Smoke Signals 😱😱🇮🇱🇺🇦

Liars Lying: Yesterday morning The Atlantic published the parts of the now infamous Signal group chat that Jeffrey Goldberg had originally held back. They did that to prove that the chat he’d been accidentally invited into really did include top secret attack plan information despite the repeated denials of all of its other participants. We also learned that the NSA, a division of Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department, had earlier warned that Signal was vulnerable, the target of Russian and other nefarious hackers. Nevertheless, Trump’s team of broken toys thought it was okay to use it for top secret battle plans because those concerns obviously didn’t pertain to them? Even worse, the chat group, some of whom used even more vulnerable personal devices,  joined in from all over the globe, with Real Estate Buddy/special envoy Witkoff who says Putin is a nice guy in Moscow, Tulsi Gabbard who remembers nothing not even where she was in Tokyo, and Marco Rubio who is blaming Hegseth for everything in Riyadh. Naturally, no one remembers what was said, they all deny that the details provided on the chat were top secret, and they blame Goldberg who obviously used one of his bar mitzvah space lasers to access the chat. Will anyone’s head roll, who knows. Trump will only kick someone to the curb if he feels that it’s in his best interest to do so. Waltz and Hegseth could soon be downgraded to coffee boys, or not. Starbucks anyone?

Legalities: Speaker Johnson has rejected calls to impeach one or more of the judges ruling against Trump because he doesn’t have the votes but he does have another plan. He now wants to eliminate federal district judges, especially the ones Trump doesn’t like. So much for those three equal branches of government. In the mean time, the judges are still issuing rulings and getting new cases. Yesterday the DC Appeals court upheld Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order against use of the Alien Act and Judge Boasberg also got a new assignment. He was assigned to preside over a new lawsuit, alleging that the use of Signal, with its delete text function, for the military strike discussion violated federal record keeping rules.  None of this is stopping Trump from his war against law firms. Emboldened by his success neutering Paul Weiss, he’s now targeted Jenner & Block, the white shoe law firm’s “crime,“ Trump nemesis Andrew Weissmann was previously a member. The INS is also continuing to target pro Palestinian students, cancelling visas and sweeping them away. Regardless of what you think about their views, nonviolent protest isn’t a crime and while the issue concerns Gaza today, who knows what will offend Trump and Noem, who really did got to El Salvador for a disgusting photo op, next? 

Voting Rights: Back during the relatively halcyon days of Trump 1.0, the orange one had Mike Pence look into voter fraud. Turns out there wasn’t much there and that non citizens do not vote. Not satisfied with that assessment, Trump is now trying to make it difficult for everyone to vote. His new thing is to require that all voters prove their citizenship with birth certificates or passports. Only 45 to 50% of US citizens have passports and since most women change their names when they get married their birth certificates will be deemed inadequate proof. Clearly, this is about voter suppression.

More Tariffs: That foreign car 🚗 you wanted, it’s about to become 25% more expensive. And cars using foreign made parts, they will cost more too. Would it surprise you to learn that Teslas sold in the US will be minimally affected by these new tariffs? As Jethro Leroy Gibbs would say, there are no coincidences. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow