigned or was pushed out rather than be involved instead it was abetted by a Missouri US Attorney, one who hasn’t been confirmed but who is a known election conspiracist.  What could possibly go wrong?

Sort of Open:  Yesterday, Trump signed the government funding bill after it passed through the House by a vote of 217 to 214. It wasn’t easy since twenty-one Republicans and 193 Democrats voted against the bill but with some calls (threats?) from Trump, Speaker Johnson was able to cobble together the votes needed to reopen the government.  The bill only funds the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks so trouble lies ahead since Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on what changes, if any, should be made to DHS funding and what types of limitations, if any, should be placed on ICE Barbie’s immigration army. To that end Noem announced that her masked “soldiers” will start wearing body cameras but that’s unlikely to be enough of a concession for Democrats.  Yesterday a number of Noem’s victims testified in front of a joint group from the House and Senate, a joint group of Democrats since no Republican legislators bothered to attend.  Their stories were harrowing. Three US citizens who were manhandled, incarcerated, and in the case of two of them shot before being released without charges detailed their experiences. One, teaching assistant Marimar Martinez, was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent who then bragged about how his five bullets resulted in seven “holes” in her body;  another was Aliyah Rahman, an autistic woman with a brain injury, who was trying to make it through immigration impeded traffic while on her way to a therapy appointment when she was dragged from her car;  the third was Martin Daniel Rascon who was shot while in his car. The only thing that distinguished the three from Alex Pretti and Renee Good is that they survived.  Again, none of them were criminals, they were all citizens, they could have been any one of us. Today’s WSJ has an article about Stephen Miller and how many of the bad things happening right now, most notably the aggressive immigration raids, the responses to the shootings, and even the blowing up of boats, are his ideas. It’s possible that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is the source of some of the material for the article, an effort on her part to deliver a message to Trump about what Miller’s actions are doing to his polls while also shifting the blame for all the bad things to Miller. Miller is clearly a very, very bad dude, but the buck stops with Trump.                

Peeps:  Hillary and Bill Clinton have agreed to testify before Oversight Chair James Comer’s committee about their involvement with Epstein.  Getting them to agree to come in is a victory of sorts for Comer however, Trump, who appears far more often in the Epstein files, seems to understand that their appearance means that if or when elections go their way Democrats will call him in to testify.  That likely explains why his reaction to learning about their scheduled appearance was to say "I think it's a shame, to be honest. I always liked him. Her, she's a very capable woman. She was better at debating than some of the other people, I will tell you that. She was smarter. Smart woman."  In other people news, Ed Martin who when he couldn’t get confirmed as the US Attorney for Washington DC was put in charge of Trump’s DOJ weaponization crew, is expected to leave the government over the next few weeks.  Is anyone surprised to learn that little Nazi wannabee Greg Bovino was caught on tape making anti-Semitic comments about an Orthodox Jewish US Attorney? As to US Attorneys, at last count fourteen have walked out of the Minnesota office because commands to investigate Renee Good’s wife rather than Noem’s thugs was a step too far for them.  Lastly, it appears that CBS is in a quandary about what to do with Peter Attia the so-called longevity expert/podcaster who is one of new news guru Bari Weiss’s recent hires.  Attia is all over the Epstein files.  He says he regrets the really awful things he said but alleges he didn’t do anything illegal because while abandoning his wife and premature newborn for a meeting with Epstein was bad form it wasn’t against the law. Weiss wants to keep him because “she hates cancel culture,” her bosses want him out. A scheduled 60 Minute episode featuring him has been pulled.     

           

 

Against Smoke and Rubber Bullets 🧊 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊  

Weekend Election:  This weekend wasn’t just about the Grammys, Melania’s grifty movie, and the Epstein files, more significantly it also involved two special elections in Texas.  On Saturday, Democrats picked up a House seat while also winning a Texas state Senate seat. That a Democrat won the House election in a race that had been delayed by Texas Governor Abbott isn’t surprising since it involved a runoff between two Democrats for the seat previously held by Democrat Sylvestor Turner who died last March. What’s significant is that as a result of the election, the Republican’s already very slim majority in the House will shrink to 218 to 214 with four vacancies.  That means that at least for now, Speaker Johnson who says that he will swear in winner Christian Menefee this week, can afford to lose only one vote on anything, including the funding package up for a vote this week which needs to pass so that the parts of the government that closed over the weekend can be reopened.  It also means that the already difficult to negotiate and then pass Homeland Security package that was severed from the rest of the funding package by the Senate in response to Democratic uproar over the Minnesota murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti will be that much harder to pass.  The other special election in Texas has Republicans freaked out because the winner was a Democrat who won by a margin of 14 points in a district that Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.  Democrats have overperformed in most of the special elections held since Trump took office, but this outcome was unexpected and the Democratic overperformance was huge. Though Trump claimed over the weekend that he didn’t know much about the race, he did, he had endorsed the Republican candidate and had tweeted about the importance of the race. If this race’s outcome, where Republicans spent ten times as much as Democrats, is a harbinger of things to come in the midterms it could mean that the blue wave really happens; that the Republican’s Texas congressional redistricting will backfire; and that maybe, just maybe Democrats stand a chance of finally winning a Texas Senate seat, the one currently held by John Cornyn, not that either side yet knows who their candiate for that seat will be.  Cornyn is facing an uphill battle against several candidates including MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton. On the Democratic side moderate State Representative James Talarico is competing against firebrand Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. Republicans, most notably Trump, fear that what happened in Texas could happen elsewhere which goes far to explaining why Trump and Ice Barbie are sending intimidating immigration goons to swingy places like Ohio where former Democratic Senate Senator Sherrod Brown stands a chance of beating his Republican opponent JD Vance replacement Jon Husted; why Trump is threatening to invoke the insurrection act; and why Republicans are once again trying to pass vote squelching legislation in the House and Senate. In other Senate race news, over the weekend, Trump endorsed his one time critic, former New Hampshire Governor Sununu, who is running for the seat being vacated by Jeanne Shaheen who isn’t running for reelection and Democrats in Michigan are in the middle of a food fight over who gets to run for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters.  Both those seats matter bigly because the Democrats “pie in the sky” chance of of winning back the Senate doesn’t just rely on picking off states like Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and even Texas, it also relies on holding on to New Hampshire, Michigan, and Georgia.

