Comments

  1. rorschach says

    “What really infuriates me is that political ads are allowed to lie.”

    Yes, that’s well and truly bizarre.

  2. Reginald Selkirk says

    @ 496, 498

    @ rorschach : What really infuriates me is that political ads are allowed to lie. What we really need is Truth in Political Advertising laws.

    What would happen with such laws under a corrupt administration? This used to be an esoteric question, and is no longer.

  3. birgerjohansson says

    Re. @1

    Fox News intended to set up a Canadian version, but got cold feet when they found out Canadian legislation does not permit the use of deliberate lies in news programs!

  4. JM says

    Alternet: Experts fear Trump’s ‘legitimately frightening’ new order to turn US military into police

    Trump’s new order, which is entitled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” makes various declarations about the administration’s commitment to supporting law enforcement professionals in the opening paragraphs. However, one section further down specifically mentions the U.S. military and the administration’s intent to have enlisted service members participate in civilian law enforcement actions.

    The EO is vague about what it actually means but the Trump administration implementation will almost assuredly be illegal. No matter what if they are using soldiers for policing it’s a terrible idea. There is a narrow provision for allowing the US military to act on US soil to suppress out of control riots and such but only when directly ordered by Congress and not for general police work.
    Soldiers make very bad cops because the standards for using violence are very different and they are not taught anything about the arcane rules of law.

  6. birgerjohansson says

    BTW
    ‘Skrump’ is from the Swedish word for villain ( ‘skurk’ , derived from a foreign ford for shark) and the surname of the orange one.
    I find it apt, considering Skrump’s fascination with sharks (and other man-eating entities).

  7. birgerjohansson says

    My bad.
    I forgot to mention the Open championship is golf, you know, the activity where Skrump cheats all the time. The Scotsmen hate him and the golf establishment he owns up there.

  8. JM says

    The Hill: Trump executive order requires truck drivers to speak English

    Trump designated English as the country’s official language in an executive order in March. In his order Monday, the president said proficiency in English should be nonnegotiable for professional drivers.
    “They should be able to read and understand traffic signs, communicate with traffic safety, border patrol, agricultural checkpoints, and cargo weight-limit station officers,” the order said. “Drivers need to provide feedback to their employers and customers and receive related directions in English.”

    Federal law already requires functional English for interstate trucking so it isn’t clear what, if anything, this does. It may just be pandering to his racist base and he won’t do anything with this. It may also be used for a couple of illegal and/or stupid things, such as trying to ban the use of languages other then English or pushing federal regulation onto local trucking.

  9. JM says

    @491 Reginald Selkirk
    The White House is already complaining about it.
    White House blasts ‘hostile’ Amazon over tariff cost report; company downplays change

    “This is hostile and political act by Amazon,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

    It is but it’s also survival for Amazon. More then half of what Amazon sells comes from China, marking out the impact of the tariffs is important for them.

  10. ardipithecus says

    @485 StevoR

    Yes, Poilievre can be leader of the party without holding a seat in parliament. Mark Carney was elected leader of the Liberal party a couple months ago without holding a seat until yesterday. It’s fairly routine here.

    Poilievre has basically 2 choices. He can resign, or he can convince an elected conservative to step down so he can run in a byelection in that riding. Not sitting in parliament means he won’t get to JAQ off the PM, and will lose a lot of media coverage therefore.

    Of course, the party can hold a leadership convention and oust him, or he could call the convention hoping for support, but even he won that, he would still need to find a dupe whose riding he can usurp in order to be effective as a leader of the opposition..

  11. Reginald Selkirk says

    @9 JM

    a similar article:
    Trump administration brands Amazon’s tariff transparency plan a ‘hostile and political act’

    Leavitt didn’t hold back in her criticism of this notion. She stepped up, saying she had just gotten off the phone with the President discussing this matter. “This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” asserted Leavitt, before adding, “This is another reason why Americans should buy American.” The press secretary had her own questions, and retorted, “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?”

    Wah wah, wah. See the snowflakes melt in the sun. Maybe because imposing tariffs is a “hostile and political act,” and inflation wasn’t?

    I don’t like to side with Amazon, but in this case at least they are pissing off the right people.

  13. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    Trump’s 100 day faceplant: More devastating polling for Trump show Americans reject his policies
    Video is 7:10 minutes

    Trump panics at the prospect of Republicans turning against him over abysmal poll numbers
    Video is 4:12 minutes

    Trump exploits loophole to militarize the border; Americans potential targets of military arrests
    Video is 7:12 minutes

  14. johnson catman says

    re Reginald Selkirk @11:

    “This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” asserted Leavitt

    Looks to me like it is Truth in Advertising.

  15. says

    Links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread:

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-3/#comment-2263292
    Amazon To Display Tariff Costs For Consumers, Report Says

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-3/#comment-2263257
    Follow-up on the jet-dumping aircraft carrier @457.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-3/#comment-2263254
    Then Trump told Time magazine he’s made 200 trade deals, because his tariffs are such a smashing success. With whom? It’s a secret!

  16. Reginald Selkirk says

    @14 johnson catman

    Looks to me like it is Truth in Advertising.

    Granted it is factually accurate, but it is unnecessary to state the numbers openly.

    As discussed on a previous page;
    Here in the USA, most retailers tack the sales tax onto the end of the bill, rather than calculate it into the stated cost. Why do they do that, since it is confusing to consumers (except for native USAians who are used to it)? It is because they want you to be aware of the amount of the sales tax, and they want you to hate it.

  17. says

    OTTAWA (The Borowitz Report)—In an emotional victory speech late Monday night, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney thanked Donald J. Trump for his stunning election win.

    “I don’t deserve credit for this victory,” Carney, choking back tears, told his supporters. “Donald, I couldn’t have done it without you.”

    Carney received congratulatory calls from dozens of other world leaders whose political careers have been boosted by Trump, including Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

    “It’s like I told you, man,” Zelenskyy reportedly told the Canadian. “Trump is magic.”

    Link

  18. says

    Ignoring public attitudes, the Trump administration finds new ways to target Harvard

    “Recent polling suggests the public is overwhelmingly against the Trump administration’s offensive against higher education. It’s intensifying anyway.”

    During the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump didn’t promise voters that he would launch an unprecedented offensive against some of the nation’s leading institutions of higher learning — but that’s precisely what he has done since returning to power.

    The public appears unimpressed. The latest Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll asked respondents whether they support “increasing the federal government’s role in how private universities operate.” Despite the rather anodyne phrasing, the results were lopsided: 70% of Americans said they oppose the White House’s efforts against universities, while only 28% approved. […]

    The same national survey asked about Trump and his team going clashing with Harvard University, and as the Post’s report on the polling results noted, “About 2 in 3 Americans say they take Harvard’s side of this confrontation.”

    Evidently, the administration doesn’t much care. CNBC reported:

    The Trump administration on Monday announced investigations into Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review after a report that the prestigious legal journal was selecting articles for publication based on their authors’ race and not merit. … On Monday, the civil rights offices of both the Department of Education and the Department of Health & Human Services said they would investigate allegations of discriminatory practices at the Harvard Law Review.

    […] the simmering dispute between the school and the administration reached a boiling point on April 11, when Harvard received a series of outlandish written demands from the Trump administration, including a “request” to install outside auditors who would monitor the school’s academic departments.

    The university realized that failure to comply with the ridiculous demands would result in governmental punishment. But left with little choice, Harvard balked anyway.

    The retaliation was swift: Immediately after Harvard said it would not comply with the apparent extortion attempt, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard. (There are federal requirements in place when imposing financial penalties like these, and the Republican White House appears to have ignored those requirements.) The Department of Homeland Security secretary also canceled nearly $3 million in agency grants to Harvard, and at Trump’s behest the IRS reportedly began scrutinizing the university’s tax-exempt status.

    This week, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services joined the parade, targeting Harvard because a student-run publication at the school prioritized diversity in a way Team Trump didn’t like.

    Harvard has already brought their concerns to court, but while its case advances, The Wall Street Journal reported this week that leaders from some of the nation’s most prestigious universities have “assembled a private collective to counter the Trump administration’s attacks on research funding and academic independence across higher education.”

    […] If the reporting is accurate, my advice for school officials: Hurry. The administration’s offensive is already underway; it’s unnervingly aggressive; and it’s unlikely that the White House will scale back its campaign any time soon.

    The faster universities can link arms and work cooperatively to push back against the efforts, the more effective the institutions will be.

  19. says

    Hegseth targets ‘Women, Peace & Security’ program championed by Trump, Noem and Rubio

    “Pete Hegseth didn’t need another setback, but the Pentagon chief nevertheless condemned a policy long championed by Donald Trump and prominent Republicans.”

    Related video, hosted by Chris Hayes, is available at the link.

    […] the current defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, decided to make an announcement by way of social media:

    This morning, I proudly ENDED the ‘Women, Peace & Security’ (WPS) program inside the [Pentagon]. WPS is yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING. WPS is a UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists. Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it. DoD will hereby executive the minimum of WPS required by statute, and fight to end the program for our next budget. GOOD RIDDANCE WPS!

    [Hegseth is proud of that!?]

    Except, of course, this wasn’t a “Biden initiative” — it was touted by the Trump administration as a Trump initiative. [!]

    But wait, there’s more. When the Women, Peace, and Security Act was still pending on Capitol Hill, the chief co-sponsor of the legislation was none other than then-Rep. Kristi Noem — before the South Dakota Republican became governor and before she started working alongside Hegseth in the White House Cabinet as the Homeland Security secretary.

    In case that weren’t quite enough, when the Women, Peace, and Security Act was considered in the Senate, it was also co-sponsored by then-Sen. Marco Rubio — before the Florida Republican also started working alongside Hegseth in the White House Cabinet as the secretary of state.

    Earlier this month, Rubio spoke at an event and boasted, “President Trump also signed the Women, Peace, and Security Act, a bill that I was very proud to have been a co-sponsor of when I was in the Senate, and it was the first comprehensive law passed in any country in the world — the first law passed by any country anywhere in the world — focused on protecting women and promoting their participation in society.”

    Evidently, Rubio didn’t know Trump’s policy was a “woke” measure “pushed by feminists and left-wing activists.”

    As Politico reported, Hegseth’s move did not go unnoticed in Congress. Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who co-wrote the 2017 bill with Rubio, said in a statement that Hegseth’s latest move reflected “a dangerous and disturbing pattern from the Secretary, who clearly does not listen to advice from senior military leaders. He also continues to ignore the invaluable role women play in our national security. It’s startling that just because the word ‘women’ is in the title, this evidence-based security program has been reduced to a DEI program.”

    Around the same time, during a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia noted that Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, Trump’s choice to serve as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hailed the program during his confirmation hearing.

    “The fact that he doesn’t like WPS and the fact that he claims that it’s a Biden issue when it is an initiative that was supported unanimously by Republican majority of the Senate and ‘troops hate it’ when the newly confirmed head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifies to its value, I find shocking,” Kaine said.

    The president told The Atlantic last week, in reference to Hegseth, “I think he’s gonna get it together.” […] the beleaguered and hapless Pentagon chief apparently hasn’t gotten it together yet.

  20. says

    The Destruction: Civil Rights Edition

    […] The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has for nearly seven decades been at the forefront of some of the department’s most historically significant work. As a backstop to disenfranchised Americans in the South and minorities nationwide, the Civil Right Division has long been at the vanguard of protecting the rights of “the most vulnerable members of our society,” as it still says on its website.

    Reporting in recent days had indicated that a purge of top lawyers in the division was underway, and now there is a full-scale exodus from the division as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon wrenches it from its traditional functions mandated by Congress toward propping up the policies of President Trump:

    Since being sworn in this month, civil rights director Harmeet K. Dhillon has redirected her staff to focus on combating antisemitism, the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports and what Trump and his allies have described as anti-Christian bias and the Democrats’ “woke ideology.”

    Approximately half of the division’s approximately 380 attorneys have either left or are planning to leave, the NYT reports. [!]

    […] The Guardian reports that all of the senior managers in the section have been removed and most notably that all active cases have been ordered dismissed.

    Dhillon elaborated on her new mission in an appearance over the weekend on Glenn Beck’s podcast, a choice of venue that as former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance noted, “is enough to raise the hairs on the back of the neck of anyone who understands the Justice Department’s non-political mission.” [Yep]

    Jon Greenbaum, a former Civil Rights Division attorney 20 years ago, recounted some of what he’s heard from inside the department and concludes: “This is what we are faced with […] federal agencies that follow the dictates of one person and his friends while largely ignoring their Congressionally mandated responsibilities.”

    Link

  22. says

    Trump Judge Gets Burned By Trump

    […] a splendid new example emerged in the big case trying to block the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

    The DC Court of Appeals had intervened in the case just a couple of weeks ago, partially overturning U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s preliminary injunction and allowing layoffs to proceed at the CFPB under certain limited conditions.

    It was a win for the Trump administration, but as is its tendency it wasn’t content with the win. Instead, it pushed the limits of the appeals court ruling beyond recognition by quickly laying off roughly 90% of CFPB personnel while claiming to have complied with the court’s conditions.

    Yesterday, after seeing the hash that the administration had made of the court order, one of the Trump appointees on the appeals court panel — Gregory Katsas — flipped and restored the part of the injunction that would block the layoffs and any future layoffs until the courts have had a chance to consider the case in full. The cherry on top was that appeals court acted after the Trump administration went back to it complaining about Judge Jackson, and it took this step on its own to revise its earlier order and reign in the renegade administration.

    It turned the Trump win into a Trump loss and converted another federal judge into more of a skeptic.

    This comes as federal judges worry the administration may withdraw their protection by the U.S. Marshals Service.

    Same link as in comment 20

  23. says

    The Atlantic:

    How The Atlantic secured an interview with President Trump:

    So at 10:45 on a Saturday morning in late March, we called him on his cellphone. (Don’t ask how we got his number. All we can say is that the White House staff have imperfect control over Trump’s personal communication devices.) The president was at the country club he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey. The number that flashed on his screen was an unfamiliar one, but he answered anyway. “Who’s calling?” he asked.

  24. says

    New York Times: “All Authors Working on Flagship U.S. Climate Report Are Dismissed”

    “The Trump administration told researchers it was “releasing” them from their roles. It puts the future of the assessment, which is required by Congress, in doubt.”

    The Trump administration has dismissed the hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s flagship report on how global warming is affecting the country.

    The move puts the future of the report, which is required by Congress and is known as the National Climate Assessment, into serious jeopardy, experts said.

    Since 2000, the federal government has published a comprehensive look every few years at how rising temperatures will affect human health, agriculture, fisheries, water supplies, transportation, energy production and other aspects of the U.S. economy. The last climate assessment came out in 2023 and is used by state and local governments as well as private companies to help prepare for the effects of heat waves, floods, droughts and other climate-related calamities.

    On Monday, researchers around the country who had begun work on the sixth national climate assessment, planned for early 2028, received an email informing them that the scope of the report “is currently being re-evaluated” and that all contributors were being dismissed. […]

    Many state and local policymakers, as well as private businesses, rely on the assessment to understand how climate change is affecting different regions of the United States and how they can try to adapt. […]

    Decision makers forced to refer to the last assessment would be relying on outdated information on what adaptation and mitigation measures really work, scientists said. […]

  25. says

    Trump marks 100 days with rally in Michigan, a state rocked by his tariffs

    […] Trump is holding a rally in Michigan on Tuesday to mark the first 100 days of his second term, staging his largest public event since returning to the White House in a state that has been especially rocked by his steep trade tariffs and combative attitude toward Canada.

    Trump is making an afternoon visit to Selfridge Air National Guard Base for an announcement alongside Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He’s expected to speak at a rally at Macomb Community College, north of Detroit, allowing him to revel in leading a sprint to upend government and social, political and foreign policy norms.

    […] “The bottom line for the first hundred days is, lots of damage being done to the fundamentals of our government,” said Max Stier, founding president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit dedicated to better government.

    Stier noted that there’d been “a lot of interest in this idea of trying to make our government more efficient, and what we’ve seen instead is the most substantial destruction of our core governmental capabilities in history.”

    Michigan was one of the battleground states Trump flipped from the Democratic column. But it’s also been deeply affected by his tariffs, including on new imported cars and auto parts.

    Michigan’s unemployment rate has risen for three straight months, including jumping 1.3% from March to reach 5.5%, according to state data. That’s among the highest in the nation, far exceeding the national average of 4.2%.

    Automaker Stellantis halted production at plants in Canada and Mexico after Trump announced a 25% tariff on imported vehicles, temporarily laying off 900 U.S. employees. Industry groups have separately urged the White House to scrap plans for tariffs on imported auto parts, warning that doing so would raise prices on cars and could trigger “layoffs and bankruptcy.”

    […] Trump’s early months have been characterized by little domestic travel.

    The exceptions have been flying most weekends to golf in Florida or attend sporting events, including the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500, where Trump relished the crowds but didn’t speak to them. The limited travel to see supporters is a major departure from his first term, when Trump held major rallies in Florida, Tennessee and Kentucky before celebrating 100 days in office with a Pennsylvania speech in 2017.

  26. says

    By the numbers:

    […] 9%: The amount the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped since Trump took office. The S&P 500 is also down more than 9%, while Nasdaq down about 13%. In all, this is shaping up to be the worst stock market performance for a president at the start of their term in roughly 100 years.

    […] 60%: The odds JPMorgan gives that the U.S. sinks into a recession in 2025, mostly thanks to Trump’s economic policies.

    $6.23: The average price for a dozen eggs in March, a record high.

    […] $150 billion: The amount of cuts Musk claimed he’s made through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency—a pittance compared with the $2 trillion he had promised he would cut before joining the Trump administration. What’s more, an analysis found that the chaotic way in which DOGE made its cuts may actually cost the federal government $135 billion, which would mean whatever DOGE did cut is even less than it looks.

    2: The number of times Trump Cabinet officials have been caught sharing classified war plans on unsecured Signal chats.

    0: The number of Cabinet officials who have been fired or disciplined for sharing classified intelligence on a Signal chat, even though 51% of voters say those responsible for sharing the classified information in the scandal should be fired, according to a Civiqs poll conducted for Daily Kos.

    238: The minimum number of Venezuelan immigrants Trump deported to El Salvador without due process, despite a court order to halt the illegal deportations. Trump has also deported a 4-year-old child who is a U.S. citizen and is battling late-stage cancer, forcing them out of the country without medication or contact with their doctors.

    9: The number of major law firms Trump has extorted to provide legal services for his pet causes after threatening to tank their businesses with illegal executive orders.

    123: The number of court rulings that have either blocked or overturned Trump’s executive actions, according to The New York Times.

    […] 27%: The percent of his presidency that Trump has spent at one of his golf clubs

    […] 11 points: The amount Democrats in special election contests are overperforming Democrat Kamala Harris’ results in the 2024 presidential election, according to an analysis from The Downballot. Special election overperformance is a good barometer of future outcomes in midterm elections […]

    Link

  27. says

    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says Supreme Court ruling will hurt the ‘neediest among us’

    “Joined by Justice Sotomayor in dissent, Jackson said Congress can fix the mistake the majority needlessly made in the benefits case.”

    […] The majority sided Tuesday with federal health officials in a dispute over how much the government pays hospitals that treat a disproportionate share of low-income patients. The majority rejected the hospitals’ appeal in a 7-2 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, involving what the Trump appointee called a “highly technical” issue about calculating payments.

    But Jackson said the seemingly narrow issue has high stakes.“The decision the majority has made in this case will deprive hospitals serving the neediest among us of critical federal funds that Congress plainly attempted to provide,” she wrote, joined by Sotomayor.

    “Indeed,” she went on, “it is undisputed that systemically undercounting low-income patients for the purposes of the disproportionate-share formula might cause many such hospitals to close their doors entirely, such that patients from our Nation’s poorest communities may not be served at all.”

    But the Biden appointee concluded this doesn’t have to be the end of the matter. She called on Congress to step in and “restate its intention that low-income people have access to quality medical care and that hospitals be compensated accordingly.”

    While the case is important in its own right, it also highlights a long-running dispute over how conservative and liberal jurists approach the interpretation of legal texts. Barrett said the dissent “frames its argument as one primarily about the statute’s purpose and only secondarily about its text,” while Jackson said Congress wouldn’t need to step in “if this Court’s interpretive practices would just take care to evaluate the text of a statute alongside any indisputable legislative objectives.”

  28. says

    After White House has a fit, Amazon denies it was going to show consumers tariff costs

    Amazon said it is not displaying tariff price hikes on products on its main website, denying an earlier report that it had planned to show consumers just how much President Donald Trump’s tariffs will raise the price of items. The company issued its statement swiftly after the White House publicly criticized the tech giant.

    […] Amazon issued a statement that such a plan was only in consideration for Amazon Haul, which is expanding to compete with e-commerce companies like Shein and Temu that largely sell dirt-cheap goods from China.

    “The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC. “This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”

    The spokesperson said later in another statement that the plan was “never approved” and “is not going to happen.”

    […] Trump made a personal call to Bezos to complain about the report of Amazon’s plan, NBC News reported, citing a source familiar with the call. It’s unclear whether the call took place before or after the White House press briefing.

    Although Trump has delayed imposing higher tariffs on many countries, he is still engaged in a trade war with China that does not look likely to end anytime soon. Amazon’s third-party sellers, many of which sell goods from China, anticipate steep cuts in their profits due to the tariffs. Reuters reported Monday that some merchants plan to sit out or to limit discounts on Amazon’s Prime Day in July — typically the company’s biggest shopping event of the year — in the hopes of selling more items at full price as the cost of Chinese imports skyrockets.

  29. Reginald Selkirk says

    @28

    I should have known. Finally they did something I agree with, so they had to backtrack.

  30. Reginald Selkirk says

    SK Telecom cyberattack: Free SIM replacements for 25 million customers

    South Korean mobile provider SK Telecom has announced free SIM card replacements to its 25 million mobile customers following a recent USIM data breach, but only 6 million cards are available through May.

    SK Telecom is the country’s largest mobile network operator, serving roughly half of the domestic mobile phone market.

    On April 19, the company detected a malware running on its network that allowed threat actors to steal customers’ Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) data, typically including International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI), Mobile Station ISDN Number (MSISDN), authentication keys, network usage data, and SMS or contacts if stored on the SIM.

    No customer names, other identification details, or financial information were exposed due to this incident.

    The main risk from this breach is the potential for threat actors to perform unauthorized number ports to cloned SIM cards, known as “SIM swapping.”

    In an update published earlier today, SK Telecom assured customers that such requests would be automatically detected and blocked by its Fraud Detection System (FDS) and SIM Protection Service, which have been enhanced to handle the elevated risk.

    As of today, SK Telecom is also offering free-of-charge SIM card replacements to 25 million mobile subscribers, including approximately 2 million using budget carriers, who are worried about the potential for SIM swapping attacks impacting them.

    However, the mobile carrier warns that due to a lack of inventory, they can only replace up to 6 million SIM cards through May 2025…

  31. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tesla (TSLA) chair sells most of her stocks – her time is done?

    Tesla’s Chairwoman, Robyn Denholm, has filed to sell another $30 million in Tesla stock. She appears to be completely liquidating her stake in the company she chairs.

    This morning, we noted that a Tesla insider made their first stock purchase in five years.

    Other than the small purchase from Joe Gebbia disclosed last night, Tesla executives and board members have exclusively exercised stock options and sold them right away.

    Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s Chairwoman, has been the top seller. She sold over $150 million worth of Tesla stocks over the last 6 months.

    She has received over $600 million in stock compensation since joining the board just 10 years ago, and she has sold over $500 million worth.

    Today, she filed with the SEC to sell another 112,390 Tesla shares worth over $32 million:

    It’s the third time in the last 3 months that she filed to sell a block of over 112,000 shares.

    As of her last filing, she had only 85,000 shares left and 300,440 stock options expiring later this year.

    She has now liquidated most of her Tesla position…

  33. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Oklahoma City family traumatized after ICE raids home, but they weren’t suspects

    A woman says her family’s fresh start in Oklahoma turned into a nightmare after federal immigration agents raided their home, taking their phones, laptops, and life savings […] The agents had a search warrant for the home, but the suspects listed on the warrant do not live in the house.
    […]
    about 20 men, armed with guns, busted through the door. […] Marisa said the men identified themselves as federal agents with the U.S. Marshals, ICE, and the FBI. […] the U.S. Marshals Service denied having agents present […] She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes. […] “We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.” She said the agents didn’t care.
    […]
    Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had […] [“]I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here […] I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this?[“] […] “I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months,” […] the agents wouldn’t even leave her a business card. She said she has no idea who to contact to get her things back. […] no idea which agency has those belongings

  34. says

    Sky Captain @33, well that’s a fascist nightmare.

    In other news: Even now, Trump still can’t defend his order targeting Krebs, who dared to tell the truth

    “The president has had three weeks to come up with a defense for targeting Chris Krebs. Trump apparently can’t think of anything”

    Related video at the link.

    It’s probably fair to say that Christopher Krebs is not a household name, but inside the White House, he’s immediately recognized. Krebs led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during Donald Trump’s first term, which meant he was responsible for combatting foreign interference in our elections and preventing attacks.

    Krebs earned bipartisan praise for his work, and after the 2020 election cycle, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius noted, “When the history books about this election are written, Krebs will be one of the heroes.”

    The day Ignatius’ column was published, Trump fired Krebs — not because he’d done anything wrong but because the president wanted him to go along with his lies about the election results. When Krebs instead told the truth, he was shown the door.

    Four and a half years later, Trump issued an order that not only described Krebs as a “significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority” — a baseless claim the president made while abusing his government authority — it also directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Homeland Security to investigate Krebs’ work and activities.[…]

    Three weeks after Trump signed a first-of-its-kind executive order targeting a former official for defying him, Time magazine asked Trump a good question: “You recently signed memos calling for an investigation of Chris Krebs, a top cybersecurity official in your first term. Isn’t that, though, what you accused [Joe Biden] of doing to you?” The president responded:

    I think Chris Krebs was a disgrace to our country. I think he was — I think he was terrible. By the way, I don’t know him. I’m not — I don’t think I ever met him. … I know very little about Chris Krebs, but I think he was very deficient.

    Right off the bat, there’s the obvious problem that Trump thinks the former cybersecurity leader — who, again, did literally nothing wrong during his work in Trump’s own administration — is “a disgrace,” despite the inconvenient detail that the president knows “very little” about him. [Trump is even bad at lying.]

    […] Trump ignored the underlying question […]

    Asked to defend his own tactics, Trump said his perceived enemy was “a disgrace to our country.” By that reasoning, can any president sic the DOJ after those they hold in contempt? Wouldn’t that necessarily create the kind of conditions that Trump and his party have claimed to be against?

    As for Krebs himself, the former official has said very little about the president’s executive order, though he has spoken out against the administration’s policy agenda in his area of expertise.

    As NBC News reported, Krebs received a warm welcome from industry professionals at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, a cybersecurity conference, where he criticized the second Trump administration for its repeated cuts to cybersecurity employees, contractors and programs.

    “Cybersecurity is national security. We all know that, right? That’s why we’re here. That’s why we get up every morning and do our jobs. We are protecting everyone out there. And right now, to see what’s happening to the cybersecurity community inside the federal government, we should be outraged. Absolutely outraged.”

  35. says

    Financial Times:

    U.S. stocks have underperformed the rest of the world this year by the widest margin in more than three decades as Donald Trump’s erratic policymaking sparks an investor exodus from American assets.

  37. says

    Maddow polls all the ways Trump has ‘botched’ his first 100 days

    Rachel Maddow spent the first part of her Monday night show going through the relentless polling data showing that most Americans are “angry” and “furious” with President Donald Trump’s stewardship of our country in his first 100 days.

    “The country really, really does not like him and sees his first hundred days as a disaster,” Maddow explained. “He has had, in public opinion terms, he has had the most disastrous first hundred days of any president since the dawn of modern polling.”

    Whether it is the new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll or NBC News polls conducted by SurveyMonkey, Trump’s cataclysmic first 100 days is a failure by virtually every metric one can apply.

    Maddow notes that the disapproval of Trump is so comprehensive he is railing against polling in the most absurd ways. “He’s ranting now. He’s calling the polls fake. He says they’re fake polls. And he says he wants pollsters investigated for election fraud. What election?”

    “No president has ever botched the first hundred days more badly than Donald Trump has botched it,” Maddow continues. “And that’s true not just for his approval rating generally and how people feel about him, it’s for every single thing you ask the American public about in terms of what he has done. Do you like any of it? No.” [Video at the link]

    […]

  38. whheydt says

    Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #36…
    So…That Felon in the White House is the Corvair of US Presidents?

  39. says

    Trump fires Doug Emhoff, Biden appointees from Holocaust museum board

    Former second gentleman Doug Emhoff on Tuesday was kicked off of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum board, which includes over 50 president-appointee members.

    “Today, I was informed of my removal from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Let me be clear: Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized. To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous — and it dishonors the memory of six million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve,” Emhoff said in a statement to The Hill.

    “No divisive political decision will ever shake my commitment to Holocaust remembrance and education or to combatting hate and antisemitism. I will continue to speak out, to educate, and to fight hate in all its forms—because silence is never an option,” he added. […]

  41. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/tariff-meltdown-job-cuts-empty-ports

    Tomorrow will be four weeks since Trump announced America’s LIBERATION DAY (from its wallets) with the biggest tariffs ever, now 145 percent tariffs on imports from China and a 10 percent minimum tax on all other countries. Has the phone from China rung yet with them begging with tears in their eyes to make a deal? I’m sure they’ll be calling any minute! Right after they get off the phone with Brazil to order up all of their soybeans.

    Contrary to what Trump told The Atlantic, he does not run the world. And like Wile E. Coyote off a cliff, we’re going down and have not quite reckoned with it or how bad it’s going to be, though pandemic-hardened consumers are stocking up, and purchases of canned goods, ketchup and instant coffee are up double digits.

    But don’t you dare blame Donald J. Trump for the price hikes and empty shelves to come, ooh, that makes him mad!

    [I snipped news about Amazon’s walk back of the plan to include a tariff line item.]

    One company that is adding a tariff line item, Temu. The “Temu Things” subreddit is in full meltdown with consumers pointing out a line with massive “import charges” on their invoices. [Screen grab at the link.]

    […] Meanwhile, it seems like empty shelves are going to be a future reality. At the Port of Los Angeles, the main point of entry for cargo ships from China and Southeast Asia, the executive director says shipments are expected to sink 35 percent next week. In Washington state, the Northwest Seaport Alliance saw an increase in March as retailers stocked up in anticipation, and now ships are coming in with 30 percent less cargo. And ships are going out and turning around and coming back, then just sitting in dock waiting with their soybeans or whatever, because orders are being cancelled.

    And now UPS says it will cut 20,000 jobs and close 73 facilities in expectation that Amazon shipments will be cut in half. Trucking volumes are already down, and Mack Trucks and Volvo Trucks are laying off hundreds of workers. […]

    The US relies on China for as much as 80 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients and 90 percent of generic antibiotics. And more than 90 percent of the medical gear worn by American health care workers.

    Earlier today That Man did back down from part of his automotive tariffs, so that car importers already paying a tariff on the car will now not ALSO be paying a tariff on the steel and aluminum, and can get a rebate for any double-tariffs they paid. So benevolent, and how well-thought-out this rollout was!

    Meanwhile, Rand Paul and the Democrats are expected to vote this week on revoking Trump’s self-bestowed emergency tariff powers. Trump will just veto it, of course, but as layoffs, empty shelves, and furious constituents pile up, maybe two-thirds of the House and Senate will grow some spines and override him? (Why you need two-thirds to override a presidential veto of Congress vetoing the president seizing Congress’s specifically enumerated taxing power is just one of those funny things!) […]

    Now if you’ll excuse us, we are off to order […] some K95 masks for the plague to come […]

  42. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    RawStory – Play dumb games, win dumb prizes

    Perkins Coie is one of a number of firms that Trump has targeted with an executive order for representing anti-Trump clients in the past […] The order directs an investigation of Perkins Coie’s hiring practices and prohibits them from representing the federal government in legal affairs or accessing government buildings.
    […]
    Perkins Coie fought back with a lawsuit. The Justice Department, however tried to throw up a technical roadblock to the lawsuit: advising the court that Perkins Coie cannot sue the executive branch in the abstract, and it is their opinion if an injunction is issued in the case, it can only apply to federal agencies and officers who are explicitly named in the complaint.
    […]
    “So Perkins Coie just amended its complaint to name all the relevant fed agencies. The case caption is now 40 pages long.”

    Owen Barcala: “Judge Howell all but told them to do this at the hearing last week.”

  43. Reginald Selkirk says

    Judge snaps at DOJ lawyer arguing Trump executive order targeting Big Law firm can’t be illegal

    A federal judge appeared poised to hand Big Law another win after he snapped Monday at a Justice Department lawyer attempting to justify President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting one firm.

    During Monday’s court hearing, Richard Lawson, the Justice Department attorney, argued that Trump’s order couldn’t possibly be illegal because it required federal agencies to act “consistent with applicable law.”

    Lawson appeared to struggle through arguments, at times not giving direct responses to questions from the judge.

    Lawson said Trump could target Jenner & Block, the Big Law firm, because the president said “Jenner discriminates against its employees based on race” — even though no court or government agency had come to that conclusion.

    “Give me a break,” US District Judge John Bates snapped, as Lawson said federal agencies should be allowed to follow the order because the firm engaged in “racial discrimination.”

    The oral arguments, in a Washington, DC, federal court, were part of Jenner & Block’s lawsuit seeking to permanently block Trump’s March 25 executive order targeting the firm. Bates previously ordered the federal government to pause the implementation of Trump’s order…

  44. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    EmptyWheel – 100 days, a trillion dollars: DOGE’s costs keep adding up

    First, there’s this WaPo story from March […] the cuts to IRS may cost […] $500 billion a year.

    NYT reported last week […] the way Elon carried out personnel cuts may have created $135 billion in personnel costs, partly because Elon fucked up firings and so Russ Vought had to do it again.

    And today, […] a tracker that lays out $430 billion in spending that taxpayers have paid for, but for which the services have been withdrawn or frozen.
    […]
    Elon Musk came in promising (at various times) to save a trillion dollars.

    Instead, a hundred days in, and we’re already a trillion in the hole, and that’s before you consider defending these unlawful cuts, the increased costs that disease and extreme weather and wars will incur because we’ve defunded their mitigation, or increased borrowing costs arising from Trump’s trade war.

  45. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Mediaite – Trump admits he ‘could’ bring back Abrego Garcia and comply with Supreme Court—but still refuses

    MORAN: You could get him back. There’s a phone on this desk.

    TRUMP: I could.

    MORAN: You could pick it up, and with all the power of the presidency, you could call up the president of El Salvador and say, “Send him back right now.”

    TRUMP: And if he were the gentleman you say he is, I would do that.

    MORAN: But the court has ordered you to facilitate his release.

    TRUMP: I’m not the one making this decision. We have lawyers that don’t wanna do this.

    MORAN: You’re the president!
    […]
    TRUMP: No, no, no, no, no. I follow the law. You want me to follow the law.
    […]
    MORAN: The Supreme Court says what the law is.

     
    Mediaite – Trump argues about photoshopped image: ‘He had MS-13 on his knuckles tattooed!’

    Trump protested, “No, no. He had MS, as clear as you can be. Not interpreted. This is why people no longer believe the news because it’s fake news.”

    Moran pointed out, “Well, when he was photographed in El Salvador, they aren’t there, but let’s just go on. […] Take a look at the photograph.”

    “They weren’t there, but they’re there now, right?” asked Trump, to which Moran replied, “No!”

    Despite the back-and-forth, Trump refused to believe that the “MS-13” label had been edited onto the photo, concluding, “He’s got MS-13 on his knuckles. Okay?[“]

    So very dumb in the video at the link.

    Anna Bower: “There’s no ‘but I think he’s MS-13’ carve out in the Supreme Court’s order. It’s brazen defiance. Also by ‘lawyers’, he means Stephen Miller doesn’t he?”

    Rando 1: “He’s lurching between brazen defiance and deflecting responsibility. Neither of which will fly in court.”

    Rando 2: “He negotiated 200 deals and Abrego Garcia wasn’t one of them.”

  46. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Science – Global pandemic treaty finalized

    It took an extension to the extension of the extension, but after more than 3 years of negotiations, governments around the globe—but notably, not the United States—have finally agreed on a treaty to improve how the world prevents, prepares for, and responds to future pandemics, including the basics of a system to share vaccines and drugs more equitably than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
    […]
    The 30-page treaty—which covers everything from protecting health workers and strengthening capacities to regulate new drugs and vaccines to reducing risks of pathogens spilling over from animals to humans—is now ready to be adopted by the World Health Assembly, an annual meeting of WHO member states, next month. […] Negotiations will continue for one more year on how countries will share both samples and genetic sequences of bacteria, viruses, and other potentially pandemic pathogens and the vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics created with that information.
    […]
    countries that produced COVID-19 vaccines had hoarded millions of doses, whereas those with no vaccine plants often had no access to the shots. One study estimated that more equitable access to vaccines could have prevented hundreds of millions of infections and saved 1.3 million lives.
    […]
    manufacturers committed to donating 10% of their production to distribute by WHO, with a target of offering another 10% at affordable prices. But the details still need to be worked out in an annex, and the entire treaty won’t be opened up for signing and ratification until the annex has been adopted by next year’s World Health Assembly. […] The final treaty will enter force 1 month after 60 countries have ratified it. How powerful it will turn out to be depends on how seriously countries take it

    UN

    The text further affirms national sovereignty in public health decisions. It states explicitly that nothing in the agreement gives WHO the authority to mandate health measures such as lockdowns, vaccination campaigns, or border closures.

  47. Reginald Selkirk says

    After 53 Years, a Failed Soviet Venus Spacecraft Is Crashing Back to Earth

    A 53-year-old Venus probe that failed to escape low Earth orbit is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry in the coming weeks. Built to withstand extreme heat, parts of the spacecraft could survive the descent and crash on Earth.

    The lander module from an old Soviet spacecraft is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere during the second week of May, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in Leiden, the Netherlands. “As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact,” Langbroek wrote in a blog update. “The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero.”

    Kosmos 482 launched on March 31, 1972 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport in Kazakhstan. The mission was an attempt by the Soviet space program to reach Venus, but it failed to gain enough velocity to enter a transfer trajectory toward the scorching-hot planet. A malfunction resulted in an engine burn that wasn’t sufficient to reach Venus’ orbit and left the spacecraft in an elliptical Earth orbit, according to NASA. The spacecraft broke apart into four different pieces, with two of the smaller fragments reentering over Ashburton, New Zealand, two days after launch. Meanwhile, two remaining pieces, believed to be the payload and the detached upper-stage engine unit, entered a higher orbit measuring 130 by 6,089 miles (210 by 9,800 kilometers)…

  48. Reginald Selkirk says

    Scientists Discover a Massive, Glowing Blob of Hydrogen Very Close to Our Solar System

    … The cloud, named Eos after the Greek goddess of dawn, was discovered around 300 light-years away from our solar system. It is one of the largest single structures in the sky, and may be the closest molecular cloud to Earth, according to a paper published this week in Nature Astronomy. Because it’s so close, it offers astronomers a unique front row seat to the star-forming process and to observe the molecular universe.

    Stellar nurseries in our general galactic neighborhood lie along the surface of the Local Bubble, a large, hot cavity of plasma surrounded by a shell of gas and dust. In order to find the molecular clouds within that bubble, scientists have had to rely on observations of dust emissions. For the recent discovery, however, scientists found the nearby molecular cloud by detecting the fluorescent nature of hydrogen in the far-ultraviolet realm of the electromagnetic spectrum, according to the paper.

    “This is the first-ever molecular cloud discovered by looking for far ultraviolet emission of molecular hydrogen directly,” Blakesley Burkhart, a physics and astronomy professor at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

    Molecular hydrogen, which is made up of two hydrogen atoms stitched together, is the most abundant molecule in the universe. It is also, however, difficult to detect as it glows in far ultraviolet wavelengths that get absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere. “The data showed glowing hydrogen molecules detected via fluorescence in the far ultraviolet,” Burkhart added. “This cloud is literally glowing in the dark.” …

  51. StevoR says

    Billionaire philanthropist and private astronaut Jared Isaacman is headed back to Washington, D.C. as the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation votes to advance his confirmation as NASA Administrator.

    Isaacman was nominated by President Donald Trump last December, and sat before the committee once already during a hearing on April 9. Now, the committee will vote Wednesday (April 30) whether or not to send the tech billionaire’s confirmation to the full Senate. If confirmed, Isaacman stands to replace former administrator Bill Nelson, and take the reins from the current acting administrator, Janet Petro.

    The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) and will stream live on the Senate committee website.

    Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/watch-trumps-pick-for-nasa-chief-jared-isaacman-return-to-capitol-hill-for-senate-vote-tomorrow

  54. rorschach says

    Daily news on the new German government, Trumpism reincarnate that somehow nobody saw coming: The new minister for agriculture is a, wait for it, butcher. And in every interview he’s giving, he’s essentially saying MMGA, make meat great again. None of this vegetarian meal stuff in schools anymore, a nice steak has never harmed anyone, etc etc.
    eyeroll gif

  55. JM says

    The Register: Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, economists claim

    Instead of depressing wages or taking jobs, generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have had almost no significant wage or labor impact so far – a finding that calls into question the huge capital expenditures required to create and run AI models.

    Pretty straight forward, so far GenAI has not had a significant real impact. In places that are jumping on GenAI it’s shuffling work around but it creates as much work as it clears out. This could easily change because they are looking at 2023 and 2024 data and this stuff is experimental right now.
    They also point out that the AI companies are running at losses right now. They are aiming for market share and gathering information. They will have to jack up prices to make a profit, which will remove at least some of the cost advantage of GenAI.

  56. says

    The White House really does want Fox News to fire its pollster

    It was about a week ago when Fox News released the results of its latest national poll, which, like most recent surveys, included all kinds of discouraging news for Donald Trump and his agenda. […]

    instead of simply whining about his unpopularity, Trump went further, suggesting that Fox News should “get rid of” its pollster.

    [Trump] proceeded to refer to pollsters as “Negative Criminals” (I still don’t know what that means), adding, “These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it.”

    The next day, the White House’s Stephen Miller appeared on the network, and Fox News’ John Roberts reminded his guest about some of the results from his employer’s latest poll. The presidential adviser didn’t hesitate.

    “I don’t want to make things awkward for you, John, but it is our opinion that Fox News needs to fire its pollster,” Miller said. He added that, as far as the White House is concerned, Fox News’ pollster “has always been wrong” about Trump. [video at the link]

    Right off the bat, it’s worth emphasizing the fact that Fox News polls — the network’s partisan reputation notwithstanding — have been rather accurate of late.

    […] Trump and his team have complained bitterly about all kinds of media outlets and their polls, but Fox News is the only one that’s been targeted by the president’s and the White House’s public declarations that the pollster should be fired.

    It’s a push rooted in an unspoken insult.

    In the run-up to Election Day 2024, Trump argued that Fox News “shouldn’t be allowed” to show remarks from his Democratic rival. Around the same time, Trump also argued that Fox News “shouldn’t allow” Democratic attack ads.

    […] Trump added that Fox News executives should instead prioritize “the people who got them there.”

    […] Trump was making clear that he saw Fox News not as a news organization, but as a Republican entity that exists to advance a partisan cause. […]

    The more the White House calls on Fox News to fire its pollster, the more we’re reminded that Trump continues to see the network as a political instrument instead of a news organization.

  57. says

    Followup to Sky Captain @45.

    Trump’s belief in doctored ‘MS-13’ image suggests frail mental state

    […] Trump cited an obviously doctored image of tattoos on the hand of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia to justify the administration’s decision to abduct and deport the father of two.

    Trump made the argument on Monday during an interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran on Trump’s 100th day in office.

    “They look, and on his knuckles, he had ‘MS-13,’” Trump said, referring to a doctored photo of Abrego Garcia that he and his team have circulated, while alleging that the man is a part of the MS-13 gang.

    Moran noted that the photo does not show conclusive proof that Abrego Garcia is a member, and Trump angrily pushed back.

    “It says M-S-1-3,” Trump insisted.

    “That was Photoshop,” Moran replied.

    “Hey, they’re giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you’re doing the interview. I picked you because frankly I never heard of you, but that’s okay,” Trump said. “But you’re not being very nice.”

    [video at the link]

    Trump is used to sycophantic interviews from MAGA-friendly outlets, particularly his fans at Fox News, so even Moran’s gentle nudging seemed to rile the president.

    The image that Trump used to justify the wrongful deportation is a photo of pictogram-style tattoos on Abrego Garcia’s knuckles. Someone—presumably, the administration—then added “MS-13” above the pictograms, and Trump has passed off the image as if Abrego Garcia’s tattoo includes the digitally added characters. […]

    Otherwise, the purported evidence that Abrego Garcia is affiliated with MS-13 comes from a dubious double-hearsay statement in a court filing from a police officer who was later suspended from the force.

    […] Trump’s stubborn defense of an obviously doctored image also raises serious questions about his mental state and decision-making ability. Either Trump is lying to justify his actions, or he cannot distinguish between reality and make-believe.

    He frequently posts doctored images to his social media accounts. Does Trump also believe he has the body of a prizefighter? Does he also think he has played for the Pittsburgh Steelers?

    Or is he just making up yet another lie to justify another step toward an American police state that he can rule like a dictator? [Both?]

  58. says

    Democrats are losing the most important fight in history, by Mark Sumner

    The purpose of every protest, every call, every letter, every blog post, and every skeet being made in opposition to Donald Trump is the same: Show that what Trump is doing isn’t just wrong, it’s also unpopular. Because popularity, like it or not, is important.

    Establishing the popularity of a position is key to political power. Mass protests alone may not be enough to move the needle, but that needle never moves without mass protests. And the calls. And the letters. It takes it all.

    The good news is that, when it comes to Trump’s poll numbers, it’s all working. […]

    Trump is underwater on the economy, on the war in Ukraine, and even on immigration. He is so immensely unpopular that he has broken the previous unpopularity record set by … Donald Trump.

    In 2018, when Trump was more popular than he is now, Democrats picked up 41 seats in midterm elections—the largest Democratic gain since Watergate. The 2016 election that brought Trump to power had left Republicans with an enormous 241-194 advantage in the House. The first midterms under Trump nearly reversed that result, leaving the House at 235-199 in favor of Democrats.

    With Republicans currently holding a slim five-seat lead in the House, a result like 2018 would absolutely swamp them. Trump’s polls should be enough to have Republicans quaking in their $4,000 ostrich skin faux-cowboy boots.

    A repeat of 2018 would leave Hakeem Jefferies presiding over a House that was 254-181 Democratic. That’s the kind of margin that makes for genuinely historic change. With their razor-thin advantage in the House, Republicans should be terrified. Phones should be ringing off the hook at lobbying firms as Republican reps seek to leverage their positions for fresh employment while they still can.

    But Republicans are not scared. They look at the polls and see no reason to abandon Trump; no reason to shift their positions; no reason not to back tariffs, prison camps, and political persecutions.

    Because if there’s one thing polling worse than Trump, it’s the Democratic Party.

    In March, the Democratic Party hit an all-time polling low for any party, and it did this as Trump was wrecking the economy, deporting people without due process, and trying to extort minerals from Ukraine. […]

    The numbers have recovered slightly since then, but polls still show that the Democratic Party is hugely underwater, and despite everything, less popular than the Republican Party on every key issue. Even as Americans are waking to the horror of what Trump is doing, they are not looking to Democrats for help.

    […] Going into 2018, it wasn’t just that Trump’s poll numbers were low; Democratic Party numbers were at record highs. Not only did Democrats enjoy a wide advantage over Republicans, 40% called themselves “extremely enthusiastic” about voting for a Democrat—the highest number ever in CNN’s polling.

    None of that is happening now. Trump is sinking, but the Democratic Party is sinking more than Trump. Republicans continue to enjoy an advantage in head-to-head polling. […]

    This is a referendum on Democratic Party leadership that has been an absolute paragon of ineffectiveness.

    […] Trump’s second term is a historic challenge to the survival of this nation, and so far, Democratic leadership has failed that challenge at every turn.

    Democratic leadership needs to be out there, not just marching with the protestors but leading the protests. They need to be pushing their way into social media and traditional media, shouting down Trump’s actions and the support of Congressional Republicans in the strongest possible terms. They need to be angry. They need to be aggressive. They need to be, what’s that term?

    Fired up and ready to go.

    They need to stop trying to critique Democrats who are willing to stand against Trump. They need to put down their sternly worded letter pen. They need to stop worrying that Trump is trying to trap them.

    […] Trump is historically unpopular. He’s going to get more unpopular as prices rise, jobs decline, and people realize they’ve all been taken for a ride. We’re even seeing something this cycle that we didn’t see in 2018: A large number of Trump voters waking up to their mistake and looking for an alternative.

    Democrats better give them that alternative soon. Or someone will.

  59. says

    Ukraine ready to sign Trump’s minerals deal

    Ukraine says it’s ready to sign […] Trump’s minerals agreement as soon as Wednesday, almost two months after a contentious White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky derailed talks on the deal.

    The two sides plan to sign the agreement on Wednesday in Washington, multiple outlets reported.

    Ukrainian first deputy prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, is travelling to Washington to ink the agreement, according to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

    “We are finalising the last details with our American colleagues. As soon as all the final details have been finalised, I hope that the agreement will be signed in the near future, within the next 24 hours,” Shmyhal told the Ukrainian Telemarathon on Wednesday. […]

    Ukraine has long called for security gaurantees from the U.S. as part of any peace deal. Earlier versions of the agreement made vague allusions to security. Trump officials have argued that U.S. investment in Ukrainian mines would bring implied protection from Russian attacks.

    Ukraine and the U.S. signed a memorandum, which was released on April 18, to finalize a formal agreement on economic partnership between the two countries and establish a “reconstruction investment fund.” […]

    A source familiar with the discussion told The Hill on Wednesday that the signing of the deal can happen on Wednesday if Ukraine satisfies the memo’s intent and agreed-upon terms.

    The source suggested Ukraine was attempting to reopen settled terms of the deal, including the transparency mechanism, the governance fund and ensuring that funds are traceable.

    Shmyhal said on Monday that under the agreement, previous U.S. assistance to Ukraine would not be counted as part of the minerals agreement.

    […] Zelensky has declined to sign the previous proposals of the deal, which requires Ukraine to relinquish a major share of its future oil, gas and mineral revenues. […]

    I half expect Trump to pull the rug out from under Ukraine again.

  60. says

    York Times fires back after Trump threat

    The New York Times issued a firm rebuke of President Trump on Wednesday after the president threatened the news outlet with legal action over reporting on the litigation in which he is locked with Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News.

    “President Trump’s post today follows a long list of legal threats aimed at discouraging or penalizing independent reporting about the administration. The law is clear and protects a strong free press and favors an informed American public,” the Times said in a statement to The Hill.

    The outlet was referencing a social media post by Trump earlier Wednesday morning in which the president accused Times journalists of having “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, possibly to the point where the Times’ interjection makes them liable for tortious interference, including in Elections, which we are intently studying.”

    The Times on Tuesday evening published a report laying out an effort by lawyers for the president and Paramount Global to secure a settlement in connection with the lawsuit he filed over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes,” a CBS News program.

    The report noted “legal experts have called the suit baseless and an easy victory for CBS,” an assertion Trump pushed back aggressively on in his Truth Social post.

    […] “The New York Times will not be deterred by the administration’s intimidation tactics,” the Times said in its statement Wednesday. “We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.” […]

  61. says

    Followup to comments 45 and 57/

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/stupid-hitler-emphasis-on-the-stupid

    “Stupid Hitler, Emphasis On The Stupid, Really Thinks That Kilmar Photoshop He Posted Is Real”

    “Or he’s just a lying Nazi who hates immigrants like Hitler hated Jews. Or both.”

    Much will likely be made of Donald Trump’s ABC News interview with Terry Moran last night […] For instance, he said Moran didn’t know what his tariffs would do to the price of goods from China, because “You don’t know whether or not China’s going to eat it.” He added, “China will probably eat those tariffs.”

    You know, the 145 percent tariffs. You don’t know, Terry. Maybe China will just eat that 145 percent and charge us, um … carry the two … math and commerce and tariffs, how does it work?

    How does fucking anything work? This barely sentient buffoon lost contact with the ability to know decades ago […]

    But in this blog post, we’d like to focus on the truly mindnumbing exchange Trump — in olden days, Trump might’ve been called the “leader of the free world,” but it’s increasingly clear this befuddled dipshit is leading a whole lotta nothin’ […] The Photoshopped picture he posted of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s nonexistent “MS-13” hand tattoo was Photoshopped. (It was.)

    And Donald Trump, a few weeks ago, posted a picture of himself holding a ludicrously obviously amateurly Photoshopped picture of Kilmar, where Kilmar had a ludicrously obviously amateurly Photoshopped “MS-13” tattoo on his knuckles. He has now posted that picture repeatedly. Did we say ludicrously obviously amateurly Photoshopped? That might be generous, since we are pretty sure a halfway computer savvy sixth grader with Microsoft Paint could have typed the “M,” the “S,” the “1” and the “3” on Kilmar’s knuckles, that’s how ludicrously obviously amateurly.

    […] that picture fooled Trump. He thinks it’s real. […] He thinks it’s as real as that Facebook status that says that as of midnight tonight, he declares he DOES NOT GIVE FACEBOOK PERMISSION to use his photos.

    [Videos and transcript at the link. In the transcript you can see that Trump insisted over and over again that his photo of the tattoo on Kilmar’s knuckles was real. Trump insisted much more that other reports reveal. It’s alarming.]

    Yes, Donald Trump’s brain is pudding. China is going to eat the tariffs and [Trump] thinks that picture he posted is real, the one with the computer letters and numbers that say “MS-13.” And he’s so confused and angry about it, he’s going to lash out at Terry Moran and say he hasn’t heard of him and that it’s really ungrateful for him to be saying these things, after they’ve given him the “break of a lifetime” and let him interview Trump.

    This picture: [Photo at the link]

    Why doesn’t Terry Moran just say thank you?

    Why doesn’t he just say yes, Donald Trump, Barack Obama is a Muslin and Facebook is not allowed to sell my pictures to the internet after 12:01 a.m. and please post this status as legal proof of that and that Kilmar Abrego Garcia has “MS-13” written on his knuckles?

    […] This dementia patient thinks he runs the world.

    God help us all.

  62. says

    […] the Trump administration on Monday fired all the scientists working on the sixth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report that’s published every four years to explain how the country is being affected by global warming.

    As The New York Times puts it with just a bit of an understatement, “The move puts the future of the report […] into serious jeopardy, experts said.” Hey, Congress may have required the report be compiled every so often since 2000, but is there anything in the law requiring the executive branch to actually pay for it? Or maybe Trump will simply have his climate denier friends put together a slapdash replacement contending that climate change is actually good for America.

    The comprehensive climate reports cover every aspect of how climate affects the country in sectors like human health, agriculture, water supplies, transportation, and the like. The most recent National Climate Assessment, published in 2023, also included, for the first time, a chapter on the economic effects of a changing climate, pointing out the increasing costs of climate-related extreme weather and explaining that “the benefits of deep emissions cuts for current and future generations are expected to far outweigh the costs.”

    The report also emphasized that transitioning away from fossil fuels would reduce pollution, resulting in “widespread health benefits and avoided death or illness that far outweigh the costs of mitigation.” In other words, the transition would pay for itself in lower health and mortality costs. […]

    The periodic climate reports are a huge undertaking, with hundreds of contributing scientists who volunteer their time to write it, bringing to it a vast range of expertise.

    But Monday, the researchers preparing the next assessment got an email telling them that their services are no longer needed.

    “We are now releasing all current assessment participants from their roles,” the email said. “As plans develop for the assessment, there may be future opportunities to contribute or engage. Thank you for your service.”

