Two Weeks 💣 🚀 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣 🚀 

TACO Trump:  Trump has chickened out again.  Well maybe. Yesterday, while not celebrating Juneteenth because why would he celebrate the freeing of slaves, Trump announced that his decision on whether or not to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites, like infrastructure week, tariffs, and revealing a health care plan, has been put off two weeks.  However, like everything the mercurial Trump says, his Iran plans should be taken with a grain of salt because if he is planning to drop those bunker busting bombs on Iran, it would be foolish, even for him, to say so beforehand.  Politico reports that Defense Secretary/Fox Weekend anchor Pete Hegseth, too busy rooting out DEI and transgender soldiers, has deferred authority for the Iran decision to General Erik Kurilla, a hawkish general who is pushing for a strong military response against Iran.  Additionally, though a lot of the press and many members of Congress continue to assert that Iran isn’t on the verge of going nuclear, mostly based on an assessment from DNI Tulsi Gabbard, NBC reports that Gabbard’s been sidelined by Trump and is no longer involved in the White House’s Israel-Iran discussions.  Apparently, Trump was aghast at an unauthorized video she posted on social media during her recent unexpected side trip to Hiroshima, another thing he wasn’t pleased about. The video showed a simulation of San Francisco getting bombed, warning about imminent “nuclear annihilation.”  Gabbard has always walked to the beat of a peculiar drummer, she was an admirer of Syria’s brutal Bashar Assad and is known to parrot Putin talking points so even if she’s right, she has a credibility problem.  As one anonymous White House source told NBC, “If you adopt a Chihuahua, you should not be surprised that you have a Chihuahua.”  The procrastinating Trump says he’s putting off his bombing decision to give Iran and the Ayatollah another chance to come to the negotiating table where he says he’ll expect them to agree to stop all things nuclear, even though they won’t.  Meantime the missiles are flying.  Iran is now targeting and getting missile through to Israeli hospitals and using cluster bombs on civilian locations.  Bunker busters or not, the trajectory doesn’t look good. As I said earlier this week, presidenting isn’t easy especially when your advisors are out of their depth.

Viral Musings:  Unfortunately, Gabbard isn’t the only chihuahua in Trump’s kennel, he’s also gifted the country RFK Jr and the consequences for that adoption are mounting. Next week’s meeting of the newly comprised Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will be revisiting long settled vaccines safety issues, potentially upending how vaccines are manufactured, paid for, and distributed.  Among other things, the panel is expected to make decisions that could impact the availability of adult flu vaccines and children’s vaccine schedules. In addition, RFK, who is neither a doctor nor a scientist, wants to ban the use of aluminum, an immunity boosting adjuvant long used in polio, hepatitis, HPV, meningitis, and whooping cough vaccines. With two of his new ACIP members long term opponents of the cancer preventing HPV vaccine, many immunization specialists are concerned that he is ready to torpedo those shots because why would we want to keep up with the countries who are well on their way to eradicating HPV related cancers.  Moreover, reports are that the newest strain of COVID, already out and about in Europe and hitting our shores, is highly contagious and accompanied by the awful sounding and probably way worse feeling “razor blade throat.” That’s particularly alarming since RFK has already announced limitations on who will be eligible for this year’s COVID shots, assuming the new ones ever make it to the market. Does anyone know if there is an effective treatment for “razor blade throat.” Maybe, RFK thinks that his weekly trips to the Washington DC tanning salon he’s been seen going in and out of will spare him, or maybe he’s working on a new heroin cocktail? As to the tanning thing, where does skin cancer fit in his Make America Healthy again model?  Alongside mesothelioma maybe? Trump appears ready to repeal the ban on chrysotile asbestos, a known carcinogen that causes mesothelioma, a particularly deadly cancer.  He’s frequently to asserted that had the World Trade Center buildings had asbestos, they wouldn't have burned down or melted, a claim that is contradicted by scientific consensus. It seems doubtful that the construction industry and insurance companies would want to open themselves up to more litigation from what would inevitably be more mesothelioma sufferers or their survivors but we’ve got Trump so who knows.

More:  Last night, overturning a district courts temporary restraining order, a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government made a required "strong showing" in arguing it would prevail against California’s challenge to the legality of the deployment of troops usually under the governor's control. The case is on its way to the Supreme Court.  Those troops have been doing little besides burning money, since their call-up was more about Trump flexing than about them being needed but that appears beside the point. In other migrant news, more and more businesses that rely on migrant labor report that their workers have stopped showing up, fearful of being rounded up and deported if they do. Who really needs fruit and vegetables, or packaged meat anyway and why should we be concerned that the Fed is now projecting even lower economic growth?  And, after a Fox News host responded to an announcement by the management of the LA Dodgers that they planned to support their migrant workers and fans, by suggesting that ICE should show up at Dodgers’ stadium, ICE did just that.  Dodgers’ management refused to let them into the parking lot.  ICE responded that they had no nefarious intentions, they just wanted to park. As if.  Lastly, the Supreme Court has upheld the State of Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care for transgender youth because apparently six of the Justices know more than those children’s parents and doctors.  In related news the Trump administration said it will shut down the national suicide prevention hotline’s LGBTQ youth-focused services, terminating a program designed to offer expert help to a group that is especially vulnerable to suicide.   

#BringThemAllHomeNow