Rhinoceros or Elephant 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🦏🐘

Good News, Bad News:  First the good, sometime around 3 AM this morning the Senate unanimously agreed to fund the TSA and the rest of the Department of Homeland Security except for ICE and Border Patrol. The Senate proposal now goes to the House for a vote which is expected to take place today because House members want to go home for Easter, and even they have to know that jumping into and sometimes ahead of airport lines without agreeing to the Senate compromise would be a really bad look, well maybe.  The downside of the Senate deal is that since ICE still has boatloads of money from the Big Ugly Bill, it can continue to do all the nasty things it’s been doing, the upside is that there remains a chance that some of the reforms that Democrats are seeking will be included in some future funding legislation, assuming any is ever passed.  If the Senate proposal makes it past the House and is then signed by Trump, the executive order that he said he would issue for DHS to start paying TSA agents by shifting its funds around should become moot, but Trump is who he is and until now he’s opposed the Senate passing legislation without ICE funding so who knows what he’ll do. Anyone who listened to yesterday’s Cabinet meeting where he rambled on and on about his new wonderful East Wing and the need to “temporarily” close the Kennedy Center that’s now named after him because of those wonderful board members who he appointed thought he deserved the honor and anyway he can “improve” it for far less money that that wasteful criminal idiot Fed Chair Jerome Powell who won’t lower interest rates and should be indicted for imaginary crimes, yada, yada, yada, clearly knows he’s rattled and growing increasingly demented.  Maybe he knows too since he once against cited his ability to distinguish elephants 🐘 from rhinoceroses 🦏, a question on the dementia test that for some very obvious reason his doctors keep administering.  Now the bad news, not only is Trump still in charge but we are still at war and Trump whose brief war updates are mostly two minute video clips of our military blowing things up, addressed Iran, asserting we’ve won while also saying that the war will be over when he says it is, a message that provided little comfort to the oil and stock markets which both reacted accordingly. He did sort of clarify what the gift that he previously said the Iranians had given him was, saying that it was safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz for a few Pakistani flagged ships, though it’s not clear that those ships have actually been granted safe passage or whether the Iranians were just punking him.  In any case, Trump has once again pushed off his plans to start attacking Iranian infrastructure which might just be because more time is needed to get the troops who may or may not be about to attack Kharg Island into position. Oh, and Speaker Mike Johnson gave Trump the first ever “American First Award” yesterday, which he will no doubt display next to his FIFA Peace Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize he was ”gifted” by its real winner, the desperate head of Venezuela’s opposition party.  Lastly, send in the sharpies, because going forward instead of only the Treasury Secretary our currency will be signed by Trump which wouldn’t be a bad thing if someone locked him in a room and made him sign each bill. If you aren’t already a user of Apple Pay, now would be a good time to start.

State of Health:  On Wednesday, NIH head Jay Bhattacharya’s interim role as head of the CDC expired but since Trump still hasn’t nominated a new CDC head, he will continue to “supervise” the CDC while Trump dithers about who to appoint.  Health Secretary RFK wants an anti-vaxxing rubber stamper running the CDC.  The problem for Trump, who has seen polling showing that the majority of voters, including people in key swing areas, actually appreciate vaccines, is that with the midterms coming up he doesn’t want to bring more attention to RFK’s vaccine mishigas.  It’s not just the CDC spot that’s vacant, we still don’t have a Surgeon General. Casey Means, Trump’s RFK chosen nominee, is having a hard time getting the votes needed to make it out of the Health Committee on to the Senate floor. Her problem is that Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Committee Chair/Doctor Bill Cassidy are all “concerned” about her qualifications and they should be because in addition to refusing to clearly endorse vaccines, she’s more of a health influencer who pushes questionable cures than a real doctor.  The three Senators have not said that they won’t vote for her because they don’t want to enrage Trump, but they clearly are hoping that if they keep stalling her process, Trump will either push her to the curb or get her to decide that she’d rather do something else. That’s a decision that Robert Malone, a vocal critic of COVID vaccines made over the weekend.  He resigned from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) which is currently suspended as the result of a federal judge’s decision that the firing of all of its prior competent members and its watering down of vaccine recommendations wasn’t kosher.  The sign off on what strains should be included in the upcoming year’s flu and COVID vaccines is generally made in March but without an ACIP or other health leadership, there may be no one to signoff. 