    […] That Global Change Research Program established by that law was empowered by Congress to develop policy related to climate change and other environmental crises. One of its early achievements, back in the 1990s, was in pulling together research that guided regulations to prevent depletion of the ozone layer. Remember how the world headed off that potential disaster with science, international agreements, and regulations? And the economy didn’t even collapse, either! Since then, the program has coordinated the periodic climate assessments across a range of federal agencies.

    […] Monday’s firing of the scientists working on the report was only the final blow; earlier in April, the administration canceled a key contract that paid for the production of the climate reports, effectively defunding the Global Change Research Program. […]

    Beyond that, the USGCRP also coordinates America’s contributions to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which of course is the biggest international body dealing with climate science. No big deal, since the US has decided we’re not part of the world anymore.

    There’s no getting around the fact that Trump is doing all he can to disrupt climate science — hell, all science — in the US, and the damage he’s doing will take years to fix, however quickly he’s removed from office. But there’s also this to keep in mind: Trump’s efforts to boost fossil fuels keep crashing into his insane tariffs, which may harm Big Oil as much as other policies may aim at helping them. […]

    With the US determined to go the wrong way on climate, we sure hope China keeps accelerating its massive transition to renewables.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-throws-climate-science

  63. JM says

    @59 Lynna, OM: It isn’t just the US changing the terms. I don’t have a source for this but from watching the action I’m pretty sure Zelensky is dragging this out also because he knows that land in Ukraine is his best leverage over the US. Zelensky probably understands better then most that Trump is short sighted and only concerned with immediate material rewards. As long as Zelensky dangles the possibility of a land deal in front of Trump he will have Trump’s attention and the Trump won’t want to pull out of Ukraine.

  64. says

    Stocks slide after report shows economy shrank ahead of Trump’s tariffs

    The U.S. economy contracted 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025, the first negative reading since 2022, according to an initial measurement released Wednesday by the Commerce Department.

    The decline in gross domestic product was fueled by a massive surge in imports, while other parts of the U.S. economy showed signs of slowing. Consumer spending climbed 1.8%, the weakest pace since mid-2023. The report also showed inflation remained firm.

    Markets tanked in response. The broad S&P 500 declined as much as 1.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 600 points, or about 1.6%. Government bond yields climbed, suggesting weaker demand for U.S. debt.

    […] The report is among the last data points to capture a snapshot of the U.S. economy before President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement sent shock waves around the world. More recent data has begun to capture some of that fallout. Earlier Wednesday, payroll processor ADP reported just 62,000 new roles added in April — well below both estimates.

    Meanwhile, many companies have lowered their forecasts for 2025 or have withdrawn their financial guidance entirely.

    The U.S. economy thus appears to be entering a period of instability — one that is largely self-inflicted. In a new interview with ABC News, Trump continued to downplay concerns about the economy, claiming he had signaled during his campaign that there would be a “transition period” as his policies took hold.

    “Well, they did sign up for it,” Trump countered. “This is what I campaigned on.”

    […] In a Truth Social post Wednesday, Trump blamed former President Joe Biden for the weakness.

    “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” he wrote. “I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

    [Graph at the link]

    Gross domestic product is the standard measure of a country’s economic growth. It is the sum of consumption, investment, government spending and the balance of trade, defined as exports minus imports.

    In most circumstances, advanced economies like the U.S. try to aim for GDP of around 2% to 3% per quarter, adjusted for inflation. The U.S. has been doing slightly better than 2% for the past two years — and until Trump began his tariffs rollout, it was expected to have performed at about that pace.

    But shock over Trump’s tariffs has begun to rattle [everyone, everywhere]

  65. says

    JM @63, could be true. Zelensky got a good taste of that during his brief chat with Trump at the Pope’s funeral, and during Trump’s remarks mildly dissing Putin afterwards.

    In other news: Trump’s trade war hits his second-favorite set of wheels, the golf cart

    “Golf carts are just one example of complex products assembled in the U.S. that rely on foreign components.”

    […] Trump’s second favorite set of wheels, the golf cart, is another good example of the global reality behind “Made in America” manufacturing claims. While both Club Car and E-Z-Go assemble their golf carts in the United States, they source their components from China, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Turkey, and Europe, among other countries.

    The two companies — which collectively held a substantial market share, over 37%, of the golf cart industry in 2024, according to Global Market Insights — were a part of a case brought to the U.S. International Trade Commission alleging harm from unfair Chinese trade practices. The ITC has already found a reasonable indication that imports from China are materially injuring what is defined as the U.S. low-speed, personal transportation vehicle market. A final determination, which could include tariffs on Chinese-made golf carts, is scheduled to be announced on June 17.

    According to ImportGenius, the U.S. imported $709 million in fully assembled golf carts in 2024, with $703 million, or 99% of that, coming from China.

    For Club Car and E-Z-Go, data gathered and analyzed by ImportGenius shows that while the assembly of their carts may take place in the U.S., the supply chains are potentially exposed to many Trump administration tariffs.

    E-Z-Go, which is part of diversified industrial Textron, sources its golf carts from a supply chain that is heavily reliant on products from China and Taiwan. The engines for their golf carts are made in Taiwan; the GPS tracking system is made in Malaysia; and the golf cart itself — golf cart seats, mirrors, windshields, cargo bed, enclosures, fenders, steering wheels, golf seat trays, golf car batteries, and grab handles — are all made in China. […]

    More at the link.

  66. says

    Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi is free on bail after judge orders his release from federal custody

    “Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old U.S. permanent resident who was raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, was detained during his April 14 naturalization interview in Vermont.”

    Video at the link.

    […] Mahdawi, a 34-year-old U.S. permanent resident who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, was detained April 14 and had been held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, the Northwest State Correctional Facility, in St. Albans, Vermont.

    “I am saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” Mahdawi said Wednesday outside the Vermont courthouse after his release.

    “What we are witnessing now and what we’re understanding is exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King has said before: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he added.

    From the bench, Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ordered the release of Mahdawi from prison on bail, pending the resolution of his habeas petition. […]

    Addressing reporters outside the courthouse, Mahdawi’s attorneys claimed victory against what they described as “the government’s retaliation” against Mahdawi’s right to free speech.

    “Their claims and actions are baseless, without evidence, and are a disgrace to the U.S. Constitution,” said Luna Droubi, partner of Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP. “We will keep fighting until Mohsen is free for good.”

    Mahdawi grew up in al-Fara, a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, where much of his family remains, according to a court filing. When he was 15 years old, he was shot in the leg by an Israeli soldier, the document states. He came to the U.S. more than a decade ago before enrolling at Columbia in 2021, according to the filing.

    […] “Keep in mind that, yes, you might think I am free, but my freedom is interlinked to the freedom of many other students, including Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil,” he said.”[…]

  67. says

    Trump’s tariff fiasco has even his own treasury secretary flailing

    “And even a statement of fact about how tariffs generate revenue is enough to send the administration into a rage.”

    Related video at the link.

    Before his second term began, President Donald Trump said that tariffs were “not going to be a cost to you, it’s going to be a cost to another country.” He said they will make a “great economy.” He said they “will MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN.”

    […] Trump is a good salesman, and he has found buyers for a lot of junk over the years, from steaks to supplements to degrees from Trump University. But this time the sales job is failing. Though many voters unfortunately believed his pitch through the 2024 presidential election, more and more of the public has figured out that tariffs don’t work the way Trump claims, especially when they’re so haphazard and unpredictable that what the administration is doing can barely be called a “policy.” Remarkably, they have reached those conclusions even before tariffs really start to increase prices […]When that happens, a bad start for Trump 2.0 could become a political catastrophe.

    […] Bessent [Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ]claimed that Trump was cleverly deploying “strategic uncertainty” to keep other countries off guard. “I think that tariffs will bring back American manufacturing and generate substantial revenues,” he added.

    But it’s impossible to negotiate with someone who won’t say what he wants from other countries or keeps changing those asks. Even the two goals Bessent stated are in direct conflict. If tariffs bring back American manufacturing, that means consumers will be buying American-made goods, which means less tariff revenue. If they bring in substantial revenues, it means consumers are continuing to buy foreign-made goods and American manufacturing languishes. [Yep the entire Trump “policy” is incoherent. It’s not even a policy really. It’s more of a delusional movie that seems to be running on a continuous loop in Trump’s addled brain.]

    […] Amid his verbal squirming in Tuesday’s news conference, Bessent offered a perhaps unintended revelation. “President Trump is interested in the jobs of the future, not the jobs of the past,” the secretary said. “We don’t need to necessarily have a booming textile industry like where I grew up again, but we do want to have precision manufacturing and bring that back.”

    But textiles and other low-cost goods that rely on cheap foreign labor are subject to Trump’s tariffs, which means higher prices for consumers even if Americans won’t ever make those products again. And while precision manufacturing is great, it tends to be much more automated, which requires a smaller number of highly skilled employees. That means Americans won’t be working in that kind of factory by the tens of millions. In other words, Bessent accidentally summed up the effects of Trump’s tariffs: we’ll pay higher prices, but get little in return. Even before we feel the worst of it, Americans already understand. They aren’t happy and, if a recession comes, Trump will really feel their wrath.

  68. says

    Profiting off ‘people’s suffering’: Airline set to operate ICE flights faces backlash

    “Protests are breaking out across the U.S. against Avelo Airlines after it agreed to help the administration carry out deportations.”

    This is an adapted excerpt from the April 29 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

    Earlier this month, dozens of people gathered at an airport in New Haven, Connecticut, to protest a small budget airline called Avelo. The company, which markets itself as a consumer airline for the general public, recently signed a contract with the Trump administration for the use of its planes, flight attendants and everything else for deportation flights.

    Since then, the protests against Avelo Airlines at the New Haven airport have become a regular thing, and they have been getting bigger over time. Connecticut’s senior U.S. senator, Richard Blumenthal, joined the protesters for one of them.

    […] These protests are taking place all over the country. This past weekend, we saw protests in Santa Rosa, California. Throughout the month, there have been protests at airports in Rochester, New York; Wilmington, Delaware; Burbank, California; and Daytona Beach, Florida. If there is an airport where Avelo flies, chances are there has been a protest there this month — maybe even more than one. One online petition calling for a boycott of Avelo has more than 36,000 signatures so far.

    […] it is another thing to be a private, for-profit, public-facing company trying to get consumers to purchase your product while you are also participating in [illegal deportations].

    […] Avelo has its largest base in New Haven, and the airline recently expanded to a second airport there after getting a sweet tax deal from the state government. But now, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has written to Avelo and told the company, “The State of Connecticut has an obligation now … to consider the viability of our choice to support Avelo.”

    […] In addition to requesting a copy of Avelo’s contract with the Trump administration, Tong demanded answers to a number of questions, including, “Can Avelo confirm that it will never operate flights while non-violent passengers are in shackles, handcuffs, waist chains and/or leg irons and unable to safely evacuate in the event of an emergency?”

    Avelo responded by not answering any of those questions. Instead, the airline told Connecticut’s attorney general that he has a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the situation and advised him that if he wants a copy of its contract with the Trump administration, he is welcome to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the government.

    […] In a statement, Tong called Avelo’s letter “insulting and condescending to the people of Connecticut who have invested in and committed millions of dollars to Avelo’s success.”

    “What’s more, telling the Office of the Attorney General to pound sand and to ask the Department of Homeland Security for a copy of their contract through FOIA is a callous back-of-the-hand that shows they really don’t care what we think,” Tong wrote. “It is clear all they intend to do is take state support and make money off other people’s suffering.”

  70. says

    Republican ploys to cover tax cuts for the rich

    Republicans on the House Transportation Committee floated an idea to levy a new tax on every car in the United States in order to help pay for Donald Trump’s budget—which features tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich.

    Sam Graves, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wanted to put a $20 annual tax on every car, and an even steeper $200 annual fee for electric vehicles and $100 for hybrids. The Missouri Republican and other members of the committee cooked up the desperate scheme to help partially pay for Trump’s deficit-exploding tax cut and border security bill.

    But before a national car tax could be debated at a Wednesday hearing on Capitol Hill, Politico reported that House leadership had already nixed the idea following an uproar from conservative lawmakers and mocking from Democrats across the aisle.

    “Are you out of your fricking mind?” GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told Politico of the car tax idea. “Like, the party of limited government is gonna go out and, ‘say we’re gonna have [a car tax]?’

    “Of all the crazy things Republicans want to do, now they want a CAR TAX?!” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday in a post on X. “HELL NO.”

    On Wednesday, after it was reported that the tax wouldn’t be included in the GOP bill, Schumer tweeted, “lol, the republicans have already now backed off this dumb idea.”

    Republicans, however, are desperate to find $880 billion worth of cuts to the federal budget to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and pass a bill by Memorial Day.

    The majority of the cuts are expected to come from Medicaid—the critical government program that provides health insurance to 72 million low-income Americans.

    But Republicans are having issues coming to an agreement on how to cut the hugely popular program.

    So far, the idea being floated by the GOP—paring back the Medicaid expansion funding passed by Democrats as part of the Affordable Care Act—would cause up to 20 million people to lose their health insurance […]

    Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, another GOP lawmaker who says he would not vote to cut Medicaid, now says he’d be okay with up to $500 billion in cuts from the program, Politico reported. Seriously.

    Republicans’ own polling shows that cutting Medicaid would be a political disaster for the party. And a Civiqs poll conducted for Daily Kos in March found that 63% of registered voters oppose the idea of cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts.

    So it’s interesting that Republicans were so quick to drop their car tax idea to pay for rich people’s tax cuts—but have not ruled out ripping health insurance coverage away from the poorest Americans. […]

    Duh. Republicans cannot make their truly despicable budget plans work … because … math.

  71. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/here-it-is-the-rfk-jrdr-phil-interview

    “Here It Is, The RFK Jr./Dr. Phil Interview Recap You Never Asked For!”

    Video at the link.

    I made it about seven minutes into Dr. Phil’s interview with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before I broke. I made it through the not-so-good doctor’s extremely vague introduction, casting Kennedy as a rebel, heroically standing up to “the man,” without mentioning any of his actual beliefs, but it wasn’t until seven minutes in, when the two of them expressed their shared awe that the HHS was so much bigger and cost so much more than the Pentagon and what we spend on defense, that I needed to scream into a throw pillow.

    Because obviously we should be spending more money on killing people than on trying to cure cancer, right?

    […] the part that’s getting the most attention is the part where RFK Jr. encourages parents to “do their own research” on vaccines and suggested that the measles vaccine was unsafe. […] because I am apparently a masochist, I’m going to watch the whole 120 minute thing … and I’m taking you all on that journey with me.

    It got worse after that. Because after that, Dr. Phil — who we can assume, as a big Trump supporter, does not support Medicare for All or any form of socialized medicine — had the gall to note that “We have the highest healthcare cost and the poorest healthcare delivery of the other 37 developed nations that it’s compared to.”

    Yes. Because those nations have universal healthcare and the United States is the only nation in the developed world without it. That is why they have better outcomes. […]

    I’ve seen several Republicans touting this line lately and I can’t believe it, especially after the many years they’ve spent claiming that we have the best healthcare in the world and all of the other countries are jealous of us.

    Kennedy then starts going on about how the CDC is “responsible” for the fact that Americans are so sick and have so many chronic diseases, which they’re not. Seems worth noting here that one of the most common chronic diseases in the United States is tooth decay, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to get fluoride out of the tap water.

    And then RFK Jr. starts in on the fertility of teenagers and his oft-cited statistic that 77 percent of teenagers are not eligible to serve in the military for health reasons, calling it a matter of national security. While, yes, the number one reason is obesity (though, please to recall, conservatives are the ones who think “walkable cities,” a thing that would certainly help with that, are a communist plot to take their cars and freedom away), the second is drug use or a criminal record and the third is inadequate education. […]

    He starts going on and on about how there was no chronic disease when his uncle (JFK, you may have heard) was president and no money was spent on chronic diseases at all. Just to be clear, the most common chronic diseases are heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy and, again, tooth decay.

    Point of fact, deaths due to heart disease hit a high in the 1960s, when his uncle was president, and have steadily declined ever since. […] [Graph at the link]

    […] After this, Dr. Phil pulled up a list of the things RFK Jr., who is not a doctor nor a scientist, suspects are the “root causes” of childhood chronic illness, which included things like medical treatments (ie: vaccines), electromagnetic radiation, and absorption of toxic material. As for that last one, let us just note that the CDC, under RFK Jr., has refused to help Milwaukee address its problem of unsafe lead levels in public schools. [Image at the link]

    Following this, RFK Jr. and Dr. Phil had a relatively bland conversation about tobacco companies and food dyes and additives and how kids should eat better. Dr. Phil then followed that up by asking, “Now, the things that we’re talking about, these are not things that are challenging to follow, right? […] Why do you think people are so threatened by the message that you are delivering?”

    So here’s what he’s doing. He’s taking the absolute most innocuous thing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes or wants to do with the HHS and making that the reason people are calling him a “conspiracy, crazy nutball.” That’s like suggesting that people’s primary opposition to Hitler was that he was a vegetarian. [Yep.]

    RFK Jr.’s reasoning, of course, was that it’s the industries that make these things that are convincing everyone that he’s nuts.

    […] RFK Jr. explains that Roger Ailes told Kennedy that he agreed with him on everything but couldn’t put him on any of the primetime shows to talk about it because of their pharmaceutical advertisers. […]

    I will note here that no one is mad about the idea of taking pharmaceutical ads off TV, either, and this is actually something the Left has been saying for years now.

    About a half hour into the interview (yes, all of this nonsense occurs before then), we finally get to vaccines. RFK Jr. says the things he’s supposed to say about how people who get the MMR vaccine will almost definitely not get measles, but then claims that the real problem with the vaccine is the “mumps portion of the vaccine and the combination,” which he claims was “never safety tested.”

    That is a lie. [embedded links to sources are available at the main link]

    […] There have been many studies in many countries and the vaccine is definitely safe. RFK Jr. then claimed that the mumps portion of the vaccine “has never worked.”

    This is also a lie, and a fucking ridiculous one at that, because it’s pretty easy to see that vaccinated people are not going around getting mumps these days.

    Dr. Phil then did his level best to sanewash what RFK Jr. was saying […] RFK Jr. then claimed that none of the vaccines were “safety tested” against placebos, claiming that this means that “we have no idea what the risk profiles for these products are.”

    Also a lie, and here is a list of those tests:
    – Rubella vaccine
    – Pneumococcal vaccine […]
    – HPV vaccine
    – The Salk Polio vaccine
    – Measles vaccine
    – Tdap vaccine
    – COVID vaccine

    He then claimed that the CDC did a study on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) called “The Lazarus Study” that showed that 99 percent of vaccine injuries go unreported … and then used that to say, once again that “we have no idea about the safety profiles of these products.”

    This is also, unsurprisingly, a straight up lie.

    Dr. Phil then moved the conversation to autism, and, predictably, RFK Jr. repeated his usual lies, which we all know by heart by now.

    Dr. Phil once again tried to help him make his ideas sound more normal. [I snipped details]

    […] And RFK Jr. noped that right out of the park, saying, “Whatever’s causing the epidemic [of autism] is not genetic,” later claiming, “We know it’s a toxin that became widespread around 1989.”

    [I snipped details of RFK Jr. answering questions from the audience. He answered with yet more lies. I think he does not understand any of the science.]

    After a break, Dr. Phil took the reins back to ask Kennedy Jr. why people write about infectious diseases more than they write about chronic diseases, which is a lot like asking why police only send out Amber Alerts for children who have just gone missing in a specific area instead of all the missing children everywhere, or why the CDC (used to) alert people when it’s not safe to eat romaine lettuce because of e. coli, instead of alerting them to all the food that is unhealthy for them to eat.

    […] “every kid who gets a diabetes diagnosis, there should be a headline and every kid who gets an autism diagnosis, there should be a headline, but you never read about ‘em.”

    […] Next up, we get to the part everyone’s been talking about, in which a woman asks him what his advice would be for new parents, with regards to vaccines. And yes, he said “do your own research” — which for people who share his views usually means “look at some memes on Facebook.”

    A few audience members later, we get Emily, who tells us that her “biggest concern is the stratospheric aerosol injections that are continuously peppered on us every day. Bromium, aluminum, strontium, it’s sprayed in our skies all day long. […] How do we stop it?”

    In case it’s not 100 percent clear … our dear Emily is talking about chemtrails, which are not real. I’m also going to need to point out that “bromium” is the homeopathic term for “bromine.” Strangely enough, people believe it cures respiratory problems, which it does not, because water doesn’t have a memory and homeopathy is bullshit.

    “[…] Kennedy answered. “[…] It’s done — we think — by DARPA and a lot of it now is coming out of the jet fuel. Those materials are put in jet fuel. I’m going to do everything in my power to stop it. We’re bringing on somebody who’s gonna think only about that, find out who’s doing that and hold them accountable.”

    No. Just no.

    This is one promise he’ll end up breaking — because you can’t put a stop to something that doesn’t exist in the first place. No matter what he does, these people are still going to see contrails from planes in the sky and go “Oh no, chemtrails!”
    […]

  72. says

    Followup to comment 71.

    The little-known database at the heart of Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracy theory

    Related video at the link.

    For as long as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has falsely claimed that vaccines cause widespread harm — from autism to sudden death — he has pointed to the one source he says could immediately prove it.

    […] Kennedy has repeatedly claimed that the evidence of a massive public health cover-up lies buried in a little-known database of medical records of some 12 million Americans: the Vaccine Safety Datalink, or VSD.

    […] one of his first initiatives as health secretary was to launch his long-dreamed-of study using the VSD to investigate the link between childhood vaccines and autism. It’s a theory that has already been disproven in dozens of studies, many using VSD data.

    […] Without evidence, anti-vaccine lawyer Aaron Siri and activist Del Bigtree have claimed on the internet show “The HighWire” that the CDC scattered the vaccine safety data after Kennedy took office, making it unavailable for Kennedy’s team to examine. […]

    It’s a pattern that has echoed through the first months of the Trump administration: Onetime outsiders who had long asserted that the federal government was hiding the truth suddenly had access to all the government documents they could want — only to reveal that, perhaps, there were no nefarious secrets after all. […]

    Now, it appears that anti-vaccine activists are similarly girding for the possibility that Kennedy’s promises may fall short — and they’re already laying the groundwork for someone to blame.

    “We’ve been saying that database is where the answers are,” Bigtree, who was communications director for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign, said of the VSD on “The HighWire” last week. “You could do the study in probably minutes with AI and computer learning and everything that’s possible. Then the moment before Bobby gets in there to be able to do that study, what did they do? They obliterated it.”

    […] A CDC spokesperson confirmed that nothing about the stewardship of VSD data had changed in the last year.

    […] The VSD is a collaboration between a small team at the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office and 11 private health care organizations. Since the 1990s, it’s been used to monitor vaccine safety and conduct studies of rare side effects.

    “These studies that use the VSD are able to tell the difference between a condition that coincidentally happens after vaccination and a condition that may actually be the result of vaccination,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

    The health care organizations used to send their anonymized medical data to the CDC each year for analysis, but since 2001, the organizations have kept the data on their own servers, to ensure it stays secure.

    “[…] There is no single file that can just be sent or released.”

    The conspiracy lore around the VSD began in the early aughts, around the time that Kennedy, then an environmental lawyer, was being introduced to the anti-vaccine movement.

    At that point, the only groups with access to the VSD were the CDC and the participating health care organizations. The studies they produced relied on the data they collected, including from doctor and hospital visits, vaccinations, pharmacies and lab results. […]

    More details at the link.

  75. Reginald Selkirk says

    RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory

    …
    While we may never have definitive answers on his cognitive situation, one thing is plain: Kennedy’s thoughts and actions make a lot more sense when you realize he doesn’t believe in a foundational scientific principle: germ theory.
    …
    It’s important to note here that our understanding of Kennedy’s disbelief in germ theory isn’t based on speculation or deduction; it’s based on Kennedy’s own words. He wrote an entire section on it in his 2021 book vilifying Fauci, titled The Real Anthony Fauci. The section is titled “Miasma vs. Germ Theory,” in the chapter “The White Man’s Burden.”
    …
    In the chapter, Kennedy promotes the “miasma theory” but gets the definition completely wrong. Instead of actual miasma theory, he describes something more like terrain theory. He writes: “‘Miasma theory’ emphasizes preventing disease by fortifying the immune system through nutrition and by reducing exposures to environmental toxins and stresses.”

    Kennedy contrasts his erroneous take on miasma theory with germ theory, which he derides as a tool of the pharmaceutical industry and pushy scientists to justify selling modern medicines…

    According to Kennedy, germ theory gained popularity, not because of the undisputed evidence supporting it, but by “mimicking the traditional explanation for disease—demon possession—giving it a leg up over miasma.” …

    Smallpox could not be reached for comment.

  76. Reginald Selkirk says

    New Atomic Fountain Clock Joins Elite Group That Keeps the World on Time

    NIST:

    Clocks on Earth are ticking a bit more regularly thanks to NIST-F4, a new atomic clock at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) campus in Boulder, Colorado. This month, NIST researchers published a journal article establishing NIST-F4 as one of the world’s most accurate timekeepers. NIST has also submitted the clock for acceptance as a primary frequency standard by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), the body that oversees the world’s time.

    NIST-F4 measures an unchanging frequency in the heart of cesium atoms, the internationally agreed-upon basis for defining the second since 1967. The clock is based on a “fountain” design that represents the gold standard of accuracy in timekeeping. NIST-F4 ticks at such a steady rate that if it had started running 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed, it would be off by less than a second today.
    …

  77. Reginald Selkirk says

    Woman, 36, with Stage 4, incurable colon cancer now cancer-free thanks to new treatment

    During Thanksgiving 2013, Emma Dimery, then 23, experienced intense stomach cramps… Ultimately, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 colorectal cancer, and Dimery eventually ran out of treatment options. Then she learned of a clinical trial that could help her. Excited, she enrolled and underwent the therapy in late 2022 and beginning of 2023.

    Two months after she completed the study, she learned some unexpected news.

    “There was no evidence of disease. It was amazing,” she says. “My whole adult life up to that point I was pretty much a cancer patient.”

    The treatment she received uses “CRISPR gene editing” to create an individualized treatment for Stage 4 colorectal cancer patients, as Dr. Emil Lou, the principal investigator of the clinical trial, describes it.

    In this trial, Lou and his colleagues used CRISPR, a tool that can modify the DNA of living organisms, to prevent cancer cells from evading the immune system.

    More specifically, cancer cells can create blockages that stop the immune system from attacking them. These blockages on the immune calls are also called checkpoints. This study marked the first time researchers have used CRISPR to eliminate the CISH checkpoint in humans.

    The Phase I trial — meaning it is the first in humans and had the goal of showing the therapy is safe — examined 12 patients with gastrointestinal cancers, including colon and rectal cancer…

  78. says

    Reginald @75: “Smallpox could not be reached for comment.”

    Ha! I am back to my conclusion that RFK Jr. does not understand the science.

  79. says

    New York Times:

    […] Trump signed a pair of executive orders on Tuesday that walked back some tariffs for carmakers, removing levies that Ford, General Motors and others have complained would backfire on U.S. manufacturing by raising the cost of production and squeezing their profits.

  80. says

    NBC News:

    The Wisconsin judge [Judge Hannah Dugan] accused of obstructing federal authorities who were seeking to detain an undocumented immigrant for deportation was temporarily relieved of her duties Tuesday, an order from the state’s high court shows. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s order bars Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan from her position while the federal charges are adjudicated.

    Washington Post:

    Former U.S. solicitor general Paul Clement is helping defend the Milwaukee judge who was arrested last week for allegedly helping a Mexican migrant evade arrest.

  81. says

    NBC News:

    Conservative members of the Supreme Court on Wednesday leaned toward allowing Oklahoma to approve the first-ever religious public charter school in a case that could weaken the separation of church and state.

  82. says

    Washington Post:

    The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has quietly begun cooperating with federal immigration officials to locate people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to two people familiar with the matter and documents obtained by The Washington Post — dramatically broadening the scope of the Trump administration’s government-wide mass deportation campaign.

  83. says

    Washington Post:

    Federal Election Commission employees soon will be required to declare their work location in a daily questionnaire, part of the Trump administration’s effort to monitor compliance with return-to-office mandates and identify ‘unused space that may be ripe for disposal,’ according to an email sent to FEC employees and obtained by The Washington Post.

    The email said the FEC had prepared the ‘Daily Occupancy Tool’ in response to directives from the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration.

  84. says

    Trump’s Cabinet cult hawks MAGA merch in bizarre official meeting

    The members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet sat behind red MAGA-style hats emblazoned with the inaccurate terminology “Gulf of America” during a televised White House meeting held on Wednesday.

    […] As if the whole “Gulf of America” hat thing wasn’t absurd enough, billionaire Elon Musk also attended, wearing two different MAGA-style hats on his head. The attention-hungry move follows reports that he will soon step back from his role in steering the unpopular Trump White House. [Video at the link]

    Adding to the Cabinet meeting’s cult-like atmosphere, Trump opened the gathering by insisting they share a false reality. Lying, he claimed that it was not his fault that the nation’s gross domestic product shrunk in the first quarter of 2025. Instead, he incorrectly blamed former President Joe Biden.

    “That’s Biden. That’s not Trump,” Trump complained. “I was very against everything that Biden was doing in terms of the economy, destroying our country.” [Video at the link]

    In reality, the economy is suffering because of Trump’s chaotic tariff moves. His policies have increased the costs of goods and caused global economic uncertainty. The shrinking economy has virtually nothing to do with the former president.

    When Trump took office, the U.S. economy was booming following policies that Biden put in place to recover from the COVID-19-fueled downturn under Trump.

    The strange hats and the promotion of a false reality with Trump’s Cabinet of billionaires show evidence of a cult of self-deception. Trump and his team may try to sell a false version of reality to the public, where the Gulf of Mexico is renamed and tariffs are working out—but public opinion polling shows it isn’t working.

    Trump is unpopular and so are his ideas, and a red hat isn’t going to make that go away.

  85. says

    US, Ukraine sign mineral deal

    The United States and Ukraine signed their long-awaited mineral deal on Wednesday according to the Treasury Department. [I snipped Scott Bessent’s blather.]

    The two countries have been working on an agreement for months to secure a long-term U.S. economic investment by harvesting Ukraine’s raw earth minerals. The deal comes almost a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a deadly drone and missile attack on the country’s capital and days after President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s face-to-face meeting at the Vatican during the Pope Francis’s funeral. […]

    Bessent said that “no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

  86. says

    Followup to comment 85.

    “U.S. and Ukraine announce signing of contentious minerals deal”

    “The deal’s language marks a win for Kyiv, which has been seeking any concrete show of support from the United States since […] Trump returned to power.”

    Washington Post link

    The United States and Ukraine have signed a deal to establish joint investment in Ukraine’s mineral wealth, oil, gas and other natural resources, officials said Wednesday, in a move that would fulfill a key White House request and give Kyiv a degree of much-desired U.S. backing.

    […] Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term.”

    The deal will establish the “United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund” […]

    Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s Minister of Economy, said the deal “reflects the United States’ dedication to Ukraine’s security, recovery, and reconstruction… The document we have today can ensure success for both our countries — Ukraine and the United States.”

    The latest version of the deal, reviewed by The Washington Post, falls short of providing any concrete security guarantees to Ukraine, but it states that Kyiv and Washington agree it affirms a “long-term strategic alignment” between the two countries and U.S. “support for Ukraine’s security, prosperity, reconstruction, and integration into global economic frameworks.”

    That language alone marks a win for Kyiv […] Ukraine will seek significantly more tangible security guarantees under any future peace deal.

    This agreement makes no mention of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest such facility in Europe, which Russia violently seized in early 2022 and now occupies. U.S. officials have proposed taking control of the plant as part of a future deal to end the war.

    […] Zelensky refused to sign the document that reclassified aid as debt. […]

    Ukrainian officials then rewrote the deal and intended to sign a different, initial version when they visited Washington in February. That plan went haywire when Trump and Vice President JD Vance lambasted Zelensky on live TV in the Oval Office, before canceling the rest of his visit to the White House.

    Since then, the lack of agreement has hung over U.S. talks with Ukraine over a separate peace deal with Russia. Trump, who prides himself as a dealmaker, has grown increasingly impatient, writing on his Truth Social site last week that the mineral deal “is at least three weeks late.”

    […] A Ukrainian familiar with the process said despite reports of widespread disagreement, the discussions were productive and both sides listened to each other’s arguments.

    […] The latest draft of the deal adjusts several key points that Ukraine had objected to in past versions. Kyiv had, for example, raised concerns over language in a different draft that it feared could have put it in violation of European Union laws by offering advantages to American investors.

    […] It also allows for the possibility of future good-faith negotiations to rewrite parts of the deal if Ukraine legally must do so. […] also nixes old language that would have set Ukraine up to reimburse Washington for past U.S. military aid.

    […] Currently, foreign investors are reluctant to significantly scale up mineral projects in Ukraine for a number of reasons, including the war. Trump cannot force private U.S. firms to make expensive and potentially unprofitable investments.

    “Trump wants to present this as a victory for the Americans, but it’s not Trump who will invest, and it’s not the U.S. who will invest — you need the private sector,” Ustenko [Oleg Ustenko, who served as an economic adviser to Zelensky] said. “So I think it’s more symbolic than anything else right now.”

    Alex Jacquez, who served as a senior official on minerals in the Biden administration, said it’s extremely unlikely Ukraine has the ability to develop a new mining industry in lithium or rare earth metals, calling the trillions of dollars in natural resources claimed by the Trump administration to be illusory. Ukraine does have a large iron ore industry, but the draft agreement does not appear to include it.

    “The bottom line is Ukraine has deposits of a variety of critical minerals being valued at essentially imaginary numbers,” Jacquez said. “There is a reason few of these mining projects are actually being developed outside of China — under current economic conditions, it makes little sense for investors.”

  87. says

    Trump’s vulgarity and poor taste is on display in the Oval Office:

    […] The mantel is adorned by seven gold examples of bric-a-brac. Gold floral moldings are stuck here and there. Gold angels. Gold eagles on side tables. Gold coasters. Gold medallions on the fireplace. Gilded mirrors on the doors and gilded frames for about 20 paintings, more than triple the number Biden had, so there. Gold cherubs imported from Mar-a-Lago, which is probably still is not destitute of them. Gold coasters. A large gold block paperweight inscribed with TRUMP, in case he momentarily forgets to think about himself.

    Washington Post link

  88. StevoR says

    Dangerous wildfires have erupted in central Israel, forcing authorities to close major highways and prompting the Israeli Government to ask for international firefighting help. Dry and windy conditions fanned the flames, threatening communities about 25 kilometres west of Jerusalem and blanketing much of central Israel in smoke.Video shared on social media showed the fire raging along the edges of Highway 1, which connects Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, leaving motorists little choice but to abandon their cars and run for their lives.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-01/israel-fires/105236820

    @ 66. Lynna, OM : “Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi is free on bail after judge orders his release from federal custody.”

    Good news – although Mahdawi should never have been arrested and put through that in the first place. Saw an interview by him (Mohsen Mahdawi ) and was impressed by him.

  89. StevoR says

    @51. Update here again via space dot com :

    The confirmation of President Trump’s pick for NASA Administrator is one step closer to completion.

    The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation voted today (April 30) to advance his confirmation as Administrator to the full Senate. The votes tallied 19 to 9 in favor of Isaacman’s advancement, but for some it came with stipulations.

    Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/watch-trumps-pick-for-nasa-chief-jared-isaacman-return-to-capitol-hill-for-senate-vote-tomorrow

  90. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    USAToday – DOJ memo offers blueprint to Tren de Aragua deportation plan

    The directive, issued March 14 by Attorney General Pam Bondi, provides the first public view of the specific implementation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act […] March 15, immigration officials apprehended and flew more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador
    […]
    officers are free to “apprehend aliens” based on their “reasonable belief” they meet the definitions […] immigrants deemed “Alien Enemies” are “not entitled to a hearing, appeal or judicial review.”
    […]
    “The administration’s unprecedented use of a wartime authority during peacetime was bad enough […] Now we find out the Justice Department was authorizing officers to ignore […] the Fourth Amendment by authorizing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant.”
    […]
    “The documents reveal the Trump administration has authorized every single law enforcement officer in the country, including traffic cops, to engage in immigrant roundups explicitly outside due process,”

  91. StevoR says

    A huge family of newborn stars seem to now be going their separate ways: Over 1,000 stars are hurriedly fleeing their nest in record time, leading to something of a mystery as to the cause of this stellar breakup. Typically it takes a few hundred million years for a cluster of stars that are born together to break up, gradually nudged apart by gravitational tidal forces from each other and other passing objects.

    …(snip)…

    Yet a newly discovered young open cluster of stars, barely 20 million years old, seems to be playing by a different set of rules. Using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which measured the position, velocity, distance and spectra of approximately two billion stars, astronomers led by Dylan Huson of Western Washington University found that the thousand stars of this new cluster are all moving too fast to stay together.

    The cluster is about 650 light-years away in Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, and has been nicknamed “Ophion” in honor of its resident constellation.”Ophion is filled with stars that are set to rush out across the galaxy in a totally haphazard, uncoordinated way, which is far from what we’d expect for a family so big,” said Huson in a statement. “What’s more, this will happen in a fraction of the time it’d usually take for such a large family to scatter. It’s like no other star family we’ve seen before.”

    Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/stars/a-thousand-stars-are-fleeing-home-in-a-hurry-and-scientists-dont-know-why

  93. John Morales says

    “A huge family of newborn stars seem to now be going their separate ways: Over 1,000 stars are hurriedly fleeing their nest in record time, leading to something of a mystery as to the cause of this stellar breakup.”

    Who can know their motivation?

    Fleeing their nests, that’s for sure what stars do. Huge families!

    “It’s like no other star family we’ve seen before.”

    Star families!

    —

    Bah.

  95. StevoR says

    Donald Trump asked Americans to be “be patient” after the US economy unexpectedly shrank in the first quarter of the year, amid widespread concern over the president’s tariffs agenda.

    Gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annualised rate of 0.3 per cent between January and March, according to a report released by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis on Wednesday. That was worse than the 0.3 per cent growth economists had been forecasting, and came amid deep uncertainty over the impact of the Trump administration’s broad tariffs. The latest data marks the American economy’s worst performance in three years, as well as a dramatic reversal on the 2.4 per cent annualised growth recorded in the last three months of 2024.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-01/us-economy-shrinks-in-first-quarter-of-2025-trump-tariffs/105236706

    So those who voted for the regressives – in this case the Trumpists – believing the very erroneous myth that they are “better economic managers” (they are demonstrably NOT) have been proven wrong yet again.

    The cost of living is being pushed as an issue by the LNP here in Oz where, again, they are lying about our economy being worse than it is and blaming the govt for what greedy price-gouging companies esp supermarkets are doing. Despite the Gestapotato, our Trump copy, literally not knowing the price of eggs and being totally out of touch. The sad thing is that this dishonest tactic worked in the USA and worryingly could work here as well.

    PS. Yeah, polling and betting says ALP win likely but NOT being complacant or counting any metaphorical chickens till eggs – now costly thanks bird flu and corporate profiteers – hatch here.,

  96. StevoR says

    Via PBS Newshour :

    Oklahoma’s charter school board approved the creation of a Catholic virtual school in 2023, establishing the nation’s first publicly-funded religious charter school. Oklahoma’s Supreme Court blocked it, saying it violated the state constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case on Wednesday and John Yang discussed the arguments with News Hour Supreme Court analyst Marcia Coyle.

    Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/justices-appear-divided-in-supreme-court-case-over-publicly-funded-religious-schools

  97. John Morales says

    “You’re objecting to a comon metaphor now?”

    You reckon stars fleeing their nests in vast families is a common metaphor? I don’t think so.

    It’s narrative; it’s storytelling; it’s like it was written for very young children.

    Be aware I’m not objecting to it.

    (“When a star cluster loves another cluster very much…” type of thing)

  99. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    ProPublica – DOGE aide dismantling CFPB owns regulated stock & banned crypto

    Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old [DOGE] disclosed [his] investments […] as much as $365,000 worth of shares in four companies that the CFPB can regulate. […] he later helped oversee the layoffs of more than 1,400 employees at the bureau [90%]. […] a potential violation of federal ethics laws. […] Among those fired were the bureau’s ethics team
    […]
    at the CFPB in particular, regulations give employees 90 days to divest prohibited holdings. […] though, the employee is required to recuse themselves from any actions that could affect their investments.

    Rando 1: “Where did a 25-year-old get $365,000?”

    Rando 2:

    [Andreessen Horowitz] A16z-backed startup [Databricks] has been paying him well into the 6 figures for 5 years on top of vested stock units that his disclosure lists in the low millions. His robinhood account with various big tech stock also adds up to an even higher total.

  100. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The kerning on the pope’s tomb is a travesty

    It really is quietly beautiful. But atop that marble is a tomb inscribed with the name “Franciscus.” Or what—due to terrible spacing between letters, known as kerning—reads something more like “F R   A NCIS VS.”
    […]
    Christopher Calderhead […] has written several books on ancient and religious letterforms. “No, there is no historical or aesthetic reason why the kerning is so poor,” […] the inscription was set in Times New Roman and then carved. […] each letter appears to be spaced equally from the furthest edge of each glyph.

    “That would be the most boneheaded rookie mistake you can imagine (pun intended),” he writes. Calderhead suspects the work was “farmed out to a run-of-the-mill tombstone company.” […] [“]they chose a formal letterform that demands careful letter spacing.”

    Rando: “This is definitely some kind of Davinci Code clue.”

  103. JM says

    CNN: Marco Rubio and Salvadoran president have been in touch about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, sources say

    US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have been directly in touch about the detention of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the US mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s notorious megaprison, according to multiple sources familiar with the previously undisclosed discussions.
    A US official also told CNN the Trump administration has been working closely with El Salvador and asked for Abrego Garcia’s return but insisted that Bukele has made clear that he’s not returning him to the US, citing an Oval Office meeting between Bukele and President Donald Trump this month.

    Hard to tell what to make of this because Rubio is one cabinet official experienced and organized enough to intentionally leak something through 3rd parties to manipulate things. Is Trump setting up Rubio to take the fall for Garcia not being returned? Is Rubio trying to setup a story about the administration trying to comply with court orders to get Garcia back? Both are possible.
    The one thing I don’t believe is that Bukele can’t be made to return Abrego Garcia. There is no reason to think he cares about Abrego Garcia. He might throw up some complaints if he has promised Trump not to return anybody deported but if the administration applies any real pressure he returns Abrego Garcia.

  106. JM says

    Politico: Trump plans to oust national security adviser Mike Waltz

    President Donald Trump is planning to oust national security adviser Mike Waltz, who has lost the confidence of other administration officials, according to five people familiar with the decision.

    Take with a grain of salt, not because the sources are unreliable. Rather everything in the Trump administration is subject to Trump’s whims and when it comes to people Trump hired personally they are really random. Trump may excuse anything but taking the spot light from Trump.
    Despite the other scandals going on Waltz would be the first top level official to go. He may be paying the price for the signal chat mistake, he wasn’t the one breaking the law but he was the one that invited the reporter. It may also be that he doesn’t get along with the rest of the cabinet. Likely he isn’t supporting people when they are doing stupid things that Trump does support.

  107. JM says

    Politico: Trump’s use of Alien Enemies Act for swift deportations is illegal, Trump-appointed judge rules

    President Donald Trump’s invocation of a wartime power to summarily deport Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador was “unlawful,” a federal judge ruled Thursday, blocking the administration from further deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
    The decision from U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., a Trump appointee, is the latest sharp rebuke to one of Trump’s most aggressive and high-profile efforts to quickly carry out deportations with little or no due process.

    Critical first ruling that the Trump administration use of the Alien Enemies Act is just generally illegal. This will be appealed of course but it sets the stage for Trump’s deportations to be cut off entirely. It will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court does with this but even with a right wing court I don’t see them over turning this entirely. The Trump administration use of the Alien Enemies Act is way beyond what it was intended for and it’s generally held now that the original intent was possibly unconstitutionally broad to begin with.

  108. says

    Microsoft drops a law firm that appeased Trump, hires firm that’s fighting Trump

    “Law firms that struck deals with the White House thought it’d protect their bottom line. What if their assumptions were wrong?”

    Related video at the link.

    When Donald Trump launched an unprecedented offensive against prominent law firms, the businesses faced a difficult decision. If they appeased the president, they’d (theoretically) avoid White House punishments — penalties that the firms’ clients might have a problem with — but their reputations would suffer.

    If, on the other hand, they fought back against Trump’s authoritarian-style assault, they’d preserve their credibility but risk defeats in court and potentially would lose clients that want legal representation with intact security clearances.

    To date, four of the targeted firms have chosen the latter course, but they’re in the minority: Most of the targeted firms reached costly deals with the Republican White House.

    How’s that working out for all involved?

    The president certainly appears delighted, not only because some of the nation’s most important law firms bent the knee, but also because they agreed to hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal services for Trump-aligned causes. The four targeted firms that decided to fight back have reason to be pleased, too, since they’ve scored a series of preliminary legal victories.

    As for the firms that went along with the White House’s demands, the news is far less good. Not only are the firms starting to realize that their deals with the president are worse than they first realized, at least one of the firms is also learning that the plan to keep prominent clients happy might be backfiring. The New York Times reported that Microsoft “has dropped a law firm that settled with the administration in favor of one that is fighting it.”

    Large companies like Microsoft often farm out legal work to dozens or even hundreds of firms and may move business depending on circumstances, like pricing, expertise or potential conflicts. Microsoft declined to comment on why it changed law firms in a significant case last week, but the switch suggests that a firm that chose to fight the Trump administration could still attract an important client.

    […] the switch has been confirmed in official court filings. About a week ago, attorneys at one firm — Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, which recently reached an agreement with Trump and his team — informed a court in Delaware that it would no longer be representing Microsoft in an acquisitions case.

    Instead, the tech giant would be represented by the firm Jenner & Block, which is one of the four firms fighting back against Trump’s offensive.

    […] In the meantime, firms are also contending with a new pressure campaign. NBC News reported last week that a progressive group has launched a media campaign targeting the same firms that have already reached deals with the president.

    ‘Big law, stop bending the knee,’ reads a poster from the ‘Big Law Cowards’ campaign by the liberal nonprofit group Demand Justice. The group says the ads will be wheatpasted strategically around Washington on Thursday near the locations of the firms that have reached deals with the administration. The group will also have a mobile billboard circulating with ads criticizing the firms, along with a broader digital campaign.

    In case this isn’t obvious, the underlying point of these efforts isn’t to chastise the firms for making the wrong decision; it’s to remind the firms that it’s not too late to reverse course and join the ranks of the firms resisting Trump’s gambit.

    Will any of the firms abandon their existing deals? If one firm does it, will others follow? Watch this space.

  109. says

    A twist in the ‘War on Christmas’: Trump suggests tariffs could mean fewer toys for kids

    In a rare moment of candor, the president conceded that his tariffs will mean fewer choices for consumers and higher prices — including on dolls.

    […] The New York Times reported on one of the more memorable moments from the latest White House Cabinet meeting.

    […] Trump has a message for the nation’s children: Prepare to sacrifice for your country. He was taking questions at the end of one of his marathon cabinet meetings when he finally allowed that, yes, his tariff policies and the trade war he has set off with China may soon result in some emptier-than-usual shelves in stores. Specifically, toy stores.

    “You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open,’” Trump said. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.” [video at the link]

    Given the frequency with which the president lies about matters large and small, it was refreshing, at least to a degree, to hear him make policy comments that were largely true. His trade tariffs are very likely to mean fewer choices for consumers and higher prices on consumer goods — including children’s toys.

    But that didn’t make the broader political dynamic any more tolerable.

    The Times’ report added, in reference to Trump’s assessment, “This, from the billionaire, crypto-salesman, golf-club-operating, Palm Beach-by-way-of-Fifth Avenue president with the golden office and the golden triplex apartment. There he sat, surrounded by the other billionaires with whom he has filled his cabinet, telling the boys and girls of America they’ll just have to make do with fewer toys this year for the greater good.” [True]

    […] This week, the Times published a related report noting that Trump’s tariffs, specifically on China, “are threatening Christmas.”

    Toy makers, children’s shops and specialty retailers are pausing orders for the winter holidays as the import taxes cascade through supply chains. Factories in China produce nearly 80 percent of all toys and 90 percent of Christmas goods sold in America. The production of toys, Christmas trees and decorations is usually in full swing by now. It takes four to five months to manufacture, package and ship products to the United States. Mr. Trump’s 145 percent tariffs have caused a drastic markup in costs for American companies.

    The report added that some in the industry have not yet canceled seasonal orders because they still think Trump might back off his own policies. That said, the article added that the “alarm in the industry is palpable, with the companies predicting product shortages and higher prices. Some business owners, citing how crucial holiday sales are to their bottom lines, are consulting bankruptcy lawyers.”

    It’s probably fair to say those same people took note when Trump effectively confirmed those same fears.

  110. says

    Oh FFS.

    Vice President Vance casts tie-breaking Senate vote to kill bipartisan effort to rebuke Trump’s trade policy

    Vice President JD Vance traveled to Capitol Hill late Wednesday to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate that killed a bipartisan effort to rebuke President Donald Trump’s trade policy.

    Earlier in the evening, the Senate rejected the resolution that would have effectively blocked Trump’s global tariffs by revoking the emergency order the president is using to enact them. Two senators who were set to vote for the resolution, Republican Mitch McConnell and Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, were absent, allowing the resolution to fail 49-49.

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune then moved to ensure that tariff opponents were unable to bring their resolution back up at a later date, forcing Vance to the US Capitol to put an end to the matter. It marked just the second time the vice president has used his tie-breaking authority.

    […] Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who cosponsored the resolution to block the tariffs, argued that Vance having to break the tie worked in the resolution-backers’ favor.

    “They are so dead set on this tariff idiocy that is wrecking the economy that they’re going to bring the vice president over to completely own it. Great, let them do it. Let them do it,” he said. “The American public needs to know who to blame for this. And they are showing everybody tonight who is to blame for this.”

    Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also hit at Republicans for preventing a future vote, saying that “Thune and the Republicans are working to keep Trump’s tariffs in place.” [True]

    GOP Sens. Rand Paul, who cosponsored the resolution, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted along with Democrats in support of the resolution, but they were unable to pull together the needed votes to adopt it with the key absences Wednesday.

    McConnell would have voted for it had he not been under the weather.

    “The Senator has been consistent in opposing tariffs and that a trade war is not in the best interest of American households and businesses. He believes that tariffs are a tax increase on everybody,” his spokesman said.

    Even had there not been key absences and the resolution had been adopted, the resolution was dead on arrival in the House. There, Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this year tucked a provision into a rule to prohibit consideration of the measure until September 30. […]

  111. says

    Scoop: White House launches Drudge-style website to promote Trump

    The White House has launched a new Drudge Report-like website devoted to promoting pro-Trump news stories.

    Why it matters: The site, called White House Wire, represents the administration’s latest effort to circumvent the mainstream media and present itself in a positive light.

    The Trump administration has ruffled the feathers of establishment media giants by inviting Trump-friendly outlets and personalities into the White House briefing room.

    It also has punished mainstream outlets whose coverage it doesn’t approve of — most notably AP, whose access it curtailed after the outlet refused to start referring to the “Gulf of Mexico” as the “Gulf of America” in its coverage.

    Driving the news: The White House Wire, which has the url link WH.gov/wire, presents columns of links that send readers to articles.

    “THE MOST SUCCESSFUL FIRST 100 DAYS IN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY,” the site’s headline blared on Tuesday evening, linking to a Fox News article. [JFC]

    “24/7 FORTY-SEVEN,” read a ticker on the site.

    […] “The President’s First 100 Days Is a Return to American Greatness,” said one that linked to a Newsweek op-ed authored by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas.

    Another linked to Trump’s interview this week with ABC News. [They’re proud of that?]

    […] The website looks similar to the Drudge Report, the popular political website that also serves as a bulletin board for links.

    […] A White House official said the site serves a key strategic purpose: To give pro-Trump influencers a central hub to disseminate Trump-favorable coverage. […]

    As if they need more rightwing propaganda outlets.

  112. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tesla denies trying to replace Elon Musk as CEO

    Tesla today denied a report that its board contacted executive search firms to find a replacement for CEO Elon Musk. The Wall Street Journal reported last night that about a month ago, “Tesla’s board got serious about looking for Musk’s successor” and that board “members reached out to several executive search firms to work on a formal process for finding Tesla’s next chief executive.”

    Tesla’s official X account then posted a statement attributed to board chairperson Robyn Denholm saying that “there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company.”

    “This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published). The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead,” Denholm’s statement said…

  113. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Salon – Punishable by death: Pam Bondi raises the stakes in the war on whistleblowers

    First, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that federal authorities may once again seek reporters’ phone records and compel their testimony in leak investigations. Second, Bondi announced that she plans to pursue cases “where a Government employee discloses sensitive information for the purposes of personal enrichment and undermining our foreign policy, national security and government effectiveness.” She claimed that “this conduct could properly be characterized as treasonous.”
    […]
    an internal Justice Department memo from Bondi’s office claims that dropping the reporter record policy is necessary to prevent the release of not just “classified” information, but “privileged and other sensitive information”—a much broader, undefined category
    […]
    Bondi does not seem to understand how the government classification system works, which by its very nature protects sensitive information. The three main levels of classification are confidential, secret, and top secret. The desired degree of secrecy about such information is known as its “sensitivity,” which is based on a calculation of its potential damage to national security if released. Nor does Bondi seem to understand that information designated as “classified” does not necessarily make it related to the “national defense”—the definition in the Espionage Act, which is the law used in the majority of leak prosecutions.

    Bondi also seems to misunderstand that “privilege” is a rule of evidence—not a classification category—which protects communications within certain relationships from compelled disclosure in a court proceeding (even if it may be relevant). It is shocking that the Attorney General doesn’t appreciate this distinction. It’s basic law school fare.

  114. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    AG Pam Bondi’s fawning at the cabinet meeting yesterday was so insincere, it would’ve made for good sarcasm.

    Justin Wolfers (Econ professor):

    [Line graph of CBP Fentanyl seizures, currently the lowest since 2022]
    Bondi claims that these seizures have saved the lives of 258 million Americans (or three-quarters of the population). [Video clip]

    Kids are dying every day […] They think they’re buying a Tylenol, or an Adderall, or a Xanax, and it’s laced with fentanyl, and they’re dropping dead. And no longer, because of you [Trump].

    Commentary

    Yesterday Bondi said Trump had saved 119 million lives, and today […] it is 258 million lives.

    I’m not sure that makes up for the million he killed by making the COVID pandemic worse.

    Seems like everyone should’ve died during the Biden admin if Trump save more than 200 million in 3 months.

    Thank god, when I buy my Tylenol loosies from my dealer, I’m always concerned he’s going to give me fentanyl instead.

    Drug dealers just spend $100 of millions to hide it in Tylenol? I do not have a head for business.

    Back when Biden was president, I was OD’ing on fentanyl 5 or 6 times a day. Thanks to Trump’s America First policies, I’m down to an OD a week.

    Biden saved over 15 BILLION lives […] every single person in America ~45 times (each)—roughly once every 32 days of his presidency.

    During the Biden administration, Trump supporters said the seizures somehow meant Biden wasn’t doing his job stopping the flow of fentanyl.

    She’s misusing a standard DEA statistic relating kilos of fentanyl to equivalent lethal doses. Of course it’s ridiculous to imply that’s the number of people saved.

