Bamboozle 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡

205 Days In:  Trump pardoned the January 6 rioters, appointed one of their most ardent defenders to run the US Attorney’s Office in Washington DC, and hired a former FBI agent who was videotaped urging his mob cohorts to kill the police officers who were trying to stop their invasion. That former FBI agent is now advising on how best to seek retribution against Trump’s political enemies.  Yesterday, after asserting that Washington DC, which on January 6 he characterized as a peaceful haven full of fun seeking Trump supporting tourists, is now a lawless hell hole, Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to control the “punks and scumbags” who reside there.  His action, which he’s long mused about taking, appears to have been triggered by the recent mugging of Big Balls, the 19-year- old former DOGE employee who is now an official tasked with mucking around in the Social Security Agency’s code.  Big Balls really was a crime victim.  He was bloodied in an attempted carjacking, and DC is hardly a crime free idyll, however, as indicated by the DOJ’s own crime statistics, year on year homicides in DC are down by 32%, robberies by 39%, armed carjackings by 53%, and assaults with deadly weapons by 27%.  If Trump was serious about helping out the cash strapped District he’d see to it that its funding which was cut $1 billion by the Congress he controls was restored but instead, he’s into performative messaging and autocratic actions, so we have the National Guard in DC, the same National Guard he refused to deploy on January 6 when it was really needed because then the marauders were his supporters.  Washington DC is a bit of a strange animal, it’s not a state, its residents pay lots of federal taxes but don’t have Congressional representation and its mayor has limited powers when compared to those of state Governors so it’s particularly vulnerable to Trump’s dictatorial whims. That said, Trump who has already sent a bunch of soldiers and guardsmen into Los Angeles, is now threatening to do the same to NYC, Baltimore, Chicago, and Oakland, California, lumping them all together as teeming masses of criminals when what they mostly share in common is that they are urban places with large non-white, Democratic voting populations.  None of these cities are perfect but their crime rates are mostly declining from pandemic levels, and while being the victim of a crime is always a bad thing, don’t for a minute believe that felon Trump’s actions are motivated by a desire to make things better for their residents.  The forces he’s sent into DC and is threatening to send into the other cities aren’t the right people for that job, and in places like NYC with its 36,000 uniformed officers aren’t needed, he’s just playing dictator, making it clear that, he gets to do whatever he wants.  That’s not hyperbole, with Trump’s support, Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is considering the establishment of a "Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force" composed of National Guard troops, for deployment in US cities experiencing protests or other unrest. The force would consist of 600 National Guard troops, split into two groups of 300 each, they would be stationed at military bases in Alabama and Arizona, covering regions east and west of the Mississippi River, respectively, they would be on standby for rapid deployment (within an hour) to address situations that Trump deems "domestic civil unrest.” Asking for all of us, will election days in swing districts with large blue voter turnout be examples of civil unrest?         

Factoids: It’s not just Trump’s militaristic tendencies that are a bigly problem, he also has his complicit henchman rewriting history and playing with economic statistics because when he doesn’t like the facts, he makes up his own.  Yesterday the White House announced that it’s embarking on a comprehensive review of the Smithsonian Institute’s exhibits to make certain that they reflect Trump’s vision of America, that would be a vision that doesn’t reference his two impeachments and presumably also whitewashes out the role that people of color and women have played over the years, the women that Pete Hegseth and his favorite extremist pastor believe should never have been granted the right to vote.  Trump has already moved the portraits of former presidents Obama and GW Bush into an infrequently used stairwell, Biden’s official portrait is not yet completed, but you know when it is it will get similar, or worse, treatment. Maybe that Mar a Lago toilet is still available?  Trump has also nominated the Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni to serve as his new Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Antoni, one of those responsible for bringing us the Project 2025 blueprint, announced that he plans to eliminate the monthly labor report that so annoys Trump, only issuing quarterly reports that presumably will be suitably rosy.  Trump, who celebrated only the “good” part of yesterday’s inflation report, ignoring that price increases are starting to rear their ugly head on items subjected to his tariffs, also called on Goldman Sachs’ head David Solomon to fire his firm’s respected chief economist, Jan Hatzius for warning on Sunday that US consumers will end up absorbing an increasing share of the cost of Trump’s tariffs.  As to those tariffs, Trump 🌮ed again, he has extended the deadline for resuming the higher tariffs on China, another 🌮anticipated by the investor community.  It’s fair to assume that Trump is also quite distressed with the CBO (Congressional Budget Office), looking for ways to kneecap them over their distributional analysis that concluded that America’s poorest households will see their incomes drop by $1200 while the wealthiest among us will see an additional $13,600 annually as a result of his Big Ugly Bill.   

People and Politics:  Former Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown has made it official.  He’s running again.  Keeping with the comeback trend, though he was only gone for a little more than a week, Dr. Vinay Prasad who had been forced out by right wing influencer Laura Loomer is back at the FDA, again making decisions about gene therapy and vaccines which explains why shares of biotech companies fell on Monday. Prasad has a habit of overruling his own scientific review staff, taking a confrontational approach that his critics say will “stymie scientific innovation and slow drug approvals.”  Then again, that seems to be HHS head RFK Jr’s objective, at least with regard to anything the guy who majored in heroin in college doesn’t like.  To that end,  FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, defended the decision to defund mRNA vaccine development, saying that the public has lost confidence in the mRNA technology.  Of course, Makary conveniently ignored that the loss of confidence is the result of the volume of misinformation that he, RFK, and their anti-vax cohorts have relentlessly spread. Like Trump, RFK continues to try to play with facts, but at least one reputable publication isn’t buying his attempts.  Yesterday Annals of Internal Medicine, an influential medical journal, rejected his request that they retract a large Danish study that found that aluminum ingredients in vaccines do not increase health risks for children. 

Fog:  Trump’s Anchorage, Alaska meeting with Putin is still on for Friday.  Everyone not part of Trump’s sycophant squad, especially Ukraine’s Zelenskyy and most of our one time but probably not for long European allies, are concerned that Putin, who has ramped up his attack on Ukraine, will bamboozle him.

#BringThemAllHomeNow