More 💩: As a result of a ruling by Trump friendly Florida federal judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon, former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the secret documents that Trump hid away in various rooms at Mar a Lago at the end of his first term hasn’t been released, well mostly.  Some of it was accidentally shared by the DOJ with the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into how “unfairly” Trump was treated during the Biden administration.  Among the nuggets seeing the light is a map of Iran that was so secret that it was supposed to be seen by only six very vetted members of government. Trump showed it to a group of people on one of his campaign flights. Among the viewers was Susie Wiles who was then running his campaign. Another nugget is that Jack Smith concluded that Trump took documents that he thought he could use to enrich his financial position. And what is surprising about that?  As to enrichment, yesterday it was announced that the DOJ has agreed to pay $1.25 million to Michael Flynn who sued claiming he had been wrongfully prosecuted for lying to federal officials during Trump One even though he had admitted and plead guilty to lying. On the subject of wrongful prosecution, with the help of Housing official Bill Pulte, the DOJ appears to be ginning up more charges against NY AG Letitia James because having failed to indict her for imaginary mortgage fraud, the plan is now to get her for imaginary lying to obtain home insurance. That’s not good but even worse, Secretary of War/Beer Hegseth’s favorite Christian pastor has called for Texas Democrat/Senate candidate James Talarico to be crucified or worse because obviously a devout Christian should be punished for being critical of Trump and certainly shouldn’t be running for political office as a Democrat.  Also, Pete and his minister believe that everyone in the military and everywhere else should pray to their god and only their god. Lastly, since Democrats can screw up too, Florida Congresswoman Shelia Cherfilus-McCormick is being investigated by the House ethics committee for misusing $5 million in federal disaster relief funds.  She is probably guilty and may end up being forced out of Congress because her alleged crimes, while less headline grabbing, are along the lines of those committed by George Santos and things didn’t end well for him, at least until he got a Trump pardon something that Cherfilus-McCormick has also been trying to get. Assuming the House votes on DHS funding today, Johnson’s caucus may be down one vote as 78-year-old South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, best known for yelling “you lie” at President Obama,  is working from home after sustaining a head injury during a bathroom fall.    

No Kings Rally tomorrow!    

 

Sighs of Delusion 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀 🛩️✈️

Fog of War: Monday morning the oil and stock markets rallied after Trump said that since he was having productive conversations with someone in Iranian leadership he would hold off on the bigly attacks on Iran’s infrastructure that he had threatened over the weekend. Everyone breathed a sigh of delusion, ignoring for the moment that missiles are still flying and hitting targets and killing people across the region; that Trump and War/Beer Pete are still sending in more troops; and that Trump couldn’t identify who in Iran he was “talking” with, or maybe someone like Real Estate buddy Witkoff or son in law Jared may or may not be talking with. That Iranian person may or may not be someone in Iranian leadership who, if he is talking, is probably talking through a Pakistani intermediary, he may or may not be Speaker of Iran’s parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf who may or may not have the authority to negotiate on behalf of Iran’s injured hidden Ayatollah and/or the IRGC, the group that appears to making military decisions. Yesterday, Trump asserted that the Iranians had given him a gift, but no one knows what he is talking about. He also said that he’s presented the Iranians with fifteen demands but couldn’t name them and a few senior Iranians keep posting disparaging, mocking notes on social media. Despite the conflicting messaging, the markets, though still volatile, are still wishfully breathing signs of delusion. Adding to the fog, late yesterday, multiple media outlets reported that the US is deploying roughly 2,000 paratroopers from the elite 82nd Airborne Division's "Immediate Response Force" to the Middle East. This morning the WSJ reports that officials from Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan are pushing for talks between Iran and the US to begin on Thursday while also reporting that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel are pushing for Trump to continue fighting. Bottom line, there is no bottom line.   

Airport Mess:  The skies aren’t much clearer at the airports. For much of yesterday, Republican leadership thought they were close to finalizing a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) including the beleaguered and increasingly short-staffed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) whose agents are currently working without pay. The deal would have funded all of DHS except for ICE whose agents, including the ones mostly lolling around airports chugging coffee, are currently being paid since last year’s Big Ugly Bill funded ICE through 2029. The Republican plan called for future funding for ICE to be provided in a reconciliation bill that would also provide funding for the Iran war and those parts of the voter squelching SAVE Act that they could get past the Senate Parliamentarian. Reconciliation bills require only 51 votes for passage rather than the 60 required for other legislation so they’re easier to pass, however, by Senate rules, they are only supposed to include finance related provisions which in theory should mean that parts of what’s in the SAVE Act wouldn’t or shouldn’t pass muster with the parliamentarian who gets to decide what qualifies.  By funding ICE separately and sticking in some SAVE Act provisions, Senate Leader Thune’s plan was to sidestep the reforms about warrants and agent masking that Democrats are demanding while also satisfying Trump’s demands that the SAVE Act which he believes will improve the Republicans chances of holding on in the midterms and all subsequent elections be passed ASAP. Last night Democratic leadership rejected Thune’s plan, calling it out for what it was, a back door to avoiding ICE reforms with a SAVE kicker.  Notably, it wasn’t clear that Trump would have been satisfied with Thune’s plan. In any case, it’s back to the drawing board for Thune. Airport lines will remain long and Trump who ironically voted by mail in yesterday’s Florida special election even though he was at Mar a Lago during much of the early voting period continues to insist that vote by mail should be mostly outlawed. It turns out that Trump’s vote didn’t matter yesterday. The Republican candidate he endorsed and presumably voted for lost to Democrat Emily Gregory who flipped his hometown red district blue.  She will now represent Palm Beach County, including Mar a Lago, in the Florida State House.  By the way, those ICE agents at airports, according to Steve Bannon they’re presence is a dry run for the upcoming elections.