    Overdose deaths fell under Pres Biden after skyrocketing under TRAITOR trump and now TRAITOR trump is ending funding to provide Narcan. [Graph]

  115. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Harvard – Here’s why police drug busts don’t work (2023)

    We are part of a research team that assessed the impact of drug busts in 2020 and 2021 in Indianapolis, Indiana. We found compelling evidence that fatal and nonfatal overdose rates doubled following police raids to seize opioids and other drugs.
    […]
    Twenty years of prior research has shown that disrupting local drug markets is consistently associated with excess overdose deaths, whether that disruption is a police drug seizure, a global pandemic, or a new drug like fentanyl. […] established personal relationships between people who use drugs and their suppliers play a significant role in helping the users assess risks and manage an exceedingly toxic drug supply. When that relationship is severed, people suffering from addiction turn to dealers they don’t know

    Via a thread of links, by Joshua Hoe (Dream.org)

  117. johnson catman says

    re CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @113:

    Second, Bondi announced that she plans to pursue cases “where a Government employee discloses sensitive information for the purposes of personal enrichment and undermining our foreign policy, national security and government effectiveness.” She claimed that “this conduct could properly be characterized as treasonous.”

    So, is she going to pursue the death penalty for the Orange Turd?

  118. says

    Surprise! Trump’s promoting scandal-plagued adviser instead of firing him

    Hours after nearly every major news outlet reported that national security adviser Mike Waltz was the first big casualty of the Trump administration, President Donald Trump announced that—surprise!—he’s nominating Waltz to be ambassador to the United Nations.

    “I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role.”

    The U.N. ambassador role requires Senate confirmation, so Waltz—who is responsible for inadvertently adding a journalist to an unsecured group chat in which top Trump administration officials shared highly secret attack plans—will have to publicly defend his egregious mistakes as national security adviser.

    This will also put Republican senators on the record about whether they’ll support someone who so carelessly jeopardized national security. […]

  119. says

    Trump’s tariffs force Xbox and Nintendo to raise prices

    […] On Thursday, Microsoft announced price increases of $100 on its popular Xbox Series S consoles and $10 on accessories, including new games.

    These price hikes, which went into effect on May 1, mark the first increases to Xbox’s Series S products since its launch in 2020.

    “We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development. Looking ahead, we continue to focus on offering more ways to play more games across any screen and ensuring value for Xbox players,” Microsoft said in a statement.

    Though the price hikes will impact all markets, gaming headsets will only see price increases in North American markets.

    […] Nintendo, which has already pushed back the preorder date of its highly anticipated Switch 2 because of Trump’s tariffs, is increasing prices on all accessories. And in an attempt to maneuver around Trump’s incredibly high tariffs on China, the gaming giant has tried moving its manufacturing to Vietnam.

    “Nintendo Switch 2 accessories will experience price adjustments from those announced on April 2 due to changes in market conditions,” Nintendo said in a statement, adding that “other adjustments to the price of any Nintendo product are also possible in the future depending on market conditions.” […]

  120. says

    On Wednesday night, […] Trump claimed in a televised town hall event that he couldn’t think of a single mistake he has made during his first 100 days in office, eliciting laughter from the audience of voters in attendance.

    The town hall was broadcast on the right-leaning NewsNation network and was hosted by disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and disgraced former CNN host Chris Cuomo. They were joined by ESPN host Stephen A. Smith.

    A question submitted to the hosts asked Trump to detail the biggest mistake he had made in his first 100 days.

    “I’ll tell you that’s the toughest question I can have because I don’t really believe I’ve made mistakes,” Trump said, with the audience largely laughing in response. [video at the link]

    […] One of Trump’s most prominent failures has been his decision to implement heavy, wide-ranging tariffs against virtually every country, launching a pointless trade war. The tariffs have led to increased costs for consumers, and recent data shows U.S. economic growth contracting, possibly signaling a recession in the coming months.

    Trump has also been internationally condemned for pursuing immigration policies that have detained and deported people while denying them due process rights. Recently, his administration reportedly deported a 4-year-old U.S. citizen with late-stage cancer.

    Trump’s Cabinet has been a source of constant headaches and national embarrassment, from security leaks connected to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, to anti-science rants from Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    The so-called Department of Government Efficiency, headed by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk, has undermined American science, diplomacy, and the social safety net while running afoul of federal law again and again.

    Trump’s cavalcade of mistakes has led to widespread public displeasure with his presidency, and his job approval rating is underwater in opinion polls from multiple polling firms. Trump has even lost ground on the issue of immigration, previously a strength of his.

    When he hasn’t been whitewashing his failures, Trump has made comments that raise new concerns about his mental state.

    During Wednesday’s town hall, Smith asked Trump to address his administration’s attacks against Harvard University. Instead of speaking about the issue, Trump began to ramble to Smith—who is Black—about Harlem, New York.

    “We had riots in Harlem, and frankly, if you look at what’s gone on—and people from Harlem went up and they protested, Stephen, and they protested very strongly against Harvard,” Trump replied. [video at the link]

    Harlem is a 200-mile drive from Harvard University, which is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    The disconnected and strange response arrived very shortly after Trump insisted to ABC News that an obviously doctored image of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia was proof that the deported migrant was a member of the MS-13 gang. […]

    Link

    Definitely not mistake-free.

  122. Reginald Selkirk says

    McDonald’s sales drop as diners face ‘uncertainty’

    McDonald’s has suffered its biggest drop in US sales since the height of Covid, a fall that it said was driven by people’s concerns over the US economy.

    Despite a marketing tie-in with the Minecraft movie and extended price deals, US customers made fewer visits to the burger chain in the first three months of this year, compared to a year ago…

    That surprises me a bit. Mickey D’s is fairly on the cost/quality totem pole. Lower cost places tend to do OK during a squeeze; for example more people would go to Walmart rather than a pricier department store.

  123. Reginald Selkirk says

    Mack Trucks announces layoffs at Lehigh Valley plant, blames tariffs

    Mack Trucks will lay off between 250 and 350 workers at its Lehigh Valley Operations center outside Allentown over the next three months, due to economic uncertainty caused by U.S. tariffs, a company spokesperson said Thursday.

    “Heavy-duty truck orders continue to be negatively affected by market uncertainty about freight rates and demand, possible regulatory changes, and the impact of tariffs,” spokesperson Kimberly Pupillo said…

    I like that they are able to place the blame where it belongs.

  124. says

    Followup to Sky Captain @114.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/are-you-ready-for-this-media-pam

    Are You Ready For This, Media? Pam Bondi Is A Dumbass

    A funny thing happened on Wednesday during Donald Trump’s […] session with his Cabinet members, where they all lined up to pay respects […]

    No, we’re not talking about when Trump angrily told the nation’s children that they need to give up most of their Christmas presents while President Grandpa uses trade wars to work out his emotional insecurities on a global scale.

    That was definitely weird, though.

    No, this moment came during the parade of ass-sniffing, where each Cabinet member had to praise Trump and tell him how brilliant and sexy he is, which we imagine he especially needs right now, considering how large majorities of the population are fully turning on him and a majority considers him a “dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.”

    “Sir, it’s been a momentous 100 days with you at the helm!” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent […]

    “The biggest reason why we’re here is that this is the 100th day of the most consequential, historic first 100 days in the history of this country,” said EPA chief Lee Zeldin.

    Pete Hegseth, gushing like a little boy who got to go to work with Daddy that day and wear one of his ties and everything, babbled, “What we have seen since your election and the inauguration has been nothing short of a recruiting renaissance. The men and women of America want to join the United States military led by President Donald Trump.” You betcha. Literally cannot imagine anything more dishonorable on earth than wanting to serve Donald Trump, but keep telling yourself there’s a “recruiting renaissance” and that you’re an important part of it, big guy!

    “You’re not just courageous, you’re actually fearless,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “All of us can sprint, because you’re running ahead,” he also said […]

    […] Attorney General Pam Bondi was there […] she claimed that approximately 75 percent of the American population would be dead if it hadn’t been for him. Ayup. [Video at the link]

    “President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you,” said Bondi, […]

    Then she got specific about why that 100 days was so legendary.

    “Since you have been in office President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills, 3,400 kilos of fentanyl … which saved — are you ready for this, media?

    Oh shit, we’re ready! She turned to the camera when she asked this, so she could check to see if the media was ready for the clownfucking bullshit that was about to fireball out of her gullet.

    “258 million lives. Kids are dying every day because they’re taking this junk laced with something else. They don’t know what they’re taking. They think they’re buying a Tylenol, or an Adderall, and a Xanax. And it’s laced with fentanyl and they’re dropping dead. And no longer, because of you, what you’ve done.”

    That’s right, 258 million lives saved, because of Donald Trump and what he’s done. What has he done? Unclear. […]

    OK wait.

    There are about 340 million people in America. Is Bondi suggesting that literally 75 percent of the population would have eaten the fentanyl pills and died? In the last 100 days? […]

    And if this is a problem Donald Trump fixed, which was raging before, how many hundreds of millions of Americans died in the 100 days before Trump was president, when Joe Biden was in there? We have so many questions about this moronic pissdrivel Pam Bondi said.

    The Daily Beast explains the formula, which the DOJ gave them willingly, like ta da! You can see how many excellent brains are left in that building by reading this:

    When asked how the attorney general arrived at that number, the Department of Justice provided a formula to the Daily Beast: 3,400,000 grams of fentanyl multiplied by the “current purity level” of .1518, divided by .002, the lethal amount per gram. The result: 258,060,000.

    Just completely failed to consider how many Americans would actually be on the market for some drugs laced with fentanyl, then sent Attorney General Dumbfuck Barbie in there to babble, “YOU READY FOR THIS?” to the media and then say with a straight face that X = 258 fucking million.

    Amazing.

    Rolling Stone clears up one other halfwitted part of Bondi’s otherwise flawless statement:

    [I]f you’re wondering why kids are turning to the black market for headache relief, as Bondi suggests, they’re not. She seems to be distorting reports of kids trying to buy the opioid Percocet only to find they’re getting Tylenol laced with fentanyl.

    […] It gets better, we mean stupider.

    Because on Tuesday, this is what Bondi said on Twitter: [social media post at the link]

    So it turns out that as of Tuesday, that fentanyl seizure had only saved 119 million lives. Is there something about Wednesdays that makes the entire American population more prone to eating fentanyl and the number had to be revised upwards by around 138 million to reflect that?

    […] Also, are these the counting skills and math-letic prowess that Pam Bondi brought to the table when she was running around crying “election fraud!” to help Trump steal the 2020 election?

    Just curious.

    In other news, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trying to shitcan all the Narcan, because these motherfuckers don’t actually care about saving lives […]

  125. Reginald Selkirk says

    LDS Church files appeal after court sides with opposition in sex abuse settlement lawsuit

    The Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints filed an appeal in federal court Thursday after a judge ruled against the organization earlier this month, according to documents.

    The 2021 lawsuit is between the church and its insurance companies, National Union Insurance and ACE Property & Casualty Co., and pertains to a dispute over whether the insurance companies are required to pay the organization’s settlement payments.

    The dispute began after the church settled a high-profile sex abuse lawsuit in West Virginia and the insurance companies refused to pay the settlement costs. The church claimed the insurance companies were required under contract to make the payments and sued them in Salt Lake City’s federal court.

    On April 6, the court ruled against the church, saying the companies did not breach their contract as they “did not owe the church a duty to defend or indemnify under any implicated policy.”

    Court documents show the church is now appealing the ruling through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Colorado…

  126. Reginald Selkirk says

    Twelve EU members request activation of escape clause for defence spending, Commission says

    -Twelve European Union countries have requested activation of the “national escape clause” from EU deficit rules in order to boost their defence spending, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

    The Commission, which is the EU’s executive body, has proposed allowing member states to raise defence spending by 1.5% of gross domestic product each year for four years without any disciplinary steps that would normally kick in once a deficit is more than 3% of GDP.

    In a statement, the Commission said Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia have made requests, and that additional requests are expected at a later stage.

    A spokesperson for the Polish presidency of the Council of the EU said that while 12 countries have already applied, four more “will do so shortly.”

    The Commission will now assess the requests…

  127. says

    Sneaky and nefarious stuff going on in Missouri:

    Last November, despite the fact that all but three counties went Republican in the presidential election, the people of Missouri voted in favor of a constitutional amendment establishing a constitutional right to abortion (prior to fetal viability, or ability to survive outside the womb) and eliminating restrictions on abortion in the state. Ever since then, the Republican supermajority in the state Lege has been working hard to undo that.

    They came up with a lot of ideas, but the winning one (so far) is a plan for another referendum to repeal that amendment and reinstate most of the state’s very restrictive abortion ban. The state House has approved it, and a state Senate committee passed it 4-2 on Wednesday, making it just one (Republican supermajority) Senate vote away from appearing on the ballot in November of 2026 (or even before if approved by Gov. Mike Kehoe).

    Of course, there’s still just one little snag — how to get around the fact that Missouri voters do not want to ban abortion. […]

    You see, they’re just not going to tell voters that they’re voting for an abortion ban at all.

    The new amendment will ban abortion, except in cases of medical emergencies and fatal fetal anomalies, and prior to 12 weeks in cases of rape or incest. However, that’s not what voters will see on their ballot. It will look to them like they are voting for an amendment that would guarantee access to abortion in those cases.

    Instead, they will be asked if they want to repeal Article I, Section 36 and to allow abortions in those specific situations. This could easily be seen by voters as allowing them without parental consent. […]

    The proposed initiative reads:

    “Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:
    – Guarantee access to care for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and miscarriages;
    – Ensure women’s safety during abortions;
    – Ensure parental consent for minors’ abortions;
    – Allow abortions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, rape, and incest and repeal Article I, Section 36; and
    Protect children from gender transitions?”

    Tricky, tricky! As you can see, they also threw in a provision banning trans kids from, well, existing. What does this have to do with abortion? Absolutely nothing, beyond the fact that Republicans believe this is their number one winning issue and tacking it on there may increase their chances of Missourians voting for it.

    Of course, they may not be as quite clever as they think, as many voters have already caught on to their scheme. More than 150 people showed up to share their thoughts on the ban, and only six of them were there to speak in favor of it.

    The Missouri Independent reports:

    State Sen. Patty Lewis, a Kansas City Democrat, noted that after her GOP colleagues again said that Missourians only approved Amendment 3 because they didn’t understand what they were voting on.

    “Missouri Right to Life represents hundreds of thousands of people across Missouri,” [Susan Klein, executive director of Missouri Right to Life] said.

    “Where are they?” Lewis asked.

    Those speaking in opposition to the amendment included myriad health professionals whose patients’ lives were put in danger by the state’s previous ban, women who have had abortions, and even religious leaders who support their right to have them.

    So maybe they won’t get away with it, after all.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/missouri-leges-cool-plan-to-ban-abortion

    Not quite tricksy and sneaky enough after all?

  128. Reginald Selkirk says

    3 House Democrats ask to be removed from Trump impeachment resolution

    A trio of House Democrats asked to be removed as co-sponsors of a resolution to impeach President Trump, a sign that many in the party do not want to go down the path of trying to remove the president from office — at least at the current moment.

    Reps. Kweisi Mfume (Md.), Robin Kelly (Ill.) and Jerry Nadler (N.Y.) had signed on as co-sponsors of Rep. Shri Thanedar’s (D-Mich.) impeachment resolution — which includes seven articles of impeachment — but Tuesday afternoon, they went to the House floor and asked for their names to be taken off the legislation. The House clerk granted their request.

    Spokespeople for Kelly and Mfume said the lawmakers initially signed on to the effort because they assumed it had been reviewed by leadership. When they learned it was not, they asked for their names to be removed…

  131. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Delivering an incendiary accusation, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt warned on Thursday that “an invasion force of migrants” is smuggling math across the US-Mexico border.

    “They are bringing textbooks, calculators, and slide rules into our country, hoping to get America’s children hooked on math,” she said.

    “President Trump has made a strong commitment to protect our country from math, whatever it takes,” she added.

    Claiming that the nation was suffering from a “math epidemic,” Leavitt refused to disclose how many math-smuggling migrants have invaded the US thus far, noting, “Using numbers is exactly what they want us to do.”

    Link

  132. says

    NBC News:

    The White House said Wednesday night that it had signed an ‘economic partnership’ with Ukraine that, after weeks of volatile negotiations, will give Washington access to some of the war-torn nation’s critical minerals and natural resources.

  133. says

    NBC News, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    This resolution would’ve passed, but two proponents missed the vote: “A bipartisan measure that sought to undo the sweeping tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on most countries this month failed in the GOP-led Senate on Wednesday. The vote ended in a tie, 49-49, with three Republicans — Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — joining all Democrats present in support of the resolution, which was designed to terminate the national emergency Trump declared to implement his global tariffs.”

  134. says

    New York Times:

    The Trump Organization has agreed to a new Middle East golf course and real estate deal that involves a Qatari government-owned firm, two weeks before President Trump is set to travel to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on a state visit.

  135. JM says

    @118 Lynna, OM: Under Trump being moved to UN Ambassador is a way of moving him to a sidelined title only job. Trump does all of the negotiations that might go someplace out of the White House. The UN Ambassador isn’t going to have any real impact on what the US administration does and will carrying stupid statements Trump made to the UN.

  136. says

    Reuters report, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was divided 9-6 in this case: “A divided federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s bid to lift an order blocking the U.S. Social Security Administration from giving the Elon Musk-spearheaded Department of Government Efficiency unfettered access to the data of millions of Americans.”

  137. says

    JM @135, good point. It still means that Mike Waltz is not being fired for his obvious snafu.

    In other news, from USA Today:

    The Trump administration abruptly cancelled roughly $1 billion in federal grants aimed at helping schools hire and train therapists. Hundreds of funding recipients across the country received letters April 29 from the U.S. Department of Education informing them that their mental health programs violated civil rights laws.

  138. says

    New York Times report, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    Petty and unnecessary retribution, Part I: “Chris Krebs, the former cybersecurity official in President Trump’s first term whom the president recently targeted for investigation because he had said that the 2020 election had been conducted securely, learned this week that his membership in a program giving travelers expedited status had been revoked. Mr. Krebs received an email on Wednesday alerting him that his status in the Global Entry program had changed, prompting him to log into his account.”

    A different New York Times report, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    Petty and unnecessary retribution, Part II: “The F.B.I. is reassigning several female agents in supervisory positions who knelt during demonstrations protesting police violence in the District of Columbia in 2020, according to several people familiar with the matter. The move has raised concerns among current and former bureau employees that the F.B.I. is taking action against agents and analysts who were involved in situations denounced by allies of President Trump and the right-wing news media.”

    MSNBC report, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    Petty and unnecessary retribution, Part III: “President Donald Trump has ousted former second gentleman Doug Emhoff from the Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, just three months into what is typically a five-year term as a board member.”

  139. says

    Trump orders a dystopian makeover for law enforcement agencies

    [Trump’s] latest directive is bad in a spectacular number of ways, not the least of which is its name: “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens.”

    Yes, if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the last several years, it’s that law enforcement officers should be unleashed. […]

    What Trump wants right now is a militarized police state, and he’s going to do everything in his power as president to get it. However, several parts of the order are just demanding that law enforcement be given special solicitude and lots of treats, most of which they already have.

    […] much of the Trump administration’s rhetoric holds that a vast crime wave is gripping blue cities and that police are powerless to stop it because of wokeness or … something. Just look at how terrified Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is of the New York City subway system, how convinced he is that crime there is skyrocketing when, in fact, it’s plummeting. That decrease in crime isn’t just true for New York City, but for dozens of large cities across the country. […]

    Trump’s latest nightmare order does two separate but related things. One part aims to militarize local law enforcement, while the other seeks to create a police state.

    The former is more about showering local law enforcement with equipment and personnel. The order would increase the amount of excess military assets given to local law enforcement agencies. It also calls for determining how military training and personnel could help local law enforcement fight the nonexistent crime wave that’s gripping the nation.

    […] we already give cops tons of this stuff. There is a robust federal program to dispose of military equipment by giving it to state and local law enforcement. Since 1997, it has funneled $7 billion worth of free military equipment to over 6,000 local law enforcement units. […] Local law enforcement can also get military-style equipment via five other federal grant programs. Local agencies already have ample opportunities to acquire the machinery of war on the cheap.

    As for needing federal military personnel to parachute in and help, we already have a mechanism for that as well. State governors can deploy their own National Guard units—and they do it all the time. […] New Mexico’s governor just activated that state’s National Guard to assist the Albuquerque Police with crime-fighting efforts.

    [Trump] isn’t interested in letting governors, particularly those in blue states, decide when to activate military personnel. That’s the police-state part of this order, which calls for “holding state and local officials accountable.” This actually aims to strip local officials of the right to control their own law enforcement agencies and to insert federal personnel into the process instead.

    So, “accountability” here means threatening to federally prosecute state and local officials for obstruction or for any forbidden diversity, equity, and inclusion policies—the GOP’s dreaded DEI bogeyman— that restrict law enforcement officers in any way..

    We don’t have to wonder what this looks like, because we already know: It looks like arresting Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan at her courthouse. The Trump administration has no qualms about arresting anyone it perceives as getting in the way of its anti-immigrant frenzy, and this order is a not-at-all-veiled threat to state and local officials that they could be next.

    The order is also going to empower state and local law enforcement, apparently, but a lot of those “empowering” elements already exist. Increased pay and benefits? Big Bad Blue Cities already employ more police officers and pay them better than their red-city counterparts. Is the order purporting to require some sort of market intervention where the federal government will force red cities to pay their police more? Lol no.

    […] Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers already exist and have a division dedicated to training state, local, and tribal law enforcement. But this order isn’t about providing actual training: It’s about having the federal government tell local law enforcement agencies that it’s fine to crack skulls.

    What about seeking “enhanced sentences for crimes against law enforcement officers”? […] the people who stormed the Capitol and attacked police at the urging of Trump himself on Jan. 6 got a pretty sweet consequence-free deal, what with Trump pardoning them all. For everyone else, though? [snipped references to state laws that treat law enforcement officials as a protected class]

    […] no-cost representation for cops who “unjustly incur expenses and liabilities for actions taken during the performance of their official duties to enforce the law.” […]

    Of course, unlike people who are victimized by police officers, the police officers themselves do not typically lack representation! That’s already handled by the state or local jurisdiction. […]

    Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, law enforcement officers also already have the benefit of qualified immunity, which often protects officers when they are sued in civil court. And if they lose? Officers rarely pay settlements, because state and local governments pay them instead. It’s tough to find a group with more opportunities for free legal representation or more robust protections from consequences than law enforcement agents.

    What the administration envisions is a world where law enforcement officers are answerable to no one—not to the local elected officials who oversee them, and definitely not to the communities they serve.

    That’s not “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” as the executive order’s name suggests. Trump’s goal is to let police officers get away with state-sanctioned brutality.

  141. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):

    In a move that raises very serious First Amendment issues, ICE executed a major splashy operation in California aiming to arrest a guy for posting fliers with names, pictures, and apparent phone numbers for ICE HSI agents.

    I am struggling to think what possible law posting that info could violate.

    FoxNews reporter: [He was] previously arrested at UC Irvine during an on-campus Pro-Palestinian protest.

    To give you some sense of how over the top this operation was, ICE gave Fox News DRONE FOOTAGE of the operation, showing a cavalcade of armored vehicles through the streets of Pasadena to serve a search warrant on a guy whose offense was stapling fliers on power poles […] literally had the top leadership of ICE there to *serve a warrant* […] just for posting a “watch out for them” flier
    […]
    Okay, Bill Melugin [FoxNews] responded to me and said the guy is being investigated under [18 U.S.C. § 119] the law prohibiting sharing of protected LEO personal information with intent to threaten. I think they are likely going to have a hard time proving that. But they have certainly sent a message.
    […]
    I look forward to reading the indictment […] there may be something else they have to justify probable cause, like a social media post, so we’ll see then.

    EmptyWheel: “Crazier still, this is basically what Aileen Cannon refused to gag Trump for after he invented FALSE claims about what the FBI did in the search of his home. Deport Trump to CECOT.”

    Rando 1: “Is this not literally what the white house was doing on its front lawn?”
    Rando 2: “Also sharing the address of Abrego Garcia’s wife and kids.”

    Jacqueline Sweet (Rolling Stone): “this kid should get a media internship, the ICE officer info isn’t easy to get.”

    Rando 3: “Oh my god, they did the Onion video!”

    Tim Onion: “We did this video NINE DAYS AGO.”

  142. birgerjohansson says

    Finland is again named world’s happiest country.
    Sadly, USA is not in the top ten.

  144. Reginald Selkirk says

    British govt agents step in as Harrods becomes third mega retailer under cyberattack

    Harrods, a globally recognized purveyor of all things luxury, is the third major UK retailer to confirm an attempted cyberattack on its systems in under two weeks.

    It confirmed the incident in a statement, hinting that, like Co-op’s case earlier in the week, the attack may not have been successful.

    “We recently experienced attempts to gain unauthorised access to some of our systems,” it told The Register.

    “Our seasoned IT security team immediately took proactive steps to keep systems safe and as a result we have restricted internet access at our sites today.

    “Currently all sites including our Knightsbridge store, H beauty stores, and airport stores remain open to welcome customers. Customers can also continue to shop via harrods.com…

  146. says

    A new complaint from a coalition of unions, local governments and nonprofits wants the courts to block and overturn DOGE’s illegal firing spree.

    So many lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration since January that the Justice Department has struggled to keep up with them. Many of them have focused on the Department of Government Efficiency and its sweeping yet erratic attempts to slash the size of the federal government. While previous cases have focused on blocking or undoing mass layoffs at specific agencies, a new mega-lawsuit filed this week represents the best shot yet at fully undoing all the damage billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE have done once and for all.

    The suit filed Tuesday comes from a broad coalition of labor unions, local governments and nonprofit groups, on behalf of federal workers affected by the White House’s mass layoffs. The question at the heart of the case: whether President Donald Trump and/or members of his administration have the authority to undertake their wide-ranging reshaping of the executive branch. According to the coalition’s lawyers, who include attorneys from the Democracy Forward Foundation and the San Francisco firm Altshuler Berzon, the answer is a resounding “no.”

    In their complaint, the plaintiffs focus on an executive order Trump issued on Feb. 11, which commanded all federal agencies to undertake a “critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy.” The order required every facet of the executive branch to work with DOGE and the Office of Management and Budget to develop “reduction in force” plans to shed thousands of workers. Those staffers who remained after the layoffs would be reorganized and re-allocated to cover whatever remaining functions the administration felt were worthy of the agency continuing.

    Trump’s initial order was followed by a memo from OMB and the Office of Personnel Management to coordinate and implement the now-mandatory mass layoffs. The memo gave agencies just two weeks to prepare RIFs and another month to detail the newly reorganized agencies and what functions the newly reduced staffs would be performing. As the plaintiffs note, “it is not possible for any federal agency, let alone all federal agencies, to create [a plan] that both accommodates the specific parameters required by the President, OMB, and OPM and complies with all of the federal agency’s statutory and regulatory requirements in a mere two weeks” or even by the latter deadline.

    The complaint alleges that the administration’s haste created an ill-considered dash to cut the government down to size without stopping to consider what functions agencies are legally required to perform under the law. Each of the orders included boilerplate language directing that the work follow federal laws. But the lawsuit argues (as I noted in a March essay) that the “language directing agencies to comply with applicable law in creating these plans was disingenuous,” as there was no way for any agency head to hit the brakes on the layoff project.

    Moreover, OMB, OPM and DOGE specifically had the final say on the layoff plans and any new hiring that was to be done in the interim. In the process, the plaintiffs’ attorneys write, those offices have “usurped agency authority, exceeded their own authority, acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and ignored procedural requirements.” The resulting mass firings were not just unconstitutional, the plaintiffs argue, but also a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that has been a major thorn in the side of both Trump administrations. [video at the link]

    Crucially, the complaint lays out the history of past attempts to reorganize the federal government to highlight the lack of precedent for Trump’s efforts. The Constitution assigned Congress the role of establishing the executive branch’s various departments and agencies, and it has only rarely delegated that power to the president. Even then, that authority has been limited in scope and time frame, and lawmakers have ignored, or outright rejected, numerous proposed reorganizations — including one from the first Trump administration that Congress never acted upon.

    In his second administration, Trump hasn’t even pretended to involve Congress in the process, nor has his administration allowed any public debate about the downsizing. Even as federal workers have been subjected to chaotic mass layoffs, pressured buyouts and lengthy administrative leaves ahead of eventual firings, none of the agencies — including DOGE — have released overarching plans for the newly restructured departments.

    Accordingly, the plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that Trump has acted unconstitutionally, vacate the various orders mandating mass firings and temporarily restrain the government from implementing any of those orders while the case is ongoing.

    In targeting Trump’s lack of authority to reshape the government at will, the lawsuit cuts straight at the “unitary executive” theory of governing that guides Trump’s most ardent crusaders. OMB Director Russ Vought and others believe that the president has carte blanche power in the executive branch, as the Constitution vests all executive authority in him. Under that assumption, they are claiming there can be no independent agencies that don’t follow Trump’s orders or power granted to Cabinet officials that doesn’t flow from the White House.

    The plaintiffs in this new case think otherwise: “Congress has not delegated to the President the authority to employ and discharge the subordinate employees of the agencies or to spend appropriated funds on those positions, rather, it delegated those functions exclusively to the heads of federal agencies.” Likewise, they argue, OPM and OMB lack the statutory authority to carry out Trump’s order: “Insofar as neither Article II nor any act of Congress gives the President authority to reorganize federal agencies or order them to engage in massive layoffs of federal employees,” neither agency can “cloak itself in Presidential authority, either.” (The same holds true for DOGE, which the plaintiffs note “has no statutory authority at all.”)

    As to the lawsuit’s odds of success, several federal courts have already ruled against the administration’s power to conduct these layoffs on a case-by-case basis. A judge in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where this case will be heard, previously ordered several agencies to rehire 17,000 probationary workers fired in the purge. The Supreme Court paused that ruling, however, and the case is ongoing.

    Given the relatively slow progress in the other cases on this front, it seems unlikely that this will be the one to have a swift resolution, either. The district court may not issue its ruling before Musk steps back from his role at DOGE, as he has told investors he will do soon. Even without him at the helm, it appears DOGE is already turning its sights onto new federal systems to conquer and destroy even as it spectacularly fails to achieve its original cost-cutting goals. And if the case reaches the Supreme Court, as would seem likely, it will be up to Chief Justice John Roberts to decide whether his support for executive authority overrides his belief in the separation of powers.

    Until then, though, the wide-ranging relief this lawsuit seeks can still stem DOGE’s worst harms. More importantly, by pulling together an overarching argument against Trump and Musk’s power to shape the government, the plaintiffs have woven a series of disparate threads into a tapestry of illegality. In targeting the very heart of the administration’s dogma, there’s at least a chance that the blatant lawlessness of Trump and Musk’s executive power grab can be shut down for good.

  147. says

    The Signal Scandal Somehow Just Managed to Get Much Worse

    […] let me point your attention to a new part of the White House Signal chat story which is actually a pretty big deal. You likely saw that yesterday Reuters published a photo of a Trump Cabinet meeting in which Mike Waltz could be seen using Signal on his phone. That was pretty unbelievable. You could see several of the chats, though mainly who he was chatting with more than the contents. Embarrassing, etc. But 404 Media, a newish tech news site, noticed that there was more than that. He wasn’t actually using Signal at all. He was using a third-party Signal knock-off which allows you to use your Signal account but with additional features.

    Waltz was using an app created by a company called TeleMessage. And their additional feature is that it allows you to store your conversations off the app. Presumably that is to comply with federal records retention rules. The app says that it retains all of Signal’s end-to-end encryption and security. But as 404 Media reports, that’s clearly not true. What end-to-end encryption means is just what it sounds like, end-to-end, between your phone and your interlocutor. Once you take the secret messages and send them somewhere else, by definition you’ve departed from that encrypted channel. 404 Media asked Signal about this and they replied as you’d expect, which is, essentially, we can’t be responsible for what happens to your data if you’re not using our app.

    There are actually two really big security issues involved here and they’re quite distinct.

    The first requires understanding Signal’s security. Signal provides very robust security between your phone and the other person’s phone. Your phone itself could be hacked, though. In that case, you’re out of luck. That’s the actual Signal app. In this case you’re using a Signal clone app which takes the data and sends it somewhere else entirely. So by definition it doesn’t have Signal’s security protections. But there’s a second very big security issue raised by using this app. This app is made by some random company we don’t know much about. They could be a front for a foreign intelligence agency. The whole app could be a surveillance backdoor to look at Signal conversations. I’m not saying that is true. But you can’t actually rule it out. So again, you have the inherent lack of security introduced by operating outside of Signal’s security system. Then you have the additional security black box of “who is this company?” — and what do they do with the data?

    Security experts trust Signal for two reasons. One is that it has established a very good reputation over a number of years for trustworthiness. But the far more important reason, and what most of that reputation is based on, is that their code is open source. Everyone can look at it. So the hardcore security experts can look at exactly how it functions and say, “Okay, yeah, this is done exactly right. This is super secure.” The set up the White House appears to be using and Waltz himself is definitely using sends the data to some other outfit. And we don’t have any visibility into their code or more generally even who they are. So we have no idea what their security is. We don’t know if they know what they’re doing. And we can’t rule out that their pursuing some nefarious ends.

    Anyway, we should soon be hearing more about this. You may not have heard about 404 Media. They’re new. But they have a very strong reputation. Since I’ve been writing, the Times has now also picked up and credited their reporting on this.

  148. Reginald Selkirk says

    @147 Lynna, OM

    And their additional feature is that it allows you to store your conversations off the app. Presumably that is to comply with federal records retention rules.

    I certainly would not presume that a Trump cabinet member was making efforts to comply with federal rules.

  149. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump’s Stablecoin Chosen For $2 Billion Abu Dhabi Investment In Binance

    Donald Trump’s crypto company created a digital dollar called USD1, which is now being used by a big investor in Abu Dhabi to help fund a $2 billion deal with Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Reuters reports:

    Stablecoins are an increasingly lucrative cog in global crypto trading. Their issuers typically profit by earning interest from the Treasuries and other assets that underpin them. The value of USD1 in circulation reached about $2.1 billion on Wednesday, according to CoinMarketCap data, making it one of the fastest-growing stablecoins. The identity of its major holders, however, remains unclear. An anonymous cryptocurrency wallet that holds $2 billion worth of USD1 received the funds between April 16 and 29, according to data from crypto research firm Arkham. Reuters could not ascertain the owner of this wallet.

    Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, who was incarcerated in the United States last year after pleading guilty to violating U.S. laws against money laundering, met Zach Witkoff and two other World Liberty co-founders in Abu Dhabi, according to a photo posted on social media site X on Sunday. “It was great to see our friends,” in Abu Dhabi, posted Zhao in response to the photo, tagging Witkoff. Zhao, who in 2023 stepped down from his role at Binance as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S. over the illicit finance charges, remains a major shareholder of Binance.

    Separately, Zach Witkoff announced that USD1 would be integrated into Tron, the blockchain of Hong Kong-based crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun. Sun is the biggest known investor in World Liberty and an adviser to the venture, according to his social media posts, having poured at least $75 million into the project. Sun was fighting a U.S. securities fraud lawsuit at the time of his first investment in World Liberty. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February paused its case against him, citing public interest.

  150. says

    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson forcefully condemned attacks by […] Trump and his allies on judges who have blocked Trump administration policies, warning Thursday that the increasingly hostile rhetoric poses a dire threat to the country’s political fabric.

    “The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity,” Jackson told a judges’ conference in Puerto Rico. “The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.”

    Though she did not mention Trump by name, Jackson said she was addressing “the elephant in the room,” a clear reference to the belligerent language — and calls for impeachment — that Trump and some of his advisers have lobbed at federal judges who rule against his agenda.

    Jackson urged her judicial colleagues to show “raw courage” to dispense justice without fear of the results. “I urge you to keep going, keep doing what is right for our country, and I do believe that history will vindicate your service,” the Biden appointee said.

    Jackson’s unusually pointed comments received a standing ovation from the judges and lawyers in attendance. Her 18-minute fulmination is the strongest public statement by any member of the Supreme Court since the Trump administration began denouncing judges who have blocked Trump’s policies on immigration, firing government workers, and halting federal grants and contracts.

    […] Trump’s allies have only intensified their rhetoric since Roberts’ statement. Trump’s top domestic adviser, Stephen Miller, has railed against what he calls power-hungry and “Communist” judges putting the country at risk while upending the powers of the presidency. Trump ally Elon Musk has repeatedly amplified calls for judicial impeachments on X.

    Before a scheduled on-stage discussion about her life, Jackson strode to the lectern and said she had decided to speak out against “the relentless attacks and disregard and disparagement that judges around the country and perhaps many of you are facing on a daily basis.”

    […] “I do know that loneliness. It is very stressful to have to decide difficult cases in the spotlight and under pressure,” she said. “It can sometimes take raw courage to remain steadfast in doing what the law requires.”

    Jackson pointed to similar attacks on judges who issued controversial decisions during the Civil Rights Movement and the Watergate scandal. She urged her colleagues to take inspiration from those examples.

    “Other judges have faced challenges like the ones we face today, and have prevailed,” she said.

    Link

  151. says

    […] Trump says Harvard University will be stripped of its tax-exempt status, redoubling an extraordinary threat amid a broader chess match over free speech, political ideology and federal funding at the Ivy League school and across American academia.

    “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump posted Friday morning on Truth Social.

    Trump floated a trial balloon April 15 for the notion of removing Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and the Internal Revenue Service had been making plans to carry out the idea.

    “There is no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status,” a university spokesperson told CNN. “Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission.”

    Money for federal taxes would have to be taken away from other priorities and “would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation,” the spokesperson said Friday.

    US law specifically prohibits presidents from directing the IRS to investigate anyone. If it found Harvard’s tax-exempt status should be revoked, the agency would have to formally notify and give the school a chance to challenge the decision. The IRS did not immediately respond to CNN’s questions about how Trump’s announcement might be implemented.

    […] Revoking the tax-exempt status of an institution of higher education is extremely rare. The IRS took that step in 1970 against Bob Jones University because the school did not allow interracial relationships among students, a decision upheld years later by the Supreme Court. The university rescinded its interracial dating policy in 2000, and its tax exemption was restored in 2017.

    […] Harvard this week released two lengthy internal reports, one on how antisemitism and anti-Israel bias is handled on campus and another on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias. While school officials don’t entirely disagree with the White House’s position that antisemitism is a major problem at the university, that report shows, the sides still strongly disagree over who should decide what reforms are required and whether federal or school officials should oversee them.

    The university also shared data with the Department of Homeland Security in response to its request for information on the illegal activity and disciplinary records of international students, though it did not detail what it gave.

    Harvard’s steps so far to curb antisemitism are “positive,” a White House official told CNN this week, but “what we’re seeing is not enough, and there’s actually probably going to be additional funding being cut.”

    Link

    Yeah, I’m not buying the Trump administration’s line that they care about antisemitism. I think they are just trying to control an elite University.

  152. says

    Trump pretends to defund public media with meaningless order

    […] Trump issued an executive order on Thursday night that seeks to eliminate federal funding for NPR and PBS, the latter of which airs widely admired educational programming like “Sesame Street.”

    Trump’s order, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to “cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.” Trump’s justification for the order is that NPR and PBS have purportedly failed to provide the public with unbiased, fair, and nonpartisan news coverage.

    The effect of Trump’s order is unclear at the moment.

    “CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority,” Patricia Harrison, the president and chief executive of CPB, said in a Friday statement. “Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.”

    In 1967, Congress established CPB as an independent nonprofit corporation with the mission of disbursing federal funding to public media stations. CPB funds allow stations across the United States to purchase programming like “Sesame Street,” “Frontline,” and “Morning Edition” from PBS and NPR. CPB is funded two years in advance as a way to keep it independent of the political whims of Congress—and the presidency. […]

    More at the link.

  154. says

    […] According to a Media Matters for America analysis of television appearances [Attorney General Pam Bondi] has shown up 24 times on Fox News between Feb. 5 and April 28. The intense volume of Bondi appearances stands in stark contrast to her immediate predecessor, former Attorney General Merrick Garland.

    In his first 100 days on the job in 2021, Garland made one media appearance, speaking to ABC’s “Good Morning America” on April 20, 2021.

    […] She made four appearances on “Hannity,” two appearances each on “Fox & Friends,” “America Reports,” and “America’s Newsroom.” She even took time out of her day—ostensibly while running the entire Department of Justice—to sit down with conspiracy theorist Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” and legal crackpot Mark Levin on “Life, Liberty & Levin.”

    Bondi kept her views within the Fox News echo chamber. Media Matters did not find any Bondi appearances on broadcast television (ABC, CBS, NBC), other than Fox’s “Fox News Sunday,” and she did not appear on CNN or MSNBC.

    What sort of things is Bondi discussing in these appearances? [video at the link]

    […] Bondi argued that vandalism at Tesla dealerships was “domestic terrorism” and said Crockett needed to “tread very carefully” while exercising her right to free speech. [video at the link]

    Then in April, Bondi told Sean Hannity that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father who was abducted and deported to an El Salvador prison, is “a terrorist” and a member of the MS-13 gang, allegations that have not stood up to legal scrutiny.

    Bondi’s residency at the network ties in well with her recent stint dressing up and cosplaying like a scientist to push the administration’s “tough on crime” narrative. Like her fellow Cabinet member, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Trump team is heavy on appearances over reality.

    […] Bondi made a name for herself as a television talking head on Fox News. After her Senate confirmation, Bondi is still effectively a Fox News pundit, but now she has the power of the White House and the federal government behind her and is using that to pursue and denigrate Trump’s political rivals and detractors. […]

    Link

  155. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/musk-brings-out-big-balls-so-people

    “Musk Brings Out Big Balls So People Will Stop Talking About How His Own Company Wants To Fire Him”

    “It’s your DOGE update!”

    Let us check in on America’s least-favorite alleged illegal immigrant, Elon Musk, and his boys of DOGE, because they are as hilariously stupid as anybody can be while using everybody’s tax money to break the government, invent “savings” numbers, and remake the world to a purity-purged technocracy re-populated by the descendants of 5,000 little Elons!

    [Musk,} instead of worrying about his brand, has been spending his time indulging his breeder fetish, playing Diablo […]

    Tesla’s already faced a raft of lawsuits from pissed shareholders, including over Elon’s alleged conflict-of-interest $56 billion (with a b) pay package, insider trading, and breach of fiduciary duty, and the board was ordered in January to return as much as $919 million to stockholders. The Cybertruck’s had eight recalls over design flaws like its glued-on panels flying off, accelerator pedals getting stuck, its wheels losing power, and the windshield wipers not working. And Trump tariffs are also going to be fucking over the company bigly; China is, or was, its second-largest market, whoops. And sales are down 37 percent in Europe too. […]

    And the divorced dad of 14 that we know of is ALL CAPS mad at the report that his own board is getting sick of him! He pounded out on X:

    It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors!

    It’s all so bad that his mommy even chimed in to try to help him. [social media post at the link]

    How dare women write about her son?! Hey, wait, if women are unreliable reporters and Maye Musk is a woman, do they cancel each other out?

    The Wall Street Journal reporters say that they tried to contact him and got no response […] and they refused to retract their story. Soon after the report came out the Tesla chair issued a denial. “The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.” […]

    But don’t cry for him […] SpaceX got a $5.9 billion contract to launch satellites for the government, and there’s rumors of a $2.4 billion contract for Starlink to take over air traffic control communications too (which Starlink denies). And, in January Musk companies were facing at least 65 “actual or potential” actions from 11 federal agencies, totaling at least at least $2.37 billion in potential liability, all threats that are now neutralized. And in Elon’s spare time he’s building his own Spahn ranch in Texas for his collection of children, and trying to make his own town near Brownsville, which he’ll call Starbase.

    […] yesterday Musk presided over a DOGE roundtable hosted by tire-tampering creep Jesse Watters, and hey, it’s Big Balls, AKA Edward Coristine, age 19, who is the spitting image of … come on, tell us we’re wrong. [Photo and illustration at the link]

    Jesse Watters set out to solve the mystery on everyone’s mind, why does he call himself that? It’s even stupider than you suspected!

    “I just set it as my LinkedIn username. People on LinkedIn take themselves like super seriously and they’re adverse [sic] to risk, and I was like, well, I want to be neither of those things, so I just said it, and honestly, I didn’t even think anyone would notice,” he said, while Elon nodded like a proud father who spends time with his own children and loves and encourages them.

    “LinkedIn is so cringe!” Elon chimed, as if a 53-year-old trying to use kid slang like “cringe” as an adjective is not painfully cheugy.

    In case you get all those kids mixed up, Coristine is a DOGE “senior advisor,” the one with a startup called TESLA.SEXY, who Reuters reports once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent. And Coristine got himself fired from a cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets to a competitor, then bragged later on Discord that he retained access to the company’s servers. Just who you want mucking around in Homeland Security, FEMA, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency data. […]

    CBS News reports that the government spent $200 billion more than last year.

    Oh, and Elon was inexplicably wearing two hats, and compared himself to the Buddha. You know, if the Buddha went around with a decorative chainsaw, giant belt buckle, and ball-squeezing skinny jeans, calling everybody the r-slur. “DOGE is a way of life. Like Buddhism. Buddha isn’t alive anymore. You wouldn’t ask the question: ‘Who would lead Buddhism?’”

    He and Trump were probably chatting on the phone after Musk railed some ketamine: “If you’re going to be the Pope, then who do I get to be?”

    They’re evil, but also inexperienced and dumb. So at least we’ve got that going for us. […]

  156. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/aborted-fetus-debris-is-not-rfk-jrs

    ” ‘Aborted Fetus Debris’ Is NOT RFK Jr.’s New Metal Band”

    “It’s also not in the vaccines.”

    Once upon a time, one of the nicer things you could say about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was that at least he supported abortion rights. Unfortunately, as you may recall, he has since backtracked on this, asserting that he and Trump are aligned on reproductive rights.

    “I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy. I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. I agree with him that the states should control abortion,” Kennedy Jr. told Republican Sen. James Lankford at his confirmation hearing earlier this year.

    Now, it appears, he’s so on board with this that he’s happily using anti-abortion propaganda to buttress the opposition some Mennonites have against the measles vaccine.

    On Wednesday night, [at] a town hall event with Trump and others in his administration in excited anticipation of his second 100 days in office. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was also in attendance, and was asked about his measles response by host Chris Cuomo […] [video at the link]

    Kennedy Jr. responded by talking about how much better the US is doing with our measles outbreak in comparison to other nations, and then about groups with religious objections. And that’s where it got weird.

    “There are populations like the Mennonites in Texas who are most afflicted, and they have religious objections to the vaccination because the [measles, mumps, and rubella] MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted fetus debris and DNA particles,” he told Cuomo. “So, they don’t want to take it. We ought to be able to take care of those populations when they get sick.”

    Aborted fetus debris.

    Aborted.

    Fetus.

    Debris.

    This just shows you how very little Robert F. Kennedy Jr. actually understands about vaccines. There’s no “aborted fetal debris” in the MMR vaccine. There are no “DNA particles.”

    The fetal fibroblast cells used to grow the viruses used to create most vaccines today did originate from two fetuses that were aborted in the 1960s, and have continued to grow in a laboratory ever since. However! The vaccines themselves don’t actually contain any “aborted fetal debris” or “DNA particles.”

    “In order to grow viruses in the lab, cells need to be made into single cell suspensions, meaning they can no longer be grouped together in the form of tissues or organs. As such, vaccines do not contain ‘parts of fetuses,’” according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Additionally, “[v]accines also do not contain fetal cells. Once the vaccine viruses are grown in the cells, the next step in the manufacturing process is to purify the vaccine viruses away from the cells and substances used to help cells grow. If you have ever picked blueberries, you can think of this part of the process as similar. While you are picking, you might get some of the blueberry plant — stems, leaves and even branches — in your berry bucket, but to use the berries, you remove all of those things, so your pie contains only the blueberries (and any other ingredients you choose to add).”

    The Catholic Church, which we all know to be pretty big on the fetuses, has evaluated this process and determined that it is “morally acceptable” for Catholics to take vaccines that originated in these cells when there is no other option other than getting sick or getting other people sick. There is also, actually, no official Mennonite law barring vaccines either, and most other sects do not consider that to be an aspect of their religion. In fact, many of them are a little annoyed that this group is making them look like selfish jerks.

    That aside, no one gets to have a “religious belief” that there are dead baby bits in the vaccines when there are not dead baby bits in the vaccines. That’s not a thing. One’s faith cannot simply will dead baby bits into existence.

    But Kennedy Jr. knows exactly what he’s doing here. He doesn’t actually want people to vaccinate their kids, and so he is going around talking about “aborted fetus debris” in hopes that others who oppose abortion rights will make the same decision some Mennonites have. He’s hoping they’ll say “No, sorry. We love life far too much to not put other people’s lives and health at risk. No aborted fetal debris vaccine for us!”

    And, unfortunately, it will probably work.

    Sheesh. Fighting anti-vaccine nonsense feels like a never-ending battle.

  157. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/stephen-miller-charms-america-with

    […] Where Karoline Leavitt comes off as a confident liar who doesn’t care whether you know she’s lying, Stephen Miller is more like a North Korean news anchor shorn of the sincerity or credibility. All that’s left is the malice and lies, and a distinct sense that if anyone challenges the greatness, nay, the godlike perfection of Donald Trump, Miller just might bite them.

    Stephen Miller’s greatest skill is hyperbole, and no one in the known universe is capable of delivering more exaggerated lies more efficiently than he can. He declared that we have just completed the “greatest a hundred days to begin any presidency in the history of this nation,” and seemed to imply that Donald Trump has now accomplished everything he set out to do, and can now just spend the next three years and a bit less than nine months of his term golfing. […]

    If you really want to hate yourself, here’s the video of the full presser, but you could just as well skip it since half is just Miller stringing together variations on the words woke, communist, DEI, madness, and so on. The other half is Miller [spouting] lurid details about the horrible crimes committed by bestial undocumented immigrants […] [video at the link]

    Miller trotted out a whole lot of lies about “DEI” and “merit,” […] He threw out plenty of scaremongering about trans people, warning that any elementary school teacher who “tries to turn a boy into a girl or a girl into a boy” will be prosecuted for child abuse, because Trump supporters believe that must happen all the time.

    Then it was “critical race theory’s” time in the rantbarrel, and Miller was so excited about his plans for freeing little children from woke indoctrination that he didn’t even bother telling any lies about that topic. He simply went straight to a stirring vision of how the Trump administration will make sure children are carefully taught, instead. If you can stand it, we do encourage you to watch at least the first 20 seconds of this one, if only to remind yourself of why so many people were out marching against this shit yesterday. [video at the link]

    “This administration is also fighting to get critical race theory out of our school districts.

    “Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values, for schools that want federal taxpayer funding.”

    This certainly sounded familiar to us, since it’s really a very familiar classic from the Western — or at least the South Pacific — canon.

    You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,
    You’ve got to be taught from year to year,
    It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear—
    You’ve got to be carefully taught! […]

    You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
    Before you are six or seven or eight,
    To hate all the people your relatives hate—
    You’ve got to be carefully taught!

    Miller went on[…] “We’re going to make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology. For any nation to be successful, it cannot teach its children to hate themselves and to hate their country.”

    We wonder if the funds can still be used to teach kids to avoid the straw man fallacy?

    […] Trump brushed off the first-quarter GDP decline by blaming Biden, but Miller went his boss one better, spinning the report as great news by picking out one statistic and ignoring the shrinking GDP altogether. […]

    Miller, clearly enjoying his own weird fantasies, insisted that all the jobs created during the Biden administration actually went to foreign workers, and virtually none to Americans, which, if true, would mean that virtually all 20 million Americans who lost jobs in the pandemic recession remained without work for the entire Biden administration. In fact, said Miller, his nose miraculously not actually growing longer and longer, the entire Biden administration was an economic “depression.” For American Americans! But don’t worry, as of January 20 they’re all at work again.

    Miller also returned, again and again, to lurid tales of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants […]

    […] Kilmar Abrego Garcia didn’t deserve due process in his case, and indeed anyone accused of being in a gang must be sent to a Salvadoran supermax forever if you love America. […]

    In conclusion, we sure do hope that Stephen Miller keeps doing press conferences, since he’s so darn likeable.

  158. says

    Democratic senators call for investigation into Elon Musk’s foreign deals involving Starlink

    Democratic senators alleged Friday that tech billionaire Elon Musk may have used his White House job to drum up private deals in foreign countries for Starlink, his satellite internet service.

    […] 13 senators led by Mark Warner, D-Va., wrote that Starlink seemed to make sudden breakthroughs this year in at least five countries that previously resisted giving the company footholds there. The senators called for Trump to investigate and make the findings public.

    […] “Musk is reportedly taking advantage of his government role to coerce concessions from foreign governments for his own benefit, including unfettered market access as well as contracts with his companies, in exchange for favorable treatment by the U.S. government,” they wrote.

    […] Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, where Musk is CEO. […] Musk kept his CEO roles at SpaceX and Tesla while he has been an adviser to Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency since January.

    During five weeks beginning in March, Starlink reached agreements with governments and telecommunications companies to operate in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Lesotho […]

    This year, Starlink has also increased its footprint within the federal government, with multiple federal agencies exploring the service as an option for internet access, NBC News has reported.

    More details at the link.

  159. says

    TikTok hit with €530M fine after illegally sending users’ data to China

    “Video-sharing app had for years claimed it did not store European personal data on servers in China.”

    TikTok has to pay €530 million in penalties because it sent the personal data of Europeans to China illegally and wasn’t transparent enough with users, Ireland’s powerful privacy regulator said Friday.

    The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said TikTok breached the EU’s flagship data protection rules when it sent European user data to China because it couldn’t guarantee that the data was protected under China’s surveillance laws.

    Taking a stance on data transfers to China for the first time, the regulator said TikTok failed to adequately assess the implications of Chinese surveillance laws on Europeans’ data.

    […] The regulator also said TikTok breached transparency rules between 2020 and 2022 because it didn’t tell users that personal data was being transferred to China. It noted that TikTok updated its privacy policy in 2022 and is now “compliant.”

    The company has been fined €485 million for its data transfers to China and €45 million for the lack of transparency in its privacy policy.

    The fine is the third-largest ever for a breach of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. TikTok has its EU headquarters in Ireland, meaning the Irish DPC is the lead authority in charge of enforcing the EU rules.

    TikTok had for years claimed it did not store European or American user data on servers in China, but in April informed the regulator that it had discovered in February that “limited EEA User Data” had in fact been stored in China.

    Irish DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said the regulator was taking this discovery “very seriously,” and while TikTok has said it deleted the data on Chinese servers, was considering “what further regulatory action may be warranted.”

    […] TikTok pointed to its €12 billion investment in Project Clover, which is rolling out data centers in Europe to store data locally in the EU, as well as other privacy safeguards. The Irish DPC acknowledged the project but said it was not enough to sway its decision […]

  160. Reginald Selkirk says

    More Than 80 Faculty Pledge 10 Percent of Pay To Support Harvard’s Fight Against Trump

    More than 80 Harvard faculty members pledged to donate 10 percent of their salaries for up to a year to support the University in its resistance against the Trump administration’s attempts to exact concessions and freeze billions in federal funding.

    The group is still collecting pledges, but faculty members’ commitments currently amount to more than $2 million, according to Government professor Ryan D. Enos. The faculty sent a letter outlining their planned donation to University President Alan M. Garber ’76 Wednesday afternoon.

    “If we as a faculty are asking the University administration to resist the Trump administration’s attacks on academic freedom, we should also be willing to share in the financial sacrifice that will be necessary,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Dani Rodrik ’79, a signatory, wrote in an emailed statement…

  161. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump will rename Veterans Day to celebrate US victories in World Wars

    US President Donald Trump says he plans to rename Veterans Day – known as Remembrance Day in the UK – as “Victory Day for World War I” to celebrate American contributions to the conflict.

    The president also wants to name VE Day on 8 May as “Victory Day for World War II”, he said on his Truth Social social media platform.

    The announcement was not accompanied by an executive order, and it is unclear whether he intends for 8 May to become a federal holiday – a power that rests with the US Congress.