Epstein, Epstein, More:  So as you likely heard, a whole bunch of Epstein files were released on Friday. According to the highly unbelievable Deputy US Attorney Todd Blanche the dump represents all the remaining files though it probably doesn’t.  It’s unlikely that anyone will be prosecuted as a result of the dump but what was released and the shambolic way they were released is very telling. A whole bunch of people on all sides of the aisle, mostly rich men but also a current female Goldman Sachs lawyer who appears to have walked away with a gift of a Hermes bag for her Epstein affinity, continued to interact with Epstein even after his disgusting treatment of young girls had entered the public domain. That group includes Trump, who is mentioned a lot, including by a girl who claimed he’d raped her. The emails also include evidence that despite his claim that he was disgusted by Epstein, Commerce Secretary Lutnick communicated with him about visiting his island as did Elon Musk who appears to have been seeking an invite to a “wild party.” The list goes on and on because apparently lots of icky rich people thought that Eptstein wasn’t all that bad even though they knew he evil.  On the shambolic side, despite the requirement that victim’s names be redacted the accidental or maybe intentionally sloppy DOJ release included names and pictures of victims who hadn’t previously been indentified, even including a copy of one victim’s drivers license, and somehow or other a spreadsheet including references to Trump was posted than deleted and then reposted, maybe in its entirety, maybe not. Trump, is now threatening to sue the Epstein estate and journalist Michael Wolff, asserting that the files prove he did nothing wrong. They don’t prove he’s innocent though sadly there’s probably not enough in them for an indictment or to turn off much of his MAGA base because as he once said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.  As to lawsuits, that’s what Trump does or threatens to do about everything.  Last week he announced plans to sue the IRS for $10 billion over the leak of his tax info that took place during his first term.  To state the obvious, sitting presidents, or even former ones don’t typically sue the government especially over tax information that normal presidents release willingly.  Apparently, the $500 million that the WSJ reported he and his son’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture received from a UAE investment firm headed up by the UAE’s “Spy Sheik” that was not so coincidentally followed by the approval of the purchase by the UAE of advanced AI chips that prior administrations held up over concerns that the chips would fall into the hands of China wasn’t enough enrichment for him.  After all, the Trump kids have to eat, Melania’s stilettos are very expensive, and there’s Barrons tuition, assuming he’s still in college.  By the way, don’t be impressed by the reports that wife Melania’s movie brought in revenue this weekend. It did, but far more was spent marketing it and unlike most documentaries, it’s playing in theaters all over the world so of course some tickets were sold though not at my local theater.😊

Streets of Minneapolis: If you haven’t heard it yet, check out Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis protest song.  It’s on point which is why Trump spent part of his weekend rage posting about it and attacking Bruce (who attacks Bruce???).  As to Minneapolis, via Pro Publica we now know the names of the two immigration officials who shot Alex Pretti.  They both have years of experience rounding up “violent” criminals not protesters which is just one of the reasons they were totally unsuited to be dealing with protestors and rounding up non violent immigrants and their children on the streets of Minneapolis.  The good news is that the cute little five year old boy and his father who’d been seized and taken to an ICE “facility” in Texas were released and flown back to Minneapolis this weekend after a judge issued a scathing decision mandating their release. Among other things the judge suggeted that the INS squad read up on US history and familize themselfves with the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The bad news is that there are many other children, many citizens, being held in similar or worse ICE facilities.  As to the Constitution, Pam Bondi should read her copy too because arresting former CNN host Don Lemon for reporting on and accompanying some protestors into a church where the preacher was also an INS official doesn’t seem kosher. While it’s true that going into a  church during services is a violation of a law more commonly used to protect patients going into abortion clinics, this DOJ has waved charges against people violating that law when it comes to abortion clinics because of course they have.  Moreover, a number of US attorneys refused to seek charges against Lemon because they knew better.  Lemon is now out on his own recognizance and the case against him will probably go nowhere but it is very chilling and another harbinger of things to come because we still have three more years.  Trump announced last night that starting this summer he’s closing the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years to “renovate” it.  Apparently, destroying the Rose Garden and East Wing while trampling on our rights while destroying health care, urging on measles and polio, trashing the environment, etcetera, etcetera isn’t enough for him.

On a positive note, it’s supposed to make it to 32 degrees in NYC today. 😊