More 💩:  To avoid complying with the recent court ruling that put the kibosh on War/Beer Pete’s banning of mainstream media from attending Pentagon press conferences and otherwise hanging out at the Pentagon, Petty Pete has moved all of the press, including his rightwing friends like Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz, into a separate unconnected annex. Makes one wonder whether Pete is just being petty or if he really, really has something to hide.  Probably both.  The Trump administration is paying $1 billion to French company TotalEnergies to get it to walk away from two US offshore wind leases to instead focus on fossil fuel options because, really, who needs alternative energy when relying on oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz is such an attractive option and anyway Trump hates windmills even more than he hates electric cars. Though the war has distracted somewhat from all things Epstein, more Epstein news keeps seeping through anyway including reports that the $170 million that investor Leon Black paid Epstein for tax and estate planning included payoffs to several women. In legal news, NJ finally has a US Attorney and it’s not Alina Habba. The DOJ has agreed to allow Robert Frazer, an experienced career prosecutor who was appointed by the state’s district court judges to remain in place because even AG Bondi recognizes that letting criminals evade prosecution because of lack of leadership was a bad look.  It’s not clear yet, if the DOJ will let district judge appointments stand in other disputed parts of the country.  Lastly, Markwayne Mullin is now confirmed as DHS Secretary. He’s no more qualified than ICE Barbie but that’s the point.                         

       

 
Ground Hold 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀 🛩️✈️

War, War, War:  Well in turns out that despite their assertions to the contrary Iran does have long range ballistic missiles.  That became apparent this weekend after Iran launched two two-stage ballistic missiles 2500 miles at Diego Garcia, the Indian Ocean location of a joint US- UK military base. Although the attack failed, in response the UK is now allowing the US more expanded use of its bases and Europe is now on notice that it is well within Iran’s missile range.  It’s not clear how many more of those longer-range missiles Iran has in stock, however, it is clear that they still have significant lethal missile capability and that some of those missiles are making it through Israel’s defense system since over the weekend two struck the southern cities of Dimona and Arad near Israel’s main nuclear research facilities injuring somewhere between 180 to 200. It remains unclear who exactly is running things in Iran but whoever it is, clearly isn’t ready to call it quits despite Trump’s Truth Social Posts that he’s either about to declare victory and end the war, or ramp it up, bombing the smithereens out of everything bombable and quite a few things that aren’t while also preparing to attack the critically located Kharg island.  Given that he’s got 2500 more Marines enroute to the Middle East, the Kharg attack option appears to be growing more likely especially given Iran’s missile “reveal.” It certainly doesn’t help that Iran is goading Trump on, back to hanging dissidents after sham trials, including a decorated teenage wrestler. It’s particularly ironic that while Trump may be about to deploy US Marines to assault Kharg, he’s lifting sanctions on some Iranian oil to bring gas prices down, or prevent them from going up even more than they already have, while also celebrating the death of his first term “nemesis” Robert Mueller, the former head of the FBI and Special Counsel who was awarded a Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals, the Purple Heart, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry for his service in the Marines during the Viet Nam war, the war that Trump managed to skip by feigning heel spurs.  Remember how the right got all bent out of shape when some people didn’t show sufficient outrage after Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk was assassinated, weird how many of them, are okay with Trump immediately and predictably responding to Mueller’s death by posting on Truth Social “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” To be clear, assassinations are bad, but celebrating death, especially the death of a decorated war hero and government servant is too.

WTF 🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️:  As to assassination attempts, over the weekend the Washington Post reported that Russia’s foreign intelligence service had proposed staging one, an attempt on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, to boost his declining public support ahead of Hungary’s April parliamentary election. Whoa, could there be a grain of truth in the conspiracy theory that Trump wasn’t really shot in the ear in Pennsylvania during the run up to the 2024? 🤷‍♀️ Given the sanitizing daylight shone on their plans, Russia has probably shelved them but no worry for Orban, because instead Trump is sending VP Vance to Hungary to campaign on his behalf.  Autocrats have to stick together though it’s not clear that JD is much of a gift but then again Trump sent Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent out as designated Sunday news show idiot this weekend, and he’s not all that persuasive or coherent either.  Nor is the bombastic War/Beer Pete Hegseth, who may be about to learn what it’s like to have real reporters, rather than just Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz types at his Pentagon news conferences.  On Friday, DC District Court Judge Paul Friedman ruled that Hegseth’s limitations on who can enter the Pentagon and participate in his press briefings were a step too far because they violate the Constitution while restricting the ability of the real press to cover news, something that’s more important than ever during war.  Naturally, an appeal is likely.    