    The days mark the end of World War I in 1918 and Germany’s surrender to the allies in 1945, respectively…

    The US has not historically recognised VE Day. The country was still at war with Japan on the Pacific front for several more months after conflict ended in Europe…

    Trump is a demented narcissistic fuckwit. Film at eleven.

  163. Reginald Selkirk says

    Dow jumps 600 points on solid jobs report, S&P 500 heads for longest winning streak in 20 years

    Stocks rose on Friday as Wall Street digested a better-than-expected nonfarm payrolls report for April, which eased recession fears and put the S&P 500

    on pace for its longest winning streak in just over two decades.

    The S&P 500 advanced 1.5%, a move that placed the broad market index on track for its ninth consecutive day of gains. If the index closes higher, that would mark its longest winning streak since November 2004. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
    jumped 600 points, or 1.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite

    gained 1.6%. With Friday’s gains, the S&P 500 has now recovered its losses since April 2, when President Donald Trump announced his “reciprocal” tariffs. This comes a day after the tech-heavy Nasdaq accomplished the same feat.
    …
    The recent sell-off spurred by worries around President Donald Trump’s tariff plans may be over, said Jay Hatfield of Infrastructure Capital Advisors.

    “We think we’ve passed peak tariff tantrum,” the firm’s chief executive said in an interview with CNBC, adding that he has a year-end target on the S&P 500 of 6,600. That implies nearly 18% upside from Thursday’s close…

    Apparently he thinks Trump has realized his mistake and will not renew tariffs when the pause is over. since Trump is a demented narcissistic fuckwit, I wouldn’t wager too much on his behaving rationally.

  164. Reginald Selkirk says

    Apparently RFK Jr is not the only anti-fluoride wacko.

    Texas goes after toothpaste in escalating fight over fluoride

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating two leading toothpaste makers over their use of fluoride, suggesting that they are “illegally marketing” the teeth cleaners to parents and kids “in ways that are misleading, deceptive, and dangerous.”

    The toothpaste makers in the crosshairs are Colgate-Palmolive Company, maker of Colgate toothpastes, and Proctor & Gamble Manufacturing Co., which makes Crest toothpastes. In an announcement Thursday, Paxton said he has sent Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) to the companies.

    The move is an escalation in an ongoing battle over fluoride, which effectively prevents dental cavities and improves oral health. Community water fluoridation has been hailed by health and dental experts as one of the top 10 great public health interventions for advancing oral health across communities, regardless of age, education, or income. But, despite the success, fluoride has always had detractors—from conspiracy theorists in the past suggesting the naturally occurring mineral is a form of communist mind control, to more recent times, in which low-quality, controversial studies have suggested that high doses may lower IQ in children.

    The debate was renewed earlier this year when the National Toxicology Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences finally published a particularly contentious study after years of failed scientific reviews. The study claims to find a link between high levels of fluoride exposure and slightly lower IQs in children living in areas outside the US, mostly in China and India. But the study’s methodology, statistical rigor, risk of bias, and lack of data transparency continue to draw criticism.

    Paxton referenced the study in his announcement of the investigation into toothpaste makers…

  165. says

    Trump Allies Sue John Roberts To Give White House Control Of Court System

    “A think tank founded by Stephen Miller sued Roberts and the office that administers the judiciary, claiming that the White House should run the federal courts.”

    Close allies of Trump are asking a judge to give the White House control over much of the federal court system.

    In a little-noticed lawsuit filed last week, the America First Legal Foundation sued Chief Justice John Roberts and the head of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.

    The case ostensibly proceeds as a FOIA lawsuit, with the Trump-aligned group seeking access to judiciary records. But, in doing so, it asks the courts to cede massive power to the White House: the bodies that make court policy and manage the judiciary’s day-to-day operations should be considered independent agencies of the executive branch, the suit argues, giving the President, under the conservative legal movement’s theories, the power to appoint and dismiss people in key roles.

    Multiple legal scholars and attorneys TPM spoke with reacted to the suit with a mixture of dismay, disdain and laughter. Though the core legal claim is invalid, they said, the suit seems to be a part of the fight that the administration launched and has continued to escalate against the courts over the past several months: ignoring a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a wrongly removed Salvadoran man, providing minimal notice to people subject to the Alien Enemies Act, and flaunting an aggressive criminal case against a state court judge.

    […] DOGE has already caused disorder at the courts and sent out mass emails to judges and other judiciary employees demanding a list of their recent accomplishments. Per one recent report in the New York Times, federal judges have expressed concern that Trump could direct the U.S. Marshals Service — an executive branch agency tasked with protecting judges and carrying out court orders — to withdraw protection.

    These are all facets of an escalating campaign to erode the independence of the judiciary […] The lawsuit demonstrates another prong of it: close allies of the president are effectively asking the courts to rule that they should be managed by the White House.

    […] “To the extent this lawsuit has any value other than clickbait, maybe the underlying message is, we will let our imaginations run wild,” Peter M. Shane, a constitutional law scholar at NYU Law School, told TPM. “The Trump administration and the MAGA community will let our imaginations run wild in our attempts to figure out ways to make the life of the judiciary miserable, to the extent you push back against Trump.”

  166. says

    I forgot to note in comment 165 that more details are available at the link.

    In other news: Yes, Trump’s trying to make America segregated again

    […] Trump gave another victory to the forces of racism and intolerance […] by dismissing a desegregation case against Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. The Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, gave up the case that has been operative since 1966, when it was first filed.

    Following the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954, schools in America had to desegregate. But Plaquemines Parish resisted. The effort was led by avowed racist politician Leander Perez. Perez founded the white supremacist Citizens’ Council of Greater New Orleans and argued that segregation was mandated by the Bible, an argument that eventually led to his excommunication by the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

    Rallying against school integration in his home state, Perez once argued, “Are you going to wait until Congolese rape your daughters! Are you going to let these burr-heads into your schools! Do something about it now!” [Offensive racist blather!!]

    Perez and his ideological offspring have been given a victory, thanks to the Trump administration.

    Before the Justice Department’s actions, schools in the parish were subjected to oversight by the federal government to ensure that they were actively working against school segregation—something that did not end with the Civil Rights Movement. As recently as 2023, the district was asked to provide the federal government with data on hiring practices and how school discipline was administered. Studies have shown that Black children are more likely to face suspension than white children, even though both groups of children misbehave at the same rate.

    […] Former Fox News personality Leo Terrell, who was installed as senior counsel to the DOJ Civil Rights Division by Trump, said in a statement that Louisiana “got its act together decades ago.” [Lie]

    Johnathan Smith, chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law, told the Associated Press that segregation is still a problem for schools in the region and noted, “Most of these districts are now more segregated today than they were in 1954.”

    […] Trump has an extensive history of racism and racist comments. He popularized the racist “birther” conspiracy about President Barack Obama and argued for the execution of the innocent Central Park Five in the 1980s.

    The Justice Department action is in line with Trump’s other actions to undo the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. Early in his presidency he signed executive orders that repealed previous executive orders meant to desegregate federal contracting. Trump allowed federal contractors to once again operate segregated facilities, purged government web pages highlighting Black heroes like Jackie Robinson [The Jackie Robinson page as since been restored after a lot of backlash.], and reinstalled the names of Confederate leaders at military bases.

    Trump gave some of the most virulent racists in American history a victory they were denied and continues to roll the clock back on the most vulnerable people: children.

  167. says

    More than 900 measles cases confirmed in US, with illnesses now reported in 29 states: CDC

    The latest measles update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports a total of 935 confirmed measles cases across dozens of states.

    That number is now officially more than triple the confirmed cases reported in all of 2024 (285 total), per the CDC.

    The CDC’s latest update, published Friday, also acknowledges that there are likely more than 935 total cases of measles in the U.S., but says its data only takes “confirmed” cases into account, and not “probable” ones. The majority of those infected (96%) were either unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination statuses, according to the CDC.

    The largest share of the country’s confirmed cases have been reported in Texas, where the state’s department of health counted 683 cases as of Friday — mostly clustered around Gaines County near the New Mexico border. Around 450 of the cases in Texas were reported to be among children under the age of 18, the Texas Department of State Health Services said. Two of them, both said to be school-aged children, have died.

    After Texas, New Mexico reported the most cases of any state, at 67. One resident of Lea County, by the Texas border, tested positive for measles after dying earlier this year. […]

    In total, 29 states were home to residents with reported cases of measles in the CDC’s latest update: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. [map at the link]

    […] The best way to avoid transmission remains two doses of a measles or MMR vaccine, according to the CDC, the World Health Organization, and the majority of infectious disease experts.

  168. says

    Rubio’s new role is a dangerous step in Trump’s effort to consolidate power, by Chris Hayes

    “With Rubio’s appointment as interim national security adviser, Trump has now consolidated two of the most important roles in the federal government.”

    After over 100 days of national security chaos and the Signal chat scandal, Michael Waltz is out as Donald Trump’s national security adviser. That is the headline, but it hardly does justice to how this all unfolded.

    It started with reports on Thursday morning that Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, were soon to be removed from their jobs. But by the afternoon, Waltz’s ouster was spun into something else. Trump took to Truth Social to confirm Waltz was out and announced his nomination as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

    In that same post, Trump also announced Secretary of State Marco Rubio would act as his “interim” national security adviser. This was an abrupt and incredible shake-up, one that would leave Rubio simultaneously holding at least four official full-time jobs in the government: secretary of state, acting national security adviser, acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and acting head of the National Archives. [What could go wrong?]

    The news of Rubio’s new role even came as a surprise to those at the State Department. […]

    Make no mistake about it: This is a demotion for Waltz. He is out of the core of the security establishment and nominated to a still-open position that does not amount to much in a Republican administration. […] [video at the link]

    Whatever the reasons for Waltz being marginalized, Trump is rearranging the deck chairs on a badly listing ship and trying to do it in a way that doesn’t look bad for him. Part of that involves him consolidating two of the most important roles in the federal government — secretary of state and national security adviser — and giving them to Rubio.

    When Rubio was asked at Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting if, as secretary of state, he had been in touch with El Salvador about returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States and whether a formal request had been made, Rubio said he would “never tell.”

    “You know who else I’ll never tell? A judge. Because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States and the executive branch, not some judge,” Rubio continued. [Oh FFS]

    A child of Cuban immigrants who once made his bones in the Senate, standing up against dictators and for the rule of law, is now the face of Trump’s draconian, unconstitutional deportation regime.

    That’s the kind of loyalty Trump rewards. In order to cover the incompetence of his administration, the president is now consolidating power even further, giving two powerful positions to one sycophantic subordinate. [!]

  169. says

    Washington Post Exclusive: Trump administration plans major downsizing at U.S. spy agencies.

    “The CIA plans to cut 1,200 positions, along with thousands more from other parts of the U.S. intelligence community.”

    The Trump administration is planning significant personnel cuts at the Central Intelligence Agency and other major U.S. spy units, downsizing the government’s most sensitive national security agencies, according to people familiar with the plans.

    The administration recently informed lawmakers on Capitol Hill that it intends to reduce the CIA’s workforce by about 1,200 personnel over several years and cut thousands more from other parts of the U.S. intelligence community, including at the National Security Agency, a highly secretive service that specializes in cryptology and global electronic espionage, a person familiar with the matter said. The person, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

    The specifics of the planned cuts have not been previously reported.

    The CIA does not publicly disclose the size of its workforce, but it is believed to be about 22,000. It is unclear which parts of the spy agency would be most affected. The downsizing is happening even as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has pledged to target more agency resources on China and on cartels smuggling fentanyl and other synthetic drugs into the United States.

    The staff reductions would take place over several years and would be accomplished in part through reduced hiring. No outright firings are envisioned. The goal of a roughly 1,200-person staff reduction includes several hundred individuals who already have opted for early retirement, the person familiar with the matter said.
    The downsizing is taking place separately from efforts by the U.S. DOGE Service, led by billionaire Elon Musk, to radically restructure the federal government. Musk met with Ratcliffe in late March for a discussion that included government efficiency measures, but no DOGE teams have been working at the agency’s Langley, Virginia, campus.

    […] Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has pledged to streamline the agency at […] Trump’s bidding […]

    Since assuming her post, Gabbard has frequently spoken to conservative media outlets and depicted some U.S. intelligence personnel as part of a “deep state” working to undermine Trump, echoing charges the president has made. As a congresswoman from Hawaii, she sometimes expressed skepticism of U.S. intelligence judgments, including a 2017 assessment that former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his own citizens.

    […] Russia and China have recently directed their intelligence services to ramp up attempts to recruit U.S. national security workers, targeting those who have been fired or feel they could be soon, CNN reported in March, citing U.S. intelligence assessments on the issue.

    […] Gabbard also has been reviewing the numerous intelligence centers under ODNI — focused on topics such as terrorism, counterintelligence and weapons proliferation — with an eye on staff reductions or folding them into other agencies.

    […] A total of several thousand positions would also be cut from the NSA; the Defense Intelligence Agency; the National Reconnaissance Office, which designs and operates spy satellites; and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes satellite imagery and provides targeting data to U.S. troops, according to the plans described to The Washington Post.

    […] In a March 31 note to the CIA workforce laying out his priorities for the spy agency, Ratcliffe wrote, “For decades, CIA has known nothing but growth, but the years of growing budgets and resources are behind us. Moving forward, you will be part of a smaller, more elite and efficient workforce.” The memo was first reported by the New York Post.

  170. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Between agency sabotage and Trump’s hostility to Panama, I was concerned about this international program. Something I’d only learned about last summer.

    Ars Technica – Screwworms are coming
    (CW: Gross photo of an infected deer at the link, after the map.)

    flies that lay eggs on the mucous membranes, orifices, and wounds of warm-blooded animals. Wounds are the most common sites, and even a prick as small as a tick bite can be an invitation for the savage insects.
    […]
    In the 1950s, the US began an intensive effort to eradicate screwworms. […] bomb screwworm-riddled areas with millions of sterile male flies. The onslaught of sterilized flies elbows out fertile ones from their one-time chances of mating with a female, cratering the population. […] For decades, the US and Central America have mostly been free of screwworms, a fact that is estimated to have saved US farmers $900 million every year.
    […]
    In 2022, the biological barrier [where continents meet] at the Darién Gap was breached. By July 2023, screwworms reached Costa Rica, then Nicaragua in March 2024, and Honduras by September 2024. Now, they are in Mexico. In February, the USDA announced it was shifting its aerial sterile fly bombings from Panama to Mexico to try to halt the northward advancement. In comments this week, Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins said that the parasites are currently south of Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrowest strip of land between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. [The east-west strip where Mexico bends at the bottom.] The overall goal is to push them back down to the Darién Gap.
    […]
    Compared to humans, livestock and other animals are at far greater risk from screwworms’ resurgence. For instance, there were at least 18,553 animal cases in Panama last October but only 79 human cases in the country. Still, when screwworms get a taste for human flesh, it’s not pretty.

    Trump is bombing Mexico after all.

  171. JM says

    Newsweek: Florida National Guard to Become Immigration Judges Under Proposal

    “We’re ready, willing and able to take it to the next level. We have submitted plans to DHS to say if this is approved, we will go off to the races. And we will be able to do really from soup to nuts, from apprehension to detention, even putting some of our people in the National Guard in line to serve as immigration Judges to process this. We can do it,” DeSantis said on Thursday.

    Details not public yet but you can be sure this is stupid and immoral, it’s also probably illegal if only because not enough National Guard members have the experience and training to do the job. On the plus side Trump may block it just to spite DeSantis.

  172. JM says

    CBS News: Judge rules Trump executive order targeting law firm Perkins Coie is unconstitutional

    A federal judge ruled Friday that President Trump’s executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie is unconstitutional and permanently blocked the administration from enforcing it.

    “Using the powers of the federal government to target lawyers for their representation of clients and avowed progressive employment policies in an overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints, however, is contrary to the Constitution, which requires that the government respond to dissenting or unpopular speech or ideas with ‘tolerance, not coercion,'” Howell wrote.
    She found that the executive order violates the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution.

    Very broad ruling that the EO is just fundamentally unconstitutional. Sure to be appealed but the EO was always on shaky grounds and even most of the conservatives on the court don’t like Trump meddling with legal procedure.

  173. Reginald Selkirk says

    Mark Zuckerberg just declared war on the entire advertising industry

    It’s not really a secret that the advertising industry is about to get upended by AI — one reason big platform companies like Google and Meta have been so deeply invested in photo and video generation is because they know the first heavy users of those tools will be advertisers on their platforms. But no one’s ever really just come right out and said it — until today, when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with Stratechery’s Ben Thompson and basically said his plan was to more or less eliminate the entire advertising ecosystem, from creative on down. Here’s the quote — Zuck was talking about how AI has already improved ad targeting, but now Meta is thinking about the ads themselves:
    ..

  174. Reginald Selkirk says

    Rochester woman seen spewing racist slur pulls in thousands in donations

    A viral video of a mom who allegedly directed racial slurs at a young Black boy at a city playground has prompted a fundraising standoff between the NAACP and an apparent white supremacist effort to support the woman.

    By Friday morning, the woman had raised $305,200 and increased her goal to $1 million on a website that bills itself as a Christian crowdfunding service.

    The fundraiser purportedly belonging to Shiloh Hendrix had initially sought $20,000 after the video surfaced Wednesday of her spewing racial epithets at a man who intervened on the boy’s behalf.

    The virality of the video has raised shock and concern as Minnesota’s third-largest city deals with yet another racial incident in recent months.

    The video shows Hendrix, of Rochester, at Soldiers Field Memorial Park, just south of downtown. She repeats the slur to the man behind the camera, at one point telling the man the Black child took something from her and her toddler.

    “If he acts like one then he’s going to be called one,” Hendrix could be heard saying in the video.

    Social media commenters have claimed the Black child is around 5 years old and autistic. The Minnesota Star Tribune could not independently confirm the identity of the boy.
    …

  176. JM says

    @173 Reginald Selkirk: There are a bunch of problems with what Zuck is selling here but for a content platform like Meta it’s an obvious dream. Cut the advertising agencies out entirely and get 100% of the advertising dollar.
    There is a huge conceptual issue that isn’t addressed in the article. If Meta is showing ads that Meta generated then Meta is entirely responsible for the content. If they show me an ad that Meta generated then Meta is at fault if the add is wrong or stupid. They are setting themselves up for a huge conflict of interest. It exists already on a small scale but with this Meta would be taking entire responsibility for every ad that appears.

  177. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    CBS – Wis. Gov. Evers says “I’m not afraid” as Trump border czar Tom Homan suggests possible arrest

    [In last month’s memo to state workers with questions about ICE encounters,] Evers’ guidance advised them to contact an attorney immediately and ask the officers to return if an attorney is unavailable. The memo also advises state workers not to turn over paper files or give ICE officers access to computers without first consulting the state agency’s attorney and not to answer questions from the agents.
    […]
    similar to guidance that Connecticut’s Democratic governor issued in January. The guidelines also mirror what the National Immigration Law Center and other advocacy groups have said should be done when immigration officials show up at a workplace. […] The goal of the guidance was to give state employees “clear, consistent instructions” to ensure they have a lawyer present to help them comply with all applicable laws, Evers said.
    […]
    Tom Homan, Trump’s top border adviser […] said, “[…] impediment or knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that’s a felony and we’re treating it as such,” […] Some Republicans embraced the possibility of Evers being arrested.

  181. Silentbob says

    @ StevoR

    I don’t think I’ve ever been so invested in the outcome of an election. PLEASE let us join Canada in resisting fascism.

  183. birgerjohansson says

    Reginald Selkirk @ 175
    ‘In an unusual move, the [German] foreign office directly replied to [Marco] Rubio on X, writing: “We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped.”

    A lesson Americans sadly have forgotten. Or -courtesy of a badly underfunded education system- never lesrned.

  185. StevoR says

    The Gestapootato and his Trumpist cow chutney has gone down! They’ve lost.

    Phew!

    Thank Fuck! Thanks Ausssie people for actually being decent people.. mainly. YES! 😃

  187. StevoR says

    Dutton has lost his seat!!! :-D

    Albo returned. ALP win.

    Aussies have overwhelmingly rejected Trumpism and the worst piece of shit ever to lead the Libs – tho’ Scummo (also a loser last election) comes fucking close.

  189. Reginald Selkirk says

    Dinosaur Purse? Scientists Aren’t Buying This T. Rex Leather Claim

    Three companies have joined forces to develop a new luxury alternative to traditional leather. That sounds ordinary—except the material they’re trying to create is anything but.

    On Friday, April 25, creative agency VML and biotech companies Lab-Grown Leather Ltd. and The Organoid Company announced a “first-of-its-kind” partnership. Their goal: to create a cruelty-free, environmentally friendly, high-quality alternative to traditional leather, purportedly using Tyrannosaurus rex DNA. According to a company statement, the partnership aims to harness “the biology of the past to create the luxury materials of the future.” The catch is that they haven’t sufficiently explained exactly how they’re going to do that—and some researchers are very skeptical.

    “Using fossilized T-Rex collagen as a blueprint, the production process will involve engineering cells with synthetic DNA,” according to the statement. “Unlike other bio-based alternatives, Lab-Grown Leather’s ‘scaffold-free’ approach allows cells to create their own natural structure, resulting in a material that is structurally identical to traditional leather.”

    Collagen is an abundant protein in all animals, and provides structural support to muscles, bones, skin, and connective tissues. While researchers have recovered bits of collagen up to 195 million years old from dinosaur fossils and other remains, DNA decays much more rapidly. That means scientists can’t study dinosaur DNA directly—they have to reconstruct it in other ways.

    VML did not respond to a request from Gizmodo for clarification on its process. According to The Times, however, the researchers plan to use artificial intelligence to create a replica of T. rex collagen from preserved collagen fragments.

    Collagen, like all proteins, is made of amino acids whose sequences are determined by the order of nucleotide bases in DNA—the genetic code, or a gene’s “instructions” for how to make a specific protein.
    …
    There’s just one problem. “You can’t make leather from collagen,” Mary Higby Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist from North Carolina State University, told Gizmodo. “Leather is tanned from skin,” she added, which mostly consists of “epithelial tissues. These are made of keratin in all terrestrial vertebrates.”

    More broadly, Schweitzer, who’s not involved with the project, said that if she was trying to make dinosaur leather, she wouldn’t start with the T. rex, since preserved skin samples of theropods are extremely rare…

  191. birgerjohansson says

    Reginald Selkirk @ 188

    This one candidate object is the most promising I have read about in 49 years of disappointments but for obvious reasons I am not bringing out the champagne yet (I am not really an alcohol guy. When Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger died, I was content celebrating with cream cake. Planet Nine? That would really be something).

  193. birgerjohansson says

    Oops. Writing ‘Me 190’ is sacrilegous for aircraft nerds who might be googling this.
    If this was about aircraft it should be Bf 109 or Fw 190. 🙂

    (This is the kind of things we serious nerds get passionate about. Like you do NEVER confuse Valinor and Numenor)

    Ordinary people: do not vote for dudes who confuse Harvard and Harlem. But I digress.

  195. Silentbob says

    For Americans, red at 194 is the good guys (labour, left), blue is the baddies (conservatives). I know it’s disconcerting for you. X-D

  196. birgerjohansson says

    Jay Foreman is a map enthusiast. He has also posted an episode about how maps are altered for gerrymandering.
    .
    Jay Foreman:
    “Why is there a BLANK space in this map of East Berlin?”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=kwprznh3d-o

    A comment in the thread below:

    “Interestingly the map is actually wrong. Eastern German maps were always a bit distorted to make it difficult for people to plan escapes into the west.” 😱

  198. birgerjohansson says

    Silent Bob @ 194, 195

    For the benefit of young readers:
    Even before the Cold War, and during its full duration “red” meant left(/commie/Evil) while “blue” meant conservative(/right/proper). This was pretty much the international standard
    .
    After the cold war US TV started to do election maps with the incumbent president’s party in blue (possibly because it implied the authority of government?) while red was the opposition party. Since Obama was elected for two terms, the term ‘blue states’ and ‘red states’ got permanently associated with the respective party during Obama.

  199. Reginald Selkirk says

    @198

    Considering persistent rumors of Russian influence, red is an appropriate color for today’s version of the USA Republican Party.

  201. JM says

    @196 birgerjohansson: The USSR fudged it’s maps everyplace. They didn’t want too much detail or that they be too accurate because it helped foreign military planners. This used to be a thing that everybody did to some degree but it’s largely obsolete now.
    Every country with satellite cameras can get an accurate map in more detail then they can review. Turning camera pictures into useful information is the challenge now. The game now is countries sticking unused/unneeded/fake buildings on their military bases. If you need 5 hangers for planes build 10 and rotate the planes. It makes it harder on missile strikes and obscures just how many planes are actually on the base.

  202. JM says

    NBC News: Trump downplays recession fears, saying the U.S. would be ‘OK’ in the long term

    Asked twice by “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker whether it would be OK in the long run if there were a recession in the short term, the president said, “Look, yeah, it’s — everything’s OK. What we are — I said, this is a transition period. I think we’re going to do fantastically.”

    Another case where there are just too many possible ways for Trump to be wrong. Is he so mush brained he didn’t understand the questions, has he bought into his own propaganda so much he is OK with a recessions, does he think it won’t effect him so much he is OK with it, is he just outright lying, is he in denial? Just so many ways he can be wrong.

    “Well, you know, you say, ‘Some people on Wall Street say’ — well, I tell you something else. Some people on Wall Street say that we’re going to have the greatest economy in history. Why don’t you talk about them?” Trump said during the interview at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

    That one is easier to read, Trump’s group of spineless yes men don’t count as economic experts.

  203. Reginald Selkirk says

    @202

    “… Some people on Wall Street say that we’re going to have the greatest economy in history. Why don’t you talk about them?”

    There was one guy who was going to say that on Wall Street, but he got shot by Trump on Fifth Avenue.

  204. says

    Trump’s meme coin dinner takes crypto self-dealing to a whole new level

    “This is over the top — even for Trump.”

    Related video at the link.

    Unbelievable.

    That’s the first word that came to mind when I saw […] Trump’s announcement last week that he will host a dinner for the 220 top holders of the $TRUMP meme coin, complete with a private reception and White House tour for the top 25 investors.

    Trump’s efforts to grift off the presidency are not new, and his first term was largely defined by corruption and self-dealing. My organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, tracked 3,700 conflicts of interest over the course of his four years in office. […]

    But throughout those thousands of examples, I’m not sure we ever saw anything as blatant as this meme coin dinner. This is over the top — even for Trump — because while the practice of putting money in his pocket and subsequently gaining access to the presidency is far from new, it is more shameless than it has ever been. And even MAGA Republicans are beginning to take note. On Friday, Trump ally Sen. Cynthia Lummis, of Wyoming, for example, said the dinner “gives me pause.”

    Let’s be explicit about what’s happening here: Trump appears to be auctioning off access to the presidency. The more of his cryptocurrency that people buy, the higher their chances of meeting Trump at his club. And there’s no ambiguity about who is profiting. Trump launched $TRUMP on Jan. 17, and Trump is able to personally profits in a few ways. As The New York Times reported:

    A business entity linked to Mr. Trump owns a large tranche of the coins, meaning the president personally profits every time the price increases, at least on paper. Mr. Trump and his business partners also collect fees when the coins are traded, a windfall that amounted to nearly $100 million in the weeks after the coin debuted in January.

    […] after Trump made his reception announcement, the price of Trump’s coin surged more than 50%. That brings Trump more money. He may also stand to make an additional profit by holding the dinner at one of his golf clubs.

    The buying process is also extremely opaque. At the end of the day, we don’t know everyone who is spending money at his properties, investing in Truth Social or buying up his crypto assets. […]

    This raises glaring ethics concerns but, unfortunately, for the most part, our ethics laws outside of the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution don’t apply to the president. Those clauses bar the president from receiving profits, gains or advantages from foreign, state and federal governments. Unless a state, federal or foreign government purchased the $TRUMP coins, there’s very little we, or anyone, can do.

    ‘Making cash off of your pain’: Michael Steele slams Trump’s meme coins scheme. [video at link]

    But because the buyers behind crypto transactions are generally not disclosed, foreign governments could in fact be buying these coins, meaning that Trump could be violating the Constitution without the public finding out. Individuals or special interests could also be buying the coins in the hopes of directly influencing presidential decisions that will affect all of us. Here, too, the public likely wouldn’t know.

    This is unacceptable. […] outrage is appropriate, and needed, here.

    A president is supposed to serve the public, not his own interests or the interests of a wealthy few. With this meme coin dinner, Trump is giving the highest bidders access to the president while lining his own pockets. These wealthy investors are getting a unique chance to potentially influence decisions that could affect regular Americans’ lives. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of civil servants are losing their jobs thanks to his administration’s budget cuts, with a possible recession on the horizon as a result of Trump’s tariff policy.

    This is disturbing corruption, and we cannot allow it to pass by as a new normal.

  205. Reginald Selkirk says

    Navigating Secular Spaces as a Puerto Rican, Black Atheist

    by Kyria Santa • 22 April 2025
    As a Puerto Rican, Black, and atheist student, navigating secular spaces has often felt like stepping into uncharted territory. For many communities of color, religion is more than just a belief system—it is a cornerstone of identity, culture, and resilience in the face of historical oppression. In these contexts, questioning or rejecting religious beliefs can feel like questioning your community, your heritage, or even your own worth.

    I may be what some consider a “new atheist,” having only begun identifying as such in January 2023. And yet, one of the most terrifying things I have ever done was coming out as an atheist to my mother on January 1, 2025. I know this because, instead of telling her in person, I recorded a video of myself doing it. Ironically, I was more afraid of coming out as an atheist than I had been of coming out as gay—an announcement I actually made face-to-face. Thankfully, my mother took the news well, and our relationship remains strong.

    Now, some might think this reaction is overblown. “Is not believing in God really that big of a deal in communities of color?” The answer is a resounding yes. A 2021 study titled “You Don’t Believe in God? You Ain’t Black”: Identifying as Atheist Elicits Identity Denial From Black Ingroup Members found that:
    …

  207. birgerjohansson says

    Lynna, OM @ 204

    I read that as “STRUMP” which reminds me of the Swedish name for Pippa Longstocking.

    I would prefer substituting his surname with “SKRUMP” as a combination of Trump and the Swedish word “skurk” derived from an old word for shark meaning “crook” .

    Also the sw. word “skrumpna”/ “skrumpnat” is relevant for a mushroom-shaped appendage of the venerable Mr Skrump.

  208. birgerjohansson says

    Reginald Selkirk @ 205
    The author of “Seven Years A Slave” did not have a high opinion of priests as they were the cruellest slave owners of all.

    And the creator of a religion in the Middle East 1400 years ago was both a slave trader and slave owner, and is quoted with numerous disparaging remarks about black people.

    The idea that there are a particular Black religious group following that prophet would be hilarious if not my humor circuits were burned out.

    *Was it “Seven Years a Slave” or “Twelve” ? My memory leaks like a sieve.

  209. birgerjohansson says

    Myself @ 207
    The latter Swedish word means shrivel or shrivelled.
    Might apply to Skrump’s cognitive abilities or a physical appendage.

  211. says

    Reginald @174, not an example of good parenting! And the Christian fundraising connection to that bad parenting … sheesh.

    StevoR @185, good news! Thanks for keeping us up to date.

    JM @202, Trump and his imaginary friends!

  213. says

    Sneaky and unlawful at the same time:

    Trump wants to send to Congress a chunk of the DOGE federal funding cuts that Congress, in a properly functioning democracy, should have voted on in the first place. Its called a rescissions package, and it is a mechanism for Congress to vote to approve a small sliver of the cuts that the executive branch has already enacted without the legislative branch’s permission, as well as a request to, essentially, end all federal support for PBS and NPR, the nation’s most-well-known public media organizations. As my colleague Emine Yücel reported this week, Trump’s constitutionally backwards approach to a pretty standard executive branch-legislative branch request is designed to give an air of legitimacy to the whole DOGE operation, while also allowing Trump to get some revenge on the news media.

    Reports surfaced earlier this week indicating that the White House might delay sending its formal rescissions request to Congress for a few weeks — ostensibly so that Trump could focus on strongarming House and Senate Republicans into passing his massive budget bill (with drastic cuts to Medicaid). But new reporting from WaPo Friday suggests a second problem: that some Republican members of Congress are unnerved by the idea of swallowing sweeping foreign aide cuts that the White House has lawlessly enacted on its own, some of which will reportedly be in the recessions package, without having the time to thoroughly inspect the potential ramifications of making those funding freezes law.

    Democrats have, of course, been making noise about the fact that going about rescission in this manner is not only backwards constitutionally, it, more specifically, puts Trump in the position of doing Congress’ job for it. It is one of many themes of Trump’s power-grabbing second term we’ve been watching closely.

    Whether Trump is truly exercising patience, allowing Congress to pass his massive fiscal agenda before he shoves some DOGE cuts down members’ throats, or whether he’s reacting to pushback from Republican members wary of ceding their authority to the executive, will likely remain unclear for a bit. What is clear is his pettiness will always win out in the end.

    Not content to wait on Congress to formalize his war on the press, Trump signed an executive order late Thursday night supposedly striking down federal funding for NPR and PBS. Experts are already saying that the executive order, much like the DOGE work of freezing congressionally authorized funds, is unlawful.

    Trump Got Tired Of Waiting On GOP Lawmakers To Decide Whether To Relinquish Their Authority

  214. JM says

    Youtube/China Update: Xi Faces Military Crisis? | US-China Tariff War
    The part about trade starts 4:40. Both the US and China are carving various tariff exemptions but publicly saber rattling about the trade war. Both sides have talked themselves into difficult positions by making demands to open negotiations. In private their are some signs of low level talks but nothing substantial yet. Economic problems may force the countries to the table but it isn’t clear which country will give in first.
    There is a somewhat funny bit at the end at 9:13 talking about how the CIA is releasing some videos on Youtube to recruit new spies in China. It’s really as weird as it sounds and likely more for distraction value then anything.

  216. KG says

    Considering persistent rumors of Russian influence, red is an appropriate color for today’s version of the USA Republican Party. – Reginald Selkirk@199

    I don’t know if you’re being even semi-serious, but no. Just no. Red was associated with the USSR because of its (disputable, but not simply dismissable) claim to be socialist. The Russian Federation was founded on the explicit rejection of socialism, and its ruling ideology now is Christian Nationalist – like the Republican Party.

  217. says

    Trump restores Title X funding for two anti-abortion states—while wiping it out elsewhere

    The Trump administration quietly restored federal family planning money to Tennessee and Oklahoma, despite court rulings that the states weren’t entitled to funds because they refused to provide women information about terminating pregnancies or abortion referrals on request.

    The decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to restore millions of dollars for the two states came as it simultaneously withheld nearly $66 million from clinics in the Title X program elsewhere. Title X for more than 50 years has provided sexual and reproductive health services especially to low-income, hard-to-reach people, including minors.

    The Biden administration in 2023 cut off funding to Tennessee and Oklahoma, saying they violated federal rules by not offering counseling to patients about abortion. The states sued federal health officials. And courts ruled against the states.

    […] Zach West, an official with the Office of the Oklahoma Attorney General, separately wrote on April 17 that the state’s grant notice “wrongly indicated that a settlement agreement had been reached. No agreement has yet been entertained or discussed in any substantial manner in this case.”

    […] Title X was established to reduce unintended pregnancies and provide related preventive health care. As of 2023, more than 3,800 clinics across the country used federal grants to supply free or low-cost contraception, testing for sexually transmitted infections, screening for breast and cervical cancer, and pregnancy-related counseling. [All are important services.]

    Nationwide, more than 4 in 5 people who use Title X’s services are women, according to HHS.

    Federal law prohibits clinics from using Title X money to pay for abortions. However, HHS regulations issued in 2021 say participating clinics must offer pregnant women information about prenatal care and delivery, infant care, foster care, adoption, and pregnancy termination. That includes counseling patients about abortion and providing abortion referrals on request.

    HHS under President Donald Trump has not yet revised the Biden-era regulations […]

    Tennessee and Oklahoma […] told their Title X clinics they could discuss or make referrals only for services that were legal in their states, effectively cutting off any talk about abortion.

    […] State officials suggested even they weren’t sure why they got some of their funding back before the lawsuits were resolved. “If Oklahoma’s award is not being restored pursuant to a settlement agreement, then what is the reason for the partial restoration, and is it permanent?” West wrote.

    […] A report from HHS’ Office of Population Affairs said 60% of roughly 2.8 million patients who received Title X services in 2023 had family incomes at or below the poverty line. […]

    […] At least seven states — California, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, and Utah — now do not have any Title X-funded family planning services, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court by the ACLU and the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which lobbies for Title X clinics.

    Overall, 865 family planning clinics are unable to provide services to roughly 842,000 people, the lawsuit states.

    “We know what happens when health care providers cannot use Title X funding: People across the country suffer, cancers go undetected, access to birth control is severely reduced, and the nation’s STI crisis worsens,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement.

    Bad news.

  222. says

    Judge strikes down Trump’s ‘unconstitutional’ executive order against law firm Perkins Coie

    “Judge Beryl Howell’s 102-page opinion excoriates Trump, calling his targeting of the firm “an unprecedented attack” on the judicial system.”

    Related video is available at the link.

    U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order against Perkins Coie on Friday night, ruling his targeting of the law firm unconstitutional.

    In a 102-page opinion, Howell excoriated Trump and called his efforts against Perkins Coie “an unprecedented attack” on the principles of the American judicial system.

    “No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’” she wrote.

    It is the first ruling in which a judge has permanently blocked any of Trump’s efforts to target a law firm. In recent months, the president has sought to punish, via executive order, nearly a dozen firms over a range of grievances. Four of them, including Perkins Coie, have pushed back in court, but most have pre-emptively struck deals with the White House to avoid Trump’s wrath, as my colleague Steve Benen has pointed out.

    Trump’s executive order against Perkins Coie, signed in early March, centered in part on the firm’s representation of his former presidential opponent Hillary Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He revoked security clearances for Perkins Coie employees, restricted their access to government buildings and ended government contracts with the firm.

    In her ruling, Howell wrote in a footnote that other law firms have yielded to Trump, but that courts can review the legal merits of a case only when lawyers “make the choice to challenge rather than back down when confronted with government action.”

    Perkins Coie said in a statement that Howell’s decision on Friday “affirms core constitutional freedoms all Americans hold dear, including free speech, due process, and the right to select counsel without the fear of retribution.”

    “We are pleased with this decision and are immensely grateful to those who spoke up in support of our positions,” the firm said.

    Whether the Trump administration plans to appeal Howell’s ruling is unclear. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to MSNBC’s request for comment.

  223. says

    UK and EU to defy Trump with ‘free and open trade’ declaration

    “The draft U.K.-EU agreement is one of several being drawn up ahead of a May 19 summit.”

    Britain and the European Union are set to sign a formal declaration committing to “free and open trade” in defiance of Donald Trump’s tariff agenda.

    A leaked draft seen by POLITICO promises a “new strategic partnership” between London and Brussels based on “maintaining global economic stability and our mutual commitment to free and open trade.”

    It comes as Keir Starmer’s U.K. government is locked in negotiations with the Trump administration to try to get a carve-out from the U.S. president’s new tariffs.

    The draft U.K.-EU agreement, dated April 25, is one of several being drawn up ahead of a May 19 summit, which is seen as a key moment in resetting post-Brexit relations.

    Officials are also negotiating U.K.-EU agreements on defense and security, fishing and energy, as well as a “common understanding” of which topics will be covered by intensive Brexit reset negotiations this year.

    EU ambassadors are set to meet on Wednesday in Brussels to review progress on talks.

    The leaked draft also covers topics like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East, and irregular migration.

    Both parties pledge their “unwavering commitment to providing political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic” support for Kyiv and also assert their “commitment to securing a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages, and [a] surge in humanitarian aid.”

    The document also contains a section recommitting both parties to “multilateralism” — including support for the United Nations charter, the European Convention on Human Rights, and other international agreements. […]

  224. says

    David Remnick, writing for The New Yorker:

    […] At this point in his first term, in the pages of The New Yorker, we observed that Trump had “set fire to the integrity of his office.” We now know that was merely a rehearsal for what was to come.

    This time around, as I write in this week’s issue, “the record of failure after a hundred days is, at once, astonishing and predictable.” For no clear purposes, Trump has destabilized the global economy, alienated allies, laid waste to vital government agencies, deported hundreds of people (nearly all of whom have no criminal record) to a Salvadoran gulag, and waged a war of intimidation against dozens of scholarly, commercial, and legal institutions. This is not primarily a matter of competence or a clash over policy, but a coördinated assault on the country’s first principles. […]

    The record of failure after a hundred days is, at once, astonishing and predictable. With no evident purpose, Trump has alienated Europe, Japan, Mexico, and Canada, further undermined nato, and made even more plain his affection for Vladimir Putin. He has sanctioned his benefactor Elon Musk to hoist a chainsaw and commit mayhem against government agencies that save countless human lives. […] Shari Redstone, of Paramount, would rather trash the independence of “60 Minutes,” the most respected investigative outlet on television, than resist the absurd attacks of Trump and his lawyers.

    The enduring emblem of this Administration and its duplicity is undoubtedly $trump, a meme-coin scheme that has brought many millions of dollars in profits to the President and his fellow-investors.

    […] Trump treated a moral hero [Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky] as an ungrateful scoundrel. […] he treated a sadistic dictator as a soulmate. It is hard to recall a scene in the Oval Office more revolting than that of Trump’s smiling request to Bukele to build five more prisons, because “the homegrowns are next.”

    In recent weeks, there have been encouraging signs of opposition to Trump, on the streets and in the courts. Cory Booker, Chris Murphy, Alexandria Ocasio-­Cortez, and Bernie Sanders are among the clearest voices of dissent on Capitol Hill. But accommodation and cowardice remain the norm. “We are all afraid,” the Republican senator Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, said to a gathering in Anchorage. No doubt. The threat of retaliation is no joke, but the Senator’s plaintive cry does not exactly meet the demands of the moment. This is not primarily a matter of competence or a clash over policy. The Trump Administration is carrying out a coördinated assault on first principles. “The limits of tyrants,” Frederick Douglass said, “are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” The President will persist in his assault until he feels the resistance of a people who will tolerate it no longer.

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/05/a-hundred-days-of-ineptitude

  225. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/oklahoma-where-the-batsht-that-sleepy

    Welcome to your teacher training for the 2025-’26 school year, fellow Oklahomans! Or should I say Oklahomo-ans if you are one of the members of our gay community. Also, being gay is now illegal in Oklahoma*, so consider yourselves fired. Please exit the room and the state in an orderly fashion with no swishing.

    Okay, for those of you who are left, let’s get down to business! As you know, our state education department has instituted some very exciting curriculum changes for this upcoming year. These changes have the backing of our Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters. In fact, they were Superintendent Walters’ idea. He’s very hands-on in the development of all curricula in the state now, since too many of you were teaching woke stuff like “racism is bad” and “not everyone loves Jesus.” No more mentioning the divinity of Allah or the Buddha […] Anyone who even thinks it will be fired.

    First, let’s talk social studies. As you know, our new curriculum requires you to teach your students that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the 2020 election. As the guidelines state on page 118:

    Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of “bellwether county” trends.

    Now, many of you have already made your objections to this area of the curriculum known, and believe me, I’ve heard them all: That didn’t happen. There has never been any evidence of widespread election fraud. Multiple courts of law have rejected all of Trump’s allegations. He lost 60 cases just in the weeks after the election, for Chrissakes. The only frauds were all the people who went to prison trying to prove this nonexistent fraud. How about I quit and you hire that fuck-knuckle Mike Lindell to teach my class?

    To which I say, I hear you! There has been a lot of controversy over the 2020 election! And Superintendent Walters feels that our job as educators is not to, quote, teach facts. Nor is it our job to, quote, tell the students what happened simply because it’s true. Our job is to teach the controversy, that’s all. No matter how strained and phony the controversy may be, the fact is, it exists. Because people baselessly made it up. So it’s not really an empirical controversy. But still.

    In light of your objections, however, I have been authorized to tell you that anyone who refuses to inform students about how Sleepy Joe stole the presidency from our rightful, Christ-anointed leader Donald Trump will be fired for insubordination. Also, you will be condemned to an eternity wrapped in chains at the bottom of a lake of fire, not alive but not able to ever die, your skin burnt black and your lungs so scorched by flames that every breath is a searing agony a hundred thousand times more excruciating than any pain you ever felt on Earth.

    Or you can just bite your tongue and tell your students that Rudy Giuliani was right about everything. Superintendent Walters was very insistent on this point. Your choice!

    Relatedly, some of you have expressed concern that while the original draft of these standards instructed you to teach about the Biden administration’s successes and failures, the new draft pretty much throws all the successes out the window and tells you to concentrate on the failures. […]

    I think he was still amped up from preaching about sending anyone who ignores his orders to their damnation in the fiery lake. […]

    Are there any questions?

    Yes. The answer to that is yes, you will be teaching the Bible. Not all the time, though! Just a few days here with the story of Adam and Eve, a few days there with the story of Moses, a few more days over here with all the ways we know the Founding Fathers modeled the Constitution on the Bible to make us a Christian nation …

    No, children cannot opt out of these lessons if their parents don’t like the material, this isn’t sex ed class.

    Superintendent Walters just feels that children don’t get enough religious education in our schools these days. Yes, I know decades of law and custom say they shouldn’t. But the superintendent believes that Thomas Jefferson only said that thing about the separation of church and state because he was mad with sinful lust for his slaves. Therefore, Superintendent Walters doesn’t think it should count.

    It’s just that Superintendent Walters loves both Jesus and Donald Trump very much, and is at all times thirsty for the approval of one or the other.

    I do have some good news. Evolution is still allowed, for now, as is math. Also, they’re still tweaking the Biblical Numerology in Ancient Texts module, so we likely won’t have to teach that this year.

    Science teachers, you have no limits, other than you can’t acknowledge climate change. Or anything about the environment. Or ecology. Or geology. Or biology. Definitely not biology. […]

    Oh, and also, no teaching that germs cause illness. That actually comes from the federal government, and they have threatened to pull all our funding if we don’t obey**. […]

    * Being gay not actually outlawed in Oklahoma yet.

    ** Germ theory not actually outlawed in schools yet, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes some weird fucking shit.

    Embedded links are available at the main link.

  226. birgerjohansson says

    Phil Moorhouse:
    (Trump wannabe) Farage reckons he is bringing DOGE to the UK 

    “Will Farage Cause Strikes in His Councils?” #shorts

    .https://youtube.com/shorts/Rsv9Hc1qms8
    YES! YES! Let his party self-destruct, but not before they have caused chaos for the tories by stealing conservative voters!

  228. birgerjohansson says

    (Hossenfelder alert)
    A good thing about SH is, she has little patience with extraordinary physics claims unless they provide extraordinary evidence.

    New theory allegedly explains electric force as part of gravity.
    .https://youtu.be/zit31CnWcp8

  230. Reginald Selkirk says

    New Gold-Creating Phenomenon Confirmed in Space Using 2004 Neutron Star Flare Readings

    Slashdot reader sciencehabit shares this excerpt from a new article in Science magazine:

    At first, astronomers knew of only one cosmic scenario that fit the bill for the violent formation of “jewelry shop” elements [gold and sliver]: the collision of two ultra-dense stellar corpses called neutron stars.

    Now, a second has stepped onto the scene.

    As they report this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers have discovered signatures of this heavy element formation — called the r-process — in a giant flare first detected from a highly magnetic neutron star in 2004. The flare, which released more energy than our Sun does in a million years as it spewed electrically charged material, has remained shrouded in mystery since its discovery 20 years ago. Researchers quickly traced the outburst to a nearby magnetar, a special breed of neutron star whose magnetic fields are trillions times stronger than Earth’s. But ten minutes after the massive flare, a second, fainter signal inexplicably came from the same star.

    More r-process sources may still be looming in the dark. The new study accounts for about 10% of the Milky Way’s heavy elements, suggesting that astronomers will have to scour the cosmos for even more places where the r-process is hiding. One potential spot is a rare type of supernova that births rapidly rotating neutron stars, says says Anirudh Patel, the new study’s lead author and an astronomer at Columbia University. He hopes that with more observations, astronomers will be able to sharpen that picture…. “It’s humbling to realize that these were made in such extreme astrophysical environments.”

  231. Reginald Selkirk says

    Williams defeats Trump in World Championship (Snooker) semi-final

    Three-time champion Mark Williams produced a vintage display to defeat world number one Judd Trump 17-14, becoming the oldest ever player to reach a World Championship final.

    The Welshman, who turned 50 in March, eclipses his compatriot Ray Reardon, who won the title six times and appeared in the 1982 final as a 49-year-old.

    Williams had trailed 7-3 early in the match but his enduring class shone through as he reined in the 2019 winner to 8-8 on Friday, then pulled clear over two sessions on Saturday to avenge his 17-16 loss to Trump in their last-four Crucible thriller in 2022…

  233. Reginald Selkirk says

    Portugal announces the expulsion of 18,000 foreigners ahead of a national election

    Portugal’s caretaker government plans to expel some 18,000 foreigners living in the country without authorization, a minister said Saturday in the buildup to a national election.

    Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro said the center-right government will issue approximately 18,000 notifications to people in the country illegally to leave. The minister said officials will begin next week by asking some 4,500 foreigners to leave voluntarily within 20 days.

    Portugal will hold an early general election on May 18. Prime Minister Luis Montenegro called the snap ballot in March after his minority government led by his conservative Social Democratic Party lost a confidence vote in Parliament and stood down.

    Portugal has been caught up in the rising European tide of populism, with its far-right Chega party surging into third place in last year’s election.

  234. birgerjohansson says

    (21 minute Video) 
    The Military Show:
    “Let’s Be Honest Russian Military SUCKS – Here’s the Proof…”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=gKUAqoHj4Nk

    -In addition Ukraine has just received millions of artillery shells with more to come. This will finally bridge the imbalance of artillery shells between Ukraine and Russia. Since the Russian army is built around massive use of artillery above everything else, this is significant.
    So even with minimal support from USA Ukraine is unlikely to fold.

    Just like the Finns in WWII the Ukrainan conscripts are bone-weary but have no other option than to go on fighting until there is a chance for a peace that does not mean occupation and GULAG.

  235. Reginald Selkirk says

    A Military Whistleblower Showed a Photo of an Allegedly Huge “Disc-Shaped” Object, But There’s an Incredibly Obvious Explanation

    Self-styled Pentagon whistleblower and former US Army counterintelligence officer Luis “Lue” Elizondo showed off a peculiar image of what appeared to be a gigantic, disc-shaped object floating hundreds of feet above the ground, during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee meeting this week.

    The briefing, which took place on Thursday, was hosted by the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Fund, a nonpartisan political advocacy group “committed to uncovering the truth about UAPs,” a less-stigmatized term used by government officials to refer to UFOs. Also present at the meeting was Harvard professor and noted UFO hunter Avi Loeb.

    According to a tweet by the Disclosure Fund, the object was “estimated 600-1,000 ft in diameter, silver-hued, disc-shaped,” which the group used to call for “full declassification and open scientific analysis.”
    …
    At first glance, it does indeed look like an alien ship from a Hollywood movie. But as eagle-eyed users on Reddit quickly pointed out, Elizondo’s purported smoking gun has a hilariously simple explanation. On the platform’s otherwise conspiracy theory-friendly r/UFOs community, user mattperkins86 traced back the satellite image to two adjacent, perfectly circular fields, with the nearer, much darker one perfectly lining up to look like the second circle’s shadow.

    The two circles, located an hour east of Colorado Springs, can be spotted on Google Earth here.
    An image purportedly showing UFOs, according to Pentagon whistleblower Luis Elizondo…

    Round fields are a common occurrence in parts of the western USA due to the use of irrigation equipment with circular pivots.

    Elizondo tried to retrofit the photo after the criticism, arguing in a lengthy tweet that the “specific photo had only just been provided to me (by a private pilot) that morning, prior to the forum” admitting that the photo “had NOT YET been vetted.”

    Well then idjit, maybe you should have vetted it before presenting it to Congress.

  237. birgerjohansson says

    Reginald Selkirk @ 235

    ‘Disc-shaped object’ takes me back to The Midwich Cuckoos, when Christopher Reeve still had his health.

    A more fun association is “Raumpatrouille” -not a Star Trek knockoff, it premiered just a month after the first Trek episode.
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=hobEAZ5N3L4

  240. birgerjohansson says

    Reginald Selkirk @ 239
    Please, please, a Matrix that is actually benign!

  242. Reginald Selkirk says

    This Tampa Bay (Florida, USA) woman is headed to the mermaid Olympics in Europe

    …
    In five weeks, (Mandy) Walker is headed to the Official Merlympics in Wolfsburg, Germany.
    …
    On May 24, more than a hundred merfolk from 15 nations will duke it out for fantasy-fueled glory. Who can ooze the most beauty during the photo challenge? Rescue a drowning victim the fastest? Swim at the speed of light? Walker, a Riverview-based mermaid performer and instructor known as MerMandy, is one of six members of Team USA…

  245. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: birgerjohansson @240:

    They could plug T-Rump into his own private little world

    Please, please, a Matrix that is actually benign!

    A whole Secret Service detail of Agent Smiths would be complaining about the smell.

  246. StevoR says

    Yes! Boothbyn won by the ALP’s Louise Miller-Frost & Flint defeated and hopefuly her political carer ended permanently now. Phew!

    In more recent elections, Boothby has been South Australia’s battleground seat, with the Liberals holding it on an ever decreasing margin.That changed in 2022, when Labor’s Louise Miller-Frost managed to win it.

    … (Snip)..

    It attracted early interest this time around with the return of former MP Nicolle Flint, who had been campaigning in the seat for months before the election was called.While Ms Flint has strong name recognition in Boothby, the result may show being well-known doesn’t necessarily mean well-liked. By current counting, Boothby appears to have become a safe Labor seat.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-04/no-adelaide-seats-for-liberals-after-2025-federal-election/105248078

    Such a relief!. Absolutely cannot stand Flint. who is one of the worst people I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting and a far reichwing extremist who described enviromentalism as ä “modern day scourge” in her maiden speech..

  247. StevoR says

    So nic etowakeuop to the news that the LNP has been absolutely smashed in yetserday’s election – although i wish the Greens had done better and would’ve preferred a minority govt with the Greens holding balanc eof pwoer to push the ALP towards more progreessive policies.

    See :

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-04/election-result-map-how-labor-won/105208988

    Australian voters have delivered Anthony Albanese “a win for the ages” that should see Labor with more seats than at any point in its history. More even than Kevin Rudd or Bob Hawke after their most famous victories. Albanese outperformed the polls and the pundits’ expectations on a historic night that will leave the Coalition interrogating where it all went so very wrong, with Peter Dutton “fired into the Sun” and many other senior figures and potential future leaders wiped out.

    The Labor landslide has also overshadowed the ongoing rise and rise of independents in Australian politics.

    Let’s break it down.

    Oh and hey, the Canadian election gets their own post here but our Aussie one doesn’t?

  249. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Border agents posted at Tucson maternity ward to quickly deport migrant mom

    A Guatemalan woman who gave birth in Tucson on Wednesday—days after entering Arizona through the desert and getting arrested by border agents—is facing rapid deportation proceedings […] officers, who are posted outside the woman’s Tucson Medical Center hospital room, are refusing to let the new mother speak to a lawyer, as she’s requested […] saying [her lawyer] needed a signed G-28 form identifying him as the woman’s lawyer before he could see her […] [Her lawyer] had the form with him and just needed the woman’s signature, but CBP officers said neither he, nor a hospital official, would be allowed to take the form to her so she could sign

     
    A different case.
    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):

    THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. First Trump illegally sent a child’s father to be imprisoned without trial or due process in El Salvador. Then ICE grabbed her mother to be deported to Venezuela.

    But despite the mom saying she wanted to leave with her daughter, ICE is keeping the baby!

