Road Tripping 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢

State of Play:  Trump is in China where he will be meeting with Xi. The focus of his trip is supposed to be trade, tariffs, and Ai, and to that end he’s brought 17 CEOs, including on again BFF Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s outgoing CEO Tim Cook, and as a last minute add on Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.  There are concerns that while he’s with Xi he will either intentionally or accidentally do or say something that puts Taiwan at risk of a Chinese invasion.  Anyone who doubts that is a possibility should consider that over the past few day’s he’s spent a significant amount of what should be his nighttime sleep time posting even more of his increasingly unhinged messages on Truth Social.  If she really had any influence over him, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles would lock his phone away and/or delete its apps but instead she’s been lecturing and sending memos to White House staff warning them to stop leaking to the press.  We know about the memo because immediately after she shared it with staff, someone or multiple someone’s leaked it to the press. As to those leaks, they are still coming as evidenced by today’s NY Times report that despite assurances from Trump that Iran’s military is in the crapper it isn’t, it’s stronger than we’ve been told and its missile capability, especially around the critical Strait of Hormuz, is almost completely intact.  Naturally, the Trump administration’s response to the reports is that those reporting on Iran’s capabilities are treasonous cheerleaders for the enemy. The White House announced that Trump’s annual physical, or his second or third annual physical this year will take place upon his return as will his annual dental check-up, not to be confused with the recent emergency visit that was characterized as “just a check-up.” They’ll probably quiz Trump on squirrels and rhinos again, or at least they should.

Peeps:  Ka$h Patel testified before the Senate yesterday.  He was combative and lied a lot, and why not because though lying to Congress is supposed to be a crime reports are that Trump has promised everyone who works within 100 miles of the White House that they will receive pardons.  Patel alleged that despite his public partying and branded bourbon he doesn’t drink or at least doesn’t drink much, that despite credible reports to the contrary he isn’t subjecting bunches of FBI Agents to lie detector/loyalty tests, and that all the Iran experts he fired right before the beginning of the Iran “skirmish” weren’t fired but if they were they weren’t really Iran experts. So far Patel is still the Director of the FBI which puts him one step ahead of the now former FDA head Marty Makary who was formally disposed of yesterday. Kari Lake who managed to dismember the Voice of America is now Trump’s nominee to become the US Ambassador to Jamaica and Doug Mastriano who may or may not have been launching another Pennsylvania gubernatorial run because the last one was such a disaster is now Trump’s nominee to become the US Ambassador to Slovakia.  RFK who remains the head of Health and Human Services has been quiet of late mostly because Trump doesn’t want to scare off any more voters than he and increasing inflation already have going into the midterms has been quietly conducting a “wide-ranging, behind-the-scenes inquiry into vaccine safety, prioritizing investigations into potential links between vaccines and chronic, neurological, or autoimmune disorders.”  Naturally, he already knows what he’ll conclude, and it won’t be good, for anyone who believes that polio, measles, whooping cough, shingles, COVID, and the flu are bad and who would rather not drink raw milk, snort coke off a toilet seat or rely on peptides to stay healthy.  Though the Department of Transportation has been having a hard time with funding freezes, plane crashes, a failing airline, and fuel inflation, apparently running the DOT hasn’t been enough to keep Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy busy which must be the reason that he, his wife and their nine children have been filming a cross country reality TV show like trip scheduled to air during Trump’s 250^th birthday celebration.  Duffy’s junket has been financed by some of the company’s that he regulates because, of course.                 

Jim Crow Update: As expected given its other decisions, SCOTUS has ruled that Alabama can get rid of one of its two majority Black congressional districts.  In response, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey announced that she will bifurcate the state’s primaries, holding some as scheduled and others for the newly created now majority white districts in August even though some absentee ballots have already been cast for what were supposed to be May 19^th elections.  That’s not normal but is in keeping with what Louisiana’s Governor Jeff Landry is doing now that he’s gotten the go ahead from the Supreme Court to whitewash his state. Landry is tossing out 45,000 already cast absentee ballots saying it’s not a big deal and certainly not his fault that the Supreme Court ruled so late in the primary season.  Unlike Alabama and Louisiana some of South Carolina’s Republican state senators have voted against redistricting away Democrat Jim Clyburn’s seat, at least for now.  Apparently, they think it’s a bad look to redistrict this late in the primary season. For its part, Virginia, the state where voters actually approved their redistricting in advance of primaries,  is appealing its State Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate its redistricting election to SCOTUS. It will be interesting to see how the six conservative Justices justify upholding the Virginia court’s invalidation decision because odds are they will.        

More 💩: Something hateful is in the water at the NY Times.  On Monday, the paper published an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in which he claimed with suspect evidence that Israel used sexual violence against prisoners as “organized state policy.” The piece, an op-ed rather than a researched article, makes several grave claims about conditions in Israeli prisons, including about the alleged use of trained dogs to rape prisoners. Kristof based his op-ed on reports from Hamas and Hamas affiliated sources that have long spread lies about Israel. Israel has issues, there are out of control settlers but the tell here that the op-ed is worse than fishy and more like a blood libel is the dog assertion because that’s not a thing.  To quote one of the members of the founding members of the NYC Police Department’s Canine Unit “It’s absurd for many reasons: the sexual instincts of dogs, their anatomy, the actual physical concept of it.”  It’s probably not a coincidence that a fully researched 300-page report by the independent Israel Civil Commission on October 7^th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children that builds on prior investigations including by the UN that documented how Hamas used sexual violence and torture including rape to further terrorize the victims of October 7 was also released this week.  Unlike the Kristof op-ed the commission report relied on extensive testimony including lie detector tests of witnesses.  And keeping with the NY Times “something is in the water” problem, the paper also has a rather lengthy feature article about how Israel is using the Eurovision contest as a “soft power tool.”  Americans don’t focus much on the Eurovision song contest but it’s a big deal in Europe.  The winner is chosen by a popular vote.  It is usual for countries with smaller populations to lobby heavily among ex-pats and friends to boost their singers.  Apparently that’s okay when Sweden does it but not so much when Israel does.  And by the way, the Israeli competitors are quite good.  The NY Times needs to get a grip before they trigger a pogrom.