More💩:  In November, Bruna Ferreira, the mother of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew was detained by ICE.  Though Ferreira had overstayed her visa, she wasn’t a violent criminal but was involved in a custody dispute with Leavitt’s brother Michael. As a result of all the press attention on her detainment and shipping off to a Louisiana “facility,” Ferreira, who is still facing possible deportation, was released.  It turns out that Michael Leavitt may not have been the only one in Trump’s orbit to benefit from some ICE largesse in a custody battle.  The NY Times reports that Paolo Zampolli, the former modeling agent who represented Melania, introduced her to Trump, and who remains a longtime friend of Trump and Melania reached out to a top official at ICE, saying that his ex, the mother of his teenage son, was in the country illegally, asking that ICE agents detain her, in order to help him get his son back. His strategy worked. Though Trump is currently focused on Iran and maybe Cuba too, not too long ago, the news was all about his sights being set on Greenland.  Apparently, the Danes, our one-time great ally and fellow member of NATO, took his threats so seriously that supported by some other European allies, they were prepared to destroy key infrastructure in Greenland, targeting runways in Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq, to prevent an invasion and seizure by US forces. On the subject of runways, there’s a ground hold at least through 2 pm at NYC’s LaGuardia airport this morning, not because of those long TSA lines but because a plane collided with an emergency truck last night resulting in two pilot deaths and lots of injuries. As to TSA lines, with funding for the Department of Homeland Security still on hold, Trump is sending INS agents to help TSA agents at several big airports.  The INS guys won’t be checking ounces in liquid bottles or monitoring scanners but are supposedly being deployed to takeover other TSA responsibilities assuming they can be shown how or shown how without creating more of a ruckus than they typically do.  An easier solution would be to just fund everything at the DHS other than the INS but that would be too easy and it’s so much more fun for Trump and the Republicans to shift blame for airport lines to the Democrats, the same “radical left incompetents” Trump called enemy number one this weekend while also posting that he’d won the war against Iran. 

 

 

Believe in Yesterday 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀

Yesterday:  Trump began Thursday by blaming Israel for bombing Iran’s largest offshore gas field saying that he didn’t know about it in advance. Israel responded by saying that the gas field attack was coordinated with the US, an assertion bolstered by US military experts.  That said, Trump might not have been totally lying because targeting the gas field might have come up while he was also reviewing the plans for his East Wing construction project or the new gold coin featuring an engraved picture of his face and torso and multitasking can be so distracting. Regardless of whether or not Trump knew in advance, he’s upset now mostly because the Qataris who gifted him his plane are really upset about Iran’s retaliatory strikes on their oil infrastructure and also because the oil markets aren’t happy either.  Also yesterday, appearing in front of Congress for her semi-annual threat assessment presentation Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard who looked very much like she wished she was back in Hawaii at a yoga retreat, hedged and hawed about whether or not Iran represented an imminent threat to the US, instead saying that imminent or not, it’s not her job to make that determination even though it is, she previously said that Iran wasn’t and also had earlier asserted that its nuclear program had been wiped out during last June’s attacks, even though it probably hadn’t been.  Instead, she said that decisions of that nature fall to Trump because “ultimately, we have provided the president with the intelligence assessments, and the president is elected by the American people and makes his own decisions based on the information that’s available to him.” Under questioning from NY’s Elise Stefanik, still in Congress but not running for reelection, she kind of said that she disagreed with her now former counterterrorism director Joe Kent’s assessment that the war was all Israel’s fault.  Kent however stuck by his assertion during his post resignation interview with Tucker Carlson, where the two of them agreed that Israel had “manipulated” Trump into attacking Iran. To put that in context, the two also bonded over their shared view that it was likely that Israel was responsible for Charlie Kirk’s murder and maybe also for the guy who shot Trump in the ear during the run up to the 2024 election. Kent who is being investigated by the FBI related to some leaks that took place while he worked for Gabbard, an investigation that the government says was initiated before his resignation, is scheduled to appear with influencer/hater/conspiracist Candace Owens at the upcoming “Catholics for Catholics” gala.  The two have lots in common as Owens is all in on anti-Semitism and also believes that Charlie Kirk’s death was the result of a conspiracy that included the Mossad and maybe even Kirk’s wife Erika.  In response to the ramp up in anti-Semitism and maybe also because they aren’t happy about galas that use the church’s name to promote Owens and her chums, yesterday the US Conference of Catholic Bishops strongly condemned antisemitism, calling it a sin and a rejection of Catholic teaching. The Church urged Catholics to reject conspiracy theories and false claims that fuel violence against the Jewish community.  