    [WaPo article] The Trump admin is *defending* this as a deliberate decision. They claimed both the child’s parents are in Tren de Aragua (without presenting any evidence) and therefore are arguing that this is in the child’s best interest. Of course, they didn’t file any case. They just took the baby.

  250. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Lynna @222:
    A footnote from Howell’s 102-page opinion on the Perkins Coie EO.

    Rando:

    the footnote on page 27 re the amicus briefs submitted for each “side”. It is absolutely vicious in its deadpan delivery.

    twenty-two amicus briefs have been submitted in support of plaintiff from a wide range of interested lawyers and law firms; legal professional organizations; law professors; 346 former state and federal judges; former and current in-house general counsel; former senior government officials; media and press freedom organizations; and organizations including the ACLU, Cato Institute, Institute for Justice, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, among others.

    A single amicus brief was submitted in support of the government by three gun rights groups and three conservative advocacy organizations. […] beginning with four Bible verses […] and arguing for expansive Executive Power, while noting the total number of votes and Electoral College margin in favor of President Trump

  252. rorschach says

    @247,

    “So nice to wake uop to the news that the LNP has been absolutely smashed in yetserday’s election”

    If slimy corrupt Timmy Wilson still gets up in Goldstein, I will be very pissed off. Currently 50/50. But yeah, we did a Canada!

  253. JM says

    Independent: US steps back from peace talks, saying it won’t mediate between Russia and Ukraine

    The US will no longer mediate between Russia and Ukraine, leaving the two countries to work out how to end the war, a state department official says.
    Tammy Bruce said US envoys would no longer fly around the world “at the drop of a hat” to act as a go-between in peace talks.
    It was now “between the two parties” to present concrete ideas on how the conflict would end, she insisted, although the US remained committed to helping.

    Trump has realized that Russia doesn’t want peace but he isn’t willing to admit he failed at negotiation so the US is just “stepping back” as mediator. The US position is now carefully politically spaced so that the US can’t take any blame if there is no peace but Trump can jump in and take some credit if a treaty does happen.
    No surprise that this happened right after the mineral rights treaty was finally signed but the treaty also insures that Ukraine will continue to get some military supplies from the US. How much and how long is unclear but Ukraine is working to get other suppliers. The European countries are ramping up but are still getting manufacturing capacity on line after decades of expecting the US to provide much of that.

  254. says

    Congratulations to the Aussies for all of their good election results.

    Sky Captain @250, thanks for that. Hilarious. Deadpan. Spot on.

    In other news: Ignorance about autism is bad. Republicans’ Medicaid cuts are worse.

    Related video at the link.

    April 2025 was the weirdest Autism Awareness Month in my life, thanks largely to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    The secretary of health and human services finished the month as he began it: spreading conspiracy theories, misinformation and lies about autism, vaccines, basic medical theories and more. He promised a study that would find the causes of autism by September (a timeline his NIH director immediately abandoned). He threatened to form a registry of autistic people, then pulled back, but not before parents began canceling assessments out of fear of what the government might do with that information. And in an interview with Dr. Phil, he not only offered more false links between vaccinations and autism, but also chemtrail conspiracy theories and an insistence that parents considering vaccinating their kids should “do their own research.”

    That’s plenty of “awareness” — the wrong kind of awareness. I need families like mine — my 18-year-old son is autistic — and those who care about us to become aware of the threats against Medicaid. I need awareness of the consequences that proposed GOP cuts would exact on families like mine, and what we can do to stop or mitigate the coming disaster.

    I don’t know that we can stop Kennedy from saying ignorant and stigmatizing things, but we can’t spend the next four years chasing down and debunking a man who literally doesn’t believe in germ theory. But the Republican-controlled Congress, backed by the president, is planning radical cuts to Medicaid, and there’s nothing more important for autistic people, their families and everyone with any disability or a loved one with a significant disability in America.

    […] the administration is “trying to take hundreds of millions of dollars out of Medicaid” and there’s no way to do that without cutting back on Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), which allow autistic people to live independently […] Right now, recipients of HCBS have their needs assessed, then get assigned a number of hours of support based on that assessment — already a highly contested and stressful practice.

    “If Medicaid gets cut, states are going to have to make decisions,” Gross says. “One thing they could do is cut people’s hours. People will be stuck in apartments, in wheelchairs, unable to bathe, dress, go to the bathroom.” […] People who need 24/7 care may be forced into institutions, or family members will have to leave the workforce to provide care at home.

    My son is autistic and needs a responsible adult around at all times. He also has Down syndrome, is intellectually disabled, and is nonverbal but a great communicator. I always worry that accurately describing his support needs will wrongly convey the idea that he’s a burden. He just requires specific kinds of supports. They aren’t really that expensive and are pretty easy to provide. Medicaid supplies him health care, an aide who allows him to access the world in the same ways that other teenagers do, and access to therapeutic programs not otherwise covered in school.

    […] States administer Medicaid under many different state-based program names, and users often don’t know their state program is, in fact, Medicaid. One person who might help ensure people know this would be, of course, the secretary of health and human services. But at his confirmation hearings, alas, Kennedy seemed not to know anything about the $800 billion program.

    […] “If there’s increased awareness of autism this month, that’s great,” she said, “[because] we want you to be aware of the precarious situation of Medicaid right now. We depend on it for daily survival.”

  258. JM says

    AP: Putin says he hopes there will be no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine had not arisen and that he hopes it will not.
    In comments aired Sunday in a film by Russian state television about his quarter of a century in power, Putin said Russia has the strength and the means to bring the conflict in Ukraine to a “logical conclusion.”

    Big indirectly stated threat. Hopefully the EU makes it clear that any use of nuclear weapons will be taken as a declaration of war on everybody. I have no illusion that the US government will respond to this.

  259. says

    “Cheers” from the “Cheers and Jeers” report:

    Canada, as nearly 70% of eligible voters show up to keep the Liberal Party and Prime Minister Mark Carney in place—a big, beautiful, perfect “Eff You” to Trump

    Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for getting a big round of applause at Pope Francis’s funeral, while our fake-Christian-in-chief was welcomed with scowls and silence

    The federal judges who continued to free unlawfully-detained legal residents while berating the Trump lawyers for repeatedly violating the Constitution

    Maine Governor Janet Mills, who last February stood up to Trump (“I’ll see you in court”) and won, as today a federal funding freeze on the state was lifted and Trump gets nothing

    Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, for the quote of the week after being freed from the clutches of ICE goons: “To President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you.”

    The millions of Americans who took part in the International Workers’ Day rallies across the country to protest the Republican party’s assault on labor rights

    The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees, including Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Chubby Checker, Soundgarden, The White Stripes, Warren Zevon, and Carol Kaye

    Federal Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., the first judge to throw Trump’s justification for using the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act into the terlet and flush

    Criminal defense attorney Abbe Lowell, for launching a law firm, staffed by attorneys who left firms that caved to Trump, and dedicated to representing clients under attack by Pam Bondi’s revenge-obsessed Justice Department

  260. says

    Sigh.

    A community in Texas where a launch site for Elon Musk’s SpaceX company is located voted to incorporate as the city of Starbase on Saturday.

    Residents of Cameron County, who are mostly SpaceX employees, voted in favor of the move in a 212-6 vote. Musk celebrated the vote in a post on his social media platform X, stating Starbase “is now a real city.”

    Only 143 votes were needed to secure the incorporation of the city, which sits as the edge of the U.S.-Mexico southern border in the Rio Grande Valley.

    […] Cameron County elections administrator Remi Garza said once the the election results are recognized by a county judge, Starbase will officially become a Texas municipality.

    […] The formation of the new city comes after Musk’s announcement last July that he planned to move the headquarters of SpaceX and X out of California after a bill regarding transgender students was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) into law.

    SpaceX’s project began over a decade ago when the company started to purchase land in the area in 2012 and officially broke ground two years later when the legislature passed the bill allowing for an exception to the constitution’s Public Beach Access act, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    Some residents in the area initially opposed the tech billionaire’s effort.

    “SpaceX bullied us from the beginning,” Celia Johnson told the Journal at the time. “SpaceX employees did what they wanted.”

    Johnson, in 2021, claimed there were numerous attempts from the company to buy her home and those of others.

    […] Three years later, a test flight on March 30 did blow up near the Texas facility, sending debris flurrying. It took three months to clean up. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported numerous non-compliance issues with the company to the Federal Aviation Administration, according to CBS.

    Link

  262. says

    Trump, asked if he has to ‘uphold the Constitution,’ says, ‘I don’t know’

    Trump said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he’s following lawyers’ advice as he tries to execute rapid deportations, arguing that giving immigrants due process is time-consuming.

    Video at the link.

    […] Trump argued in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that fulfilling his ambitious campaign promise to rapidly carry out mass deportations may take precedence over giving immigrants the right to due process under the Constitution, as required by courts.

    A central part of Trump’s agenda has been implementing the “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history, as he vowed during the 2024 campaign. In service of that goal, his administration has pressed the courts to allow the immediate removal of immigrants it accuses of being members of a Venezuelan gang, without giving them a chance to plead their case before a judge.

    In an interview last month with “Meet the Press,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “Yes, of course,” when asked whether every person in the United States is entitled to due process.

    Trump, however, isn’t so sure.

    “I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump replied when asked by “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker whether he agreed with Rubio. His comments came during a wide-ranging interview at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which aired Sunday.

    […] The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment says “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”; it does not say that person must be a U.S. citizen, and the Supreme Court has long recognized that noncitizens have certain basic rights. Trump has also said that while “we always have to obey the laws,” he would like to see some “homegrown criminals” sent to El Salvador as well, a proposal that was widely panned by legal experts.

    When Welker tried to point out what the Fifth Amendment said, Trump suggested that such a process would slow him down too much.

    “I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are — some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”

    “I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he added.

    “But even given those numbers that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Welker asked.

    “I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

    The Supreme Court has already made it clear to the Trump administration in three different recent decisions that it has to allow basic due process rights for immigrants based on the long-standing understanding of the laws. […]

  263. says

    Romanian election exit polls: Hard-right Trump fan George Simion wins first round

    “The nationalist chief is expected to qualify for the presidential runoff on May 18, with establishment figurehead Crin Antonescu and centrist Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan currently fighting for second place.”

    George Simion, the hard-right leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, is projected to win the first round of Romania’s presidential election, with more than 30 percent of the vote, according to exit polls.

    It was not immediately clear which candidate would place second, with establishment figurehead Crin Antonescu and centrist Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan battling to face Simion in the runoff. Former Prime Minister Victor Ponta is set to finish in fourth place, the exit polls say. [graph of exit poll results]

    The exit poll projections are not official results, which are expected to start coming in from Romania’s election authority in the next few hours. The exit polls also do not reflect votes cast by the Romanian diaspora abroad.

    The election results are being closely watched in Brussels and Washington, as Romania has become the latest battleground between the hard right and political establishment. Simion has unapologetically badged himself as a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

    Sunday’s vote was part of the election do-over that Romania’s top court ordered in December, after canceling the November ballot over allegations of illegal campaigning and potential Russian interference in favor of Călin Georgescu, an ultranationalist firebrand who came out of nowhere to win the first round.

    Simion hoped to harness the election support Georgescu built last year by saying he’ll have a job for him, even possibly as prime minister. […]

    Details about the challengers are available at the link.

  264. says

    Women have served in combat roles for a decade. The Pentagon is reopening the debate

    ​​​​​In Army Ranger school, Emelie Vanasse once sat under a poncho in the pouring rain and shivered so hard her entire body cramped up. She strapped on a rucksack that weighed more than 100 pounds and climbed a mountain. Deep in the middle of the woods, she hallucinated a donut shop.

    When Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver became the first women to make it through Ranger training in 2015, Vanasse had taped their pictures above her desk.

    “I’m next,” she told herself then. “It’s gonna be me.”

    Less than two years later, she woke up at three a.m., shaved her head—one-quarter inch all around—and drove to Camp Rogers, Georgia, to endure 62 days of crawling through the mud, rappelling down mountainsides, and leading fellow soldiers in training raids and ambushes while hungry and sleep-deprived. She graduated with another woman as the fourth and fifth female Rangers in the Army’s 249-year history.

    Today, 160 women have earned their Ranger tabs, and the debate over whether women should serve in combat positions alongside men is generally considered settled.

    Or it had been, until very recently.

    Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the military to reexamine the standards under which women have gained entry into combat roles. The month before that, he fired the former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti without giving a reason, leaving the military without a single female four-star officer. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman fired the only other four-star woman, former Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, on Inauguration Day.

    […] on Thursday, the Defense Secretary took the unusual step of removing all current members of its independent advisory committees—including the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service, one of the oldest, known by its acronym, DACOWITS. The committee has been a standard-bearer for women’s integration into the military, advising defense secretaries from both parties on every issue surrounding women in the military dating back to the Truman administration. For decades, it advocated to allow women to serve in combat roles.

    Advocates for women in the military worry the move signals Hegseth may be looking to appoint committee members who agree with him—in the past, he has been vocal that women are not suited to serve in combat.

    […] It’s been a decade since the military opened combat roles to women, and thousands of women have served in those positions. Women make up nearly 20% of the total military, and surveys of active duty troops have shown that men who serve alongside women tend to support a fully gender-integrated military. Even the Marine Corps—which long pushed back against integrating its recruit training—has begun graduating mixed-gender battalions.

    […] During World War II, some 400,000 women served in the military, in each branch’s women’s corps. In 1948, Harry Truman signed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, which permitted women to join the military alongside men.

    Three years later, Defense Secretary George Marshall established DACOWITS to help him better recruit women into the military. In the nearly 75 years since, the committee has worked on everything from lifting the ban on women in combat to developing guidance for pregnant servicemembers and single parents to pushing for boots that fit women’s feet. […]

    To be sure, the Pentagon is no stranger to politics. In 2021, then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered a review of all independent defense advisory committees […] Austin’s review of DACOWITS in particular sparked an immediate outcry. In a letter signed by every female veteran in Congress at the time—on both sides of the aisle—lawmakers argued for Austin to keep the committee.

    […] When Trump returned to the White House, the Defense Department told all independent advisory committees in February they would be required to summarize how their work benefited a “warrior ethos … and how it aligns to the President’s and Secretary of Defense’s objectives,” according to reporting by Military Times. In March, Hegseth informed all the committees they were under a 45-day review—which culminated in the dismissal of all committee members last week.

    […] When Vanasse reported to Ranger school, she knew it wouldn’t be easy, physically or mentally. […] she was also thinking about how much harder things might be because she was a woman.

    “I was very aware the population of objective graders hated my guts for even showing up to the school.”

    […] ‘Oh my gosh, someone with a lot of power over my life doesn’t want me to be here solely on the basis of me being a woman.’”

    […] Last month, Hegseth issued a memo directing the military to review its physical fitness standards and to examine how they have changed since Jan. 1, 2015. That’s the year the Army announced the first gender-integrated Ranger training class—the first of the military’s special forces communities to include women. A second memo, two weeks after Hegseth’s first, directed the services to develop gender-neutral standards for combat arms.

    Women who have served in combat roles have pointed out that Hegseth’s memo seems rooted in a misunderstanding of current standards. When removing the ban on women in combat was under debate, one of the biggest concerns circulating was that combat standards would be lowered to accommodate women—something that did not happen.

    […] In general, service members in the military take a yearly physical fitness test. Those tests are normed for both gender and age. But service members who want to go into combat arms take other tests, which are graded the same for everyone, regardless of age or gender. And all evaluations in special forces have been gender-neutral since the programs were opened to women.

    […] the new Army test exempts certain specialities from the new standards, like artillery crewmen, which currently have very few women—but not artillery officers, where there are more women. And the Army has said that while the new combat standards are the same for men and women, they will be adjusted for age.

    […] Hegseth has been promising to restore the military’s “lethality.”

    […] “What does it mean to be lethal? What are the components?” said Kris Fuhr, a former Army officer who has advised the Army on integrating women into Ranger training and combat arms. “Running fast and lifting heavy things—that’s a component of lethality. But also understanding complex problems, endurance, flexibility, the ability to gain trust and hold trust, the ability to lead under terrible conditions and pressure—those are all components of lethality as well.”

    […] watching the Army’s Best Ranger competition earlier this month, where, for the first time, a woman competed in the grueling 62-hour competition. Rangers there are graded on physical ability, but also on technical, tactical, and cognitive ability. First Lt. Gabrielle White and her partner Capt. Seth Deltenre came in 14 out of 52 teams.

    Fuhr said White’s performance should end the debate over whether women can hack it in combat roles. “That conversation is over,” she said.

    Neither Hegseth nor Trump have specified a definition of “lethality.” An executive order Trump signed shortly after taking office said that DEI programs “undermine leadership, merit, and unit cohesion, thereby eroding lethality and force readiness.”

    That order precipitated the removal of Pentagon articles celebrating women and people of color and came as the service branches moved to dismantle groups dedicated to studying obstacles facing minority groups in the military. Advocates say those groups helped to make the military more effective.

    […] women have been flying in the Air Force for decades before their most basic biological needs were addressed. “That’s a long time to have women to be part of a community and not have the readiness and lethality to be the most capable warfighter.”

    While it took nearly a half-century for the Air Force to develop the technology for its female pilots to be able to relieve their bladders in-flight, Weeks pointed out another decades-long gap that thwarted women in the military.

    Women weren’t allowed to fly in the military for 30 years after World War II. In 1974, the Army and the Navy opened pilot jobs to women—a milestone heralded at the time as an important “first.” But it wasn’t.

    More than a thousand female pilots served in the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots program during World War II, ferrying all types of military aircraft more than 60 million miles, transporting cargo, and towing targets for live-fire practice. Thirty-eight WASPs died. But after the war, women were banned from flying for the military.

    “What could have been done in those 30 years? What innovations and ingenuity or different perspectives were lost because this group of capable aviators was no longer allowed to do it?” Weeks said.

    “Does our nation have the ability to pause, stop, restart, and then pick back up?” she asked. “I would say the answer is no.”

  265. says

    Boondoggle and waste/fraud example: Trump’s “Golden Dome.”

    […] Trump is poised to get his first big windfall for his Golden Dome with a proposed $25 billion to jump-start the purported missile defense system.

    The billions of dollars earmarked for the Golden Dome — part of the GOP’s reconciliation bill to increase Pentagon spending by $150 billion — means the system long touted by Trump on the campaign trail will soon start to solidify.

    But the proposed system, meant to act as a shield protecting the continental U.S. against ballistic, hypersonic and advanced cruise missiles, has its fair share of issues out of the gate, including its enormous price tag, potential effectiveness and feasibility.

    Questions have also been raised as to whether defense contracts to build the Golden Dome could be used to pad the wallets of businesses owned by billionaire Elon Musk and others.

    Project likely to exceed GOP funding
    The Golden Dome missile shield is set to receive $24.7 billion to kick off the initiative, dollars meant to tie together existing programs with newly developed technology.

    The reconciliation bill, currently working its way through Congress, allocates the majority of the money to efforts that would set up a network of satellites and interceptors in space that can detect and help shoot down any incoming missiles.

    […] the project is expected to cost far more than the initial $25 billion [I snipped cost details], with experts and analysts predicting the dollar amount for the entire system could reach hundreds of billions, possibly into the trillions.

    The high costs partly come from the sheer amount of satellites needed to cover and protect the entire U.S. via sensing and tracking missiles — some 400 to more than 1,000 satellites, Reuters reported. […]

    Musk’s role draws scrutiny
    One emerging source of contention around the Golden Dome has been the possibility that Musk could get a chunk of the change in contracts via his company SpaceX, an outcome that would appear to be a conflict of interest given his role in the Trump administration.

    […] Musk’s company now appears to be a front-runner to win a major contract in building out the Golden Dome […]

    “When the richest man in the world can become a special government employee and exert influence over the flow of billions of dollars of taxpayer money in government contracts to his companies, that’s a serious problem, Shaheen [Senate Armed Services Committee senior member Jeanne Shaheen] said.

    Questions emerge on technology’s feasibility
    When Trump announced he would ask Congress to fund the Golden Dome as part of his presidential address to lawmakers on March 4, [snipped references to Reagan and “Star Wars program”] “It’s very important. This is a very dangerous world. We should have it. We want to be protected.”

    […] While Washington’s technological advancements have grown by leaps and bounds since then, the equipment needed for a Golden Dome could still take years to develop. Such defense capabilities include space interceptors to take out targets midflight and nonkinetic options like directed energy, lasers and high-power microwaves.

    Experts have said a more sensible goal would be to improve the country’s existing missile shield — comprised of several layered systems — as a way to prepare for future threats from the likes of Russia, China, Iran or North Korea. [I snipped description of current missile defense.]

    Lawmaker questions vulnerability issues
    Beyond questions as to whether the U.S. currently has the technology to create a Golden Dome, there’s also doubts as to the feasibility of such a project. Multiple studies have concluded that the defense system would be vulnerable, as it could be overwhelmed should adversaries decide to launch multiple weapons at the same time. […]

    “[…] You’re going to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money building things that could inspire the Russians to say, ‘Oh, we need to take them out before they get used.’ […] questioned whether the system could defend against sea-based attacks — as in missiles fired from a ship — as Trump has appeared to focus on defense from aerial attacks. […]

    Plan derives from Israel’s Iron Dome
    Trump’s dreams for the Golden Dome stem from Israel’s Iron Dome, a system the small country uses as a means to take out short-range rockets and artillery fired from up to 43 miles away.

    [I snipped Trump’s previous blather.] But while Israel’s Iron Dome is designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery […] that defense system wouldn’t work for the continental U.S.

    Washington’s potential threats would instead come from intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from countries such as Russia, China, Iran or North Korea, not short-range projectiles […]

    “Iron Dome was a system tailor-made for Israel,” said Tom Karako, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Missile Defense Project, told The Hill last year. “Putting an Iron Dome on every corner is neither affordable nor is it sensible.”

    Link

  267. birgerjohansson says

    Meidas Touch: 

    “Furious Japan issues Major Threat to Trump”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=ECArVLg8BJU
    They hold a trillion dollars in US debt. Stupid to mess with the guys who owns your ass.

    Also, Trump complained about Japan using some kind of test on US cars dropping a bowling ball on them. No such test exists outside Trump’s mind.
    Trump also claimed US cars cannot be sold in Japan because Japan puts so high tariffs on them.
    Japan has not put tariffs on American cars since 1976.

  269. Reginald Selkirk says

    Jewels linked to Buddha remains go to auction, sparking ethical debate

    On Wednesday, a cache of dazzling jewels linked to the Buddha’s mortal remains, which have been hailed as one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the modern era, will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.

    For over a century these relics, unearthed from a dusty mound in northern India in 1898, have sat largely unseen, cradled by a private British collection.

    Now, as the gems prepare to leave the custody of their keepers, they are stirring not just collectors’ appetites but also some unease.

    They come from a glittering hoard of nearly 1,800 pearls, rubies, topaz, sapphires, and patterned gold sheets, first glimpsed deep inside a brick chamber in present-day Uttar Pradesh in India, near the Buddha’s birthplace.

    Their discovery – alongside bone fragments identified by an inscribed urn as belonging to the Buddha himself – reverberated through the world of archaeology. Nicolas Chow, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia and worldwide head of Asian Art, believes this is “among the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of all time”.

    Yet as these relics now face the glare of the auction room, experts tell the BBC that a question hangs heavy: can the sale of treasures so intimately woven into India’s sacred past be considered ethical?
    …

  270. Reginald Selkirk says

    Archaeologists discover hundreds of metal objects up to 3,400 years old on mysterious volcanic hilltop in Hungary

    Ancient people in Hungary hid at least six metal hoards around a mysterious settlement on a lone hill as early as the 15th century B.C., a new study using lasers and fieldwork finds.

    In just one year, researchers using metal detectors identified over 300 artifacts from the Late Bronze Age (1450 to 800 B.C.) and the Early Iron Age (800 to 450 B.C.), including jewelry, military decorations and weapons.

    The oldest Late Bronze Age findings date back to between 1400 and 1300 B.C., though the majority are Bronze Age artifacts from 1080 to 900 B.C., according to the study, which was published March 27 in the journal Antiquity. In addition to metal assemblages, the team uncovered amber beads, fabric and leather remains, as well as boar and domestic pig tusks.

    The archaeological work took place at Somló, a volcanic hill in western Hungary notable for its elevation over a relatively flat landscape…

    The findings from Somló join other evidence suggesting that the people living here between the 13th and sixth century B.C. likely lived in tribal or clan-based societies led by elite warriors. Specifically, the recent discoveries indicate that Somló might have been one of their seats of power, as well as the host of a prominent community whose culture included the deposition of metal hoards, Soós said…

  271. JM says

    @267 birgerjohansson: Politifacts: Donald Trump botches Japanese bowling ball on the car hood test
    With the bowling ball thing there is a test that checks on human impact using what looks like half a bowling ball. It’s likely Trump saw or heard about this at some point and mangled it when repeating it. He has the actual point of the test backwards, it’s a test to make sure a car crumples enough. If the car surface was too stiff it would kill people too easily. This is the sort of thing that a competent president would have double checked before he trotted out the story but Trump doesn’t bother with that sort of thing.

  272. Reginald Selkirk says

    Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiisk

    The mayor of the Russian port city of Novorossiisk declared a state of emergency on Saturday after local authorities said a Ukrainian drone attack had damaged a grain terminal and several residential buildings, injuring five people.

    There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, whose air force said Russia had attacked Ukraine overnight with 183 drones and two ballistic missiles.

    Andrei Kravchenko, the mayor of the Russian Black Sea city of Novorossisk, was shown inspecting damage to three apartment buildings in video released on his official Telegram account…

  274. Reginald Selkirk says

    GOP amps up Trump impeachment talk in midterm battle as party leaders woo Kemp for Senate

    President Donald Trump and GOP leaders are beginning to plot their midterm push to hang on to power amid a shaky political environment, courting key candidates in critical battleground House and Senate races while leaning hard on an issue that could animate the MAGA faithful: impeachment.

    Even though Democratic leaders are wary of a third impeachment vote, the topic has become a prominent discussion in GOP ranks, with Trump eager to avoid another all-consuming showdown with an emboldened Democratic majority and Republican leaders banking the talk could help drive up turnout in an election where Trump won’t be at the top of the ticket.

    “It is a key priority of his, obviously, to keep the House majority, because he knows what would happen if we didn’t,” Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN after meeting with Trump last week to discuss the midterms. “Democrats have already said they’re gonna try another baseless impeachment. They’ll do their best to grind the agenda to a halt.” …

    I don’t think you’ll find many Democrats who would claim efforts to impeach Trump, past or future, are baseless.

    His recent comments on due process are a red flag, I am not sure if they should encourage impeachment or a 25th Amendment push, but the latter isn’t going to happen because the members of Trump’s cabinet are there solely due to personal loyalty, not competence.

  275. Reginald Selkirk says

    Ukraine said it downed fighter jets with drone boats for the ‘first time in history,’ destroying two $50 million Russian aircraft

    Ukraine said it shot down two Russian fighter jets with naval drones, describing it as the “first time in history” the technology had destroyed a crewed combat aircraft.

    A Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (GUR) special operations unit said on Saturday that it destroyed a Russian Su-30 fighter jet in the Black Sea on Friday by using a missile launched from a naval drone.

    Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the GUR, then told The War Zone that a second Russian Su-30 was also downed by the missiles from the naval drones in the attack. The Su-30 fighter jets are estimated to cost about $50 million per unit.

    The GUR said the strike was carried out by a missile launched from a Magura naval drone platform, which can carry missiles that the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence previously said would target Russian aircraft.

    Budanov told The War Zone that Ukraine used the Magura-7 version of the naval drone and that it used AIM-9 Sidewinder infrared-guided air-to-air missiles…

  277. JM says

    CNN: Trump says he is directing Bureau of Prisons to reopen Alcatraz to house ‘ruthless and violent offenders’

    President Donald Trump said in a social media post Sunday that he is directing the Bureau of Prisons to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz, the infamous former prison, as a place to “house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

    It’s been a couple of hours since the Trump administration did something stupid so Trump stepped up. It will be difficult and expensive to get Alcatraz up to spec and it isn’t a good location. I expect you could get a larger prison and more secure prison for a lower price building one from the ground up.
    He said he is issuing an order but he threw in a “it’s just an idea” also in case it turns out to be so impractical and/or expensive it can’t be done.

    “I guess because so many of these radicalized judges, they want to have trials for … every single person that’s in our country illegally,” he said, adding, “that would mean millions of trials.”

    Immigration courts are already accelerated to the point of nearly breaking due to the number of migrants and the way ICE just lies to the judges. If Trump wants to deport more people he is going to have to hire more judges and court personal.
    Or, just suggesting, we switch to a more sensible deportation system where we only try to deport the actually violent ones instead having target numbers and looking for reasons to deport people.

  278. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Signalgate has escalated. Details are unclear, but it’s bad.
     
    TM SGNL, the obscure unofficial Signal app Mike Waltz uses

    unlike the Signal end of the encrypted conversation, the TM SGNL end automatically archives a copy of the plaintext messages (even ones with disappearing messages) somewhere else that may or may not be secure. In a video the company published, they show Signal messages getting archived into a Gmail account.
    […]
    The senior executives of the company behind TM SGNL appear to be Israeli, and the CEO’s bio mentions his work with Israel Defense Forces’ Intelligence unit.
    […]
    practically the only way to get the app is if you’re using a device enrolled in an MDM service that’s tied to an Apple Business Manager or Google Enterprise account. […] This central server is able to enforce settings, install apps, remotely lock or wipe devices, etc. The admin who runs the MDM service (as well as its hosting provider) has a lot of control over these devices. If I were foreign intelligence, this would be a primary target for me. […] [I speculate that the cabinet] all use TM SGNL, which was automatically deployed to their devices via the MDM service. […] Knowing the level of incompetence and disregard for protecting classified information, my guess is it’s storing the data in a public cloud provider like AWS or Azure, or in an email provider like Google or Microsoft. If I were foreign intelligence, this also be a primary target.

    The compiled app wasn’t available for download, but the source code was found lurking on the company website, then mirrored. The app was hacked immediately.
     
    404Media – The Signal clone the Trump admin uses was hacked

    from TeleMessage, an obscure Israeli company […] serious vulnerabilities that allowed a hacker to trivially access the archived chats of some people who used the same tool. The hacker has not obtained the messages of cabinet members, Waltz, and people he spoke to, but the hack shows that the archived chat logs are not end-to-end encrypted between the modified version of the messaging app and the ultimate archive destination controlled by the TeleMessage customer.

    Data related to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the cryptocurrency giant Coinbase, and other financial institutions are included in the hacked material […] The hacker did not access all messages stored or collected by TeleMessage, but could have likely accessed more data if they decided to
    […]
    The data includes apparent message contents; the names and contact information for government officials; usernames and passwords for TeleMessage’s backend panel; and indications of what agencies and companies might be TeleMessage customers. […] the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of [747] CBP officials. […] The hacker was able to access data that the app captured intermittently for debugging purposes, and would not have been able to capture every single message […] However, the sample data they captured did contain fragments of live, unencrypted data passing through TeleMessage’s production server on their way to getting archived.
    […]
    “If I could have found this in less than 30 minutes then anybody else could too. And who knows how long it’s been vulnerable?” the hacker said. 404 Media is not explaining in detail how the hacker managed to obtain this data in case others may try to exploit the same vulnerability.

    According to public procurement records, TeleMessage has contracts with a range of U.S. government agencies, including the State Department and [CDC].

    Micah Lee (Infosec Journalist): “hardcoded credentials for submitting debugging app logs to TeleMessage, not the archived chat logs themselves. But I mean, who knows what access one would get by authenticating with those credentials.”

    Joseph Menn (WaPo): “Hardcoded credentials in the Signal archiving tool used by the White House is a five-alarm security dumpster fire.”

    Rando: “GPLv3ing my network credentials into public record. I am a very serious IDF security expert designing private comms for a fascist cadre running the US empire.”
     
    Caræsten (Software dev):

    I have this downloaded rn and am getting a build working
    […]
    It’s running its own database separate from Signal’s, where it duplicates messages for archiving. […] the app launches, waits for credentials [from an MDM provider or Firebase], then, those credentials include a destination to send backups to. Work is periodically scheduled to backup to that destination. […] the URL for posting messages to the archive is secured via basic auth.

    From 404Media, it sounds like EVERYTHING is shipped to Israel on the way to the destination. (Not just the debug samples.) The first article said the manual mentioned an Admin Portal website for configuring the destination is hosted by TeleMessage. A tutorial video in that article for using the Admin Portal even said the company needs to be contacted to involve themselves in some kind of set up for each Signal account.

    Caræsten:

    a lot of this is really only bad if something ELSE in the chain is compromised. The main concern with something like TeleMessage is that it vastly expands the attack surface of something like Signal, in a way that can’t be audited.

    It’s not that using HTTP basic auth in this way is per-se bad, it’s that you’re now adding credential exchange with the client + a non-Signal server, and also the archive requests to the attack surface of the app.

    Something like this is probably secure enough for a private company, but not for NatSec stuff, I would assume?

    This might be so, if it can operate with in-house servers instead of phoning home to the Israeli Intelligence guy. I’d rather not open his pdf manual to find out.
     
    Micah Lee: “TeleMessage has taken everything down from their website.”
    Rando (Cryptography prof): “I’m sure this is a sign that the software is rock solid.”

  279. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    News reports prior to the Signal clone hack.

    NBC – Photo appears to show Mike Waltz using Signal-like app (May 2)

    The app was founded in 1999 in Israel before it was acquired by the Portland, Oregon-based company Smarsh in a two-year process that closed in 2024. TeleMessage maintains an office in Israel.
    […]
    clients have various options for archiving, including using a “Smarsh archive,” in which Smarsh partners with another company that stores the clients’ data. Smarsh said it does not have access to that data. [The company prez] declined to specify whether the federal government used Smarsh archives or employed other archiving options offered by the app, such as sending a copy of every message to a Gmail address.
    […]
    TeleMessage is largely unknown and untested among cyber experts.

    NYT (May 2)

    a Smarsh representative said data from American clients did not leave the United States. […] the president of Smarsh’s enterprise business, said the collected information was not routed through any mechanism that “could potentially violate our data residency commitments to our customers.” Mr. Padgett also said the information was not decrypted while being collected for record-keeping purposes or moved to its final archive.

     
    Rando: “They misspelled SMERSH.” (Stalin’s counter-intel org)

  280. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up on the NLRB breach.

    KrebsOnSecurity – DOGE worker’s code supports NLRB whistleblower

    [The whistleblower] discovered one of the DOGE accounts had downloaded “requests-ip-rotator,” described as a library that will allow the user “to bypass IP-based rate-limits for sites and services.” […] As it happens, there is a newer version of this project that was derived or “forked” […] called “async-ip-rotator”—and it was committed to GitHub […] by DOGE captain Marko Elez.

    Someone submitted a bug report to Marko Elez.

    This code is insecure, unscalable, and a fundamental engineering failure.
    […]
    If this were a side project, it would just be bad code. But if this is representative of how you build production systems, then there are much larger concerns. This implementation is fundamentally broken, and if anything similar to this is deployed in an environment handling sensitive data, it should be audited immediately.
    […]
    There is nothing “hardcore” about writing fragile, insecure, and unscalable code. This isn’t pushing boundaries—it’s demonstrating a lack of engineering fundamentals.
    […]
    Upon learning of your […] advocating to “normalize Indian hatred” and for a “eugenic immigration policy,” I can’t help but address the staggering hypocrisy […] This field, including your own career, is built on the labor, innovation, and expertise of Indian engineers and developers. To hold such hateful beliefs about a group that forms the backbone of this industry isn’t just reprehensible—it’s a complete contradiction of the reality you benefit from every day.
    […]
    it’s clear that poor coding isn’t the root problem here. Your mindset is incompatible with the fundamental values of IT: collaboration, respect, and global interconnectedness. […] I strongly suggest you reflect on the harm your beliefs cause—not just to others, but to your credibility and future in this profession.

  281. birgerjohansson says

    From a Discworld novel:

    “What is there in this world that truly makes life worthwhile?”
    Death thought about it.
    “CATS”, he replied. “CATS ARE NICE”.

  283. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Wired – DOGE put a college student in charge of using AI to rewrite regulations

    Christopher Sweet was introduced to HUD employees […] a third-year student at the University of Chicago, where he was studying economics and data science […] Sweet’s […] been given read access to HUD’s data repository on public housing […] and its enterprise income verification systems
    […]
    Sweet—who […] is the lead on the AI deregulation project for the entire administration—has produced an Excel spreadsheet […] containing areas of policy where the AI tool has flagged that HUD may have “overreached” and suggesting replacement language. Staffers […] are, specifically, asked to review the AI’s recommendations and justify their objections to those they don’t agree with.
    […]
    they were told that the AI model being used for this project is “being refined by our work to be used across the government.” […] The spreadsheet details how many words can be eliminated from individual regulations and gives a percentage figure indicating how noncompliant the regulations are. It isn’t clear how these percentages are calculated.
    […]
    One HUD source […] said the effort was redundant, since the agency was already “put through a multi-year multi-stakeholder meatgrinder before any rule was ever created”
    […]
    Sweet has virtually no online footprint. One of the only references to him online is a short biography [which] claims that Sweet has worked in the past with several private equity firms

  287. Reginald Selkirk says

    @277 JM

    … to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz, the infamous former prison, as a place to “house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

    Completely unnecessary. That function is now filled by the Cabinet Room of the White House.

  289. birgerjohansson says

    Stephen the Vampire is expected to be the new security advisor.

  292. birgerjohansson says

    Bravos Research: 
    “Why the US Treasury Market is on the Brink of Total Collapse”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=31KQfLdG5Ss

    Ironically, quite few Americans are familiar with what treasury bonds are, and their importance. After all, some people still think other countries will pay the tariffs on US imports!

  293. StevoR says

    In short:

    A far-right party (AfD – ed.) in Germany has filed a lawsuit challenging a spy agency’s decision to classify it as an extremist organisation.

    The intelligence agency found evidence that the biggest opposition party in parliament was a racist and anti-Muslim organisation.

    What’s next?

    The incoming government will review whether to launch an attempt at an outright ban of the party.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-05/afd-sues-german-spy-agency-putin-and-us-weigh-in/105256484

  295. StevoR says

    Apparently there was an aurorae visble in dark skies but drowned out by skyglow tonight too. On still? Dunno.

    The Eta Aquarid meteor shower 2025 peaks tonight! Here’s how and when to catch one of nature’s most spectacular light shows, courtesy of Halley’s comet.

    Southern hemisphere skywatchers will have the best view of the Eta Aquarids with the highest number of shooting stars. This is because the point of origin of the shower — known as the radiant — is high in the sky in the constellation of Aquarius at this time of year for those in southern latitudes. However, NASA has estimated that stargazers in the northern hemisphere can still see around 10 meteors per hour under dark sky conditions, so be sure to stake your meteor hunting spot out ahead of time!

    Source : https://www.space.com/stargazing/meteor-showers/the-eta-aquarid-meteor-shower-peaks-tonight-heres-how-to-see-fragments-of-halleys-comet-burn-up-in-the-atmosphere

  296. says

    Not Normal

    Three career prosecutors resigned from the Justice Department over a highly unusual post-verdict plea agreement struck by the Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. The plea agreement comes in a case where a sheriff’s deputy was convicted back in February of using excessive force against a Black woman.

    “A plea agreement filed late Thursday says if Trevor Kirk pleads guilty to misdemeanor deprivation of rights under color of law, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will ‘move to strike the jury’s finding’ that he injured his victim, which made his crime a felony,” Meghann Cuniff first reported.

    On Friday, the four federal prosecutors who handled the case and did not sign the plea agreement withdrew from the case. It was signed on behalf of acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli by an assistant U.S. attorney not previously involved in the case.

    On Saturday, the LA Times reported that three of the prosecutors – assistant U.S. Attorneys Eli A. Alcaraz, Brian R. Faerstein, and section chief Cassie Palmer – had resigned from the Justice Department entirely.

    The plea deal sets up a dramatic downward departure in sentencing from what Kirk faced with the felony conviction, Cuniff reports:

    Kirk faced about nine years in prison under U.S. Sentencing Commission guidelines for his felony conviction, but his misdemeanor conviction carries a maximum of one year. However, Essayli and Keenan agreed to recommend only one year of probation. They also aren’t barring him from working in law enforcement.

    A judge must still approve the plea agreement.

    3 Prosecutors Resign Over DOJ’s Highly Irregular Move In Police Brutality Case In LA

  297. says

    Jan. 6 Revisionism Alert

    In a remarkable encounter over the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio – convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in Jan. 6. – personally thanked President Trump for pardoning him.

    In a reversal of the Justice Department’s legal position, the Trump administration has reached a settlement in principle in the $30 million wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbit, the Jan. 6 rioter who Trump has turned into a martyr. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.

    Senate Judiciary Democrats are blasting the Trump DOJ for taking the position that the government must refund the restitution paid by Trump-pardoned Jan. 6 defendants.

    Same link as in comment 296. Additional,embedded links are available at the main link.

  298. says

    The Destruction: Arts And Humanities Edition

    NEA: On Friday night, the National Endowment for the Arts sent out notifications cancelling grants nationwide.

    NEH: A lawsuit reveals new details of DOGE’s role in mass termination of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

    Same link as in comment 296. Additional embedded links are available at the main link.

  299. says

    Washington Post link: Memorial to victims of gun violence taken down at ATF headquarters

    The Trump administration has removed a memorial honoring victims of gun violence from the main atrium of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, taking down about 120 portraits hung during the Biden administration.

    […] Former ATF director Steven Dettelbach — who was appointed by President Joe Biden — created the memorial at the agency’s Northeast Washington headquarters last April to remind employees of the human toll of gun violence. The display includes photos of police officers killed by gunfire, children slain in mass killings in schools in Newtown, Connecticut, and Parkland, Florida, and other victims.

    A nearby kiosk told the stories of each, and many of the victims’ families would visit the memorial.
    “The ‘Faces of Gun Violence’ exhibit is a permanent reminder of what ATF comes to work to do every day — a reminder of why agents risk their lives and why everyone at ATF dedicates their careers to this mission: to honor the fallen and protect the living,” Dettelbach said at a ceremony unveiling the memorial last year. “This exhibit both honors and tells the stories of the victims of firearms violence. And it reminds us to keep front and center the lives, the stories, and the courage of those who have been impacted by firearms violence.”

    […] Memorial exhibits to ATF officers killed on duty still exist on the ground floor of the building.

    […] Trump and his Republican allies say that there should be fewer gun restrictions and that Democrats have used ATF to tighten gun laws. Democrats have pushed for stricter gun laws but have struggled to pass those proposals in Congress. […]

    Attorney general, Pam Bondi, has started rolling back Biden-era gun policies, rescinding an ATF rule that yanked licenses from federally licensed firearm dealers if they intentionally falsified records or sold weapons without running a background check.

    Brenda Haymon Joiner, a gun-control advocate whose slain father’s portrait was included in the memorial, said she saw its dismantling as a sign of the new administration’s priorities.

    […] The White House wants to slash the agency’s [ATF’s] approximately $1.5 billion annual budget by about a third, or nearly $500 million, according to budget documents released Friday. The proposal appears to cut much of the regulatory arm of ATF while saying it would leave resources for gun tracing and investigating gun traffickers. But more modest cuts in the past have forced cuts to ATF law enforcement, and if the agency loses a third of its budget, it would probably lead to law enforcement reductions. […]

  300. JM says

    Dailymail: Ukraine ‘launches new Kursk offensive breaking through minefield’ on Russian border – days before Putin’s planned ceasefire for Victory Day parade

    Ukrainian forces reportedly tore back into Russia’s region of Kursk on Monday in a stunning reversal after Moscow claimed to have pushed them out last month.
    Russian war bloggers said opposing troops had fired missiles, crossed minefields and smashed through the border this morning.

    All second hand at this point. With the fighting still going on neither side is officially saying anything. Even a small incursion by Ukraine would be a big embarrassment for Russia that has made a big point about pushing Ukraine out of Kursk. This is obviously timed to happen during the Victory day parade, where speeches about victory in Kursk would be expected.

  301. says

    Kids can do with a lot less, says billionaire wrecking the economy

    Trump on Sunday tripled down on his belief that it’s fine that American consumers won’t be able to afford as many items as they do currently because his tariffs will raise the price of goods.

    In two separate interviews on Sunday—one on “Meet the Press” and another on Air Force One—Trump said that kids don’t actually need a bunch of toys and that it’s fine if they have fewer of them because his tariffs will make the cost of those items more expensive.

    “I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs—that’s 11 years old—needs to have 30 dolls,” Trump said in an interview with “Meet the Press.” “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable. We had a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.”

    Then on Air Force One, he told reporters, “A young lady—10-year-old girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl—doesn’t need 37 dolls. She could be very happy with 2 or 3 or 4 or 5.” [parsimonious skinflint, grumpy grandpa who never fails to give himself everything he wants] [video at the link]

    Of course, it’s not just dolls that will get more expensive thanks to Trump’s tariffs.

    It’s nearly everything we buy, from clothing to furniture to electronics—the vast majority of which are imported from China and cannot be made here anytime soon because the United States does not have the factories in place to quickly shift production lines or the labor force to sustain those plants.

    That is the goal of Trump’s tariffs, with Trump’s billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying it’s the Trump administration’s goal to make Americans toil away in factories for the rest of their lives—which few Americans want to do in the first place.

    […] Ultimately, in the short term, the tariffs Trump placed on China are so insanely high that companies are just not purchasing any goods from China at all—which could lead to major shortages that means American consumers won’t be able to get any […] product that is made in China—at all.

    […] Right now, companies should be placing orders for future shopping seasons like back to school, Halloween, and even Christmas. If companies are too worried to order for those seasons because the tariffs will make it too expensive for them to sell their products, then there will be little to no inventory for shoppers. [video at the link]

    […] But Trump is undeterred.

    Aside from saying that he doesn’t care if goods get more expensive for Americans to buy, he then threatened another insane tariff, this time a 100% tax on foreign-made movies—though it’s unclear how on earth that could even be carried out.

    In a Sunday evening Truth Social post, Trump wrote:

    The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!

    [JFC]

    The new threat led the stock markets to once again sink, with investors realizing that Trump’s tariffs may be here to stay.

  302. says

    More than a dozen US government health-tracking programs have been gutted

    U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s motto is “ Make America Healthy Again,” but government cuts could make it harder to know if that’s happening.

    More than a dozen data-gathering programs that track deaths and disease appear to have been eliminated in the tornado of layoffs and proposed budget cuts rolled out in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.

    The Associated Press examined draft and final budget proposals and spoke to current and former federal employees to determine the scope of the cuts to programs tracking basic facts about Americans’ health.

    Among those terminated at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were experts tracking abortions, pregnancies, job-related injuries, lead poisonings, sexual violence and youth smoking, the AP found.

    […] a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman pointed the AP to a Trump administration budget proposal released Friday. It lacked specifics, but proposes to cut the CDC’s core budget by more than half and vows to focus CDC surveillance only on emerging and infectious diseases.

    Kennedy has said some of the CDC’s other work will be moved to a yet-to-be-created agency, the Administration for a Healthy America. [I snipped Kennedy’s blather about cutting waste and fraud.]

    […] “If the U.S. is interested in making itself healthier again, how is it going to know, if it cancels the programs that helps us understand these diseases?” said Graham Mooney, a Johns Hopkins University public health historian.

    The core of the nation’s health surveillance is done by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Relying on birth and death certificates, it generates information on birth rates, death trends and life expectancy. It also operates longstanding health surveys that provide basic data on obesity, asthma and other health issues.

    The center has been barely touched in layoffs, and seems intact under current budget plans.

    But many other efforts were targeted by the cuts, the AP found. Some examples: [examples at the link, including maternal mortality, other pregnancy risks, environmental investigations, and more]

  303. says

    Because […] Trump loves a good distraction while ignoring far more pressing problems, he reportedly plans to announce that Washington, D.C., will host the 2027 NFL draft—likely on the National Mall.

    According to Axios, Trump will make the announcement flanked by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris. Soon after the report, the White House confirmed the president would make an unspecified sports-related announcement at 1 PM ET.

    The NFL Draft was held in New York from 1965 to 2014 but has rotated cities since, most recently landing in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Now Trump, a terrible United States Football League team owner and wannabe NFL franchise owner, seems hopeful that the NFL’s massive popularity will rub off on him as his own poll numbers slide.

    […] Axios’ report comes just days after D.C. officials and the Commanders announced plans to bring the team back into city limits with a new multibillion-dollar domed stadium on the old site of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. That venue, backed in part by taxpayer dollars, is expected to open in 2030, well after Trump is out of office (hopefully).

    Axios noted that Trump may have a personal stake in making sure the stadium deal goes through. If the D.C. Council rejects it—which is possible, given concerns about public funding—the Trump administration could step in. After all, Congress only recently gave D.C. long-term control over the RFK Stadium’s land, but Trump could easily push to take it back if it suits him.

    The double standard here is hard to ignore. In 2015, some conservatives melted down when then-President Barack Obama dared to fill out a March Madness bracket during a global crisis. One Commentary writer accused him of showing a “defiant unwillingness” to lead.

    […] Some may find it absurd that Trump, who’s feuded with the NFL for decades, is now trying to pivot. He showed up at the Super Bowl and got booed, and just last week, he hosted some of the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles at the White House.

    And in typical fashion, Trump can’t help but make even the NFL draft about himself. After ranting on Truth Social that NFL teams were “STUPID” for passing on college football quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the Cleveland Browns picked Sanders a few rounds later. The White House then floated the idea that Trump helped make that happen. […]

    While the economy sputters and real crises go unaddressed, Trump is busy trying to weasel himself into the NFL. If it gets him applause, he’s more than willing to let everything else go up in smoke.

    Link

    Posted by readers of the article:

    The real story is the reality tv show bullshit. He’s constantly just trying to make sure that everything and everyone is talking about him. Doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad.
    ———————-
    Trump doesn’t do priorities. He has the attention span of a 3-year-old; he’s interested in one thing until something else takes over. Maybe this will distract him from the Alcatraz silliness.

  304. says

    Seeing Trump (or trumpism) as a Loser on a worldwide basis:

    […] Voters in Singapore also backed politicians whom they felt could best protect their economy from Trump.

    […] The People’s Action Party and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong won in a landslide on Saturday. The party has branded itself as a force for stability as the world reacts to Trump’s tariffs actions, particularly China. In his victory speech, Wong said the results “will put Singapore in a better position to face this turbulent world.”

    The Singapore and Australia results follow in the footsteps of Canada […]

    Voters across the world are clearly saying they want no part of the increased costs and instability that Trump has brought on. They are largely opposing candidates who embrace elements of Trump’s antagonistic style and bigotry, and they are giving resounding victories to parties that run against Trump’s economy-wrecking policies.

    Americans are increasingly hostile to Trumpism as well. He is falling in approval and is now underwater on a host of issues, most notably tariffs and the economy. The global movement against Trump and his ideas is picking up steam, even on his home turf.

    Link

  306. birgerjohansson says

    God Awful Movies on Patreon:

    “This week, Kara Griffin of Recovering From Religion’s RFRX podcast joins us for Fury to Freedom. It’s a biopic about how Christianity transformed a terrible, abusive man into a terrible, abusive pastor.”

    (This film dissection should become freely available at Youtube Wednesday or Thursday.)
    Dang. I miss the more elaborate bad films, like “Bells of Innocence” with a cameo from Walker, Texas Ranger.

    Or “Day When Sun Rises In the West, Film That Shock (sic!) the world”

    The flat-Earth “documentaries” are also fun. Get that dude in the Minnesota Republicans to make one.

  307. says

    The deadline for Americans to obtain a Real ID is set to arrive on Wednesday after years of delays.

    Starting Wednesday, every adult will need this specific type of identification to travel on domestic flights and access certain federal facilities, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The policy change comes from recommendations made in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. […]

    Link

  310. says

    Israel approves plans to capture all of Gaza

    Related video at the link.

    Israeli Cabinet ministers approved a plan early Monday to take over the Gaza Strip for an unspecified period of time, a move that dampens hopes of a ceasefire with Hamas in the near term.

    Israeli officials suggested the plans, which would mark a sharp turn away from talks proposing an Arab-led transition in Gaza, would not be put into action until after President Trump’s planned Middle East visit later this month.

    Two Israeli officials confirmed the plans to The Associated Press, as well as other outlets, saying the goal is to increase pressure on Hamas to free hostages held in Gaza and to isolate the militant group from civilian populations to aid in Israel’s goal in destroying Hamas entirely.

    Israeli officials also said it would also facilitate aid to civilians, which has been halted for two months under an Israeli siege.

    Critics are calling the new plans an occupation, saying there’s little hope for the surviving hostages if Israel follows through.

    […] The European Union also expressed concern over what it called an “extension of the operation by Israeli forces in Gaza,” which it said would “result in further casualties and suffering for the Palestinian population.”

    […] Israel National News cited a senior security source who reportedly stated that, under the plan, the Israeli military “will increase its forces […]”

  311. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/in-which-marco-rubio-and-jd-vance

    “In Which Marco Rubio And JD Vance Lecture Germany To Be Nicer To Far Right Extremists”

    “Saying the quiet part out loud, again.”

    Once upon a time, the Trump campaign spread rumors that Marco Rubio liked to go to gay foam dance parties in Miami, and Rubio talked about how Trump has small hands, wink wink, and “should be worrying about the lines around his eyes from the horrible spray tan.” But somehow now Marco Rubio, the saddest man in Washington, is now doing all of the jobs in the administration, or at least four of them. And he still found time to lecture Germany about democracy on Elon Musk’s hellsite, because this administration is in the dictionary under “chutzpah.”

    Xitted Rubio:

    Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise.

    What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.

    Germany should reverse course.

    The German foreign office responded:

    This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law. It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped.

    Yeah, they’ve got a good point, there. Maybe the US should do the same, but whoops, too late. And eesh, criticizing our allies on social media about how they run their democracies, that’s what American diplomacy has sunk to.

    The background is that on Friday, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, BfV, labeled the entire far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an “extremist endeavor.” Previously branches in three German states had been labeled as such, but now it’s the whole party, and the label gives the government expanded rights to observe AfD meetings, tap telephones and recruit informants, and state party funding can be withdrawn. It could even eventually be banned. The party is fighting that designation in court.

    This has been brewing for a while; judges in Germany have twice found that the group was “suspected” extremist, and now in a 1,100-page report compiled by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the office has concluded:

    The party’s prevailing understanding of the people based on ethnicity and descent is incompatible with the free democratic basic order. It aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, subject them to unconstitutional discrimination, and thus assign them a legally devalued status. [True] Specifically, for example, the AfD does not consider German citizens with a migration history from predominantly Muslim countries to be equal members of the German people, as defined ethnically by the party.

    And that is against German law, specifically Section 130, which criminalizes incitement to hatred and insults that attack human dignity. The law has been around since 1871, and was amended after World War II to include anti-Semitism, and in 1994 to include Holocaust denial. And a provision was added in 2005 for “approving of, glorifying or justifying” Nazi rule. [All good.]

    We don’t know exactly what’s cited in the report, but here’s a sampling of some of the stuff AfD has been up to:

    […] former party leader, Maximilian Krah, told an Italian newspaper last year that members of the SS, you know, the guys who ran the Nazi concentration camps, were not criminals, necessarily: “I would never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal.” That was too far-right for even France’s National Rally party, who said they wouldn’t sit alongside AfD in the European Parliament, and Krah stepped down. Notably, Krah’s former assistant was arrested last week, and accused of passing on sensitive information to China. Oh, and no one from the party has ever criticized Russia, ever, and Russia has spread disinformation in Germany critical of every party but them. [Well, that pretty much tells you what you need to know.]

    And, party leaders have been rubbing shoulders with the greasy likes of JD Vance, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, who appeared on a giant screen at an AfD rally days after that apparent Sieg-Heiling display to tell them that there’s been “frankly too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that.”

