Epstein's Revenge 🤡 😱 🌻✡️🌻😱 🤡 

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Over the weekend Trump signaled that a big announcement about Russia was forthcoming. He followed through on Monday, saying that he would permit NATO members to buy and transfer American arms, including urgently needed Patriot missiles systems, to Ukraine.  Ukraine desperately needs the weapons, especially the Patriot systems, to fend off Russian missile attacks so the announcement which Trump said was due to his disappointment that Putin had ramped up his attacks on Ukraine, went over well with NATO and got Trump a big thank you from Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, but did not please his MAGA base.  Trump also threatened that he would impose secondary sanctions in the form of large tariffs against customers of Russian energy, something that could “significantly empty Moscow’s coffers,” but that threat came with the usual Trumpian catch, a delay, not for two weeks but for a longer fifty days.  The delay is supposed to give Putin time to get back into Trump’s good graces.  Spoiler alert, Putin doesn’t care about making Trump happy, he isn’t going to start behaving, and those secondary tariffs which many in Congress have wanted for some time, are unlikely to be imposed because China is one of Russia’s largest purchasers of Russian energy and would probably respond by holding up the delivery of the rare earth minerals needed by US manufacturers.  

🍿🍿🍿: Russia isn’t Trump’s only problem, he's also been fending off incoming from the MAGA crowd on the Epstein front.  For a short while it looked like his efforts to shove the Epstein demons back into one of Mar a Lago’s toilets was working.  Republicans voted against a quickly put together Democratic resolution calling for the immediate release of all the Epstein files, right wing influencers like Charlie Kirk backed off similar demands, FBI Director Kash Patel affirmed his commitment to all things Trump, and Dan Bongino, who will probably be quietly forced out soon, went silent.  However, that retreat was short lived because by the end of yesterday calls for the release of the Epstein files emerged from surprising sources, including Speaker/Trump toady Mike Johnson.  Even Trump appears to realize that he needs to do something to placate his Epstein fixated MAGAs so while he’s taken to equating the Epstein client list to what he calls the Russian election interference hoax and to ramping up accusations that if they exist they were ginned up by Biden and Obama, he’s now saying that AG Pam Bondi should release what she thinks is appropriate. MAGA types like Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon are calling for Bondi’s resignation so while Trump still appears to have her back, don’t be surprised if she becomes his Epstein sacrificial lamb.  Complicating things further, Epstein’s sidekick, the imprisoned Ghislaine Maxwell, is currently appealing her conviction to the Supreme Court. Last night, her siblings released a statement in which they appealed to Trump to spring her from jail, perhaps a not-so-subtle threat that she’ll start talking about things he doesn’t want her to talk about if he doesn’t?  We know all of this has gotten under Trump’s skin because he’s in full diversionary tactic mode. Yesterday he ramped up attacks on one of his favorite punching bags, California Senator Adam Schiff, accusing him of mortgage fraud saying that a criminal case had been referred to the Justice Department. Schiff, like many members of Congress from both parties maintains homes in both Washington DC and his home state so he has a DC mortgage.  This is just more of Trump’s retribution campaign with a little diversion thrown in.  He is also going after Fed Chair Jerome Powell who he’s been trying to oust for some time, claiming that Powell spent excessively on an “ostentatious” renovation of the Federal Reserve’s offices.  There something really precious about the gold leaf expert with gold toilets having his surrogates call anyone out for ostentatious décor. Anyway, his real beef with Powell is over interest rates.  Trump wants them lowered ASAP, Powell will only lower them when he thinks that they should be lowered and given yesterday’s uptick in inflation that’s not likely to happen in the immediate future.  That inflation uptick, it’s probably just the beginning of an upswing because tariffs are just starting to affect prices and things costing more = inflation.         

Rescission, Rescission:  Late yesterday, the Senate advanced rescission legislation intended to claw back $9 billion of Congressionally approved funding for foreign aid programs and public broadcasting.  At the last-minute funding for PEPFAR, the international AIDs program originated by George W Bush, was removed from the rescission package. Even with the PEPFAR adjustment, Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Mitch McConnell joined all Democrats in opposing the rescission package. South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds who could have provided the vote that toppled the legislation threatened to oppose the rescission package but jumped back on board after he obtained a commitment from the White House to divert some “green new deal” money towards funding to protect his state’s tribal broadcasting services.  VP Vance, just back from Disneyland, broke the tie. In other news, Education Department employees are out, victims of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the elimination of the department, for now, whatever for now means.  Notably, SCOTUS’s six conservatives, the same crew who ruled against Biden’s student loan forgiveness executive orders are okay with Trump eliminating a Congressionally created department by fiat.  

Politics:  Trump appears to be getting nervous about the 2026 midterms. We know that because he’s publicly called for Texas Governor Abbott to call a special session of the Texas legislature to redraw the boundaries of the state’s 38 House Districts. Trump wants the very willing Abbott to gerrymander the state’s district in a manner that will result in Republicans winning five more of the state’s seats.  It’s not clear if Abbott can clear the way for the Republican Party to pick up five seats but with a little bit of racial gerrymandering, something that SCOTUS mostly ignores these days, he probably can come up with a map that gives Republicans more than the 25 seats it currently holds. Democratic governors are now scrambling to see if they can do the same, but it’s not easy since to succeed Governors need to have enough seats to play around with and also need to control their state legislatures. In other political news, yesterday, former county supervisor Adelita Grijalva won the Democratic primary to replace her father, long term Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva, who died in March.  Grijalva is expected to easily win the special election which is scheduled to take place in September. She beat out 25-year-old political content creator Deja Foxx a who had the support of Democratic upstart David Hogg and had hoped to follow in the footsteps of New York’s Democratic Mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani. Hogg, best known for being a Parkland School shooting survivor, was recently kicked out of DNC leadership for raising money to primary “older” Democrats.  As to NYC, former Governor Andrew Cuomo is running as an independent against both Mamdani and current Mayor Adams who is also running as an independent. Oh, and yesterday Mamdani said he will “discourage” the use of the term “Globalize the Intifada.” How considerate of him.  New York, New York a helluva a town: flooded subways, high rents,  and a screwball mayoral election with a leading candidate who has to be cajoled into saying he’ll discourage people from calling for a global intifada.     

More:  Instead of distributing them to the hungry, the White House plans to burn 500 tons of high energy biscuits, enough to feed 1.5 million children for a week.  The biscuits are currently housed overseas, and some soulless DOGE genius has convinced the equally soulless Trump administration that burning biscuits is so much more efficient than getting them to where they were supposed to go.  The federal panel that sets standards for screening newborns for treatable diseases is another thing that’s fallen victim to the DOGE-niks.  It’s been eliminated because though the administration and former advisor Elon Musk want more babies, they don’t want to spend money keeping them healthy.  And though Musk is on the outs these days, the Pentagon has just awarded his XAI company a $200 million contract because apparently Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and our military leaders need to be able to avail themselves of the Hitler friendly GROK chatbot.   

#BringThemAllHomeNow