More Troubles:  Also yesterday, the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee voted to advance the nomination of Senator Markwayne Mullin to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security to the Senate floor.  Mullin was advanced despite Committee Chair Rand Paul’s obvious animosity to him which appears to have originated when Mullin came out in support of the neighbor who beat Paul to a pulp back in 2017 and was more recently further ramped up when Mullin challenged him to a fist fight on the Senate floor. Mullin’s nomination was advanced despite Paul’s opposition only because Pennsylvania Democrat Fetterman, crossed party lines to vote for him. Fetterman justified his vote for Mullin on Twitter saying he advocated for Noem’s firing but believes that the Department of Homeland Security needs a Secretary.  Fetterman is odd and his vote isn’t winning him any progressive friends, but DHS does need a head and it’s not like anyone Trump nominates will be any better because Trump is who he is but it is weird that under questioning Mullin first denied ever going overseas but then admitted he had, on a secret undercover mission for the House that he refused to discuss and that no one in the House appears to know anything about. During his testimony, Mullin suggested that he would be better at adhering to the law than Noem, but he didn’t apologize for calling Alex Pretti or Renee Good, two of the people killed under the Noem regime terrorists. This morning, citing some unnamed sources one of whom was probably Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has told his inner circle that he believes his “mass deportation” policies have gone too far, not because he’s changed his mind about those policies but because voters don’t like the term “mass deportation.” At least until the midterms, he wants the narrative, not the policy, changed, after all it’s not like he’s booting Stephen Miller, his implementer in chief.  It’s probably not a coincidence that details are emerging about how Corey Lewandowski who served as de facto DHS Secretary under Ice Barbie Noem (allegedly) demanded and received payments from contractors seeking business with DHS.  Afterall, someone needs to be left holding the bag.  And by bag, we’re not talking about Tom Homan’s CAVA bag, because that one has already been swept under the rug.  

Easy Game to Play?  Yesterday Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed Graham Platner, the Maine oyster farmer who recently inked over his Nazi tattoo over the establishment candidate Maine Governor Janet Mills in the race to run against incumbent Maine Senator Susan Collins.  Warren joined Vermont’s Bernie Sanders who earlier endorsed Platner.  Centrist Maine isn’t a hot bed of liberalism.  Despite the pearl twisting that Democrats love to mock people there must like Susan Collins, they’ve elected her five times. They also like Governor Mills, they’ve elected her twice. Democratic primary polls currently show newcomer Platner leading Mills, but the polls have been tightening, and the primary doesn’t take place until June so it’s too early to know who will emerge as the Democrat’s candidate. It is worth noting that Bernie’s endorsements haven’t been working well and though it’s nearby Maine is not Vermont. In the Illinois primary that took place on Tuesday, progressive congressional candidates endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders and the Justice Democrats largely faced defeats. Notably, Junaid Ahmed, a progressive backed by Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the 8th District, who had been considered a top challenger, lost his race to a Governor Pritzker endorsed candidate.  In general, despite all the focus on whether or not having an AIPAC (America Israel PAC) endorsement would kill a candidate’s chances, the real story of the election was that most of the Democratic winning candidates were mainstream candidates and despite efforts to make their views on Israel an issue, support for Israel wasn’t a career killer.  It may be that the whole country isn’t all that swayed by Bernie and that not every city is ready for their version of Mayor Mamdani.  Maybe.  

    

 

Quarters 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀

State of the War:  The coalition to open the Strait of Hormuz that Trump said he would be announcing shortly isn’t happening.  So far Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the UK,  Canada, Italy, Greece, South Korea, Poland, Ireland, and Spain have all demurred.  The reasons vary, with some saying it’s not their war and others saying that once the situation calms down and the bombing has ceased, they’ll consider escorting ships through the Strait.  Trump who seemed to believe that getting countries to take up arms would be akin to bullying them into trade deals is bigly mad and once again threatening to pull from the NATO alliance. In addition, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Putin’s Russia is helping Iran target US assets, which makes Trump’s decision to lift some sanctions against Russian that much more bizarre.  Here at home,  Joe Kent, a top counterterrorism official who worked with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned yesterday.  He didn’t leave quietly though he did give VP Vance a heads up regarding his plans.  In his very public letter of resignation Kent questioned the rationale for the Iran war, writing that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” the latter reason his way of exonerating Trump by going with increasingly popular “blame it on Bibi” narrative.  The most surprising thing about Kent’s departure is that it didn’t happen sooner, he’s an America firster/isolationist who was against Trump’s Venezuela venture. He’s also an “imperfect” messenger since he’s a known election denier, white supremacist, and conspiracy theorist, all reasons that he was appointed to the administration in the first place. Kent now plans to sit for an interview with Tucker Carlson where the two are expected to bond over their shared affinity for Nazis and the like. The question now is how much longer Gabbard, who like Kent was sidelined in the run up to the Iran strikes and whose most recent “national security” assignment included glomming on to the 2020 Fulton County election records, sticks around. While yesterday’s hubbub was centered on Kent’s resignation, Israel continued playing whack a mole with Iranian leadership. Yesterday they announced the “elimination” of Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, and General Gholam Reza Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Basij force, not to be confused with the Soleimani that Trump took out during his first administration. Though he wasn’t the new Supreme Leader, for all practical purposes Larijani was running Iran and the war.  Soleimani had been responsible for the violent suppression of Iran’s nationwide anti-government demonstrations. While it’s far from clear that Israel’s efforts to eliminate Iran’s leadership will lead to regime change, their success at taking out so many is indicative of how much help they are getting from within the country. The “take outs” aren’t over, this morning Israel announced the elimination of another Iranian leader, intelligence chief Esmaili Khatib. Decapitation or not, the war drags on.  