    The way-background, after World War II [I snipped the historical details.]

    So, it’s kind of ironic to have Secretary of State Bubbles lecturing Germany that they are now de-nazifying too hard. Also, isn’t the administration really worried about antisemitism? Just kidding, we all know that is just a flimsy excuse for the administration to try to take control of universities and crack down on protesters.

    Anyway, Vice President [Vance] joined in the chat too.

    The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.

    The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt—not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.

    Well, that’s not true. The Berlin Wall is still gone, and while the party has doubled its vote share between elections to around 20 percent, a poll over the weekend found 61 percent of Germans agreed with the categorization of the AfD as “confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor,” and 48 percent support banning the party completely. And no other party in Germany will consider forming a coalition with it, because it is gross.

    […] Funny how the only time they want to have anything to do with Europe, it’s to support the groups that benefit from the meddling of Russia. And how people like Bannon keep saying that Western European culture is the BEST CULTURE, yet they crap on Western Europeans and their actual culture any chance they get!

    Free speech for me and not for thee, part one thousand!

  312. says

    Watch John Oliver lay into Trump for lawless deportations

    During “Last Week Tonight” on Sunday, host John Oliver broke down the inhumane and unconstitutional nature of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy of cruelty and fear.

    “We’re gonna dive straight in with our main story tonight, which concerns immigrants once again—named ‘Group of the Year’ by Right-Wing Scapegoat Magazine,” he said, setting the stage to critique the GOP’s supposed “worst first” strategy. [Video at the link.]

    Oliver highlighted how the Trump administration has targeted vulnerable immigrant populations under numerous false pretenses and unfounded claims of criminality.

    “For all this administration’s talk of prioritizing hardened criminals, in practice, it seemed to value speed, volume, and spectacle over all else,” he said, referencing the frequent cruelty of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

    Rather than focus on actual crime, the Trump administration has repeatedly pursued what Sarah Saldaña, who served as ICE director during the Obama administration, described as “low-hanging fruit,” leading to the trampling of human rights.

    “And you should avoid low-hanging fruit. If I were to constantly go for low-hanging fruit, I’d say that ‘worst first’ doesn’t describe Trump’s immigration policy so much as it describes his children,” Oliver said.

    Oliver also addressed the Trump administration’s many abuses of power, including the kidnapping and detention of student protesters under bogus pretenses and the illegal deportation of an innocent man to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, with Trump justifying these unpopular actions with egregious lies and doctored evidence.

    As Oliver demonstrates, the only “worst first” Trump has delivered are the first 100 days of his second term.

  314. says

    […] The newest and most powerful technologies — so-called reasoning systems from companies like OpenAI, Google and the Chinese start-up DeepSeek — are generating more errors, not fewer. As their math skills have notably improved, their handle on facts has gotten shakier. It is not entirely clear why.

    Today’s A.I. bots are based on complex mathematical systems that learn their skills by analyzing enormous amounts of digital data. They do not — and cannot — decide what is true and what is false. Sometimes, they just make stuff up, a phenomenon some A.I. researchers call hallucinations. On one test, the hallucination rates of newer A.I. systems were as high as 79 percent.

    These systems use mathematical probabilities to guess the best response, not a strict set of rules defined by human engineers. So they make a certain number of mistakes. “Despite our best efforts, they will always hallucinate,” said Amr Awadallah, the chief executive of Vectara, a start-up that builds A.I. tools for businesses, and a former Google executive. “That will never go away.”

    […] “You spend a lot of time trying to figure out which responses are factual and which aren’t,” said Pratik Verma, co-founder and chief executive of Okahu, a company that helps businesses navigate the hallucination problem. “Not dealing with these errors properly basically eliminates the value of A.I. systems, which are supposed to automate tasks for you.”

    […] For more than two years, companies like OpenAI and Google steadily improved their A.I. systems and reduced the frequency of these errors. But with the use of new reasoning systems, errors are rising. The latest OpenAI systems hallucinate at a higher rate than the company’s previous system, according to the company’s own tests.

    The company found that o3 — its most powerful system — hallucinated 33 percent of the time when running its PersonQA benchmark test, which involves answering questions about public figures. That is more than twice the hallucination rate of OpenAI’s previous reasoning system, called o1. The new o4-mini hallucinated at an even higher rate: 48 percent.

    When running another test called SimpleQA, which asks more general questions, the hallucination rates for o3 and o4-mini were 51 percent and 79 percent. The previous system, o1, hallucinated 44 percent of the time.

    […] Hannaneh Hajishirzi, a professor at the University of Washington and a researcher with the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, is part of a team that recently devised a way of tracing a system’s behavior back to the individual pieces of data it was trained on. But because systems learn from so much data — and because they can generate almost anything — this new tool can’t explain everything. “We still don’t know how these models work exactly,” she said. […]

    New York Times link

  315. says

    A judge used Trump’s own words to expose his real agenda

    “The president and those around him just had to brag — and Howell turned their own words against them.”

    Related video at the link.

    In issuing a permanent injunction halting the enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie, U.S. Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the order singled out Perkins Coie based on the content of its speech and actions. To conclude that the order infringed upon the First Amendment rights of Perkins Coie and its clients, Howell unsurprisingly relied upon the text of the president’s order and the accompanying “fact sheet” from his administration. But she also did something else far more unusual: Howell used Trump’s subsequent agreements with other firms — and his boasts about them — as evidence against his administration.

    Trump’s order limited Perkins Coie’s lawyers access to government buildings, revoked their security clearances and ordered federal agencies to terminate contracts with the firm. One of Perkins Coie’s claims in its lawsuit was that this punishment was in retaliation for stances that the firm has taken over the years, including its representation of Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign for president. The firm showed that it already had lost clients as a result of the order and that it was likely to lose many more if the judge did not permanently halt the enforcement of the order.

    […] It wasn’t just the deals that caught the judge’s eye, but the president and his staff’s bragging about the agreements. For Howell, this made it evident that the punishment was the very point of the White House’s actions in the first place.

    In addition to noting the White House’s promotion of the agreements with these other firms, Howell also referenced the president’s own statements on the issue. She quoted, for example, his remarks at an event in early April:

    Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump? $100 million, another $100 million, for damages that they’ve done. But they give you $100 million and then they announce, ‘We have done nothing wrong.’ And I agree, they’ve done nothing wrong. But what the hell, they’ve given me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.

    Powell also cited Trump and adviser Stephen Miller’s remarks during the signing of an order targeting the law firm Susman Godfrey. At the event, Trump asked Miller to share the value of free legal work secured from the deals with other law firms. “The numbers are adding up. We’re going to be close to a billion soon,” Miller replied. “As to the Susman EO he had just signed,” Howell wrote, “President Trump then said, ‘this one, we’re just starting the process with this one.’” [More video at the link]
    […]

  316. lumipuna says

    StevoR at 295:

    The Eta Aquarid meteor shower 2025 peaks tonight! Here’s how and when to catch one of nature’s most spectacular light shows, courtesy of Halley’s comet.

    Southern hemisphere skywatchers will have the best view of the Eta Aquarids with the highest number of shooting stars. This is because the point of origin of the shower — known as the radiant — is high in the sky in the constellation of Aquarius at this time of year for those in southern latitudes. However, NASA has estimated that stargazers in the northern hemisphere can still see around 10 meteors per hour under dark sky conditions, so be sure to stake your meteor hunting spot out ahead of time!

    I’m far enough north that there’s no fully dark conditions at this time of the year. However, the extensive twilight period is good for spotting the International Space Station, which I saw for the first time this weekend. It looked somewhat like a slow-motion shooting star.

  317. says

    […] Over the weekend, the official White House account posted an AI picture of Trump as the Pope, because this administration is all about exuding the energy of a 14-year-old incel shitposter. However, instead of hurting “the right people” (i.e. us), it ended up upsetting a lot of Republicans of the Catholic persuasion instead. In hopes of correcting for this, the most loyal of his acolytes took it upon themselves to either claim that these Republicans were, in fact, the very libs they had hoped would be hurt by the meme, or by assuring them that a small amount of blasphemy was worth the incredible joy of seeing liberals get upset about it.

    The very conservative Cardinal Timothy Dolan was asked about the image and, in a video posted to social media by a journalist for the New York Archdiocese, said that he hoped Trump didn’t have anything to do with it (which he obviously did, as it was also posted to his personal Truth Social account) and that it wasn’t good.

    […] the Trumpists responding were very upset about the fact that he criticized Trump in this way after never having criticized Joe Biden for anything, which is not even remotely true.

    “Cryyyyyyyyy leftist commies!! We voted for your pathetic tears to flow every single day. And we’re getting EXACTLY what we’ve voted for,” one very well-adjusted person wrote in response to the meme.

    [I snipped many other examples.]

    This is, more or less, what “X” is now. It’s Republicans accusing one another of being “triggered libs” and delighting in the pain they imagine they are causing “the other side.” Meanwhile, all I really saw about it on my own socials were images like these, with no tears to be seen. [Humorous Images at the link]

    […] Sure, some people rolled their eyes about Trump’s sad papal cosplay, tendency to behave more like a 4chan poster than a president, or made comments about how such a move was “beneath” the office, especially given that it was posted by the actual White House account, but no one was particularly outraged or surprised. It would be far more surprising if he behaved “appropriately.”

    […] Of course, it’s pretty understandable that they’re trying to eke out any amount of joy they can at the moment, when the economy is in crisis, prices are going up and even they are getting fucked over eight ways from Sunday. […]

    It’s certainly one way to get through the day.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/maga-weirdos-argue-amongst-themselves

  319. JM says

    @314 Lynna, OM: Part of the problem is understood. LLM AIs don’t make moral decisions or actually logically determine an answer, they are just insanely sophisticated statistical analyzers. The new generation have better systems for assembling answers but not better statistics or logic, so they are producing more answers based on weaker statistical correlations. Essentially the current generation have been given a push towards producing answers without any corresponding push towards correctness.

  320. birgerjohansson says

    The Onion
    ICE opens new supermax detention center for most hardened toddlers.

  322. JM says

    Rolling stones: People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies

    When Kat and her husband separated in August 2023, she entirely blocked him apart from email correspondence. She knew, however, that he was posting strange and troubling content on social media: People kept reaching out about it, asking if he was in the throes of mental crisis. She finally got him to meet her at a courthouse this past February, where he shared “a conspiracy theory about soap on our foods” but wouldn’t say more, as he felt he was being watched. They went to a Chipotle, where he demanded that she turn off her phone, again due to surveillance concerns. Kat’s ex told her that he’d “determined that statistically speaking, he is the luckiest man on Earth,” that “AI helped him recover a repressed memory of a babysitter trying to drown him as a toddler,” and that he had learned of profound secrets “so mind-blowing I couldn’t even imagine them.” He was telling her all this, he explained, because although they were getting divorced, he still cared for her.

    Interesting but nothing unexpected, some people are getting drawn in with chat AIs. Some of it is clearly the same loop that causes some people to get into conspiracy theories or religion. The Chat AIs seem to have a bias towards continuing conversations and people get caught up in the loop of seemingly deep conversations built on nothing and getting more and more disconnected from the world. Some of it is people with real issues finding that the chat bot will validate just about anything. With no sense of truth or morality the chat bots have no problem with anything except certain keywords that the companies have cut off.

  324. JM says

    The Times: Majority in UK now ‘self-identify’ as neurodivergent

    A majority of Britons may now consider themselves neurodivergent, meaning they have a condition such as autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia, according to a leading psychologist.

    Very interesting to see just how widespread this has become. Combination of the public being more accepting, more people being diagnosed and seeking treatment, more people self-diagnosing and the very broad standards of certain illnesses. Having anxiety before a speech isn’t necessarily a social anxiety disorder, up to a point it’s a natural human behavior. There are good and bad sides. Having ADHD doesn’t have as much stigma but as the definition becomes very broad it also loses meaning.

  325. Reginald Selkirk says

    Hundreds of e-commerce sites hacked in supply-chain attack

    Hundreds of e-commerce sites, at least one owned by a large multinational company, were backdoored by malware that executes malicious code inside the browsers of visitors, where it can steal payment card information and other sensitive data, security researchers said Monday.

    The infections are the result of a supply-chain attack that compromised at least three software providers with malware that remained dormant for six years and became active only in the last few weeks. At least 500 e-commerce sites that rely on the backdoored software were infected, and it’s possible that the true number is double that, researchers from security firm Sansec said.

    Among the compromised customers was a $40 billion multinational company, which Sansec didn’t name. In an email Monday, a Sansec representative said that “global remediation [on the infected customers] remains limited.”

    “Since the backdoor allows uploading and executing arbitrary PHP code, the attackers have full remote code execution (RCE) and can do essentially anything they want,” the representative wrote. “In nearly all Adobe Commerce/Magento breaches we observe, the backdoor is then used to inject skimming software that runs in the user’s browser and steals payment information (Magecart).”

    The three software suppliers identified by Sansec were Tigren, Magesolution (MGS), and Meetanshi. All three supply software that’s based on Magento, an open source e-commerce platform used by thousands of online stores. A software version sold by a fourth provider named Weltpixel has been infected with similar code on some of its customers’ stores, but Sansec so far has been unable to confirm whether it was the stores or Weltpixel that were hacked. Adobe has owned Megento since 2018.

    The Sansec representative said that as of Monday, both Tigren and Magesolution continued to distribute backdoored versions of their software to customers. Meetanshi, the representative added, has denied “any tampering but admits to being hacked.” Tigren, Magesolution, and Meetanshi didn’t respond to questions sent by email and contact forms on their sites. Attempts to reach Weltpixel were unsuccessful…

  326. Reginald Selkirk says

    Europe Unveils $565 Million Plan to Attract Scientists From U.S. as Trump Defunds Basic Research

    European leaders unveiled a new initiative Monday to entice U.S. scientists to bring their expertise across the Atlantic. They’re calling it “Choose Europe for Science,” and it will allocate €500 million ($565 million U.S.) over the next three years to “make Europe a magnet for researchers” from around the world.

    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke at Sorbonne University in France to announce the effort Monday. And while neither mentioned President Donald Trump by name, his government’s destruction of scientific research funding in the U.S. was clearly the impetus for all of it…

  327. Reginald Selkirk says

    NZ airport to remove Hobbit-themed eagle sculptures

    For more than a decade, a pair of Hobbit-inspired eagle sculptures have cast a watchful eye over visitors at New Zealand’s Wellington Airport.

    But the giant birds will be unfastened from the ceiling on Friday to make way for a new mystery exhibit, airport authorities said.

    The eagles appear as messengers in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, which were adapted to film by New Zealand’s Sir Peter Jackson.

    The spectacular New Zealand landscapes featured in Mr Jackson’s films are a consistent draw for tourists, who are greeted at the airport by the eagle sculptures…

    The giant eagles will be placed in storage and there have not been long-term plans for them…

  328. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tomatoes are being recalled in 14 states over possible salmonella contamination. Here’s how to check if your recent produce purchase may be impacted.

    You may want to check the label on the packaging of any tomatoes you’ve recently purchased. Two separate recalls have been issued by the Food and Drug Administration citing salmonella contamination concerns affecting tomatoes sold across a total of 14 states.

    While no illnesses have been reported to date from either recall, the FDA recommends customers either return the unused tomatoes or throw them out. Here’s what customers can look for.

    Ray & Mascari, based in Indianapolis, has recalled the following tomatoes:

    Four-count “vine ripe tomatoes” packaged in clamshell containers, specifically 20-ounce (1-pound, 4-ounce)/567 g packages with UPC# 7 96553 20062 1. The label says it was “Packed by Ray and Mascari, Inc., Indianapolis, IN 46204.”

    The master case cardboard box would contain 12 four-count containers. The label would have Lot# RM250424 15250B or Lot# RM250427 15250B on the box.

    The recall was initiated by Hanshaw & Capling Farms of Immokalee, Fla., “due to the possible presence of Salmonella in their facility,” according to the company’s announcement posted on the FDA’s website on May 3.

    Additionally, a tomato recall was issued by Williams Farms Repack LLC on May 2 due to salmonella contamination concerns. Here is the list of tomato products affected from that brand, as listed on the FDA website:
    …

    The Ray & Mascari tomatoes were sold through Gordon Food Service Stores in the following states:
    Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin

    The tomatoes from Williams Farms Repack were packaged and sold to wholesalers and distributors in the following states between April 23 and 28:
    Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina

  329. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: StevoR @294:

    The most disturbing part

    GenocideWatch – Indian strategists call for ‘Israel model’ in Kashmir (2025-04-25)

    The comparison between India’s control over Kashmir and Israel’s occupation of Palestine has long been made by academics and activists. Now, prominent Indian figures are invoking the connection […] Following an attack on tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir, there have been widespread calls for an “Israel-like” retaliation by law enforcement, high-profile commentators, and members of the public.
    […]
    Lawyer and author Suchitra Vijayan […] added, “it reflects a strategic and ideological alignment between two ethnonationalist states—India and Israel—both of which have normalised prolonged military occupation, demographic engineering, and the criminalisation of dissent”.

    Vijayan explained that this relationship is not just ideological, but extends to the “shared infrastructures of violence: surveillance, digital repression, population control, and policing regimes that are increasingly modelled on each other’s practices”. India has long been the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, while Indian-made Hermes drones have been used in Israel’s war on Gaza. […] Israeli drones and surveillance technologies are deployed in Kashmir.
    […]
    According to Kashmiri academic Hafsa Kanjwal, the Indian government’s 2019 decision—which enables Indians to purchase land in Indian-controlled Kashmir—paves the way for similar “settler-colonial projects” in India and Israel, forcing “demographic change”. Junaid said that by invoking the parallels between the two states, the Hindu right-wing aims to garner “the same kind of impunity to kill and destroy Muslim and Kashmiri lives that it believes Israel has”.

    “They are feeding into the hate and dehumanisation of Palestinians and Kashmiris and using the power of the state to produce spectacles of domination,” he added. At the time of writing, Indian news source Maktoob Media has reported the detention of at least 1500 Kashmiris, as well as incidents of Kashmiri students being violently targeted by Hindu nationalist mobs across India.

    Middle East Eye (2024)

    their struggles share a common source: British colonisation.

    In Palestine, this resulted in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised a “national home for the Jewish people” on Palestinian lands. In Kashmir, under the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar, the British sold the territory to a Hindu warlord from Jammu, resulting in the brutal suppression of the Muslim-majority population.
    […]
    The “births” of India and Israel also meant the displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through the Nakba and Kashmiris through the Jammu massacre. After the first India-Pakistan war, the territory of Kashmir was divided between the two new nation-states.
    […]
    for decades, India has presented itself as a vanguard of the anti-colonial world […] India has done a much better job of masking its colonial occupation and war crimes in Kashmir. […] Elements of the Israeli model are also used against Muslims across India, through regular lynchings and calls for genocide, the bulldozing of Muslim homes, and the passing of discriminatory laws.

    Wikipedia – Kashmir, dispute history

    Drafted by a treaty and a bill of sale [in 1846, Kashmir and Jammu] combined disparate regions, religions, and ethnicities: […] In the British census of India of 1941, Kashmir registered a Muslim majority population of 77%, a Hindu population of 20% and a sparse population of Buddhists and Sikhs comprising the remaining 3%. […] Under Hindu rule, Muslims faced hefty taxation and discrimination in the legal system, and were forced into labor without any wages. Conditions [had] caused a significant migration of people from the Kashmir Valley to the Punjab of British India. For almost a century, until the census, a small Hindu elite had ruled over a vast and impoverished Muslim peasantry. Driven into docility by chronic indebtedness to landlords and moneylenders, having no education besides, nor awareness of rights, the Muslim peasants had no political representation until the 1930s.

  330. Reginald Selkirk says

    US and Philippine forces cancel ship-sinking drill after World War II-era target prematurely sinks

    A World War II-era Philippine navy ship to be used as a target in a combat exercise by American and the Philippine forces accidentally sank Monday hours before the mock assault, prompting the drill to be cancelled, U.S. and Philippine military officials said.

    The BRP Miguel Malvar, which was decommissioned by the Philippine navy in 2021, took on water while being towed in rough waters facing the disputed South China Sea and sank about 30 nautical miles (55 kilometers) off the western Philippine province of Zambales. Nobody was onboard when the ship listed then sank, the Philippine military said…

  331. Reginald Selkirk says

    Russian journalist who escaped house arrest in Moscow reappears in Paris after a brutal journey

    Russian journalist Ekaterina Barabash resurfaced in Paris Monday following a daring escape from Moscow last month after being put under house arrest and facing a 10-year prison sentence for posts condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    Reporters Without Borders, also known by its French acronym RSF, said it helped Barabash orchestrate her adrenaline-packed getaway: The outspoken war critic tore off her electronic monitoring tag and “travelled over 2,800 kilometres (about 1739 miles) using clandestine routes” to evade surveillance.

    “Her escape was one of the most perilous operations RSF has been involved in since Russia’s draconian laws of March 2022,” said the group’s Director General Thibaut Bruttin during a press conference with Barabash at RSF’s headquarters in Paris. “At one point, we thought she might be dead.”

    Barabash, 63, vehemently condemned on Monday the lack of freedoms in Russia while detailing her escape…

    Barabash said she crossed multiple borders, using covert channels coordinated by RSF, and spent two weeks in hiding and then she France on April 26, her birthday.

    The hardest part was her inability to contact her 96-year-old mother, whom she had to leave behind…

  332. Reginald Selkirk says

    Illinois Democrat Schakowsky won’t seek Congress reelection in 2026 after 14 terms

    U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky announced Monday that she won’t seek reelection next year after 14 terms, making her the latest longtime Illinois Democrat to announce a retirement from Congress.

    “For the remainder of my term, and beyond, I vow to continue taking every opportunity possible to fight for my community and my country,” Schakowsky, 80, said in a statement. “I will do everything in my power to secure equal rights for all, an economy that works for everyone, not just the rich, universal health care, reproductive rights, environmental protections and climate security, and so much more.”

    Her announcement comes less than two weeks after Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, announced he won’t seek a sixth term in 2026…

  333. Reginald Selkirk says

    It’s the Emoluments, Stupid

    Ever since the first Trump administration, I have been arguing that going after Trump’s incessant violations of the Emoluments clause of the Constitution was the way to successfully impeach him, as it is a slam dunk case…

    The United States Constitution

    Article I, Section 9, paragraph 8:
    No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

  334. Reginald Selkirk says

    GlobalX, airline used for Trump deportations, gets hacked: Report

    GlobalX, an airline used by the Trump administration as part of its massive deportation campaign, has reportedly been hacked.

    On Monday, 404 Media first reported news of the breach, based on a defacement message on the airline’s official website and stolen data that the hackers shared with the news website.

    “Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge’s order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans,” wrote the hackers, who claimed to be affiliated with the amorphous hacktivist group Anonymous.

    The hackers were referring to rulings by several judges ordering the Trump administration to return people who were wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

    GlobalX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  335. says

    JM @319, thanks for that additional explanation.

    In other news, as reported by The New York Times:

    Air traffic controllers temporarily lost communication with planes at Newark Liberty International Airport last week, according to the workers’ union, a revelation that came as travel disruptions there extended into a second week.

  336. says

    NBC News:

    At least three people have died and five more were wounded on Sunday after multiple shooters opened fire in an isolated incident at an Arizona restaurant, police said.

  337. says

    NBC News:

    TeleMessage, the app that President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Mike Waltz, appeared to use to archive his group chats, has suspended all services after hackers claimed to have stolen files from it.

  338. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Same as 337.
    ‪Kevin Collier (NBC):

    TeleMessage, the Signal knockoff used by Mike Waltz and potentially other gov officials to archive group chats in plaintext, has suspended all services after it was hacked *at least twice.* 404Media reported a hack last night; a different hacker also broke in and gave me evidence.

    I try not to overhype this stuff, but this might be the biggest government opsec failure in history.

    Commentary:

    I would challenge that. The biggest government opec failure was to allow doge unlimited access

    Remember when they couldn’t find any evidence of Hillary Clinton’s email server being hacked? Good times.

    Turning out to be the most transparent government in US history.

    Curious as to how this is impeding daily workflow among the Cabinet.

    If there’s no real work, you can’t impede the flow. [Taps head]

     
    Ben Goggin (NBC):

    Worth noting that the federal contracts that are currently active for TeleMessage were approved under the Biden administration. Just all around, the federal government does not appear to have done much due diligence here.

    It’s an open question about how agencies that used TeleMessage will now communicate and maintain compliant archives while the service is down because of the security issues.

    Carol Rosenberg (NYT): “‘Loose tweets sink fleets.’ —New sign posted at […] Guantanamo Bay”

  339. says

    For “Star Wars” fans, May 4 is an unofficial holiday of sorts, and as Variety noted, the White House apparently wanted to get in on the fun — in the most Trumpian way possible.

    The official White House X and Instagram accounts on Sunday posted an AI-generated image of Donald Trump as a beefed-up Jedi in celebration of “Star Wars” day. The post read, “Happy May the 4th to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting so hard to bring Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy. You’re not the Rebellion — you’re the Empire. May the 4th be with you.”

    (In case this isn’t obvious, characters in the film franchise say, “May The Force be with you.” With this in mind, “May the Fourth be with you” is a pun.)

    The fact that Team Trump used the opportunity to lash out at “Radical Left Lunatics” was not surprising: Two weeks earlier, the president also wrote online, “Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics.”

    But in this case, what stood out was not the predictable palaver, but rather, the seemingly AI-generated image of the Republican wielding a red lightsaber — and as fans of the “Star Wars” franchise know, it’s the Sith villains who use red lightsabers, not the Jedi heroes. (New York magazine’s Chas Danner took an even deeper dive into all of the nerdy missteps in the White House-backed image.)

    With this in mind, actor Mark Hamill, best known for playing Luke Skywalker, turned to Bluesky to have a little fun at Trump’s expense. [Social media post at the link]

    […] In 2019 the Republican White House tried to use “Game of Thrones” as part of a clumsy argument about the president’s border-wall project, and the whole thing fell apart rather quickly. A year later, Trump talked about the Captain William Bligh character from “Mutiny on the Bounty,” though it wasn’t altogether clear whether the president realized that Bligh was the villain of the story.

    After his defeat in 2020, Trump talked obsessively about Hannibal Lecter, a fictional character, including a weird instance in which he referred to the infamous cannibal from “The Silence of the Lambs,” as “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” and “a wonderful man.”

    Soon after, Trump’s 2024 running mate, future Vice President JD Vance, pointed to Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” as an example of immigration leading to higher crime rates — which was wrong on the policy details as well as the artistic narrative. It fell to The Washington Post’s Philip Bump to note, “[T]he most brutal, vicious killer in that movie is the nativist who loathes immigrants.”

    Maybe these guys should just steer clear of making pop culture references? They’re clearly not good at it.

    Link

    Trump and Vance are villains.

  340. says

    Trump proves that he has no idea what the Constitution is—again

    Attempting to deflect from courts repeatedly ruling against his immigration policy, President Donald Trump lied to reporters on Monday, claiming that the courts fabricated the need for cases to be heard—despite the right to a trial being a constitutional law for more than 234 years.

    “The courts have all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they said, ‘maybe you have to have trials.’ Trials, we’re going to have 5 million trials? Doesn’t work, doesn’t work. You wouldn’t have a country left,” he said. [Doofus! He just STFU.]

    Trump has been under fire for denying detainees due process. Students like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk have been abducted for their pro-Palestinian advocacy, and legal U.S. resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was wrongly captured and deported to El Salvador.

    On April 30, a court ordered the release of Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian immigrant who was held by the Department of Homeland Security while it tried to find a reason for his deportation.

    Contrary to Trump’s statement, the U.S. Constitution explicitly lays out the right to a trial in the Sixth Amendment:

    In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

    Similarly, the Seventh Amendment notes:

    In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

    These rights were part of the ten amendments ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, and nothing in U.S. law or Trump’s executive orders have nullified them. The Sixth Amendment ensures that accusations leveled by the government against people have to be proven in a court of law and not just by royal fiat, as was done by the British government in the colonial era. [!]

    Trump’s unconstitutional remarks come just one day after he told NBC “I don’t know” when asked if the president needs to uphold the Constitution. Like every president before him, Trump took an oath of office, making it clear that this was a core element of his presidential duties.

    The presidential oath of office states:

    I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

    The oath is not ambiguous, and defense of the Constitution is not optional.

    Trump’s ignorance of U.S. law and history was also on display when he recently argued that the Declaration of Independence was a “declaration of unity and love and respect.” The document famously severed the relationship between colonists and England, leading to the bloody Revolutionary War where hundreds of thousands died.

    Of course, Trump is the only president who has been impeached twice. In both instances, he was found to be in violation of the Constitution.

    No wonder he thinks the right to a trial came “out of nowhere.”

  341. says

    New Homeland Security scam offers immigrants $1,000 to ruin their lives

    The Trump administration is offering undocumented immigrants a paltry $1,000 if they choose to “self-deport” in a “dignified” way.

    A Monday release from the Department of Homeland Security said immigrants would be paid the stipend “after their return to their home country has been confirmed” through Customs and Border Protection’s Home App.

    […] The Trump administration has already been executing [the deportation] policy by abducting people, some in broad daylight, and forcibly transporting them to foreign nations and the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Some, like Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, are legally qualified to be in the United States but have nonetheless been removed by Trump’s goons.

    The notion that undocumented immigrants would go to such extraordinary lengths to come to the United States, only to upend the life they’ve built for a mere $1,000 is ridiculous on its face. Furthermore, immigration experts who have ridiculed such “self-deportation” policies in the past said migrants who take this offer would often be facing terrible financial straits, violence, or worse in their countries of origin.

    Even nonexperts have said such policies are “crazy,” “maniacal,” and “mean-spirited”—at least, that’s how Trump himself described the idea when it was proposed by failed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the DHS claim in its release that people opting to take the stipend could possibly return to the U.S. after self-deporting was “wildly deceptive.”

    “For many people, this is a lie. Leaving will make their cases much worse,” he wrote. Reichlin-Melnick noted that if a person took the offer, a deportation order could then be handed down in court for failing to appear in court.

    Even more concerning is Trump’s long history of lying and misleading on matters both big and small. […]

    There are also signs that the policy announcement was intertwined with efforts to promote pro-Trump propaganda on the conservative Fox News network.

    Fox reporter Bill Melugin posted on Monday that he had been given “exclusive” early access to the announcement. He then promoted the announcement in an on-air segment on “America’s Newsroom.” [I snipped details of DHS personnel appearing on Fox News.]

    Fox News also pushed the policy in an online story. […]

  342. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Added commentary for #340

    Out of nowhere… like say the Magna Carta in 1215… all of a sudden.

    Why tf is Mayor Bowser there?
    WHY THE FUCK IS ROGER GOODELL THERE??? [NFL commissioner]

    Best part of these “press conferences” is watching the light leave the eyes of the people foolish enough to be in the shot with him.

    Merriam-Webster – It’s ‘All of a Sudden’ (There’s No ‘The’)

    Considering how few examples of the mistake are found in edited sources, it seems most writers and their copy editors are diligently heeding the advice. On the other hand, the phrase does have quite a life on social media, in self-published writing, and in quotations from interviews
    […]
    Here’s where it gets weird: there’s no clear-cut grammatical explanation as to why we use the article a in the expression instead of the. […] For centuries, this idiom has existed with the indefinite article a, and it is in that form that people recognize it as being correct.

  343. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    BBC – Endangered axolotl release raises hopes for rare amphibian

    scientists released 18 captive-bred axolotls in restored and artificial wetland close to Mexico City. The researchers fitted the animals with radio trackers and found that they “survived and foraged successfully at both sites”—even gaining weight.
    […]
    The waters of Xochimilco—shaped by traditional farming practices and flushed with spring water from the mountains—used to teem with these amphibians.

    But as Mexico City grew, urbanisation, pollution and other pressures pushed axolotls to the brink of extinction, with some estimates suggesting that there were as few as 50 left in the wild. […] ironically, these charismatic salamanders are found in the world’s laboratories and pet aquariums in their hundreds of thousands.
    […]
    “Many animals are losing their habitat around the world,” said Dr Ramos. “And restoration projects are not easy, but they can be done—they just need a lot of people. “You don’t need to be a scientist to get involved—everybody in the world can help out.”

    Like picking up litter on walks.

  344. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up to #301.

    Trump: immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country

    The Hill – White House: ‘No final decisions’ on foreign film tariffs

    The White House on Monday said no final decisions have been made about tariffs on foreign firms, after President Trump a day prior called for a 100 percent tariff on movies produced in other countries. […] The president later on Monday said that he would be meeting with leaders in the film industry to discuss his idea for tariffs.

  345. JM says

    Express: Russia economy meltdown as income tax to soar by 180% and businesses declare bankruptcy

    Government plans showed a proposed personal income tax increase of 180% and a corporate income tax increase of 110%. VAT is also set to shoot up by 17%, putting many small and medium-sized businesses at the risk of bankruptcy. The Russian Intelligence Service said: “Up to 30% of small and medium-sized businesses in Russia are already on the verge of bankruptcy. By the end of this year, this figure is expected to increase to 50%.”

    Russia is really running out of money and to keep inflation and the economy under some control despite huge military expenses are going to push tax rates way up. Their national reserve, built on years of oil and other resource exports, is finally running short. At the same time OPEC+ is pushing the price of oil down so much it’s increasingly unprofitable for Russia to export.
    Russia will continue to export oil where it can. Even if they are doing it at a loss getting the hard non-Ruble currency is necessary. They need to buy chips and other technology on the black market. Even Russia’s allies and the black markets don’t want Rubles now.
    Tax rates in that range will push much of the economy into the black market. The central government will lose control and/or drive the country into poverty, eventually.

  352. birgerjohansson says

    Addendum.
    Never mind # 45 or # 47.

    After the tariff mess, I would call him “85”.
    (If you have watched the Sigourney Weawer Alien sequels, you know)

  353. Reginald Selkirk says

    Hugo Administrators Resign in Wake of ChatGPT Controversy

    Another year, yet another Hugo Awards-adjacent controversy? That might be what fans of sci-fi lit and related media are thinking, with news today that a trio of leaders from the Seattle 2025 Worldcon, the upcoming iteration of the convention where the Hugos are annually presented, have resigned. This year, at least, the awards themselves—voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS)—seemingly aren’t directly involved in the dust-up.

    In a post on Bluesky co-signed by Hugo administrator Nicholas Whyte, deputy Hugo administrator Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and World Science Fiction Society division head Cassidy, the trio announced they were resigning from their roles ahead of the Seattle event, which takes place in August. “We want to reaffirm that no LLMs or generative AI have been used in the Hugo Awards process at any stage,” the statement read in part, which might turn the heads of anyone who is a) interested in the Hugos, but b) not up on the latest controversy.

    However, plenty of people in the community are well aware of what’s been going on. A quick journey to the blog File 770 will bring you up to speed, as will a visit to Seattle Worldcon 2025’s own site, which on April 30 shared a post clarifying exactly what role AI played in the upcoming event.

    “We have received questions regarding Seattle’s use of AI tools in our vetting process for program participants,” Seattle Worldcon 2025 chair Kathy Bond wrote. “In the interest of transparency, we will explain the process of how we are using a Large Language Model (LLM). We understand that members of our community have very reasonable concerns and strong opinions about using LLMs. Please be assured that no data other than a proposed panelist’s name has been put into the LLM script that was used. Let’s repeat that point: no data other than a proposed panelist’s name has been put into the LLM script. The sole purpose of using the LLM was to streamline the online search process used for program participant vetting, and rather than being accepted uncritically, the outputs were carefully analyzed by multiple members of our team for accuracy.”

    Bond’s post goes on to explain that “using this process saved literally hundreds of hours of volunteer staff time, and we believe it resulted in more accurate vetting after the step of checking any purported negative results. We have also not utilized an LLM in any other aspect of our program or convention.”

    That last line is what today’s resignation post from Whyte, MacCallum-Stewart, and Cassidy also emphasized: that the Hugos themselves were not pulled into this process, which was meant to help Seattle Worldcon 2025 more efficiently compile the panels it offers to convention attendees…

  354. KG says

    The Sixth Amendment ensures that accusations leveled by the government against people have to be proven in a court of law and not just by royal fiat, as was done by the British government in the colonial era. – Lynna, OM@340, quoting DailyKos

    This is a fairly typical American myth about pre-revolutionary British rule. No-one could be declared guilty of a crime by royal fiat, either in Britain or in the colonies. There was plenty wrong and undemocratic about colonial governance, but it simply wasn’t the sort of absolute monarchy a lot of Americans think it was.

  355. Reginald Selkirk says

    The Shingles Vaccine Could Be a Secret Weapon Against Heart Attacks

    The benefits of avoiding shingles through vaccinations are piling up. New research out this week has found a link between getting vaccinated for shingles and a reduced risk of heart attacks and strokes.

    Researchers from Kyung Hee University in South Korea led the study, published Monday in the European Heart Journal. They studied the medical records of over a million South Korean residents, finding that shingles-vaccinated people were noticeably less likely to develop cardiovascular disease than unvaccinated people. The findings are the latest to indicate that shingles is even worse for our health than currently thought…

    As bad as shingles is, ongoing research suggests it may also increase the risk of future health problems. Multiple studies have linked shingles to a greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, for instance—and conversely, a lower risk of dementia has been linked to shingles vaccination. Some studies have also suggested that shingles can cause heart complications after infection. But according to the researchers, there hasn’t been extensive research looking into whether vaccination can prevent these problems from arising…

  356. Reginald Selkirk says

    Laura Loomer Flexes Her Influence to Take Down Trump’s Surgeon General Nominee

    Somehow, Laura Loomer has more staying power with the Trump White House than she did when she literally handcuffed herself to Twitter’s doors. The far-right conspiracy theorist, fresh off of reportedly using her influence to force National Security Adviser Mike Waltz out of the administration, is trying to throw her weight around to oust Trump’s Surgeon General Nominee, Janette Nesheiwat, for not being sufficiently anti-vaccine, per The Daily Beast.

    Loomer has taken aim at Nesheiwat over her support for the covid-19 vaccine, taking issue with her support for the shot that saved an estimated 2.4 million lives and for calling vaccine hesitancy a “global health threat.” …

  358. Reginald Selkirk says

    Russia accuses Ukraine of drone attack on Moscow days before WW2 parade

    Russia says Ukraine launched a drone attack on Moscow – days before the start of a ceasefire, ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin to coincide with a World War Two parade.

    Moscow’s four major airports shut for a few hours on Tuesday amid the barrage, authorities said. There were no casualties and Ukraine has not commented.

    Moscow is due to hold a parade on 9 May to mark the victory of the Soviet Union and allies over Nazi Germany. This year is the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2 and will see world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, in Russia for the event…

    I am confused. Is attacking another country’s capitol with drones a bad thing?

  361. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    Maddow: For a supposed populist, Trump is strangely attached to unpopular ideas
    Video is 2:40 minutes

    Trump’s shiny object trick wears thin quickly in second term
    Video is 7:59 minutes

    Massive ‘No Kings’ protest expected to rain on Donald Trump’s (military) parade
    Video is 8:47 minutes

  362. Reginald Selkirk says

    Most Americans use federal science information on a weekly basis, a new poll finds

    Most people in the United States rely on federal science in their daily lives but don’t realize it, a new nationwide poll of U.S. adults shows.

    The poll was conducted in early April by the Association of Science and Technology Centers, the association for science museums and other educational science centers in the U.S.

    The poll found that on a weekly basis more than 90% of people use weather forecasts, job market reports, food safety warnings and other information that is based on federal science. But only 10% of respondents are concerned that cuts to federal support for science might impact their access to such information…

  363. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump administration cuts off all future federal funding to Harvard

    The ongoing war between the Trump administration and Harvard University has taken a new twist, with the government sending Harvard a letter that, amid what appears to be a stream-of-consciousness culture war rant, announces that the university will not be receiving any further research grants. The letter potentially suggests that Harvard could see funding restored by “complying with long-settled Federal Law,” but earlier demands from the administration included conditions that went well beyond those required by law.

    The letter, sent by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, makes it somewhat difficult to tell exactly what the government wants, because most of the text is a borderline deranged rant written in florid MAGA-ese. You don’t have to go beyond the first paragraph to get a sense that this is less a setting of funding conditions than an airing of grievances:

    Instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law. Where do many of these “students” come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country—and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public?

    Does Harvard have to answer these questions to get funding restored? It’s unclear…

  364. says

    Text quoted by Sky Captain @342: “like say the Magna Carta in 1215… all of a sudden”

    An appropriate comment in this circumstance. Thanks for posting additional information that highlights just how ignorant Trump really is. It was nice to also see comments shaming the likes of Roger Goodell.

    Text quoted by JM @345:

    Government plans showed a proposed personal income tax increase of 180% and a corporate income tax increase of 110%. VAT is also set to shoot up by 17%, putting many small and medium-sized businesses at the risk of bankruptcy. The Russian Intelligence Service said: “Up to 30% of small and medium-sized businesses in Russia are already on the verge of bankruptcy. By the end of this year, this figure is expected to increase to 50%.

    Good news. The collapse of the Russian economy is taking too long, but the trend is encouraging.

    KG @354, thanks for that clarification.

  365. says

    Reginald @363, I wonder if framing the issue in so much MAGA madness is part of the plan. Harvard cannot comply even if the university wanted to comply with Trump’s (and Linda McMahon’s) demands. No one can figure out what compliance would look like. The requirements are hopelessly muddled, and the claims made by the Trump administration are full of lies.

  367. says

    Trump administration eyes collection agencies, wage garnishment to collect student debt

    Related video at the link is hosted by Rachel Maddow.

    Throughout Joe Biden’s term as president, the White House made student loan debt relief a top domestic priority. […] Biden would’ve done more, were it not for ferocious pushback from Republicans and Republican-appointed judges.

    […] Trump is back in the Oval Office, and the pendulum has swung wildly in the opposite direction. The Wall Street Journal reported that the incumbent president and his team are “starting to put millions of defaulted student-loan borrowers into collections Monday and threatening to confiscate their wages, tax refunds and federal benefits.”

    There are some five million borrowers whose loans are in default, many of whom haven’t made regular payments since the pandemic. Millions more are on the cusp of default, according to the Education Department. Nearly 200,000 defaulted borrowers will begin receiving notices from the Treasury Department Monday notifying them that benefits and tax refunds could be withheld as soon as a month from now, an Education Department spokesperson said. Wage garnishment could begin later this summer, the spokesperson added.

    Vox’s Patrick Reis had an excellent explainer on the recent history, noting that it was Trump who, as the Covid crisis wreaked havoc on the economy, initially halted requirements related to student loan repayments. A year later, Biden went far further, trying to wipe out the debts for millions of borrowers — right up until Republican-appointed justices on the U.S. Supreme Court balked.

    Even after that ruling, however, student loan borrowers were able to avoid penalties for missed payments. […] the Trump administration announced collections on loans that have not been paid would begin on May 5, and this week, that deadline arrived.

    As for how many people will feel the effects, Vox explained, “Almost 43 million Americans have student debt. Five million borrowers haven’t made a payment in 360 days, per the Education Department. More than 20 percent of borrowers haven’t made a payment in at least 90 days, according to the credit service TransUnion.”

    The hardships for many are likely to be dramatic. […]

  368. says

    Josh Marshall: So This Happened

    Donald Trump’s Truth Social recently started a streaming service for MAGAs and “pro-family” Christians called Truth+. Hunter Walker was surprised to find that among the top ten most watched movies featured for viewers was a “documentary” about how alien lizard people secretly rule the earth. And that was only the beginning of the fun.

    Excerpts from the embedded link referenced above:

    Less than two minutes into the movie, the narrator makes a shocking claim.

    “The evidence we are about to present to you has the potential to rewrite thousands of years of human history. It will present evidence that suggests ancient serpent or lizard-like aliens came to earth thousands of years ago,” the narrator says. “We’ll also present evidence that these ancient aliens are still among us today.” […] this supposed haven for young viewers and wholesome Christian fare is also home to “Lizard People: Rulers of Time and Space” […]

    These ideas are easy to dismiss as utterly and obviously ridiculous. However, they have a history of attracting troubled believers on the furthest conspiracy fringe. And, while these movies are available on other streaming platforms, in this case the sitting president’s nascent media empire is playing a role in the promotion of this extreme content. […]

    [….] TMTG, which is also known as “Trump Media,” has had what one analyst described to the UK’s Telegraph newspaper as a “wild ride largely fueled by Donald Trump’s political influence.” […] TMTG, which trades under the symbol “DJT,” had its IPO in March 2024 at an $8 billion valuation. Since then, the stock has been on a rollercoaster ride, with prices climbing above $60 after the initial offering before coming down to, as of last week, roughly $25. […]

    Having a publicly traded media company means Trump, who owns a majority of the DJT shares, is in a position to rake in sums from individual advertisers and investors at a level that is unprecedented for a sitting president. […]

    “We’re assessing various means of monetizing the Truth+ platform, including through advertising and a subscription package with premium content,” Devin Nunes wrote. [Nunes is still CEO after the company lost so much money?!] “Meanwhile, we are continuing our efforts to secure new programming encompassing family-friendly entertainment, documentaries, children’s shows, Christian content, and unbiased news broadcasts.”

    […] the full description on the service identifies “Lizard People” simply as a “documentary” […]

    The movie also includes some inflammatory commentary about the Catholic Church.

    “The Vatican comes from the words ‘vatis’ for prophet and ‘can’ for serpent, making the Vatican a place of serpent prophecy,” the narrator says. “The very book of Christians across the world, The Bible, is full of the serpent.”

    Most etymologists explicitly do not agree with this interpretation of the term “Vatican.”

    […] claims of government involvement in unnatural experiments and alien blood sacrifice is that they are being streamed on a service owned by the president of the United States.

    […] “One of the reasons that QAnon spread so far and was so adopted is because Trump and some of his close associates were willing to sort of wink and nod at the QAnon community and make no effort to denounce them or denounce their beliefs,” Strain said. “That obviously fueled a lot of QAnon believers.”

    […] TPM reached out to Richard Rushfield, a longtime chronicler of Hollywood and columnist at the entertainment industry site The Ankler, to try and understand this business model. There are various production companies who churn out work in bulk, at a low cost, and are then able to monetize even relatively small audiences via the internet or streaming, he said. He described it as a sub-Hollywood “weird internet” world and “very sort of bottom-feedery business.”

    “It’s like the mud at the bottom of the floor,” he said. “It’s like living at that level.” […]

    Much more at the link.

  369. says

    birger @366, “Even a moose can mess you up and potentially kill you, and they are herbivores.”

    True. I used to live in Alaska. My parents warned my brothers and I to steer well clear of any moose. A moose can stomp a human to death. A moose with a calf is especially dangerous.

  371. says

    @368 Lynna, OM posted ‘Josh Marshall: So This Happened’
    which included: ‘wholesome Christian fare is also home to “Lizard People: Rulers of Time and Space’

    As I posted on https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/05/06/missionary-lizards/
    shermanj 6 May 2025 at 11:35 am
    I have had run-ins with those ‘xtian missionary lizards’ many times in the past. I wish these jebus zealots would all just wrap themselves in the flag, thump their bible and Crawl Off And Die. It’s sad that there are so many ignorant superstitious people who willingly drink the toxic xtian kool-aid of religion. Look for the orange smoke in the vatican

  372. says

    shermanj @370, I hear you. And yes, some of them do fit the description of “stain missionary lizards.” LOL
    So that part seems accurate.

    In other news: Hegseth Orders 20 Percent Cut in Four-Star Officers

    “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has already fired a raft of military leaders, many of them women and people of color, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a 20 percent reduction of four-star officers — the military’s senior ranks — continuing the wide swath of job reductions and firings that have marked his three months at the helm of the Pentagon.

    In a memo on Monday, Mr. Hegseth also ordered a 10 percent reduction of overall general-level officers in the military, and a 20 percent cut of four-star positions in the National Guard.

    “Through these measures, we will uphold our position as the most lethal fighting force in the world, achieving peace through strength and ensuring greater efficiency, innovation and preparedness for achieving any challenge that lies ahead,” he said.

    Mr. Hegseth has already fired a raft of military leaders, many of them people of color and women. He fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.; the first woman to command the Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti; and the U.S. military’s representative to the NATO military committee, Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield.

    […] There are about 800 general-level officers in the military. At the most senior, four-star level, there are 44.

    […] It was unclear how Mr. Hegseth planned to cut the positions. […]

    I think Hegseth is just looking for a way to fire people he doesn’t like.

  373. Reginald Selkirk says

    Supreme Court allows Trump to implement transgender military ban

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump to implement his ban on transgender people serving in the military.

    The justices granted an emergency request from the Trump administration to lift a nationwide injunction blocking the policy while litigation continues.

    The court’s brief order noted that the three liberal justices dissented…

  374. says

    Reuters: “Order by Hegseth to cancel Ukraine weapons caught White House off guard”

    Roughly a week after Donald Trump started his second term as president, the U.S. military issued an order to three freight airlines operating out of Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and a U.S. base in Qatar: Stop 11 flights loaded with artillery shells and other weaponry and bound for Ukraine.

    In a matter of hours, frantic questions reached Washington from Ukrainians in Kyiv and from officials in Poland, where the shipments were coordinated. Who had ordered the U.S. Transportation Command, known as TRANSCOM, to halt the flights? Was it a permanent pause on all aid? Or just some?

    Top national security officials — in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department — couldn’t provide answers. Within one week, flights were back in the air.

    The verbal order originated from the office of Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, according to TRANSCOM records reviewed by Reuters. A TRANSCOM spokesperson said the command received the order via the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

    The cancelations came after Trump wrapped up a January 30 Oval Office meeting about Ukraine that included Hegseth and other top national security officials, according to three sources familiar with the situation. During the meeting, the idea of stopping Ukraine aid came up, said two people with knowledge of the meeting, but the president issued no instruction to stop aid to Ukraine.

    The president was unaware of Hegseth’s order […]

    […] White House told Reuters that Hegseth had followed a directive from Trump to pause aid to Ukraine, which it said was the administration’s position at the time. It did not explain why, according to those who spoke to Reuters, top national security officials in the normal decision making process didn’t know about the order or why it was so swiftly reversed.

    […] The cancelations cost TRANSCOM $2.2 million, according to the records reviewed by Reuters. In response to a request for comment, TRANSCOM said that the total cost was $1.6 million – 11 flights were canceled but one incurred no charge.

    […] The story of how flights were canceled, detailed by Reuters for the first time, points to an at-times haphazard policy-making process within the Trump administration and a command structure that is unclear even to its own ranking members. [True]

    The multiday pause of the flights, confirmed by five people with knowledge of it, also shows confusion in how the administration has created and implemented national security policy. At the Pentagon, the disarray is an open secret, with many current and former officials saying the department is plagued by internal disagreements on foreign policy, deep-seated grudges, and inexperienced staff.

    […] The Ukrainians quickly asked the administration through multiple channels but had difficulty obtaining any useful information, according to a Ukrainian official with direct knowledge of the situation.

    […] The shipping of American weapons to Ukraine requires sign-off from multiple agencies and can take weeks or even months to complete, depending on the size of the cargo. The majority of US military assistance goes through a logistics hub in Poland before being picked up by Ukrainian representatives and transported into the country. [A competent and consistent logistics plan is needed. That existed during the Biden administration. The Trump administration (and Pete Hegseth) broke it.]

    That hub can hold shipments for extended periods of time. It’s not clear if the 11 canceled flights were the only ones scheduled that week in February, how much aid was already stockpiled in Poland and if it continued to flow into Ukraine despite the U.S. military’s orders. […]

    More at the link, including details related to infighting and disagreements at the Pentagon.

  377. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 333

    His shaking down foreign leaders and starting a coop were slam dunks as well. If they weren’t enough to convince his party to convict him, what makes the author think emoluments will?

  380. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council)

    The Trump administration is carrying out a large-scale operation across the DC area targeting *restaurants,* […] Not gang members. Not felons. Not criminals. Dishwashers. Busboys. Cooks. Waiters.
    […]
    many of these restaurants ARE complying with the law. What ICE is doing seems to be a fishing operation hoping to just happen upon people working under the table. Here’s one example […]

    eight or nine agents—some in plain clothes, others with uniforms and guns—swarmed the restaurant just as it was opening for lunch. “They all came in all of the public entrances at the same time,” says owner Bo Blair.

    The general manager met the agents, who provided a “notice of inspection” and asked to question employees. The manager said they couldn’t, and they did not push back. They asked for I-9 forms, which the restaurant keeps securely at its corporate office, not at the restaurant.

    “They made it pretty public that they’re coming back to the restaurant on Monday [to collect the forms], which is pretty unnerving to the staff, obviously,” says the group’s CEO Marisa Casey. She says she is asking them not to come back to the restaurants because the documents are not kept there. “We also don’t want them to go back to our restaurants [and] scare everybody.”

  381. says

    Text quoted by Sky Captain @380:

    “We also don’t want them to go back to our restaurants [and] scare everybody.”

    I’m sure that is a major issue. Just the threat of disruptive ICE raids will hurt business owners, and may cause some immigrants to self deport. I note that the raid on the restaurant was conducted during one of the busiest times of day, lunch time.

    In other news: Newark Airport meltdown adds to alarming trend of air traffic chaos under Trump, by Rachel Maddow

    “The U.S. government must be working for someone, but it’s clear it’s not working to keep the planes in the sky.”

    Nine days after Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as president, a terrible midair collision killed 67 people just outside Reagan National Airport over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Two days later, on Jan. 31, a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia. Seven people were killed and another two dozen were injured.

    Two days after that, a United Airlines plane caught fire on the tarmac in Houston, where flames were seen shooting out of the wing. There were 104 passengers and five crew members who were evacuated. Three days later, on Feb. 5, a Japan Airlines plane smashed into the tail of a Delta plane on the tarmac at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

    On Feb. 7, officials recovered the wreckage of a small commercial plane that crashed in Alaska; all 10 people on board were killed. Three days after that, one person was killed when one plane smashed into another at the airport in Scottsdale, Arizona. On Feb. 15, two people were killed when a small plane crashed in Covington, Georgia. Four days after that, two people were killed when two planes collided midair at a regional airport just northwest of Tucson, Arizona.

    At this point, we weren’t even one month into Trump’s second term. But it keeps going.

    On Feb. 24, a Delta flight from Atlanta was forced to turn around and have an emergency evacuation after the cabin filled with smoke. One day later, an American Airlines flight was forced to abort its landing at Reagan National Airport to avoid colliding with another plane. On March 1, a FedEx cargo plane landed at Newark Liberty International Airport with its engine on fire.

    Over the next two weeks, 15 more people were killed in nine more air crashes, including one alongside a Nashville highway in which three children were killed. On March 17, a Delta flight smacked its wing into the runway while landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

    On March 28, back again at Reagan National Airport, a Delta passenger plane preparing to take off and a military jet preparing to land both received emergency last-second instructions to divert to prevent a collision. Six days later, a flight from Key West, Florida, to Newark had to divert to Washington Dulles after a fire in the cabin.

    A week later, six members of Congress were on board an American Airlines plane that clipped the wing of another American Airlines plane at Reagan National Airport. That same day, April 10, a helicopter crashed into the Hudson River in New York City, killing six people, including three kids.

    Over the next 10 days, 21 more people were killed in seven more plane crashes. On April 21, the thing you never think happens in real life happened on the tarmac at the Orlando International Airport: passengers evacuated down the slides as their Delta flight caught fire.

    Last week, two passenger planes were forced to abort their landings at the last minute to avoid a collision with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter, once again, at Reagan National Airport in Washington. [video at the link]

    Typically, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration is not a job that is supposed to turn over with every new president. It’s one of the jobs that has a five-year term because it’s not a particularly political position, but rather a technocratic job that needs stability. This time around, that wasn’t the case.

