Broken Heart💔😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱💔

Super Grift: I didn’t think it would really happen, but I was wrong, the US Military has officially taken custody of Hamas Force One, the 747 “gifted” by Qatar.  The back story on the plane is even more convoluted than initially reported.  According to CNN and confirmed by other outlets including the NYTimes, upset that his two Air Force Ones were old (in the 30s rather than the 40 plus that Trump frequently claims) and don’t have the requisite gold bathrooms and the other superficial accoutrements that he prefers, early in the year Trump directed Man Friday Steve Witkoff to find him a suitable “interim” plane, preferably one with gold toilets.  Witkoff learned from Boeing that a Qatari Shiekh had been trying to sell his decked out, economically inefficient thirteen-year-old 747 for several years. At Witkoff’s request, the Shiekh had the plane flown to Mar a Lago for Trump to inspect its toilets. The Shiekh’s intention had been to sell it to Trump but instead of entering into a price negotiation, Trump just thanked him for the gift.  In other grifting news last night Trump hosted a dinner at his Washington DC area golf club for the 220 largest holders of his $TRUMP meme coin. There was a time when Trump dissed all things crypto but that was before he realized that he could monetize the presidency and take in billions from those willing to spend bigly bucks on a worthless meme coin to buy access and “favors.” The majority of last night’s guests were from overseas and included $TRUMP’s top investor, a Chinese-born crypto mogul who until Trump’s DOJ dropped them was facing civil fraud charges in the US. So, to put it simply, despite prohibitions from taking gifts from anyone but especially from foreigners Trump just accepted a $400 million plane and held a private dinner with rich foreigners who bought an otherwise worthless coin to get access to the president of the USA. That’s the same president who instead of dissing crypto schemes is now insulting world leaders.  In an Oval Office meeting reminiscent of the embarrassing one he held earlier in the year with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, Trump laid into South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa, calling him out for committing Afrikaner farmer genocide, no point Googling that up because it’s not a thing.  To prove his accusation Trump shared images of thousands of graves that he asserted belonged to slaughtered Afrikaners. The problem is that the graves in the video were from a Reuters video showing humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot after deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels. Though South Africa has a violence problem, it doesn’t have an Afrikaner genocide problem. No one should be surprised to learn that despite his much- ballyhooed departure from DOGE, South African born Elon Musk, who yearns for the good ole days when South Africa was an apartheid state, attended the meeting with Ramaphosa and in all likelihood is the person who “educated” Trump on the Afrikaner genocide that isn’t.

Red Budget Blues:  Yesterday by a vote of 215 to 214 with two Republicans not voting, one Republican voting present and two Republicans joining all the Democrats in voting no, the House passed its version of Trump’s “big beautiful” budget bill. One of the not voting Republicans, Long Island’s Garbarino says he accidentally slept through the vote but maybe he just was hiding, another Arizona’s Schweikert was awake when he elected to abstain.  The present voter was Maryland’s Harris and the two no voters were Ohio’s Davidson and Kentucky’s Massie who Trump is already threatening with a primary.  Shortly before the vote took place Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia died, succumbing to esophageal cancer.  He was the third Democrat to die this year, joining Texas’ Sylvester Turner and Arizona’s Raul Grijalva, making it quite possible that had they remained among the living, absent more Trumpian arm twisting and threats, the bill would not have passed in its current form.  Among other things, the 1000 plus page House bill that few who voted on it read continues the tax cuts that were passed during Trump 1.0, raises the deficit bigly, cuts Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps), raises the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction, eliminates taxes on tips, cuts many of Biden’s climate related projects, and basically enriches the really rich while doing little for most others while hammering those at the bottom. Despite a warning from Speaker Mike Johnson that they do so at their own peril, the Senate is expected to make lots of changes to the bill so if you are from a high tax state, don’t count on that SALT deduction going from $10,000 to $40,000. The Senate is likely to roll back some of the Medicaid cuts and restore some of the Biden era projects, especially the ones that benefit red states, so the bill is far from set in stone.

Playbook Politics:  Yesterday, taking a page from the Viktor Orban playbook augmented by Project 2025, the Trump administration took its battle against Harvard to another level by having Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem announce that DHS would halt the university’s ability to enroll international students by closing it out of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).  Cosplay Noem ordered existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status. International students make up about 27% of Harvard’s student body, on average they pay more tuition than domestic students many more of whom receive aid or other subsidies, so losing them would further dent Harvard’s finances. Late yesterday, federal judge Jeffrey White, a Bush appointee, banned the Trump administration from detaining and deporting international students, barring the federal government from arresting those students or revoking their visas while the case plays out in court. His ruling applied to all “similarly situated individuals” who participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program so it appears that thought they face further uncertainty, at least for now foreign students can remain at Harvard.  We should not have to rely on judges for sanity but that’s where we are.  In other judicial news, yesterday with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing because of a conflict of interest unique to the particulars of the case, a concept that she unlike some of her brethren actually recognizes, by a vote of 4 to 4 the Supreme let stand an Oklahoma ruling that blocked funding for Oklahoma religious charter schools. It’s good that four Justices, probably the three liberals and the Chief Justice, recognized that the US is supposed to separate church from state.  The bad news is that four of the Justices had no problem allowing public funding for a religious school and it’s quite likely that another similar case where Justice Amy doesn’t have a conflict will make it up to the Supreme Court sooner rather than later and that she could sway the outcome in a different direction. In another less satisfactory ruling SCOTUS allowed Trump to fire certain independent regulators at least for now though they specifically said that their ruling doesn’t allow for the firing of Federal Reserve Board chair Jerome Powell.           

Fog and Murder:  What’s there to say?  On Wednesday night on their way out of an event that was focused on promoting peace held at Washington DC’s Jewish Museum, two young Israeli embassy staffers, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, were shot and killed by a murderous thug shouting free Palestine. Yes, you can disagree with Israeli policy and not be anti-Semitic but cut the bull shxt, when two young people are killed after attending an event at a Jewish Museum it is anti-Semitism. Period. And it’s sickening and frightening and evokes the run up to the Holocaust. May their memories be a blessing.  💔 💔 💔  

#BringThemAllHomeNow