Peeps:  During his Monday press conference Trump claimed that he had spoken with a former president, not Bush, but one he said he likes, who expressed regrets that he hadn’t done what he is doing in Iran. Clinton, Obama, and Biden all deny any such conversation has occurred. We all know Trump lies, so he probably was lying but it’s also possible that he spoke to himself or maybe Andrew Jackson, in either case its not good.  He also revealed that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has been diagnosed with a very early stage of breast cancer and that she plans to keep on working while receiving treatment. There have been reports that Wiles plans to leave after the midterms, but that decision is probably independent of her recent diagnosis.  While Wiles appears to have signed off on Trump disclosing her diagnosis, it doesn’t appear that Republican Congressman Neal Dunn knew that his private health information was about to go public.  Trump revealed that Dunn had a terminal diagnosis but then added that he had helped get him life extending treatment so that now he won’t “die by June.”  It’s not clear that Trump’s intervention will extend Dunn’s life, but he’s really happy that he has convinced Dunn to spend his final days in Congress because he needs his vote. In other people news, Border Patrol honcho Gregory Bovino, who was so evil at his job that he made CAVA bag guy Tom Homan look good by comparison, announced that he’s retiring.  Bovino is hoping that his exit shortcuts plans to investigate him for lots of the bad things he did. War/Beer Pete had better hope that he gets a pardon from Trump because his pledge of "no quarter, no mercy for our enemies" violates a bright‑line ban in the laws of war while also putting our soldiers at risk.

The Courts:  RFK Jr still has his job but some of his policies have been put on hold because on Monday, federal Judge Brian Murphy put a halt to his attempts to overhaul childhood vaccine policies, specifically those changes that sought to reduce the schedule and number of recommended shots.  The judge also removed RFK’s handpicked members from the key vaccine advisory panel, finding that the changes disregarded federal law and ignored established scientific processes.  That’s good news, but probably just a temporary disease reprieve since Judge Murphy’s ruling will be appealed. At least for now, the vaccine advisory committees next scheduled meeting where the plan was to attack, maybe even kill, mRNA COVID shots has been put on hold. Election denier Kari Lake is also facing legal head wind.  Yesterday, federal judge Royce Lamberth ruled that her near shutdown of Voice of America was illegal and ordered the government to reinstate more than 1,000 people who had been placed on leave. Despite the Iran war and Trump’s not so subtle suggestions that he has his eyes on Cuba, and that both “strategies” could use the type of message sharing that VOA used to provide, the administration is expected to appeal assuming anyone can find AG Bondi. Though it’s not clear she plans to cooperate, she has been subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee to answer questions about the Epstein investigation.

More 💩:  Homeland Security funding is still on hold.  Republicans and the administration are blaming the Democrats asserting that long lines at airports are their fault.  The Democrats are blaming the Republicans, saying that they’ve offered up funding for everything except the bloated and overreaching INS. The Trump administration says that if they get the funding they want, they promise not to deport any US citizens, a kind of admission that they have been illegally deporting US decisions.  With all Republican Senators except Lisa Murkowski voting yes and all Democrats voting no, the voter squelching SAVE Act has now made it to the Senate floor for debate.  Republicans continue to insist that the Act is only about requiring voter IDs.  They’re lying, the Senate version also kills mail-in voting, and like the House version limits the types of IDs that would be acceptable, it requires that states provide the federal government with lots of voter information they shouldn’t get and so on.  Senate Leader John Thune continues to say that he won’t dispense with the 60-vote threshold required by the filibuster, so SAVE shouldn’t pass but Trump remains insistent, persistent, and desperate so stay posted.

Midterms:  Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is officially running for a third term and probably also running for president.  Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, his candidate to replace retiring Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, won her primary yesterday beating out previous frontrunner Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi.  Since Trump hasn’t yet endorsed anyone in Texas, both incumbent Senator John Cornyn and AG Ken Paxton’s names will appear on the run-off ballot since the last day for either one to withdraw has now passed.  That means Republicans will be spending (wasting) more money on the runoff, not necessarily a bad thing.  