    Before the election, Trump’s top campaign donor, Elon Musk, demanded that the FAA’s then-administrator, Michael Whitaker, resign. At that point, Whitaker was only about a year into his five-year term, and there had been no major U.S. plane crashes in quite some time. However, under his leadership, the FAA had issued fines of a few hundred thousand dollars against Musk’s company, SpaceX.

    A few weeks later, thanks in part to Musk […] Whitaker sees the writing on the wall and resigns.

    Trump did not name a replacement for Whitaker. In fact, he didn’t even name an acting administrator until after the midair collision over the Potomac.

    He did, however, pick Sean Duffy — the husband of one of his favorite Fox News hosts, a guy who was once a contestant on “The Real World” on MTV, a guy with no aviation or transportation experience whatsoever — to be his transportation secretary.

    Nothing against MTV, but it’s possible this guy is in slightly over his head. It seems even Duffy is a bit freaked out by the gravity of his job. Last week at a Cabinet meeting, he warned that if the “aging infrastructure” of the U.S. air traffic control system wasn’t updated, “there’s going to be failures and people will lose their lives.”

    Well, we now know that something really terrifying had just happened right before that Cabinet meeting, something the Transportation Department was not talking about publicly.

    Over the last few days, you may have seen some headlines about things being really snarled at Newark Airport, with hundreds of flights canceled or delayed. What’s even worse — and weirder — the biggest commercial airline at Newark, United Airlines, just cut 35 of its daily flights out of the airport. Newark isn’t the only major airport in this area, so why is it alone facing these issues? What’s going on?

    We may now have our answer. On Monday, The New York Times reported that two days before last week’s Cabinet meeting, “air traffic controllers temporarily lost communication with planes at Newark Liberty International Airport.”

    The Times reported:

    [A] spokesman for the union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said that on April 28, controllers in a Philadelphia air traffic control center who are responsible for separating and sequencing aircraft in and out of Newark Airport ‘temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control,’ and were ‘unable to see, hear, or talk to them.’

    As Bloomberg News reported, when radar or radio frequencies stop working, “there are no fail-safes,” meaning controllers have to “wait for the system to come back online.” According to Bloomberg, following the outage, multiple employees were placed on trauma leave. The incident reportedly “left several controllers visibly shaken, with some shedding tears, and at least one experiencing stress-induced heart palpitations.”

    This follows reporting from NBC News’ Tom Costello, who said that one air traffic controller who handles Newark Airport airspace told him, “It is not a safe situation right now for the flying public” and “Don’t fly into Newark. Avoid Newark at all costs.”

    That’s the situation we’re in: Air traffic controllers are having heart palpitations, breaking down in tears and having to take trauma leave, while sneaking word to reporters that it’s not safe to fly.

    Air traffic control in the U.S. is a government operation. We’re the greatest nation on the planet, the most important economic and military and cultural power the modern world has ever known — and it’s not close — but this is our government now. It must be working for someone, but it’s not working to keep the planes in the sky.

  382. says

    Student mental health grants had bipartisan support, but Trump is cutting them anyway

    “There’s no good reason for the Trump administration to cut grants for student mental health programs. It’s happening anyway.”

    Related video at the link.

    After deadly school shootings, many Republican officials try to shift the public conversation away from gun violence and toward mental health programs that might make mass shootings less likely. After the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, this led to a breakthrough of sorts.

    The Biden-era law known as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act included stricter background checks for gun purchases, making the law the most significant gun legislation in decades. But just as notably, the same federal law included significant investments in improving mental health support for students — a priority that enjoyed surprisingly bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.

    Three years later, however, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration has decided to block $1 billion in grants for student mental health programs.

    The Trump administration has halted $1 billion for mental health services for children, saying that the programs funded by a bipartisan law aimed at stemming gun violence in schools were no longer in ‘the best interest of the federal government.’ … [J]ust as some of the mental health programs are starting, the Education Department canceled the funding this week and informed grant recipients that they would have to reapply for the money because of potential violations of federal civil rights law.

    There is no reason to believe the grants are at odds with civil rights laws, though as the Times’ report added, a spokesperson for the Department of Education confirmed that the grants had been discontinued “because of a particular focus on increasing the diversity of psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers.”

    Asked why in the world he did this, Donald Trump pointed to the grants as an apparent example of “waste, fraud and abuse” (which didn’t make any sense) before adding that the programs were being used by undocumented migrants — which, like so many of the president’s claims, is unsupported by evidence. [!!]

    Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who helped write the law, told the Times, “I’m raw about this because I sat in the room for a long time negotiating a really delicate compromise on a really tough issue. What’s the point of being in Congress and writing laws if the president can just ignore them? So, I’m angry that my Republican partners are not out there raising objections to what the president is doing.”

    It is possible that the administration may reverse course on this. After all, in recent months, the White House has retreated under pressure, and if there’s enough of a backlash on cutting mental health services for children, officials might yet restore the funding. [I hope so.]

    For now, however, those looking for a persuasive defense for cutting these grants will be looking for a very long time.

  383. beholder says

    @377 Akira

    Starting a coop is a messy endeavor, but he would have been doing his part to bring down the price of eggs.

  384. says

    Another Judge Finds Trump Did Not Validly Invoke Alien Enemies Act Against Alleged Gang

    As judges begin to rule on the merits of […] Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to give him wide latitude to expel alleged Venezuelan gang members, the administration is starting to rack up losses.

    A federal judge in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday enjoined the administration from moving any detainees being held in the district.

    “Since Respondents have not demonstrated the existence of a ‘war,’ ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion,’ the AEA was not validly invoked by the Presidential Proclamation,” Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote.

    He noted that his findings echoed other judges’, including a Trump appointee’s in Texas last week.

    “The destination, El Salvador, a country paid to take our aliens, is neither the country from which the aliens came, nor to which they wish to be removed. But they are taken there, and there to remain, indefinitely, in a notoriously evil jail, unable to communicate with counsel, family or friends,” he wrote.

    […] “Here, absent a preliminary injunction, Petitioners would be removed from the United States to CECOT, where they would endure abuse and inhumane treatment with no recourse to bring them back,” he observed, referring to the megaprison in El Salvador. “If that is not irreparable harm, what is?”

    He also found that the administration’s proposed notice to the detainees about their impending removal was insufficient, both under the Supreme Court’s ruling and constitutional due process.

    At the temporary restraining order stage, he had ordered, among other things, that notice and hearing be given to the detainees in both Spanish and English. Detainees have testified in various cases that they weren’t even told where they were being sent before they were loaded onto planes.

    “Petitioners have not been given notice of what they allegedly did to join TdA, when they joined, and what they did in the United States, or anywhere else, to share or further the illicit objectives of the TdA,” Hellerstein said of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. “Without such proof, Petitioners are subject to removal by the Executive’s dictate alone, in contravention of the AEA and the Constitutional requirements of due process.”

    In the last few weeks, as the administration seemingly readied more departures under the AEA, the ACLU and other lawyers for detainees frantically went district by district where the detainees were being held, seeking an emergency block to their expulsion. [I snipped details]

    […] Read the ruling here: [Available at the link]

  385. says

    Oops-a-daisy! Trump tariffs bring sky-high flower prices for Mother’s Day

    As we head into Mother’s Day and the beginning of graduation and wedding season, the floral industry is reporting rising costs for consumers thanks to […] Trump’s tariffs.

    Trump’s array of haphazard tariffs on imported goods includes flowers and associated merchandise like vases and containers that are imported from China.

    In fact, 80% of the flowers consumed in the United States come from overseas. In 2024, the United States imported at least $2.2 billion worth of greens and cut flowers, with most coming from South America.

    [Also] flower growers are experiencing increased expenses, which are being passed on to consumers.

    Rebecca Kutzer-Rice, owner of specialty cut flower farm Moonshot Farm in New Jersey, said that Trump’s tariffs are impacting her business when purchasing bulbs from overseas.

    “We’re estimating it could cost our small business anywhere from $40,000 to $50,000 a year, which for a small farm is almost the equivalent of, like, a salary of another employee,” she said. [video at the link]

    [I snipped details of similar reports.]

    And it’s not just flowers. Sandra Gonzalez of the National Bridal Retailers Association said that some wedding dress retailers are increasing bridal gown prices by 10% to 30%, since 90% of gowns are manufactured in China.

    A March survey of small business owners by the National Federation of Independent Business found that 30% intended to raise prices following Trump’s tariff announcement. […]

  386. says

    New York Times:

    Explosions were heard early Wednesday in the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, residents said, two weeks after India vowed to retaliate against Pakistan over a terrorist attack that killed more than two dozen civilians.

  387. says

    Not sure what is going here.

    USA Today:

    […] Trump says the U.S. will end airstrikes on Houthi militants in Yemen effective immediately. ‘We will stop the bombings,’ Trump announced from the Oval Office. Trump ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who he tapped as his acting national security adviser last week, to pass on the message to the Iran-backed militant group.

  388. says

    NBC News:

    The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services soared to a record $140.5 billion in March. Year-to-date, the deficit has increased 92.6%, as companies and consumers rush to import goods before President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs increase take hold on July 6.

  389. Reginald Selkirk says

    @386

    India says it has launched strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir

    The Indian government says it has launched an attack on nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir

    Three locations have been attacked, Pakistan’s military says

    Relations between India and Pakistan – both nuclear-armed states – have declined sharply following a deadly militant attack on tourists in Kashmir last month…

    volatile situation, frequent updates

  390. says

    NBC News:

    Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he wouldn’t support Ed Martin, President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, likely blocking the path to confirmation for the ‘Stop the Steal’ organizer who had closely aligned himself with Jan. 6 defendants.

  391. says

    Washington Post:

    The Trump administration has temporarily suspended an air-quality monitoring program at national parks across the country, according to an internal email obtained by The Washington Post and two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision is not public.

  392. says

    New York Times:

    More than 150 former state and federal judges have signed a letter to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, condemning the Trump administration’s escalating battles with the judiciary and calling the recent arrest of a sitting state court judge [Judge Hannah Dugan] in Milwaukee an attempt to intimidate.

  393. says

    That A.I.-generated image of Trump as the Pope … hmm. Trump claims he knows nothing about that, as USA Today reported.

    […] Trump says he knew nothing about an artificially generated image of him dressed as the pope that was posted to his Truth Social account over the weekend.

    The White House’s official social media account also posted the image.

  394. says

    Followup to comment 387.

    […] Trump says Houthis ‘don’t want to fight anymore’

    Trump announced during his meeting with Carney [Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney] that the Houthis have informed his administration they want to stop fighting and that strikes on the rebel group have been called off.

    “We had some very good news last night. The Houthis have announced … or they announced to us at least that they don’t want to fight anymore. They just don’t want to fight, and we will honor that. And will stop the bombings,” Trump said. […]

    Link

    Take with truckload of salt.

  395. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/nice-time-federal-judge-tells-north

    “Nice Time! Federal Judge Tells North Carolina To Certify That Danged Supreme Court Election Already!”

    And now let us check in with that North Carolina state supreme court judge race, which has been messier than a mule in an outhouse. More than six months after the election, the race is STILL not certified. But, it’s getting closer!

    The latest: Chief US District Judge Richard Myers, a Trump appointee even, has ordered that the Democrat/incumbent Allison Riggs be certified as the winner. Finally! Though as a consolation prize, he gave […] whiny loser Jefferson Griffin a week to appeal the ruling to the Fourth Circuit. Which is thankfully low on weirdos; 12 out of 15 judges were appointed by Democrats. So maybe in a week we will finally be able to move […]

    Back in November, Riggs beat Griffin by 734 votes, which was confirmed in multiple recounts. But as Republicans are wont to do, Griffin refused to accept his loss with dignity, and instead smothered the state and all 100 of its counties with lawsuits […] demanding that courts throw out more than 65,000 legally cast votes, including all mail-in ballots, and even the votes of Riggs’s parents and her military-veteran father. Griffin didn’t want an election re-do, and didn’t give one lick about how other state races might be affected by that, he just wanted the courts to toss all of those votes out, because he claimed some of the registrations were missing Social Security or drivers’ license numbers. Which by law did not actually make those votes illegal in any way. [Griffin sounds both desperate and stupid.]

    Military IDs do not have either of those numbers on them, for instance, and members of the military voting under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act are even explicitly told that they do not have to submit copies of ID, and there is no option on the military portal to do it. And it gets better, by which we mean worse! For those military voters, Griffin didn’t challenge all of them, just ones in four of the most Democratic counties. And, as Judge Myers noticed, he had no problem with any of the laws in the many months before the election, only after he became a losing loser. […]

    Also, the numbers were not required when people registered before 2004, and also voters in North Carolina already must show ID to vote, and people are still legally entitled to vote without those numbers on their registrations if they show valid ID at the polls. And, by the way, even Griffin’s claim of missing numbers turned out to not be true. The Student Voting Rights Lab at Duke and North Carolina Central Universities has so far found 4,830 voters listed as having “incomplete” registrations whose registrations actually had those numbers.

    And,

    Among the 61,150 voters with allegedly “incomplete voter registrations,” young voters are 3.4 times more likely than voters over 65 to have their votes challenged. Young Black voters, meanwhile, are 5.28 times more likely to be challenged than white men over the age of 65.

    […] Cleta Mitchell’s “Election Integrity Network” had been employing something called “EagleAI” for more than a year before the election, targeting voter registrations to challenge. Though as it turns out, the guy who invented the program admitted to the AP last year that there is no AI involved at all: “The software instead draws in part from a database of ‘suspicious’ voters hand-built by conservative activists,” such as the people with “Hispanic-sounding last names” that Jim Womack, the leader of the North Carolina Election Integrity Network, told his group of volunteers to look for. Or people with addresses on college campuses, whom Mitchell has explicitly told strategists to target.

    The whole skunk carcass should have been pitchforked into a ditch months ago, but last month a 2-1 opinion by a panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals sided with Griffin, and said that the burden should be on the legal voters to come forth within 15 days and prove that their vote was really really legal, and that all overseas voters who have never lived in the state should just get their votes thrown in the trash. Which would include people who came of voting age while serving in the military, or studying abroad, or missionaries, or their parents were, etc.

    But hurray, the court has stepped in […]

    Riggs is awesome and fucking inspirational. Here she is talking to Marc Elias after that bullshit decision a few weeks ago.

    “This does not just affect North Carolina. This is like dropping a match in a really dry forest, and if we let this kind of anti-democratic effort take hold, we will not be able to contain it. So this is a fight for the very soul of Democracy.”

    [Video featuring Marc Elias]

    And for sure, if Mitchell and all the loser Republicans rejected by voters are allowed to get away with this playbook, you can bet your last can of snuff that they’ll be running it all over the country. […]

    This voting-rights fight will continue, probably for the rest of our natural lives.

    But maybe soon at least this chapter will be over!

  397. says

    Sounds about right for this particular scam: 58 crypto wallets have made millions on Trump’s meme coin while 764,000 have lost money, data shows

    “The $TRUMP token, which surged in popularity after being tied to the start of Trump’s second term, has seen sharp price swings and highly uneven returns for investors.”

    Ha. “Uneven returns for investors” is a nice way to put it.

    About 764,000 wallets that purchased President Donald Trump’s $TRUMP meme coin have lost money on the investment, according to fresh data shared with CNBC by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

    […] Lawmakers are now formally investigating whether the $TRUMP meme coin — and a related crypto venture called World Liberty Financial, which sends 75% of revenue to the Trump family — constitute a direct conflict of interest for the president.

    The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has launched a probe into the token’s ownership structure and revenue model, while House Democrats stormed out of a crypto hearing in protest.

    At the center of the controversy is the dinner competition for top token holders, promotional posts from the president himself, and ties to foreign investors including a state-backed Emirati fund and crypto mogul Justin Sun.

    Launched in January ahead of Trump’s second inauguration, the token’s value initially soared to $15 billion after a series of promotional posts from the president on Truth Social and X. It lost most of that value within days.

    Only 20% of the token’s total supply is currently in circulation. The remaining 80% — reportedly controlled by the Trump Organization and affiliated entities — is locked under a three-year vesting schedule. Public disclosures say insiders have agreed not to sell their allocations for another few months.

    […] Since January, more than $324 million in trading fees have been routed to wallets tied to the project’s creators, according to Chainalysis. The token’s code automatically directs a cut of each transaction to these addresses, allowing the team to profit from ongoing activity.

  398. Reginald Selkirk says

    Freight Company Tells SEC It Needs Millions in $TRUMP to Get Access to the President

    Donald Trump has promised to have dinner with the top holders of his cryptocurrency memecoin $TRUMP, creating a pretty clear-cut opportunity for buying access to the leader of the free world. Freight Technologies Inc., a North American-based shipping company, wants to take advantage. The firm’s CEO Javier Selgas recently announced—publicly, on purpose, with zero consequence—that it intends to purchase as much as $20 million worth of $TRUMP so that he can try to influence the president’s policies on tariffs.

    According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing made by the company, it has tapped an institutional investor to provide financing for an initial purchase of $1 million worth of $TRUMP, with the possibility of an additional $19 million. Basically, it’s borrowing up to $20 million to get a seat at the table with Trump. The company isn’t shy about that goal, either. In a press release, Selgas said the purchase is part of the company’s “promotion of productive and active commerce between the United States and Mexico.” …

  399. says

    How Is Elon Musk Powering His Supercomputer?, by Bill McKibben, writing for The New Yorker

    “Fast and loose in Memphis, as in D.C.”

    Since Elon Musk announced that he’ll be stepping back from his daily work with doge, perhaps you’ve been wondering if he has anything else to fill that time now that he’s shut down operations at America’s humanitarian-aid provider, wrecked much of the nation’s scientific-research infrastructure, and disrupted the communications systems at the Social Security Administration. One way to find out would be to ask Grok, his entry in the A.I. sweepstakes. “Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has been making significant moves in Memphis,” Grok reports. “But these have sparked controversy.”

    […] Last year, Musk’s team secured an abandoned factory that used to belong to Electrolux, the vacuum-cleaner people on the edge of the city’s Boxtown neighborhood. As Musk explained at the time, “That’s why it’s in Memphis, home of Elvis and also one of the oldest—I think it was the capital of ancient Egypt.” With typical modesty, he renamed his vacuum factory Colossus, and started stuffing it with Nvidia graphics-processing units, or G.P.U.s, the basic building blocks of A.I. systems. At the moment, he has two hundred thousand of these G.P.U.s, and he’s headed for a million; by some estimates, he is expected to build the “largest supercomputer” in the world.

    All that processing takes power to run, and so the xAI team moved about thirty-five mobile methane-gas-powered generators onto the site to support the data center. These are truck-mounted units, many of them designed by Caterpillar, which give off some of the same brew of pollutants as other gas-combustion device—including nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde—and which are currently operating without a permit. “xAI has essentially built a power plant in South Memphis with no oversight, no permitting, and no regard for families living in nearby communities,” the Southern Environmental Law Center said, in a report released in April. (Full disclosure: I volunteer every year to judge the S.E.L.C.’s Phil Reed prize for best environmental writing about the South). The S.E.L.C. has called for an “emergency order” from the city to require xAI to cease the use of these generators, with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar daily fine if the company refuses. The mayor of Memphis, Paul Young, a supporter of the project, addressed the concerns at a meeting with community members in March. […] oung explained that the company has a permit application pending with the Shelby County Health Department to run fifteen generators. “There are thirty-five, but there are only fifteen that are on,” he said. “The other ones are stored on the site.”

    t turns out that Young may be wrong about that number. SouthWings, a group of volunteer pilots who help monitor environmental problems, overflew the site with thermal-imaging equipment that showed at least thirty-three of the generators giving off lots of heat—indicating that they were fired up and running at the same time. (Young’s office and xAI didn’t respond to requests for comment.) Taken together, they would produce about four hundred and twenty megawatts of power—the equivalent of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s big gas-fired power plant nearby.

    Memphis was, indeed, home to Elvis—but it was also, of course, where Martin Luther King, Jr., who came to the city to support striking sanitation workers, was assassinated, and it remains a place of sharp economic and racial division. It will surprise no one to learn that the neighborhoods in South Memphis surrounding Musk’s facility—including Boxtown and Westwood—are predominantly Black and also home to a number of industrial facilities, including chemical plants and an oil refinery. The area already has elevated levels of pollution compared with leafier precincts, and, according to Politico’s E&E News, “already leads the state in emergency department visits for asthma.” […]

    Justin Pearson, a young African American who rode that battle into the state legislature (from which he was later expelled for joining an anti-gun-violence protest on the floor of the Tennessee House after a shooting at a Christian school, only to soon be reappointed by the county and reëlected to office in the next election). […]

    “I feel like my community is being disrespected,” Justin Pearson (whom I got to know during the Byhalia fight) told me in an e-mail. “I feel like my friends and neighbors and family members are being ignored—both by xAI itself and city leaders championing this data center that is emitting pollution into our air. Some of those leaders have mentioned the money that xAI will supposedly bring to Memphis, but what good is money if we have to struggle with polluted air? As the elders here say, ‘All money ain’t good money.’ ”

    […] Had Musk wanted to proceed differently, he could have. A report last year, from researchers at a number of energy and tech firms, made it clear that building arrays of solar microgrids is a quick and highly affordable plan for powering such data centers. […]

    Pearson says, “Solar panels and battery storage would be a much cleaner alternative to methane gas turbines. Solar panels also don’t pump smog-forming pollution or chemicals like formaldehyde into nearby communities.” […]

  400. says

    Washington Post Exclusive: Trump team urged Ukraine to take U.S. deportees amid war, documents show

    “The extraordinary request illustrates the administration’s aggressive bid to identify willing partners who will accept people expelled by the U.S.”

    The Trump administration earlier this year urged the Ukrainian government to accept an unspecified number of U.S. deportees who are citizens of other countries, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post, an extraordinary request of a nation at war and dependent on American military and financial support for its survival.

    The documents do not indicate how officials in Kyiv responded to the late-January proposal, relayed by a senior U.S. diplomat, that called for sending third-country nationals to Ukraine amid Russia’s deadly, devastating invasion — and despite the absence of a functioning airport there because of continual air attacks.
    A Ukrainian diplomat informed the U.S. Embassy only that her government would offer a response once it formulated a position, according to the documents, which show that similar proposals were issued to a number of other countries around the same date.

    Ukraine has not accepted any third-party nationals from the United States, and there is no indication that Kyiv seriously considered the American proposal. Two Ukrainian officials familiar with the matter, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss interactions with the Trump administration, said the topic never reached the government’s highest level. […]

    The State Department said in a statement that “ongoing engagement with foreign governments” was “vital to deterring illegal and mass migration and securing our borders.” […]

    These documents and others that The Post reviewed offer new insight into […] Trump’s attempt to dramatically expand deportations as he seeks to upend U.S. immigration policy using unorthodox means. Dated January to May, they show that since taking office his administration has worked aggressively, and often out of public view, to increase the number of nations that will accept third-country nationals from the U.S., routinely dangling incentives or leveraging the prospect of improved relations with Washington in pursuing its objectives.

    A few governments in Latin America, including El Salvador, Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama, have agreed to receive deportees who are not their citizens. The Trump administration courted some of these countries, granting Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele a White House visit and paying his government millions of dollars to house U.S. deportees in a notorious prison. Others it has bullied with tariff threats and other measures — including, in the case of Panama, threats to retake the Panama Canal. […]

  401. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Lynna @399:

    thirty-five mobile methane-gas-powered generators onto the site to support the data center. These are truck-mounted […] the company has a permit application pending with the Shelby County Health Department to run fifteen generators.

    NPR explained why last year.

    The county health department told NPR that it only regulates gas-burning generators if they’re in the same location for more than 364 days. “Given the mobile nature of the gas-turbines in question … [the health department] does not have current permitting authority,” […] this is the [EPA]’s jurisdiction.

    The [EPA] told NPR it hasn’t issued air permits for these turbines, but after getting inquiries from media outlets and citizen groups it’s “looking into the matter.”
    […]
    His spaceship company SpaceX was fined for allegedly discharging industrial wastewater numerous times in Texas without a permit […] Boring Co., which is his underground tunneling business, was also fined in Texas for failing to get a permit to discharge industrial stormwater. […] Tesla was cited by California for 33 air quality violations.

  402. John Morales says

    CA7746, great advertising for their Tesla Commercial Solar Energy Systems, that is.
    (https://www.tesla.com/en_au/commercial)

    “Install solar to start converting sunlight into clean energy. Learn more about commercial energy products to power your business at a fraction of the cost.”

  403. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Cleveland.com – Letter to the Editor

    Social Security can no longer insert a hyphen into anyone’s name, because DOGE broke that feature of the computer system.

    I found that out when my health insurer deleted my hyphen and said it’s because they have to match the Medicare database, which has to match the Social Security database.

    I’ve not seen this reported elsewhere. The author didn’t mention whether she’d contacted SS to ask, or simply inferred it.

    The letter primarily warned about an Ohio state SAVE bill that would reject votes from names in the BMV database that differ from Social Security—a policy made more problematic when federal systems screw up names.

  404. says

    Sky Captain @401, thanks for the additional information about the permitting for methane-gas-powered generators.

    Sky Captain @403, I expect more DOGE-broke-it reports to surface soon.

    Cartoon: Der Fewer

  405. says

    Cartoonist who quit Washington Post in protest wins Pulitzer

    Cartoonist Ann Telnaes won the Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting and commentary on Monday, shortly after she resigned from The Washington Post over it reportedly censoring a cartoon critical of Post owner Jeff Bezos’ relationship with President Donald Trump.

    The Pulitzer Prizes are considered the highest award in journalism. In its citation, the Pulitzer committee credited Telnaes for “delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity—and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years.” Telnaes previously won the award in 2001.

    “In a time when the free press is under attack by autocrats in their quest to silence dissent, editorial cartoons and satire are essential for a democracy to survive and thrive,” Telnaes said in a statement. “I’m honored to receive this award and encourage everyone to support their local cartoonist.”

    Telnaes left the paper in January after a cartoon she drew was declined for publication by the Post’s editorial page. The sketch depicted Bezos, Mickey Mouse (Disney owns ABC), Meta head Mark Zuckerberg, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Sam Altman of OpenAI bowing to Trump and offering him money.

    Days after the incident, Bezos was among those with front row seats to Trump’s inauguration—an event that he reportedly donated funds to.

    Telnaes’ departure was part of a steady stream of figures leaving the paper at the end of 2024 and early this year. Staffers quit after Bezos spiked an endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, and columnists Ruth Marcus and Jennifer Rubin also quit over the Post’s capitulations to Trump.

    […] Trump has expressed delight that Bezos is now in his corner. In a March interview, Trump hailed Bezos for “trying to do a real job” in changing the editorial tone at the paper.

    As the Trump administration has made a concerted effort to warp press access at the White House in favor of outlets willing to regurgitate right-wing propaganda—or, in the case of the Post, not push back too hard against it—figures like Telnaes have continued to speak out.

    Telnaes now operates a Substack for her cartoons, with over 98,000 subscribers. Thousands of people will still see the award-winning work that didn’t bow to Trump—they just won’t see it in The Washington Post anymore.

  406. says

    […] Trump hosted newly minted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House Tuesday—and in the process Trump showed that his 78-year-old brain has completely turned to mush.

    He incorrectly said that a Russian hockey player is from Canada and baselessly claimed to have solved California’s drought problems. But let’s break down Trump’s idiotic claims point by point.

    In one exchange, a reporter asked Trump about his punishing 145% tariffs on Chinese imports, which for all intents and purposes is a trade embargo on a major U.S. trade partner.

    “By not trading, we’re losing nothing. So we’re saving a trillion dollars. That’s a lot,” he said. [video at the link]

    Of course, since China manufactures trillions of dollars worth of goods, not trading with them means we are losing quite a lot. Many of the products made in China cannot be manufactured in the United States, so shortages are about to hit. And with shortages come higher prices, since demand will outstrip supply. And that will hurt U.S. consumers.

    “Trading with others generates gains for both sides of the transaction. Trump’s tariffs prevent trade, destroying the gains both for Americans and our trading partners. Recognize that symmetry and you’ll see how much he’s hurting Americans,” Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan economics professor, wrote on X.

    In yet another head-scratching moment, Trump claimed that the United States doesn’t do much business with Canada, which is absurdly incorrect.

    “We don’t do much business with Canada from our standpoint,” Trump said, as a very shocked Carney sat beside him. “They do a lot of business with us.” [Video at the link]

    The United States imported $412.7 billion worth of goods from Canada in 2024, according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Meanwhile, the United States exported $349.4 billion to Canada in 2024, meaning that we take in more from Canada than we export.

    In 2023, the United States imported $122.9 billion worth of fuel; $64.7 billion in transportation equipment; and billions in metals, machinery, and fertilizers from Canada.

    In fact, farmers have been warning against Trump’s tariffs on Canada, saying that the increase in fertilizer prices will cause painful inflation to U.S. consumers.

    As Trump continued his meeting with Carney, he tried to bully the newly elected prime minister into making Canada the 51st state.

    “I love Canada. I have a lot of respect for the Canadians. … You happen to have a very, very good hockey player right here on the Capitals, he is a big tough cookie too, just broke the record,” Trump said.

    He was referring to Alex Ovechkin, who is Russian—not Canadian. Surely if former President Joe Biden had made a similar comment, questions about his mental fitness would blanket corporate media airwaves.

    Trump also spoke of his moronic belief that he somehow saved California from droughts, bragging about how he gave Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom “a lot of water.”

    “If they would’ve had that water and done what I said to do, they wouldn’t have had the fires in Los Angeles,” he said. [video at the link]

    In fact, Trump’s water gambit of opening dams ended up wasting billions of gallons of water that California farmers needed for crops—and it didn’t even end up going to Los Angeles.

    “They were holding extra water in those reservoirs because of the risk that it would be a dry summer. This puts agriculture at risk of insufficient water during the summer months,” Heather Cooley, Pacific Institute director of research, told CNN. “It’s providing zero benefit and putting California farmers at risk of water supply constraints in the coming months.”

    Well, at least Canadian voters saw through Trump’s bullshit.

    Link

    Trump is such an embarrassment.

  407. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Chris Geidner (Law Dork):

    Federal judge finds, in multistate lawsuit, that Trump’s EO targeting three entities—Institute of Musuem and Library Services, Minority Business Development Agency, and Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service—likely violates the [Administrative Procedure Act], Take Care Clause, and separation of powers.

    Ken Parker (IP lawyer): “This ruling has implications for almost all the DOGE cuts.”

  409. StevoR says

    Just what the world needs – NOT. Another India-Pakistan war :

    Weeks of tension erupted early on Wednesday morning when India fired missiles into Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, escalating the likelihood of a full-blown military confrontation between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours.

    Pakistani authorities said at least eight people, including a child were killed overnight, decrying a “blatant act of war”.

    India said its strikes were “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”, emphasising that no Pakistani military facilities had been targeted.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-07/india-pakistan-kashmir-conflict-what-happens-next/105262466

    That last line, wait, they think attacking civilian sites and people is supposedly better? FFS!

  410. StevoR says

    PS. Pretty sure that’s not what they meant to imply but still what a way of putting it..

  411. JM says

    CNBC: Trump downplays tariff talks: ‘We don’t have to sign deals’

    “Everyone says, ‘When, when, when are you going to sign deals?’” Trump grumbled during a White House meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
    “We don’t have to sign deals, they have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market. We don’t want a piece of their market,” Trump said.

    Trumps simply wrong, lying, doesn’t understand trade or the complexity of trade deals. I expect a lot of this turn is the complexity of trade deals. Even simple deals take years to craft because of the immense complexity. Trump thought he could come in and negotiate a deal in a few hours, then somebody handed him a 100 page document that is just explanations of product categories in the negotiations and his eyes glazed over and he lost interest.

    “I wish they’d … stop asking, how many deals are you signing this week?” said Trump, clearly frustrated at the mounting pressure on the White House to show progress on trade talks. “Because one day we’ll come and we’ll give you 100 deals,” he said.

    Trump thinks press organizations are just for public promotion, they should only ask him questions that he wants to answer and the question should be sufficiently fawning also.

  412. JM says

    Kyiv Independent: Kadyrov asks Putin if he can resign as head of Chechen Republic

    Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin if he can resign as head of the Chechen Republic, he told Russian state-controlled media Chechnya Today on May 6.

    Kadyrov’s statement comes amid news that the Chechen dictator’s illness, pancreatic necrosis, is progressing rapidly, and he has allegedly appointed his minor son Adam as his successor, according to the independent Russian media outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe.
    This is not the first time Kadyrov has asked for his resignation. He made similar statements in 2016, 2017, and 2022, according to the independent Russian media outlet Astra. In previous cases, his resignation was not approved.

    The significance of this is that Kadrov is the only thing holding Chechnya together. If he dies or steps down this becomes a problem for Putin. The last thing Putin wants to deal with right now is the government of Chechnya coming apart but his options to deal with it are limited. What happens to the Chechnya soldiers fighting Ukraine would also be an issues. Some would be fine with continuing to fight for Russia, some willing to become mercenaries but a good number probably head home if the situation there decays.

  413. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up on the cursed aircraft carrier.

    CNN – Second Navy jet in just over a week is lost at sea from Truman aircraft carrier

    investigation is ongoing, […] there was some kind of arrestment failure as the jet was trying to land on the carrier and the pilot and weapons systems officer had to eject. They were recovered by a rescue helicopter and are both alive, but they suffered minor injuries […] The jet crashed into the sea and has not been recovered

    So that’s: one downed by friendly fire, one tilted overboard, and one failed to stop.

    Commentary

    Impressed with this admin’s dedication to helping us save money on aircraft maintenance

    The Red Sea has a terrible trade deficit with the USA, very unfair.

    Hey, what do they need thirty F/A-18s for? They should be happy with two.

    Jesus. Bring back the DEI hires to straighten shit out!

    [Image: Why cats aren’t allowed on aircraft carriers]

    SECDEF: “Make it a double.”

    Aircraft carrier? Not lately it isn’t.

    Rando:

    When my dad worked at a New Jersey chemical plant in the 1980’s, the union was in the middle of contract negotiations and someone, not saying who, dropped a wrench into an extremely expensive glass-lined reaction chamber, causing a week of work stoppage.

    I think about that a lot.

  415. Reginald Selkirk says

    Scientists Identify New Mutation That Enables Three-Hour Sleepers

    Researchers have discovered a mutation in the SIK3 gene that enables some people to function normally on just three to six hours of sleep. The finding, published this week in PNAS, adds to a growing list of genetic variants linked to naturally short sleepers.

    When University of California, San Francisco scientists introduced the mutation to mice, the animals required 31 minutes less sleep daily. The modified enzyme showed highest activity in brain synapses, suggesting it might support brain homeostasis — the resetting process thought to occur during sleep.

    “These people, all these functions our bodies are doing while we are sleeping, they can just perform at a higher level than we can,” said Ying-Hui Fu, the study’s co-author. This marks the fifth mutation across four genes identified in naturally short sleepers. Fu’s team hopes these discoveries could eventually lead to treatments for sleep disorders by revealing how sleep regulation functions in humans.

  416. Reginald Selkirk says

    Jury orders NSO to pay $167 million for hacking WhatsApp users

    A jury has awarded WhatsApp $167 million in punitive damages in a case the company brought against Israel-based NSO Group for exploiting a software vulnerability that hijacked the phones of thousands of users.

    The verdict, reached Tuesday, comes as a major victory not just for Meta-owned WhatsApp but also for privacy- and security-rights advocates who have long criticized the practices of NSO and other exploit sellers. The jury also awarded WhatsApp $444 million in compensatory damages…

  418. Reginald Selkirk says

    Intelligent Design advocates buy into Platonic nonsense

    The Discovery Institute’s “Evolution News” is always a great place to look for tenuous and dubious arguments against evolutionary biology. Lately they have been touting a book by EN journalist David Klinghoffer, published by Discovery Press, the DI’s house publisher. The book is “Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome”. Emily Sandico, a DI staff writer, has a piece calling attention to the book.

    The book by Klinghoffer describes the views of Richard Sternberg. Sternberg has two Ph.D. degrees, one in molecular evolution and another in systems science. His own web page (here) explains that, in his view

    Evolutionary genetics leaves open the central issue of how the one dimensional genotype can specify the four dimensional phenotype. The approach I am taking to this problem is a variant of structural realism, by which I mean that biological phenomena are manifestations of logico-mathematical structures. This perspective is orthogonal to the origins debate, if you will, because all historical actualities are understood to be space-time instances of pre-existing non-temporal possibilities. Within this context one can accept all that is empirically valid in evolutionary biology, while not axiomatically dismissing the position that structures as well as their “real” instantiations have an intelligent cause…

  419. StevoR says

    @414. birgerjohansson : Just saw that Colbert interview with Maddow. Twas excellent. Highly recommend.

  421. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all Chris Hayes

    Schiff warns GOP may ‘go nuclear’ and end filibuster over this one policy
    Video is 5:27 minutes

    ‘Insult to voters’: North Carolina justice on the GOP bid to steal her seat
    Video is 6:04 minutes

    ‘He believes this!’: Wall Street still doesn’t get that Trump isn’t bluffing
    Video is 8:13 minutes

  423. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump appeasing Putin with pressure on Ukraine, Biden tells BBC

    Joe Biden has told the BBC that pressure from the Trump administration on Ukraine to give up territory to Russia is “modern-day appeasement” in an exclusive interview, his first since leaving the White House.

    Speaking in Delaware on Monday, he said Russian President Vladimir Putin believed Ukraine was part of Russia and “anybody that thinks he’s going to stop” if some territory is conceded as part of a peace deal “is just foolish”.

    Biden, who spoke as Allied nations mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day this week, said he was concerned about US-Europe relations breaking down under President Donald Trump, which he said “would change the modern history of the world”.

    In a wide-ranging interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Biden was challenged on his own record on Ukraine as well as his decision to end his 2024 re-election bid late in the race after a stumbling debate performance stoked concerns over his fitness and plunged the Democratic Party into crisis…

    Five takeaways from Biden’s BBC interview

    Joe Biden on Trump: ‘What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are’

  426. says

    As Trump administration officials defend Germany’s right-wing party, Berlin isn’t pleased</>

    “Marco Rubio and JD Vance were quick to stand behind Germany’s most right-wing political party. Officials in Berlin weren’t happy about it.”

    In March, when Donald Trump took fresh steps to align his administration with Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia, officials in Germany were not pleased. When the American president announced damaging international trade tariffs, officials in Germany again made their displeasure known.

    For the third time in as many months, Berlin suddenly finds itself in another diplomatic dustup with the White House. Politico reported:

    Germany’s new conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said he would urge Trump administration officials to stop meddling in German politics. “I did not interfere in the American election campaign and take sides for one or the other,” Merz told public broadcaster ZDF in a TV interview. “I would like to encourage and exhort the American government to leave German domestic politics to Germany and to largely stay out of these partisan considerations.”

    Some background is probably in order.

    Germany already has a major center-right political party called the Christian Democratic Union, which, on an ideological spectrum, is roughly in line with Britain’s Conservative Party. Germany also, however, has something called the Alternative for Germany party (in German, Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD), which is much further to the right than Europe’s mainstream conservative parties.

    AfD is so far out there that last year, France’s far-right National Rally party decided to stop working alongside the AfD because it was too extreme.

    NBC News reported late last year that the party is monitored by the country’s domestic intelligence agency for suspected extremism; a party leader has twice been found guilty of purposefully employing Nazi rhetoric; a party candidate was forced to withdraw last year after he said that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals.”

    It was against this backdrop that Elon Musk declared in December, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

    As it happens, the American president’s top campaign donor was not the only member of Team Trump to comment on the right-wing party. After Germany’s domestic intelligence agency designated AfD as right-wing extremists, Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the move, calling it “tyranny in disguise.”

    JD Vance added his voice soon after. “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany,” the American vice president wrote online. “Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it. The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt — not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.”

    I’ll leave it to the White House to explain why Rubio and Vance were so quick to rally behind one of the most right-wing political parties on the planet. […]

    But for those wondering what prompted Merz to encourage Trump administration officials to “leave German domestic politics to Germany” and to “largely stay out of these partisan considerations,” this is why.

  427. Reginald Selkirk says

    NOAA Warns of Attacks on Radar Systems by Militia That Thinks They Are ‘Weather Weapons’

    Bad news for weather agencies around the nation: there is a shit storm brewing in the minds of the most conspiracy-addled people you know, and their offices are right in the path. According to an internal memo sent by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) security office on Monday, an anti-government militia group has declared Doppler radar systems to be “weather weapons” and is threatening to attack them, CNN reported.

    The group responsible for the attack warning that impacts National Weather Service (NWS) locations across the country is Veterans on Patrol, an anti-government, anti-immigration, Christian nationalist organization founded in 2015. They have apparently been encroaching upon NWS offices, both physically and virtually, in recent weeks, and the situation has gotten concerning enough for NOAA to put its network on notice. “This group is advocating for anyone and everyone to join them in conducting penetration drills on NEXRAD sites to identify weaknesses which can be used to ultimately destroy the sites,” the agency’s email said, per CNN…

  428. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 418

    Only in American can that unintelligible! Time-Cube-Level, gibberish be considered serious science.

  430. says

    The FDA names a new vaccine chief with an unsettling record, joining a controversial team

    “Dr. Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s new vaccine chief, has been accused of spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines.”

    Good video at the link.

    In late March, Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, was forced out of his job by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In a resignation letter, Marks wrote that the Trump administration’s willingness to undermine confidence in vaccines was “irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety, and security.”

    He added that Kennedy was only interested in “subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies” about vaccine safety.

    Seven weeks later, the FDA named Marks’ successor: Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist and oncologist. That wouldn’t necessarily be a notable development from a political perspective, except, as NBC News reported, the FDA’s new vaccine chief “has been accused of spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines and was an outspoken critic of the agency’s decision to approve Covid shots in children.” From the article:

    He spent much of the pandemic criticizing the FDA’s and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to the virus. In a 2021 blog post and an accompanying video, Prasad suggested the national response to Covid might bring on the collapse of democracy, invoking the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich in Germany. On the blog that year, Prasad downplayed the anti-vaccine activism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. … specifically his role in a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa. On Bari Weiss’ contrarian website, The Free Press, Prasad seemed to defend Kennedy’s most controversial positions on vaccines, raw milk and fluoride by listing other countries that have policies that align with Kennedy’s views.

    What’s more, the report noted that Prasad has been an outspoken critic of his predecessor, arguing in 2022 that Marks “might be the worst FDA regulator in modern history” after the approval of Covid boosters in children. Last year, he called on Marks to be fired “ASAP.”

    […] Complicating matters further is the public health team that Prasad is poised to join.
    – Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the Trump-backed director of the National Institutes of Health, helped write the bizarre “Great Barrington Declaration” during the pandemic.
    – Dr. Martin Makary, the Trump-backed FDA chief, also has a problematic record related to vaccines.
    – Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, the Trump-backed nominee for surgeon general, has been a prominent voice on Fox News; she has little public health experience; and she’s been critical of vaccine requirements.

    These officials will, of course, work under RFK Jr., a longtime proponent of ridiculous conspiracy theories and bizarre scientific ideas.

    The Trump administration will have a dramatic impact on many issues and areas of public life, but few are as likely to be as consequential as its effects on public health.

  432. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Lynna @404:

    I expect more DOGE-broke-it reports to surface soon.

    This almost snuck past me.

    DailyBeast – DOGE’s Social Security ‘Day of the Dead Living’ (Apr 23)

    continually played out at a Social Security Administration (SSA) office in upstate New York, and likely across the country. “We have people who did not receive benefits come in every day with their ID and say, ‘I’m not dead, I’m alive!'”
    […]
    These supposed dead are not to be confused with more than 6,000 living immigrants the Trump administration moved to the SSA Death Master File (DMF) in an attempt to force them to self-deport
    […]
    “[DOGE staffers] went into the system and […] About 4 million people, they marked them as dead. But they’re not sure if those people were supposed to be marked as dead, so they’re sending us an email saying, ‘If these people come into the office with their identification, you can reinstate them.’ […] We have to go through this long process to resurrect them, to get them back as alive, which can take about three to four days,”
    […]
    Only four of the 18 service windows are open due to the staffing shortage. And a person could finally step up to a window after a three-hour wait only to encounter more DOGE-induced inefficiency. “Every day, between the hours of 10 to about 12, our system goes down,”

    Nathan Tankus – The Plan: Explode the number and severity of improper payments

    When a bank agrees to receive a recurring payment from the Federal Government on behalf of a customer, it also agrees that its account at a Federal Reserve Bank can be debited at any time. […] This process by which liabilities are imposed on banks which leads them to deny payment services, as well as freeze and clawback funds, to customers is very familiar to many of the most marginalized in our society.

    This is a very different context where the term “derisking” is used. Undocumented immigrants have had their accounts randomly closed and the funds frozen or taken. So have sex workers, who have experienced worsening access to payments as laws targeting them—in the guise of “protecting” them […] which means more danger […] Indeed, the most sophisticated conversations I’ve had over the difficult-to-grasp concept of payment finality have been with sex workers who experience what I’m talking about as a daily reality. […] what could be done to them could be done to any of us
    […]
    having a functioning bureaucracy helped limit the threat of a lack of payment finality which social security beneficiaries always operate under whether they knew it or not. Enter Musk and DOGE. […] conflating payments they dislike with fraud and then conflating improper payments with fraud. It also works by ignoring that underpayment is a form of improper payment. […] It’s also a worse improper payment.
    […]
    In a fundamental sense, the lack of a functioning Social Security bureaucracy makes “social security dollars” less valuable and more insecure property.

  433. says

    Trump reportedly seeking out new horrific places to deport people

    […] Trump is pushing ahead with his twisted fantasy of exiling immigrants to foreign nations, with two U.S. officials confirming the administration may soon begin deporting migrants to Libya using U.S. military planes.

    If it moves forward, this would mark a sharp escalation of a deportation agenda already facing widespread legal challenges and political backlash. Reuters and other outlets say flights could begin as early as Wednesday, though the timeline remains fluid.

    […] This latest scheme to purge the country of anyone who isn’t white comes just days after the administration floated deporting people to Rwanda—a country that, just decades ago, was the site of a brutal genocide that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

    Indeed, the Trump administration has been aggressively pursuing deportation deals with countries willing to accept migrants who aren’t their own citizens. It’s already pressured several Latin American countries—including Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Panama—into accepting deportees. Now, Trump appears determined to expand that model to other continents, including Africa.

    But Libya is a particularly alarming destination. The country has been mired in violence and political instability since its 2011 civil war. The State Department warns Americans not to travel there due to “crime, terrorism, unexploded landmines, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict.” And in its latest human rights report, the agency described Libya’s migrant detention centers—often filled with people trying to reach Europe—as “harsh and life-threatening,” with no access to courts or due process, even for children.

    None of that seems to faze Trump. […]

    In recent days, the administration has intensified its efforts to terrorize immigrants, sending a message that they can either face deportation to war zones or accept $1,000 to “self-deport.”

    As of Monday, the Trump administration had deported roughly 152,000 people, according to figures from the Department of Homeland Security.

    But Trump, who made immigration central to his campaign, is now pushing some of the most extreme enforcement actions of his presidency: sending increased troops to the Southern border, targeting millions for removal, and outsourcing deportation to some of the most dangerous places on Earth.

    Voters, meanwhile, are rejecting this agenda. According to Data for Progress, 71% of likely voters oppose imprisoning immigrants with lawful status and no criminal record in foreign countries. And 72% say the government should have to present evidence before deporting someone it claims poses a national security threat. Fewer than a quarter believe the government should have a blank check to exile people without proof.

    This isn’t policy—it’s punishment. And it’s being carried out in the name of a president who sees human lives as bargaining chips, and suffering as a political strategy.

    Trump doesn’t care if it’s dangerous. He just wants it to be cruel.

  434. Reginald Selkirk says

    Denmark plans to call in US ambassador over Greenland spying report

    Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Wednesday he would call in the acting U.S. ambassador to Denmark for talks after the Wall Street Journal reported Washington had ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to step up spying on Greenland.

    “I have read the article in the Wall Street Journal and it worries me greatly because we do not spy on friends,” Rasmussen told reporters during an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Warsaw…

    Hmmm. The USA certainly spies on its friends. And then there was this:
    U.S. spied on Merkel and other Europeans through Danish cables – broadcaster DR

    May 31, 2021
    The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) used a partnership with Denmark’s foreign intelligence unit to spy on senior officials of neighbouring countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Danish state broadcaster DR said.
    The findings are the result of a 2015 internal investigation in the Danish Defence Intelligence Service into NSA’s role in the partnership, DR said, citing nine unnamed sources with access to the investigation…

  435. Reginald Selkirk says

    Indian Rocks Beach neighbors concerned over loud boom and pink plume of smoke

    INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, Fla. (WFLA) — It was around 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

    Beth McMullen said cars were lining a portion of Harbor Drive South in Indian Rocks Beach.

    All of the sudden, she and her fellow neighbors heard a loud boom followed by a pink plume of smoke.

    “All of our neighbors started coming out of their homes asking what in the world that was. We had people walking down the street asking, ‘What in the world was that?’” she explained…

    Well duh. Their neighbors just elected a new pope.

  436. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/josh-hawley-hopes-terribly-conducted

    Disinformation and gaslighting about abortion medication, courtesy of Republican legislators and doofuses pretending to be scientists: “Josh Hawley Hopes Terribly Conducted Study Will Help Him Ban Abortion Meds”

    For the past week or so, anti-abortion [activists] have been positively drooling over a new “study” they claim proves that the abortion medication Mifeprex is terribly unsafe and leads to “serious adverse events” in over 10 percent of cases. It’s like a dream come true for them, really. It’s also been a dream come true for Senator Josh Hawley, who introduced legislation on Tuesday titled the Restoring Safeguards for Dangerous Abortion Drugs Act.

    “I’m introducing the Restoring Safeguards for Dangerous Abortion Drugs Act after a bombshell study revealed the truth about mifepristone: it’s dangerous,” Hawley said in a statement. “The data shows 1 in 10 women who take mifepristone experience adverse health effects, like going to the ER or suffering from sepsis. The FDA needs to act to protect women now.”

    Clearly, Josh Hawley, who has an A+ rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and whose wife, Erin Hawley, helped argue the Dobbs case that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, just happens to also care about the lives and health of women in a way completely separate from that. These are definitely two very different issues for him.

    The law, specifically, would
    – Direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restore safeguards for mifepristone that were removed by the Obama and Biden Administrations;
    – Allow women, who have been harmed by the drug, the right to sue tele-health providers and others that illegally mail the drug; and
    – Ban foreign companies from mailing and importing mifepristone into the US

    The “safeguards” were removed because they were unnecessary, not because no one cared if the drugs were safe or not. [True]

    The study Hawley is referring to was published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank, and “conducted” not by scientists or doctors but by its president, Ryan T. Anderson, and its Director of Data Analysis […] Jamie Bryan Hall (pictured below).

    Previously, Hall was a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, working on undermining Medicare For All with his not-very-good research skills. Because of course he was.

    It should come as no great shock that there is a whole lot wrong with this study as well, which they say is the “largest-known study of the abortion pill […] based on analysis of data from an all-payer insurance claims database that includes 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023.”

    Anderson and Hall claim to have found that “10.93 percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion” and that “the real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high as the summary figure of “less than 0.5 percent” in clinical trials reported on the drug label.”

    Woah if true, right? Luckily, not true.

    According to the study, which is not peer-reviewed, 94,605 of the 865,727 women experienced these “serious adverse events” up to 45 days after taking mifepristone.

    Also, what they consider “serious adverse events” are not actually “serious adverse events.” 28,658 of the 94,605 “serious adverse events” were labeled simply as “hemorrhage” … for a drug that induces a miscarriage, which often results in bleeding. Thus, it would only be a “serious adverse event” if the patient required a transfusion, which the study notes that only 0.15 percent of patients did needed. Otherwise, the bleeding was within the normal range of what you would expect … for a drug that induces a miscarriage.

    Nearly half of the “serious adverse events” — 40,960 — were simply visits to the emergency room, which, in and of itself are not considered “serious adverse events.” Mind you, they tracked “adverse events” up to 45 days after the abortion, so while they claim they only counted adverse events specifically related to a medication abortion, they could actually be anything.

    49,169 are listed merely as “other abortion-specific complications,” which could be pretty much anything. They cite “codes specifically related to an abortion or miscarriage, as well as life-threatening mental health diagnoses.” So if someone were to attempt suicide within 45 days of having an abortion, that would be considered a “serious adverse event” related to the abortion.

    “Let’s say you go see your doctor for anxiety or insomnia a month after having an abortion,” Jessica Valenti writes at Abortion, Every Day. “Because EPPC is counting any event that happens within 45 days of taking mifepristone — and they’re not defining ‘life-threatening’ — your sleep problem or anxiety could be counted as a ‘serious adverse event’ of abortion pills.”

    24,563 of the events were “repeated (surgical) abortion,” which just means the pills did not take and they had to have a surgical abortion instead. [Chart at the link]

    All they did find, really, was that the rate of actual hospitalization for these patients — something that would be pretty necessary for something to be considered a serious adverse event — was 0.55 percent, which is pretty close to the 0.5 percent they claim is far too low.

    Importantly, the study also did not take into account if the patients had followed the mifepristone up with misoprostol, as the FDA recommends. Misoprostol increases the likelihood of a complete evacuation, which reduces the risk of complications. [!]

    These people do not care about the health and welfare of those trying to terminate their pregnancies — after all, Republican legislators in 11 states have tried or are currently trying to enact legislation meant to charge those who have abortions with homicide — they just want the abortions to end. They want more babies and they want women to get the hell out of the workplace and stay home and take care of those babies. […]

    They also think people are stupid enough to believe that they actually think these pills are dangerous or would care if they thought they were. If Josh Hawley really is so concerned about the “serious adverse effects” of prescribed medication, perhaps he ought to consider that the risk of death is ten times higher with Viagra than it is with Mifeprex, and get on that one instead.

    This looks like yet another case of Republicans not paying attention to the details … all while some of them pretend to do a “study” and pretend to be “scientists.” Josh Hawley pretends to be intelligent because he graduated from an Ivy League university. He also pretends to care about women.

  437. Reginald Selkirk says

    A rare New Zealand snail is filmed for the first time laying an egg from its neck

    The strange reproductive habits of a large, carnivorous New Zealand snail were once shrouded in mystery. Now footage of the snail laying an egg from its neck has been captured for the first time, the country’s conservation agency said Wednesday.

    What looks like a tiny hen’s egg is seen emerging from an opening below the head of the Powelliphanta augusta snail, a threatened species endemic to New Zealand.

    The video was taken at a facility on the South Island’s West Coast, where conservation rangers attempting to save the species from extinction have cared for a population of the snails in chilled containers for nearly two decades…

  438. JM says

    Newsweek: European City Reacts to Trump’s DEI Ultimatum

    An official in Sweden has condemned a U.S. demand that his city apply the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies for contractors dealing with the American embassy.
    Jan Valeskog, Stockholm’s planning vice mayor, described as “bizarre” a letter by the U.S. Embassy in Sweden calling for the capital city’s authorities to formally agree to cease diversity initiatives.

    The Trump administration has been sending out similar letters to companies contracted by the US embassies across Europe. Tactless but it’s surely legal that the US embassy hires contractors that align with US laws as much as possible. Trying to extend it to a city in another country is a serious diplomatic mistake.

  439. says

    Washington Post exclusive: U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Musk’s Starlink

    Less than two weeks after […] Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on goods from the tiny African nation of Lesotho, the country’s communications regulator held a meeting with representatives of Starlink.

    The satellite business, owned by billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, had been seeking access to customers in Lesotho. But it was not until Trump unveiled the tariffs and called for negotiations over trade deals that leaders of the country of roughly 2 million people awarded Musk’s firm the nation’s first-ever satellite internet service license, slated to last for 10 years.

    The decision drew a mention in an internal State Department memo obtained by The Washington Post, which states: “As the government of Lesotho negotiates a trade deal with the United States, it hopes that licensing Starlink demonstrates goodwill and intent to welcome U.S. businesses.”