 

One Battle After Another  😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🍀☘️

War, War, War:  The war that Trump says is only an excursion will be over when he “feels” it in his “bones” at which time, maybe this week, maybe in months or more, he’ll declare victory, say that Iran no longer has any nuclear capability and move on to more fun things like building his East Wing mega ballroom, emblazoning his name on more buildings, and disrupting the midterms. Victory declaration or not, with the Strait of Hormuz almost totally closed to ships from countries not allied with Iran and oil prices continuing to rise, a barrel of Brent Crude is somewhere around $103 this morning, Trump is now faced with having to deal with the Iranian stranglehold on the Strait and its impact on the economy, ours and others. Before the war he was told that keeping the Strait open would be a bigly problem but either he didn’t understand what he was told or chose to ignore the warning, figuring that since he alone can fix things he’d deal with the problem when he needed to.  Though he still doesn’t understand why Joint Chiefs of Staff General Caine can’t keep it open by shooting more missiles, Trump says that he’ll soon be announcing that he’s put together a coalition of countries to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz.  Maybe he will, though it’s not yet clear which countries will participate or whether the coalition is another one of those things that Trump feels will happen in his bones.  In any case, getting that coalition together before starting the war probably would have been a better idea but planning isn’t one of Trump’s strong points and anyway, the Strait is one of the key reasons that previous US presidents, including Trump during his first administration, haven’t attacked Iran. Trump is now sending 2200 more Marines to the Middle East maybe to seize Iran’s key oil export terminal on Kharg Island if tanker traffic remains restricted.  Are we about to have boots on the ground? If we are, does that also mean that we’ll be at war with China and Russia, two countries who seem to be enjoying, even benefiting off of our mess?  🤷‍♀️ Stay tuned, but only to Fox.   

Press Freedom:  The war against Iran is just one of the wars that Trump is fighting right now.  With the help of War Pete and Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, he’s ramped up his anti-press rhetoric, making threats against those media outlets that don’t report the rosy war stories he wants to hear.  On Friday, during his morning Pentagon news conference, War/Beer Pete’s outrageous performance included scripted attacks on the press for publishing “fake news.” He endorsed conservative media mogul David Ellison’s upcoming takeover of CNN, actually saying that “the sooner Ellison takes over the better,” the implication being that Ellison has agreed to Trump-wash CNN, along the lines of what Bari Weiss is in the process of doing to CBS News and what Jeff Bezos, who terminated his Middle East and Ukraine bureaus last month, has done to the ever shrinking Washington Post. Keeping with that theme, last night on his flight back from a weekend at Mar a Lago Trump responded to a reporter from ABC who asked him about the appropriateness of his PAC fundraising off of the dignified transfer of dead soldiers, thirteen at last count, by first asking where the reporter was from and then saying that ABC is “the most corrupt news organization on the planet….they’re terrible, I don’t want any more from ABC.” That strategy of attacking anyone who asks any question that he doesn’t like has become standard operating procedure for Trump.  Later last night, during what appears to have been a particularly agitated overnight Truth Social posting session, where he went off on a tangent about tariffs while laying into the Supreme Court, particularly the “disloyal” Justices he appointed, he asserted that all successful Iranian strikes were really AI generated, again berated the press for failing to acknowledge his 2020 election victory, and said that the “corrupt media outlets” should be brought up on treason adding that he was thrilled that Brendon Carr was looking at pulling the licenses of those “Highly Unpatriotic News Organizations.” The anti-press strategy is part of the autocrat playbook and though he’s not much of a reader, Trump appears to have memorized that chapter.  

More 💩:  Trump isn’t just furious with SCOTUS, like DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro who threw a full on shxt fit on Friday, he’s bigly mad at DC District Court Judge Boasberg who took the highly unusual step of quashing two Justice Department subpoenas which targeted Fed Chair Jerome Powell.  Boasberg ruled that “There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will…..The Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President.” Pirro, who if she wasn’t drunk during the press conference in which she lambasted Boasberg, sure sounded as if she was, says that she will be appealing Boasberg’s ruling.  North Carolina’s Senator Tillis, the Republican Senator who has grown cojones since announcing that he’s not running for reelection says that he will continue to hold up the confirmation of Trump’s choice to replace Powell if Pirro proceeds with her appeal which makes the appeal that much more idiotic but given how Trump went ballistic when the DOJ said that it wouldn’t appeal the rulings against his penalizing of law firms, it’s fair to assume that Pirro will stick with idiocy.  On the personnel front, Trump has fired Richard Grennell who had been heading up the Kennedy Center because someone has to be held responsible for all the entertainers who have cancelled their performances. However, Health Secretary RFK who last night posted a video of an AI generated beefed up version of himself wrestling with an oversized golden yellow twinkie, still has his job.           

 

 
Just an Excursion 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀

State of Play:  The Iran war, or as Trump inexplicably calls it, the Iran “excursion,” is going about as well as expected.  It turns out that going to war with Iran, a militarized nation motivated by religious fervor, in possession of what appears to be an inexhaustible number of missiles and drones, and with a population of 90 million people is somewhat more challenging than decapitating the leadership of Venezuela, a country with one third the population and a lot less weaponry.  Iran’s navy has suffered what is being described as catastrophic losses, but weakened or not, Iran has managed to strangle transit through the critical Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that 20 to 30% of the world’s total oil consumption transits through.  As a result, the price of a barrel of Brent crude which had temporarily recovered after Trump falsely asserted that his excursion would be short lived, closed yesterday above $100. Trump wants us to believe that higher gas prices are good for Americans so on Thursday he actually babbled that “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money” but even he knows that’s an absurd thing to say, particularly in the run up to the midterms when affordability is a bigly issue which explains why he’s releasing 172 million gallons of oil from our strategic reserve. Last night he also lifted some of the sanctions against Russian oil, another attempt to help keep prices down, one that benefits Putin, a consequence that Trump finds convenient because after all its Vlad. Four more US servicemen died yesterday after their refueling jet crashed in neighboring Iraq and now the Iran excursion has reached the home front.  Over the weekend, two men, inspired by ISIS, came close to exploding IEDs in the residential area near NYC’s Gracie Mansion and yesterday another terrorist was killed while ramming a truck into a Michigan synagogue that housed a childhood center while still another ISIS inspired shooter shot up a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University. A security officer was hurt but no one was killed during the Michigan attack largely because of the temple’s robust security but sadly one person, an ROTC instructor, was killed and two students were shot at Old Dominion. As to the attack at Michigan’s Temple Israel, it was hardly an isolated event, attacks on Jewish institutions are becoming increasingly frequent occurrences which is the reason that Temple Israel, like many other synagogues had security in place. There were shooting incidents at three Jewish temples in Toronto, Canada this week and yesterday, at the same time as the Michigan attack, Norway’s Trondheim synagogue, one of only two in Norway, a country with only 1500 Jews, was also being attacked.  The trend sucks, and anyone who thinks that anti-Zionism isn’t just code for anti-Semitism is either delusional or part of the problem.  One more thing, when Trump says excursion, he’s confusing excursion with incursion, not surprising since he’s the same guy who consistently says that asylum seeking refugees are people being released from mental institutions, so no one should be confused that Trump who according to his Aunt paid someone to take his SATs has a comprehension and vocabulary problem.  Anyway, excursion or incursion, it’s a war.   

Political Machinations:  Texas Senator John Cornyn who is locked in a runoff battle with Ken Paxton, his state’s Attorney General, is now embracing dispensing with the filibuster to pass the voter squelching SAVE Act even though he used to be an ardent supporter of the filibuster and the Act is a solution in search of a problem.  His change of heart is motivated by Paxton saying that he’ll only drop out of the race if the filibuster is dropped to pass the Act and is nothing more than a desperate attempt to get Trump’s endorsement.  So far Senate Leader John Thune continues to oppose getting rid of the filibuster rule to pass the SAVE Act however to placate Trump he will be bringing it to the Senate floor for “vigorous” debate even though the doesn’t have the votes to pass it.  Republicans plan to make it sound as if those “cheating” Democrats are for illegal voting.  Don’t be fooled, hardly any aliens or other illegal voters show up to the polls.  The sole purpose of the SAVE Act is to make it harder for people who tend to vote for Democrats to vote.  Trump is desperate to see the Act passed because he fears the consequences of losing the House and maybe even the Senate.  He’s also sent his election denier teams back to Arizona’s Maricopa County, part of his attempt to “prove” that he really won the 2020 election that he lost. If that sounds familiar, it is because it is. In 2021 a group of election deniers called the Cyber Ninjas examined the Maricopa ballots for cheating and traces of Chinese bamboo.  Not only did they validate Biden’s win, but they actually found more Biden votes, not that any of that matters to Trump and his acolytes. As to the midterms, while it’s far too early to focus on polls, a few revealing ones have started popping up.  In Ohio’s Governor race, Democrat Amy Acton is polling ten (!) points ahead of Republican/one-time presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy while former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is polling a few points ahead of current Senator/JD Vance replacement Jon Husted.  Texas polls show Democrat James Talarico slightly ahead of both Cornyn and Paxton, but it’s Texas and we’ve been fooled before.  Republicans are truly panicked about losing the House but are holding out hope that once the scads of money that Trump and his PACs have raised start funding campaigns their chances will improve.  They might not be wrong about that since Republicans have been outraising Democrats by a lot this cycle and money matters. Lastly, Congressman Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat and kingmaker whose support has been key to several presidential candidates announced yesterday that he’s running for reelection.  He’s 85-years-old but feeling pretty chipper, I guess.

More 💩:  FBI Director Kash Patel who has fired lots of skilled and experienced FBI Agents including those with experience dealing with domestic terrorism is teaming up with the UFC and has “top” ultimate fighters and mixed martial arts experts coming to FBI headquarters to provide FBI Agents with a two-day training session.   No word if any of them are Farsi speakers or even know any foreign languages but you have to give it to Patel, he may be a lousy FBI Director, but he knows how to keep boss Trump happy. Lastly, it turns out that those fears about Musk’s DOGE rats stealing our Social Security data were valid. The Department of Justice has now admitted that DOGE members improperly shared Social Security data using a non-government, unapproved third-party server, bypassing agency safety protocols.