    Lesotho is far from the only country that has decided to assist Musk’s firm while trying to fend off U.S. tariffs. The company reached distribution deals with two providers in India in March and has won at least partial accommodations with Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Vietnam, although this is probably not a comprehensive count.

    A series of internal government messages obtained by The Post reveal how U.S. embassies and the State Department have pushed nations to clear hurdles for U.S. satellite companies, often mentioning Starlink by name. The documents do not show that the Trump team has explicitly demanded favors for Starlink in exchange for lower tariffs. But they do indicate that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has increasingly instructed officials to push for regulatory approvals for Musk’s satellite firm at a moment when the White House is calling for wide-ranging talks on trade.

    In India, government officials have sped through approvals of Starlink with the understanding that doing so could help them cement trade deals with the administration, according to two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations. […]

  440. says

    Trump’s choice for surgeon general becomes his latest personnel failure

    “Former Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat was an odd choice for surgeon general. As her nomination collapses, Trump’s list of failures grows longer.”

    While some of Donald Trump’s more notable personnel decisions took a long time, he wasted little time in announcing that Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat would be his choice for surgeon general: Trump made his choice just two weeks after winning a second term.

    While most of the president’s early personnel choices have already been confirmed by the Republican-led Senate, Nesheiwat, a family medicine physician, has waited for months for a confirmation hearing.

    This week, the doctor’s wait was supposed to be over: The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee was scheduled to hear directly from Nesheiwat this week. Now, there’s no need for that hearing to proceed.

    The president announced by way of his social media platform that Nesheiwat’s nomination is no more — he failed to explain why — adding that he will instead nominate Dr. Casey Means for the position.

    Trump’s missive went on to claim that his first choice for surgeon general will work at the Department of Health and Human Services in “another capacity.”

    For advocates of science and public health, the demise of Nesheiwat’s nomination is not exactly discouraging. A HuffPost report from the fall detailed her background and noted the physician’s record as a Trump loyalist with little public health experience — presumably a prerequisite for a surgeon general — who made highly problematic on-air comments about hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic.

    Just as notably, Nesheiwat sold dietary supplements, featuring her image on the bottle, which included the highly dubious claim that within a few weeks, “your immune system will still be strengthened.”

    Between this and her Fox News role, the physician did not exactly have the kind of professional background one would expect to see in a surgeon general.

    Though it’s not yet clear why, exactly, Nesheiwat’s nomination ended, the list of Trump’s personnel failures keeps growing. [I snipped list of past failures.]

    More recently, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York learned that she was no longer Trump’s choice to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and two weeks later, Kathleen Sgamma, who was the president’s choice to run the Bureau of Land Management, withdrew from consideration after the public learned of her criticisms of the Jan. 6 attack.

    Related video at the link.

  441. says

    MAGA news network to take over venerable government-funded outlet

    Senior presidential adviser Kari Lake announced late Tuesday that she’s struck a deal with One America News to beam its pro-Trump propaganda through Voice of America—making clear her intent to transform the government-funded broadcaster into a mouthpiece for the far-right.

    Voice of America is currently off the air, gutted under President Donald Trump. But it may soon return as a vessel for one of his most loyal media allies. Lake said OAN will now provide “newsfeed services” not just to VOA but also to other networks under the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and Radio Martí, a Miami-based station that broadcasts in Cuba.

    […] While Lake admitted she doesn’t have direct editorial control over VOA, she made it clear she intends to funnel MAGA-aligned content into its coverage. To that end, Lake said she plans to “ensure our outlets have reliable and credible options as they work to craft their reporting and news programs.”

    However, OAN is anything but credible. The network, founded in 2013, has been dropped by nearly every major cable and satellite provider and was a major promoter of Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election—lies that led to several defamation lawsuits, including one from the voting technology company Smartmatic, which OAN quietly settled in 2024. And one of the network’s current hosts is former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who resigned in disgrace after allegations of drug use and sex with minors.

    […] It’s also unclear how this OAN deal squares with Trump’s ongoing legal battles. He’s fighting to uphold a March executive order dismantling USAGM, issued after he accused VOA of bias. That order led to over 1,000 VOA staffers being placed on leave, the termination of 600 contractors, and the suspension of broadcasting for the first time in the agency’s 83-year history. [!]

    U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth blocked the order on April 22, which would have allowed more staff to return. But a federal appeals court—stacked with two Trump appointees—partially stayed the ruling, halting the return of employees while still requiring VOA to fulfill its legal mandate. Lake appears ready to use OAN’s content to meet that mandate, without rebuilding the network as it was. [Well that’s sneaky.]

    Fears of a right-wing reboot of VOA are widespread.

    […] Grant Turner, former USAGM chief financial officer, was more blunt, telling NPR, “Kari Lake providing One America News Network to our global audiences makes a mockery of the agency’s history of independent nonpartisan journalism.”

    Lake, a twice-failed MAGA candidate for office in Arizona, is a former TV anchor who’s spent years echoing Trump’s lies about election fraud—claims she’s made about her own losses too.

    What’s unfolding at Voice of America isn’t just a bureaucratic shakeup—it’s a warning shot. A network initially created to fight propaganda abroad is now at risk of becoming a government-run amplifier of it at home.

    True.

  442. says

    Court sides with student detained by Trump’s deportation thugs

    […] Trump suffered a loss Wednesday in his attack on the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. A three-judge panel from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that his administration cannot continue to detain Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk in a Louisiana correctional facility and must transfer her back to Vermont by May 14.

    “The District of Vermont is likely the proper venue to adjudicate Öztürk’s habeas petition because, at the time she filed, she was physically in Vermont and her immediate custodian was unknown,” the court wrote in its ruling.

    Öztürk is one of several high-profile cases that legal experts and civil rights activists justifiably characterize as unconstitutional arrests carried out by thugs in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. These detentions are emblematic of a broader campaign targeting international college students as so-called foreign threats, without due process or credible evidence.

    The administration has claimed it sent students like Öztürk to Louisiana due to a lack of space in local facilities where they were arrested—a claim a federal court in Massachusetts found dubious after pointing out there was space in facilities much closer to where she was detained.

    Experts believe the Trump administration’s actual motive for using states like Louisiana to detain students is a way to funnel legal appeals through the country’s most conservative, and Trump-appointed, 5th Circuit Court of Appeals—which oversees cases out of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

    Öztürk was pulled off the street in front of her apartment in what onlookers said “looked like a kidnapping.” ProPublica reported “Surveillance video from March 25 shows her walking to dinner in Somerville, Massachusetts, near the Tufts campus, chatting on the phone with her mother when she is swarmed by six masked plainclothes officers. Öztürk screams.”

    Others have faced similar hurdles. On Tuesday, Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student who was pulled from his home in New York City and taken to Louisiana in March, won a legal victory when the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to appeal an earlier court ruling requiring that his case be heard in New Jersey.

    Also on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ruled that Georgetown University researcher Badar Khan Suri, arrested at his Arlington County home and sent to a facility in Texas by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, must have his case heard in Virginia.

    And at the end of April, Mohsen Mahdawi, another Columbia student was released from Homeland Security custody in Vermont, while the Trump administration scrambles to create a case for his deportation. Like the others targeted by the Trump administration, Mahdawi has been living in the United States legally while going through the immigration process.

    The judicial pushback against the Trump administration’s authoritarian attempts to throw out the Constitution is heartening but the fight is far from over.

  443. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Vowing to usher in a “golden age of chocolate,” on Wednesday Donald J. Trump called for Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory to be reopened.

    “I saw a show about it on TV, and it never should have been allowed to close down,” he said. “It never would have happened if I was president.”

    “What was done to Willy Wonka was a disgrace,” he said, adding that the chocolatier had been “treated very unfairly.”

    “We used to make beautiful chocolate in this country,” he said. “We’re not winning at chocolate anymore.”

    Link

  445. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Lynna @439:

    U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Musk’s Starlink

    I’m wondering—given Musk’s affinity for fragile infrastructure—what would happen to all those satellites if he got careless with his flamethrower and burned down Starlink’s orbit control facility in Redmond, Washington.
     
    The Verge – Starlink’s got company

    Amazon joins a growing number of companies working to put more than 1,000 satellites each into space to create their own mega constellation. […] Potential conflicts between satellite operators could become a major issue, as avoiding collisions comes with a financial cost. If, say, a Starlink satellite and a Project Kuiper satellite were on a collision course—what experts refer to as a conjunction—then one or both satellites need to adjust their orbit by using up some of their very limited supply of fuel.
    […]
    That’s actually one of the more positive scenarios, because at least Starlink and Project Kuiper satellites have owners who have clear responsibility for them. That isn’t the case for thousands of pieces of smaller debris in orbit.

    “A good day is when you can have a conjunction between two satellites and both are operating,” Reddy says. “A bad day is when you have two things that don’t work, where the operators have disappeared, and there’s a collision. All you can do is sit and pray they don’t create debris.”
    […]
    This situation is compounded by satellite mega constellations, in which thousands of satellites share an orbit. If one satellite malfunctions and explodes, a company may need to move hundreds of its satellites to adjust—and those maneuvers could create even more conjunctions. The situation would be even worse, and even more chaotic, if multiple mega constellations are involved.
    […]
    “Whenever two active spacecraft encounter each other you have to rely on cooperation. You will have to communicate, you have to coordinate action,” [Holger Krag, ESA’s Head of Space Safety] said. However, there are currently no laws or rules making it clear whose responsibility this communication is, or how collisions should be avoided.

  446. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Jacqueline Sweet:

    DOGE’s Sam Corcos, whose wife managed money for a sanctioned Russian oligarch which I wrote about for Rolling Stone, has been appointed Treasury’s [Chief Information Officer], FedScoop reported, after former CIO Jeffrey King took the fork in the road.

    It’s also worth noting Corcos is still a special government employee and continues to run a software company that could serve as a conflict of interest if this appointment turns into a permanent position.

  447. JM says

    Youtube: Putin’s Nightmare: Ukraine’s Drones Ignite Chaos!

    💥 Massive Ukraine drone attacks target Russia 💥 Reportedly over 500 drones launched. This triggered widespread chaos, paralyzing Russian airports and travel. 60,000+ passengers faced cancellations and delays on 350+ flights. Attacks hit key airfields and military sites. Moscow preparations impacted. Explore the escalating situation.

    Ukraine’s largest drone raid, striking military, transportation and communication targets across Russia. Air flight shut down across western Russia, other transportation faces delays, internet and banking networks screwed up, various military bases hit. All valid targets but the timing is obviously aimed at the May 9th celebration in Moscow.
    Ukraine has obviously determined that hitting the May 9th parade itself would be counter productive. It will be heavily defended and will have a lot of civilians. Instead they are taking advantage of all the air defense transferred to Moscow to hit other targets deep inside Russia.

  448. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Annie Waldman (ProPublica)

    For more than two months, the Trump administration has been subject to a federal court order stopping it from cutting funding related to gender identity and the provision of gender-affirming care
    […]
    a DOGE member, Rachel Riley, gave directions in hundreds of grant terminations. […] the administration “appears to have used DOGE in this instance to keep career NIH officials in the dark about what was happening and why.”

    ProPublica

    “[Riley] informed me that a number of grants will need to be terminated,” Bundesen testified […] Bundesen forwarded the email with the spreadsheet to Michelle Bulls
    […]
    Bundesen resigned […] citing “untenable” working conditions. “I was given directives to implement with very short turnaround times, often close of business or maybe within the next hour,” she testified. “I was not offered the opportunity to provide feedback or really ask for clarification.”
    […]
    When Bulls started receiving the lists, she said she did what she was told. “I just followed the directive,” she said. “The language in the letters were provided so I didn’t question.” Bulls said she didn’t write any of the letters herself and just signed her name to them.

  449. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    ‪Ej Dickson (The Cut):

    If you’re curious about Trump’s new surgeon general nominee Casey Means, […] She didn’t finish her residency in med school, which is cool! Also very cool she thinks hormonal birth control is a “disrespect of life” [The Cut article]

    in interviews, it doesn’t take long for their claims to lapse into dog whistles and conspiracy theories. [Casey] has raised long-settled questions about the safety and efficacy of vaccines despite not representing herself an anti-vaxxer. […] the Meanses couch their more extreme ideas in language designed to appeal to a broader audience.

    “They’re using all of the logical-fallacy traps […] They make people feel like, Well, if we just ate cleaner and had less drugs from pharmaceutical companies, we’d all be a lot healthier.”

    Casey is sibling of HHS advisor Calley Means, who was last seen on the thread ranting about demonic forces. The pair co-wrote a book about ‘chronic disease’. Casey co-founded the glucose monitoring startup Levels together with oligarch-adjacent DOGE Sam Corcos.

    Rando: “Is nominating an influencer w/o a medical degree to be surgeon general a good example of meritocracy?”

  450. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    More on Casey Means…

    Marisa Kabas: “she doesn’t even have a million IG followers!”

    Marisa Kabas:

    Unlike this smoothie recommended by the new surgeon general nominee, we’re cooked. [Image: Promoting a raw milk smoothie on Instagram, it’s brown]

     
    Bill Grueskin (WSJ):

    “When it comes to … raw milk, I want to be free to form a relationship with a local farmer, look him in the eyes, pet his cow, and then decide if I feel safe to drink the milk from his farm.” —Casey Means

    Commentary

    Tuberculosis, brucellosis, bird flu…

    “Look the farmer in the eye” tests for listeria, salmonella, and E.coli soon to be fast-tracked for FDA approval!

    I personally feel that anyone who has ever been in petting distance of a cow should be able to figure out why pasteurized milk is a great idea.

    Can you imagine having the free time, money, and leisure to form relationships, visit supply sites, and ensure your own safety for every product you use?

    People are making fun of this, but the previous Surgeon General wrote a whole report about the loneliness epidemic, and maybe the way to solve it is by getting to really know our local farmers and gastroenterologists.

    The dairy farmer quietly, after the 867th person looks him in the eyes, “please go.”

    Patrick Passarelli (Med-peds, infectious disease):

    You can have a good relationship with cows but also not want to drink bacteria from fecal matter that spills from their anus onto their udders.

    Rando 1: “Being pro cow shit in our milk is now a litmus test for senators.”

    Rando 2: “I just need one charismatic, sick cow to take on a roadtrip to DC.”
     
    WSJ: “Her star rose after she taped interviews with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and podcaster Joe Rogan.”

    NYT: “She is the sister-in-law of Michael Waltz, who served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser until last week.”

  452. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Elizabeth Jacobs (Epidemiologist):

    The U.S. is on track to have the worst whooping cough outbreak since 1948. Some regions are reporting that they are struggling to do contact tracing of cases because they are ALSO managing measles investigations.

    And, of course, funding cuts to public health have resulted in fewer resources. When I say RFK Jr. is undermining public health, I mean it. […] The count of whooping cough cases was up to 8485 as of April 24th.

     
    Geoff Brumfiel (NPR):

    West Texas Measles update: Cases passed 700 on Tuesday, but it wasn’t much of a headline. Generally speaking for the past 1.5 weeks, cases have been slowing […] The good news is that this means measles really does look like it has saturated the population of Gaines County. The worst is over there.

    The bad news is that measles is now peppering many other counties state wide (and probably beyond), creating the opportunity for a flare up somewhere else.

    This hasn’t happened yet because cities in the region, like El Paso, have very high MMR vaccination rates. That’s doing a lot to suppress the spread. But all it will take is another under-vaccinated community for this to take off again.

  453. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    TPM – Griffin concedes to Riggs In NC Supreme Court race

    Six months after Election Day, […] two days after a federal judge rejected his bid to throw out thousands of ballots and ordered the State Election Board to certify Riggs as the winner. Rather than appeal that decision, Griffin conceded.

  454. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up on trafficking to Libya @433.

    WaPo – Judge warns Trump administration against Libya deportations

    A federal judge warned the Trump administration Wednesday that it cannot deport immigrants to Libya, Saudi Arabia and any other country where they are not citizens without due process […] Given his previous orders, on Wednesday Murphy said his ruling on Libya and Saudi Arabia was more of a clarification—one he said he should not have had to make
    […]
    The judge’s declaration followed a frantic 24 hours during which lawyers for the potential deportees scrambled to confirm media reports indicating that the migrants were being readied for removal to Libya via the U.S. military. At the Pentagon, officials appeared uncertain whether such an action was imminent

  458. birgerjohansson says

    The Onion trying to summon a satirical story dumber than current events.
    .https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18qkDjghfr/
    .
    John Morales @ 456

    References…they are either greek or roman, with a smattering of old norse, arabic and miscellaneous other old cultures. I assume a century from now, we will name lots of things after Japanese and Chinese entities.

    BTW ‘hentai’ merely means ‘perv’. So Drumpf and a lot of right-wing Christians are hentai.

  460. John Morales says

    “BTW ‘hentai’ merely means ‘perv’.”

    That ‘merely’ is doing a lot of work; ‘perv’ refers to perversion.

    Specifically:
    “In sexual contexts, hentai carries additional meanings of “perversion” or “abnormality”, especially when used as an adjective;[1]: 99  in these uses, it is the shortened form of the phrase hentai seiyoku (変態性欲) which means “sexual perversion”.”
    but
    “Hentai is defined differently in English. The Oxford Dictionary Online defines it as “a subgenre of the Japanese genres of manga and anime, characterized by overtly sexualized characters and sexually explicit images and plots.””

    (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentai#Terminology)

    —

    “So Drumpf and a lot of right-wing Christians are hentai.”

    In the sense of a proclivity towards sexual perversion, or merely as being over-sexualised?

    I reckon the former is a rather salacious clai (pee tapes?) and the latter is risible.

  463. Reginald Selkirk says

    Federal government will no longer accept checks as payment starting later this year

    An executive order signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year is overhauling the way the government handles financial transactions. Starting Sept. 30, the Secretary of the Treasury is ordered to cease issuing paper checks for all Federal disbursements and will no longer accept paper checks as payment.

    The order is inclusive of intragovernmental payments, benefits payments, vendor payments, and tax refunds.

    “The continued use of paper-based payments by the Federal Government, including checks and money orders, flowing into and out of the United States General Fund, which might be thought of as America’s bank account, imposes unnecessary costs; delays; and risks of fraud, lost payments, theft, and inefficiencies.” reads a portion of the executive order.

    Later in the order, Trump claimed the cost of maintaining the physical infrastructure and technology for digitizing paper records was over $657 million in fiscal year 2024.

    All executive departments and agencies will transition to using electronic funds transfer (EFT) methods such as direct deposit, prepaid card accounts, and other digital payment options. The departments and agencies will also work with recipients to enroll them for EFT payments…

  464. rorschach says

    @463,
    “Federal government will no longer accept checks as payment starting later this year”

    Crypto will be fine, I suppose.

  466. birgerjohansson says

    Akira MacKenzie @ 465
    If the transition is as shaky as that PZ describes for ID the boomers are done for.
    .
    John Morales @ 460
    The judgement may vary from person to person, but personally I think any adjuciated rapist qualifies as a ‘perv’.
    Yes, I know there was no penetration but by Swedish law this qualifies as rape.
    .
    Reginald Selkirk @ 462
    I am reminded by the episode of Family Guy where Stewie manages to start a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

  467. birgerjohansson says

    JM @ 438

    The concept of DEI per se does not exist outside USA as efforts to increase diversity etc are baked into legislation, or in programs distinct from DEI.

    And trying to strong-arm a city in a country where Drumf is very impopular (just like most of Europe) is not very bright. A politician that is seen to suck up to Trump will attract ridicule at best and election defeat at worst.

  469. Reginald Selkirk says

    Elon Musk is responsible for “killing the world’s poorest children,” says Bill Gates

    Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates ratcheted up his feud with Elon Musk, accusing the world’s richest man of “killing the world’s poorest children” through what he said were misguided cuts to US development assistance.

    Gates, who is announcing a plan to accelerate his philanthropic giving over the next 20 years and close down the Gates Foundation altogether in 2045, said in an interview that the Tesla chief had acted through ignorance.

    In February, Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) in effect shut down the US Agency for International Development, the main conduit for US aid, saying it was “time for it to die.”

    The co-founder of Microsoft, and once the world’s richest man himself, said the abruptness of the cuts had left life-saving food and medicines expiring in warehouses and could cause the resurgence of diseases such as measles, HIV, and polio.

    “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” he told the Financial Times…

  470. says

    Trump says he’s dropping Ed Martin’s nomination amid bipartisan opposition

    “As a rule, Senate Republicans have rubber-stamped Donald Trump’s worst nominees. As Ed Martin helped prove, there are rare exceptions.” True. As PZ pointed out with his post about RFK Jr. this morning.

    Related video hosted by Chris Hayes is available at the link. “Ed Martin appeared on Russian television more than one hundred fifty times,” etc.

    Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the president has sent some truly outlandish nominees to the Senate for confirmation. In a handful of instances — Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, et al. — there were a smattering of GOP “no” votes, but in nearly every instance, the Republican-led institution ended up confirming Trump’s choice, following the White House’s demands.

    Ed Martin, however, proved to be a bridge too far.

    Early on in his second term, Trump appointed Martin as the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., which was immediately recognized as bizarre. Not only did the Missouri Republican have literally no background as a prosecutor, he had all of the wrong qualifications: Martin was a conservative activist who supported Jan. 6 criminal defendants and was a prominent member of the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement.

    After Martin got to work and demonstrated almost cartoonish levels of partisanship, Trump nominated him to serve in the post on a permanent basis. That, of course, meant he’d need to be confirmed by the Senate.

    In the abstract, the president was probably optimistic. After all, if GOP senators were already willing to go along with some of the worst Cabinet nominees in modern history, they were likely to continue to serve as rubber stamps for a U.S. attorney nominee.

    That’s not what happened. The president announced Thursday afternoon that Martin’s nomination is ending, and he’ll choose a new nominee in the coming days. [More video at the link.]

    When Martin’s defeat appeared increasingly inevitable, Trump started investing real political capital into his nomination, using his social media platform to talk up the lawyer’s nomination, while privately making calls to Capitol Hill, hoping some presidential lobbying would help get Martin across the finish line.

    That effort clearly failed — adding to his growing list of personnel missteps.

    What Trump might not have fully appreciated was just how ridiculous Martin’s record had become. Indeed, his “greatest hits” package featured misguided and unnecessary fights with the dean of Georgetown University’s law school, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, former President Joe Biden, and Democratic Reps. Robert Garcia of California and Eugene Vindman of Virginia — and that’s before one adds Wikipedia and prominent medical journals to his increasingly bizarre list of targets. During his brief tenure, Martin also:
    – demoted multiple senior officials involved in Jan. 6 insurrection cases;
    – compared one of the criminal charges used against Jan. 6 defendants to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II;
    – falsely described himself as one of the president’s lawyers;
    – made dubious denials about his earlier praise for a Nazi sympathizer;
    – made more than 150 appearances on Russian propaganda outlets between August 2016 to April 2024;
    – weighed in on a civil case involving the White House, which had literally nothing to do with his office;
    – intervened in a dubious Environmental Protection Agency investigation;
    – made a dubious decision in a case involving Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida;
    – launched the wildly unnecessary “Operation Whirlwind”;
    – also launched the wildly unnecessary “Project 1512” initiative;
    – also launched a wildly unnecessary “election accountability” unit;
    -made a creepy public vow to wield his prosecutorial powers against those who get in Elon Musk’s way;
    -engaged in brazen conflict of interest in a Jan. 6 case, in which he effectively took both sides of a criminal case;
    – and kicked off a radically unnecessary investigation into Jack Smith and a law firm that gave the former special counsel pro bono legal services.

    In a piece for New York magazine, Elie Honig recently described the lawyer as Trump’s “dangerous and ridiculous prosecutor.” Martin went out of his way to prove his many critics right, and it derailed his nomination.

    As the dust settles on the White House’s latest personnel fiasco, it’s worth appreciating the scope of the president’s failure. Not only did the president nominate a spectacularly unqualified radical to lead one of the nation’s most important prosecutorial offices, and not only did he spend political capital that’s suddenly in short supply, but Team Trump also appears to have failed to thoroughly vet Martin in advance — a familiar problem in this administration.

  471. says

    House Republicans vote to codify Trump’s executive order on ‘Gulf of America’

    “Polls show a clear majority of Americans don’t want to change the name of the gulf. House Republicans passed new legislation anyway.”

    […] A recent national poll from Marquette Law School found 71% of Americans oppose changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico. Other recent surveys, including a poll from Fox News, pointed in a nearly identical direction.

    Clearly, Donald Trump and his team are indifferent to public attitudes on the subject and have made the name change an odd priority. In fact, at a White House Cabinet meeting last week, “Gulf of America” caps were placed in front of every secretary for reasons that went unexplained.

    […] NBC News reported:

    The Republican-led House on Thursday passed a bill that seeks to codify President Donald Trump’s executive order that renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. … Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia introduced the GOP bill after Trump signed an executive order in January that ordered Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to ‘take all appropriate actions to rename the Gulf’ and update a database of the ‘official names for geographic features in the 50 states.’

    During the mind-numbing floor debate on the legislation, Greene, a notorious far-right conspiracy theorist, suggested that opponents of her proposal are secretly in league with Mexican drug cartels, which is why they support leaving the existing name in place.

    […] 211 House Republicans voted to pass the measure. Only one GOP member, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, joined with Democrats in opposition to the bill.

    […] As for what the “Gulf of America Act” would actually do, the bill would codify Trump’s executive order, making it more difficult for future administrations to put things back, while directing the chairman of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to ensure that “any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States to the Gulf of Mexico” is deemed a reference to the “Gulf of America.”

    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took some time on the chamber floor to condemn the legislation as “silly.”

    “When the American people woke up this morning, they could reasonably ask the question, ‘What are their elected representatives on the floor of the House of Representatives going to be debating?’” the New York Democrat said. “In an environment where the Trump tariffs are costing them thousands of dollars more per year, Republicans are crashing the economy in real time, costs are being raised on hardworking American taxpayers and Republicans are driving us toward a painful recession. What might members of Congress under this temporary Republican majority be debating on the floor today? Would it be legislation about the economy? Something about health care? Anything about Social Security? Perhaps something on public safety? Maybe national security matters? Anything to bring to life the American dream for hardworking American taxpayers?

    “No? What Republicans have decided to spend this entire legislative day doing is to debate a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico.”

    The legislation now heads to the Senate, where GOP leaders have not committed to bring the measure to the floor and where the bill would need 60 votes to clear Capitol Hill. If Trump is waiting to sign the legislation into law, in other words, he should probably lower his expectations.

  473. johnson catman says

    re Reginald Selkirk @462:

    Donald Trump offers to mediate as India-Pakistan conflict spirals

    The Orange Turd is still jealous of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.

  474. says

    Supreme Court steps in to do Trump yet another favor

    On Monday, the conservatives on the Supreme Court did […] Trump a solid without breaking a sweat … or even the one-page mark. With no explanation, the court let Trump go ahead, at least temporarily, with his bigoted plan to ban transgender people from serving in the military, including forcibly discharging current trans personnel.

    By now, it’s almost routine. The administration keeps losing at the lower courts, so they rush to the friendlier confines of the Supreme Court to try to eke out a temporary win, one where Trump gets his way while litigation continues. It’s not a strategy that pans out all the time, but when it does, it’s a treat for Trump and terrible for the rest of us.

    And that’s precisely what happened here.

    One of Trump’s first executive orders in his new administration was a regurgitation of his first-term attempt to ban transgender service members. The administration said the new ban was necessary for “troop readiness” and that the military was “afflicted with radical gender ideology.”

    This was their genius idea to sidestep assertions that this was a ban based on people being trans. No, no, it’s just that trans people happen to be afflicted with radical gender ideology that harms troop readiness. However, the administration didn’t bother to explain how having transgender service members affects troop readiness, save for Trump and his allies just being weird bigots about the existence of trans people.

    Things did not go well when two lawsuits over the ban hit the lower courts. In one case, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes told the administration she would not be “gaslit” by its argument that this ban was somehow not a ban, particularly since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it a ban on X. Oh, and also, Reyes wasn’t happy that nearly every study the administration cited in support of the ban was actually contradicted by those studies.

    That’s only one case where the administration got walloped over the ban, with Reyes granting a preliminary injunction that barred the administration from implementing the ban. In another case in federal district court in Washington state, the judge granted a nationwide preliminary injunction, stopping the ban from taking effect while the court case proceeds. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle said, “the government’s unrelenting reliance on deference to military judgment is unjustified in the absence of any evidence supporting ‘the military’s’ new judgment[.]”

    […] These preliminary injunctions against the ban are just that—preliminary. They aren’t final rulings, and all the underlying litigation still continues. In other words, even though the lower courts walloped the administration, it’s only a temporary setback. The administration still gets to fully litigate the ban—full trial, an appeal, the works. But that’s not enough for the administration. They want the ban in place now while figuring out their justification for it.

    […] [Courts] don’t hand out preliminary injunctions willy-nilly. Reyes’ order, for example, is 79 pages long and was issued only after the judge heard multiple motions from both sides, both sides filed memoranda and exhibits supporting their position, and the judge held multiple hearings.

    […] Parties have to show three things to get a preliminary injunction. First, they must show they’re likely to win at trial. Next, they must prove that the balance of hardships weighs in their favor. Finally, they need to show that their position is the status quo and that it is in the public interest to maintain it.

    Settle found that the plaintiffs would likely succeed in showing that the ban was unconstitutional because it violates their right to equal protection and that the ban discriminated against them based on their status.

    Next, he found the service members would be harmed by losing their careers, incomes, and reputations. Even if the ban were ultimately overturned and they were eventually reinstated, that harm wouldn’t be undone. In contrast, the harm to the administration is that they have to wait a little longer to be bigots.

    Finally, the judge found that the plaintiffs’ position is the status quo. Right now, transgender people can serve in the military. That’s the existing policy. Trump’s ban reverses it.

    […] Did the Supreme Court consider any of these things when granting the administration’s request that the preliminary injunction be stayed? We’ll never know! The one-page order does not explain its rationale, though we do learn that the court’s three liberal members would not have granted the stay. So, despite being told by two lower courts that they had presented no real reason for the ban, the administration got its ban anyway.

    It’s a way of letting conservative policies go into effect without having to justify anything.

    […] Why not take a big swing when you can largely count on your pals to do your bidding? These requests for emergency relief allow the administration to get a favorable ruling even when its actions fly in the face of existing law. That’s because the conservative justices care as little about procedure as they do about precedent.

    Lower courts will keep ruling against Trump because the administration is defying laws, regulations, and the Constitution. […]

  475. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/should-a-woman-be-forced-to-carry

    “Should A Woman Be Forced To Carry A Dead Fetus For Weeks? South Carolina Says ‘Yes!’ ”

    “SC’s ‘Heartbeat Bill’ forced Elisabeth Weber to carry a fetus without a heartbeat for several weeks.”

    Earlier this week, the […] Washington Post ran a column from congressional reporter Paul Kane about how, three years post-Dobbs, abortion has supposedly “faded” as a major issue for Democrats [faded from Paul Kane’s mind, I reckon] — though the crux of his argument was largely that they are also talking about other issues, like the horrors that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have wrought upon our country, in addition to abortion. […]

    If you ask me, abortion rights are going to remain a fairly potent issue, especially so long as abortion ban states keep doing all the incredibly horrific things they’ve been doing. Like, for instance, forcing a woman to carry a dead baby for several weeks.

    That, unfortunately, is exactly what happened to Elisabeth Weber of South Carolina, a 31-year-old mother of three who for several weeks was denied a D&C to remove the dead fetus inside her.

    After going to the doctor at nine weeks, Weber was informed that the very-much-wanted child she was carrying did not have a heartbeat and had stopped growing at six weeks — meaning it had been dead, inside her, for three. She was told to go home and just wait for it to pass naturally.

    That, however, didn’t happen.

    “My body was not recognizing that I wasn’t pregnant anymore. I was still completely bedridden with nausea, throwing up all the time,” Weber, who has suffered from a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), which causes severe nausea, vomiting and weight loss […]

    So, three days later, she went back to the emergency room and asked for a dilation and curettage (D&C) — but unfortunately, due to South Carolina’s Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act, which bars abortion after doctors can detect fetal pole electrical activity, she was told that she would have to carry her heartbeat-less baby another week to even talk to a doctor about it. Because, hey! Maybe she was carrying the second coming of Jesus and the fetus could resurrect after a few days! […]

    It was after that that Weber recorded an absolutely heartbreaking video and posted it on TikTok, where it went viral.

    “They confirmed that for sure, the baby is dead,” Weber said in the video. “No heartbeat, nothing like that. And they were talking about me getting a D&C, so that way my body won’t have all these pregnancy symptoms, because I get something called HG when I’m pregnant. My body still thinks that I’m pregnant, it is not passing the baby the way it is supposed to.”

    “My doctor came back and said, unfortunately, because of the new laws, I have to wait another week before I could do anything. In another week I have to come back, do another ultrasound, and then from there they can schedule a D&C,” she continued. “My baby has been sitting inside me dead for three weeks already, and now I have to wait another week knowing my baby is dead to do anything about it.”

    Not only was this denial cruel, it was extremely dangerous, putting Weber at serious risk of infection and sepsis. Weirdly enough, carrying around a dead fetus is not exactly a very safe thing to do. [!]

    […] Upon seeing the video, a patient advocate contacted Weber and suggested she go to a different hospital. Unfortunately, despite the fact that doctors at that hospital determined that she had an active infection, she still couldn’t get a damned D&C until the “waiting period” was over.

    In an update, Weber explained that she was told both by the doctors and by a lawyer that the way the South Carolina law works is that, if she were to have gone to an appointment where the doctor detected a “heartbeat” (not a heartbeat), and then gone to a second appointment where they didn’t detect one, she would have been able to get the D&C or abortion pills right away. However, if you go to your first appointment and they tell you there’s no heartbeat and the fetus has been dead for three weeks, as happened with her, you have to wait two weeks to get one. If you go to the emergency room and get a more comprehensive diagnosis, they’ll shorten the waiting period to 11 days. Does this make sense? No, of course not. […]

    Abortion should be legal to begin with, but to bar it even for situations when the fetus is dead is incomprehensibly cruel — and, again, dangerous. […] Dallas has lower sepsis rates among pregnant people than does Houston, simply because doctors in Dallas are empowered to provide abortions to those with high-risk pregnancies and Houston doctors are not. […]

    Stories like Elisabeth Weber’s are exactly why abortion was a privacy issue to begin with. Because this very personal decision should have been a private discussion with her healthcare providers about what was in her best interest, and not one involving state legislators in any capacity.

  477. Reginald Selkirk says

    @473 johnson catman

    The Orange Turd is still jealous of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.

    I think the narcissist-in-chief was miffed that there was one remaining headline on the front page that wasn’t about him.

  478. Reginald Selkirk says

    @476 DrVanNostrand

    Who is Robert Prevost, the new Pope Leo XIV?

    Robert Prevost, 69, will be the 267th occupant of the throne of St Peter and he will be known as Leo XIV.

    He will be the first American to fill the role of Pope, although he is considered as much a cardinal from Latin America because of the many years he spent as a missionary in Peru, before becoming an archbishop there.

    Born in Chicago in 1955, Prevost served as an altar boy and was ordained as a priest in 1982. Although he moved to Peru three years later, he returned regularly to the US to serve as a pastor and a prior in his home city…

    In his first words as Pope, Leo XIV spoke fondly of his predecessor Francis.

    “We still hear in our ears the weak but always courageous voice of Pope Francis who blessed us,” he said…

    He called his predecessor “weak”? Hmmm.

    As 80% of the cardinals who took part in the conclave were appointed by Francis, it is not all that surprising that someone like Prevost was elected.

    He will be seen as a figure who favoured the continuity of Francis’ reforms in the Catholic Church…

  479. Reginald Selkirk says

    A device belonging to a DOGE software engineer was hacked, report says

    Login credentials belonging to an employee at both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Government Efficiency have appeared in multiple public leaks from info-stealer malware, a strong indication devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years.

    Kyle Schutt is a 30-something-year-old software engineer who, according to Dropsite News, gained access in February to a “core financial management system” belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As an employee of DOGE, Schutt accessed FEMA’s proprietary software for managing both disaster and non-disaster funding grants. Under his role at CISA, he likely is privy to sensitive information regarding the security of civilian federal government networks and critical infrastructure throughout the US…

  480. JM says

    Latin Times: Trump Mocked for Sharing Photo of Soldiers at Iwo Jima on Anniversary of WWII Europe Victory: ‘What an Embarrassment’

    On the 80th anniversary of Victory Day, a holiday marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany, President Donald Trump sparked widespread criticism by sharing a photo of U.S. Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, a World War II moment unrelated to the occasion.

    Latin Times gets the details wrong also but Trump’s mistake is an embarrassment.. It’s why government officials have assistants who check these things before public statements. It’s the sort of thing that would make a person a laughing stock except Trump is protected from being laughed at by the fear the press has of his government. It’s not only wrong but it trivially and obviously wrong to anybody who knows any history.

  481. Reginald Selkirk says

    Zuckerberg’s Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

    Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is aggressively promoting a future where AI becomes the dominant form of social interaction, claiming that AI friends, therapists, and business agents will soon outnumber human relationships. During a recent media blitz across multiple podcasts and a Stripe conference appearance, Zuckerberg cited statistics suggesting “the average American has fewer than three friends” while claiming people desire “meaningfully more, like 15 friends” — positioning AI companions as the solution to this gap.

    The Meta founder’s vision extends beyond casual interaction to therapeutic and commercial relationships, with personalized AI that “has a deep understanding of what’s going on in this person’s life.” Meta has already deployed its AI across Instagram, Facebook, and Ray-Ban smart glasses, reaching nearly a billion monthly users.

    This probably makes sense to Zuckerberg, who is a horrible person and doesn’t have any real friends.

    It is my belief that more people would be saying bad things about Mark Zuckerberg if Elon Musk had not gone full Nazi.

  482. says

    The president said he’s reached a “conclusive” and “comprehensive” trade deal with the U.K. Reality suggests otherwise. In other words, Trump is lying.

    Related video at the link.

    It’s easy to understand why Donald Trump might be embarrassed by his lack of second-term trade deals. About a month ago, Peter Navarro, the White House’s top trade adviser, boasted in March, “We’re going to run 90 deals in 90 days.” Navarro added that such a plan “is possible” in part because “the boss is going to be the chief negotiator.”

    A month later, the president hasn’t struck any trade deals. In fact, as NBC News’ Jonathan Allen explained this week, Trump has been forced to overhaul his message completely to accommodate his failures: After bragging about the many trade deals he’d soon strike, the Republican has “changed his tone and his tune in recent days,” downplaying the need for trade deals — and urging reporters to stop asking him about this.

    It was against this backdrop that Trump told the public that there’d been a breakthrough.

    On Wednesday night, the president used his social media platform to announce that the White House had struck a “MAJOR TRADE DEAL.” The following morning, he added that a “full and comprehensive” trade agreement is in place with the United Kingdom, which was soon followed by another online item in which Trump claimed, “Together with our strong Ally, the United Kingdom, we have reached the first, historic Trade Deal since Liberation Day.”

    It all sounded rather exciting — right up until the public learned that the “trade deal” isn’t an actual trade deal, at least not yet. NBC News reported:

    The U.S. is working toward finalizing a narrow trade deal with the United Kingdom, President Donald Trump said Thursday, a small step as the White House pursues an aggressive tariff agenda across the globe. According to a document furnished by the U.K., the agreement will see duties on U.K. car imports reduced from 27.5% to 10%, while tariffs on U.K. steel imports will be dropped. In return, the U.K. is lowering trade barriers on U.S. beef imports and ethanol.

    The emerging picture is one in which the White House has settled on a non-binding framework for a possible future deal with the United States’ 11th largest trading partner. This sets the stage for a series of additional talks — negotiations that will likely last months — that may or may not lead to an agreement.

    […] During an Oval Office event on the developments, Trump again said that a “conclusive” deal is in place, adding, “It’s a very big deal right now, but I think it’s going to grow, just of its own volition. It’s going to grow. Over time, there will be changes made, there’ll be adjustments made because we’re flexible — we’ll see things we can do even better — but it’s very conclusive.” [Trump’s incoherence hurts my brain.]

    The problem, of course, is that the first part of the claim is plainly at odds with the second: If an agreement is still taking shape and is likely to undergo a series of changes, then the new framework obviously is neither “conclusive” nor “comprehensive.”

    In his first term, Trump had an unfortunate habit of wildly exaggerating the scope and scale of his narrow trade agreements. In his second term, the Republican is apparently picking up where he left off.

  483. says

    OMFG, no, just no.

    Trump eying Fox News host Jeanine Pirro for top prosecutor in DC

    “Pirro, if chosen, would be interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.”

    Related video at the link.

    […] Trump is strongly considering installing Fox News host and former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

    The potential selection comes as Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Thursday that Ed Martin, who is currently serving as D.C.’s interim top prosecutor, would not be taking the position permanently after losing support among top Republicans in the Senate.

    An announcement about a new interim U.S. attorney could come as soon as today […]

    Pirro has been a longtime ally of Trump, dating back to her time as a prominent prosecutor in New York. She was an early supporter of his 2016 campaign and publicly defended him during the “Access Hollywood” tape scandal.

    Following Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, Pirro pushed false allegations of election fraud involving voting machines and was later among the Fox News employees named in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit for broadcasting false claims about the company. Fox News eventually settled for $787.5 million and admitted the statements were false.

    In 2019, Pirro was reportedly suspended by Fox News after she questioned the loyalty of Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar to the U.S. Constitution, citing Omar’s Muslim faith. […]

  484. Reginald Selkirk says

    Intelligence Community Demolishes Trump’s Venezuelan ‘Invasion’ Claims In Record Time… Almost Like They Want Us To Know He’s Lying

    The Intelligence Community just demonstrated, in spectacular fashion, exactly how badly Donald Trump and his ODNI chief Tulsi Gabbard misrepresented the laughable supposed “invasion” of the US by Venezuelan gangs. And they did it by responding to a Freedom of Information Act request in what may be record time — just six business days.

    For context: FOIA requests typically languish for months or years. I’ve personally had requests sit for so long that agencies eventually asked if I still wanted the information. Year-long waits are standard operating procedure, despite the law requiring responses within 20 days.

    So it’s notable the Office of the Director of National Intelligence somehow responded to a FOIA request from the Freedom of the Press Foundation in record time earlier this week. The request was sent on April 25th, and the response was delivered on May 5th.

    The issue: the Intelligence Community’s report on whether or not (in this case, not) the Maduro government in Venezuela was directing Tren de Aragua actions in the US. As you’ll recall, part of Donald Trump’s “invocation” of the Alien Enemies Act, in order to rendition random Venezuelans to a Salvadoran concentration camp, he had to declare that Venezuela had “invaded” the US. This was obvious nonsense, but here’s what he claimed: …

  485. says

    Predictably, Trump is now going after NY Attorney General Letitia James.

    FBI opens formal investigation of NY Attorney General Letitia James

    The FBI in Albany has opened a formal criminal investigation examining the real estate and mortgage transactions of New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to law enforcement sources briefed on the matter.

    It’s unclear why U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi steered the referral to New York’s Northern District; although James is a statewide elected official with offices in Albany, the transactions involve her personal property purchases and loans that were processed in New York City and Virginia. Some of the transactions also may fall outside the federal statute of limitations, although one of the mortgages involves James’ assertions in loan documents related to her 2023 purchase of a residence in Norfolk, Virginia.

    […] Under state law, James’ principal residence as a statewide elected official must be in New York.

    “This is being handled at this time by main (Department of) Justice and the Albany FBI field office,” said U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III, who oversees the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York’s Northern District. “We stand prepared to act in the capacity that we need to when and if we are informed there’s a charge to be made. Unlike Letitia James, who unethically ran around the state campaigning on getting Donald Trump… my office conducts itself in a manner that is proper and professional.” [LOL]

    After the Times Union published this story online Thursday, The Guardian published a story saying that a federal grand jury has been impaneled in the Eastern District of Virginia to review evidence in the case.

    James has cast the allegations as “baseless.” Last month, her office hired well-known criminal defense attorney Abbe Lowell to represent her personally in the matter. […]

    In the state budget being voted on this week, Democratic leaders inserted a $10 million fund that could be used by James or other state officials to cover legal fees for actions taken against them by the Trump administration.
    Republican lawmakers are expected to contest the addition of that money in the state budget and have noted that, in James’ case, the property transactions under investigation were personal dealings and not related to her public office.

    Lowell sent a six-page letter to Bondi on April 24 accusing President Donald J. Trump of seeking to weaponize the Justice Department by targeting James as part of a campaign of “political retribution” for the investigations her office has conducted into his business dealings.

    The Times Union has reported that the documents of her property transactions, some dating to 1983, have been circulated since last year to various news outlets and elected officials by a man using a fictitious name. […]

    The man used a phone number that was listed as a contact number in a legal notice two years ago for a Long Island man who is being actively prosecuted by the state attorney general’s office for fraud. He claimed that his motivation was “not political.”

    The documents apparently made their way to William J. Pulte, director of the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, who sent a referral letter last month to Bondi alleging that James may have “falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.”

    He said the alleged conduct “potentially included … falsifying residence status for a Norfolk, Virginia-based home in order to secure a lower mortgage rate and … misrepresenting property descriptions to meet stringent requirements for government backed loans and government assistance.”

    […] “The stunning hypocrisy of President Trump’s complaint that the Justice Department had been ‘politicized’ and ‘weaponized’ against him is laid bare as he and others in his administration are now asking you to undertake the very same practice,” Lowell wrote to Bondi. “This so-called ‘criminal referral,’ which recycles long-disproven allegations and is ‘(b)ased on media reports’ lacks any credible foundation.” […]

    More at the link.

  486. birgerjohansson says

    Glass Almanac:
    Japan may have found the holy grail of hydrogen production with a low-cost metal catalyst  (manganese)

    .https://glassalmanac.com/japan-may-have-found-the-holy-grail-of-hydrogen-production-with-a-low-cost-metal/
    .
    You know, OPEC countries with plenty of desert space for photovoltaic cells -for electricity production- could add hydrogen to hydrocarbons they pump up, creating methane with significantly more energy.
    Liquid methane is much easier to transport than hydrogen.
    BTW parts of southwestern USA with both oil and marginal land providing areas for photovoltaics might also make methane this way.
    A tanker with liquid methane will not be another Exxon Valdez, as the stuff will just boil away.
    .
    If it is possible to take ordinary coal (graphite) and add hydrogen to make methane it could be a less destructive energy product for Australia than coal, per energy unit exported.
    During low demand, the photovoltaics may power desalination of water.

  487. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Adding to 476, 478.

    Wikipedia – Pope Leo XIV (Robert Francis Prevost)

    Prevost has stated that the the Catholic church should take greater action against climate change. […] Prevost has opposed the ordination of women […] Prevost opposed the inclusion of curriculum regarding “teachings on gender in schools” in Peru, stating that the “promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist”. […] Prevost lamented that popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel”, citing the “homosexual lifestyle” […] Prevost expressed sympathy for George Floyd

  488. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    CNN – Trump admin ends extreme weather database that has tracked cost of disasters since 1980

    that will make it next to impossible for the public to track the cost of extreme weather and climate events.
    […]
    Some politicians and outside experts have asserted in the past that the database, which shows an increase in disaster losses over time, reflects mainly climate change-driven trends, though NOAA says on the website: “This product has no focus on climate event attribution.”

    Population growth and the expansion of development in harms’ way are thought to be the dominant factors behind the long-term trend. However, the increasing occurrence and severity of some types of extreme weather events, due in part to human-caused climate change, is also amplifying some of these events and making them more costly, studies have shown.

    The database vacuums loss information from throughout the insurance industry, among other public and private sources. […] “What makes this resource uniquely valuable is not just its standardized methodology across decades, but the fact that it draws from proprietary and non-public data sources (such as reinsurance loss estimates, localized government reports, and private claims databases) that are otherwise inaccessible to most researchers,”
    […]
    The White House has published plans to make even deeper cuts to NOAA by eliminating its research division and closing its weather and climate labs […] The administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 would cut NOAA’s spending by 24% compared to 2025.

  489. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    CBS – West Virginia coal miners lose black lung screenings after Trump slashes worker safety agency NIOSH

    “The work being done at [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health] was not wasteful. It was not duplicative. It was not redundant. The research that was being done at NIOSH was being done nowhere else in the world.”

    West Virginia isn’t only coal country—it’s Trump country. He won the state in 2024 with 70% of the vote.
    […]
    The budget for NIOSH was about $363 million in 2023, the same year that job injuries and illnesses cost Americans around $176 billion […] Without NIOSH, officials say that number could be higher.

    Rando: “‘voted against their own interests’ is inaccurate. You THINK their interests is their health. But it’s actually just racism. They DID vote their interests.”

  490. Reginald Selkirk says

    US and UK agree deal slashing Trump tariffs on cars and metals

    The US has agreed to reduce import taxes on a set number of British cars and allow some steel and aluminium into the country tariff-free, as part of a new agreement between the US and UK.

    The announcement offers relief for key UK industries from some of the new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump since entering office in January.

    But it will leave a 10% duty in place on most goods from the UK.

    Though hailed by leaders in the two countries as significant, analysts said it did not appear to meaningfully alter the terms of trade between the countries, as they stood before the changes introduced by Trump this year.

    No formal deal was signed on Thursday and the governments were light on details…

  491. Reginald Selkirk says

    @269 update

    Sotheby’s halts Buddha jewels auction after India threat

    The auction house Sotheby’s has postponed its sale in Hong Kong of hundreds of sacred jewels linked to the Buddha’s remains, after a threat of legal action by the Indian government.

    The sale of the collection – described as one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the modern era – had drawn criticism from Buddhist academics and monastic leaders. India had said it offended the global Buddhist community.

    Sotheby’s said the suspension would allow for discussions between the parties…

  492. Reginald Selkirk says

    The election director in North Carolina, a key swing state, is ousted after a Republican power play

    The North Carolina elections board ousted its widely respected executive director Wednesday in a partisan move that will put Republicans in control of election operations in the political swing state, which includes the certification of results.

    The removal of Karen Brinson Bell, who had held the job for nearly six years during a time when the board had Democratic majorities, came after Republicans took away the authority to appoint election board members from the Democratic governor late last year, overriding a veto while they still held a supermajority in the legislature. GOP legislators handed that power to the elected state auditor, a Republican.

    Meeting for the first time with its new GOP majority, the North Carolina State Board of Elections agreed in a party-line vote to replace Brinson Bell with Sam Hayes, the top lawyer for the Republican House speaker. The board declined to consider her request to speak at the end of the meeting, adjourning instead…

  493. says

    Followup to Sky Captain @449 and 450.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/what-nonsense-does-trumps-wellness

    On Wednesday, Trump withdrew his surgeon general nomination for Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, allegedly on the advice of one Laura Loomer, who was displeased with the former Fox News contributor’s history of supporting the COVID vaccine and vaccines in general. Her replacement? “Wellness influencer” Dr. Casey Means, who describes herself as a “medical doctor, writer, tech entrepreneur, and aspiring regenerative gardener who lives in a state of awe for the miracle of existence and consciousness.”

    I don’t know if you can really call yourself a “medical doctor” if your license to practice medicine is expired, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
    So let’s get to know her, shall we?

    Means studied, initially, to be a head and neck surgeon, but dropped out in order to pursue a career in “functional medicine,” or what one might call “bullshit” or, perhaps more accurately, “fucking bullshit.” It’s a brand of alternative medicine based largely on “vibes” and “things we made up.” For instance, you know all that nonsense about how people need to “detox” from “heavy metals?” That’s functional medicine. […]

    Functional medicine also results in things like this list posted to Means’ Instagram, listing the diseases she claims are “linked to synthetic pesticide use.” [List at the link]

    Surprise! It is all of the diseases! Now, there are certainly issues with many synthetic pesticides, but those issues are not that they cause ADHD or autism or ALS or Parkinson’s. That’s why you’ll notice that, like many other practitioners of “functional medicine” she says “linked to” instead of “caused by.” Because it’s all just hypothetical. Anything can be “linked to” anything, as the Kevin Bacon rule has taught us all.

    Dr. Means also tells people they should rely on their “heart intelligence and divine intuition” instead of “blindly trusting ‘the science,’” which is, I imagine, how she came up with most of her theories. Now, I would never suggest that anyone should blindly go along with anything — always get a second opinion, I say! — but “heart intelligence and divine intuition” are not more reliable than peer-reviewed studies.

    In the Instagram post above, Dr. Means writes:

    We are a swirl of energy and matter in constant exchange with everything in the cosmos.

    We live in a quantum universe and our biology is controlled by a star ☀️.

    We are spiritual beings having a dualistic experience in the material realm. […]

    It’s a dark time when we allow ourselves to be told to not trust ourselves.

    To not trust the spirit in us.

    To not trust our magic.

    Medicine has always been an art and a science, until recently, to our great detriment.

    Feel free to take a moment to scream loudly into the void, should a void be available to you.

    Dr. Means’ big claim, however, is that “metabolic health” — or what she deems “good energy” — is the source of all good health, while bad metabolic health (“bad energy”), much like pesticides, seed oils and vaccines, is the cause of all ill health. Now, again, no one would dispute that metabolic health is important, but it’s not the cause of or solution to all of life’s ailments (that’s booze).

    Via Business Insider:

    Means’ book promotes the pursuit of Good Energy, which she defined as great metabolic health. “It governs the very essence of what (quite literally) makes you tick,” she said in the book, “whether your cells have the energy to do their jobs of keeping you nourished, clear-minded, hormonally balanced, immune protected, heart-healthy, structurally sound — and so much more.”

    According to Means, roughly 93% of US adults have “Bad Energy,” or poor metabolic health. She attributes conditions like depression, infertility, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, erectile dysfunction, cancer, and Alzheimer’s to habits like eating ultra-processed foods and sleep deprivation. Means argues that inflammation and oxidative stress, unstable molecules that cause cell damage, underpin these modern diseases.

    She wrote a whole book on the subject, a New York Times bestseller, titled Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health.

    Limitless health!

    Dr. Means also puts out near-daily newsletters on a variety of topics, like “Wheat, Gluten and Mental Health: Exploring the Link,” and “Chats With ChatGPT About A Healthier Future,” nearly all of which are sponsored by pseudoscientific supplement companies. Like so:

    LivOn is giving a VERY special offer to my community: Buy Lypo-Spheric® Glutathione and get Lypo-Spheric® B Complex Plus ($56 value) for FREE! This is an INCREDIBLE 2-for-1 offer. Just go to LivOnLabs.com, add both supplements to your cart, and enter code GOODENERGY at checkout.⁠

    Well that doesn’t sound at all like snake oil!

    We should also mention that, despite sounding a little hippy dippy, she is fiercely opposed to both IVF and birth control pills, which she claims represent a “disrespect of life.” [video at the link]

    You know, I thought that Trump’s other picks were bad — and they were! But Means is an objectively insane pick. You may as well have a Surgeon General whose primary concern is balancing the four humours. Is she going to put warnings on canola oil? Make the Ramtha-cult-produced “documentary” What the Bleep Do We Know? required viewing in all schools? Insist that medical schools teach phrenology and homeopathy?

    All things are possible in this, the stupidest of all possible worlds.

  494. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a gesture intended to welcome the new pontiff, on Thursday Donald J. Trump offered to sell Pope Leo XIV a $60 Bible.

    “You want to grab this deal while you can,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “It’s gonna cost a lot more after EU tariffs.”

    Calling the Trump Bible “a very special Bible,” he added, “I know you have a lot of Bibles already at the Vatican, but none of them have parts written by Lee Greenwood.”

    Meanwhile, in his first official act as pope, Leo ordered a photo of JD Vance posted at the Vatican security desk.

    Link

  495. Reginald Selkirk says

    ‘Friends of steel’: Xi and Putin pledge to stand together against US

    Chinese President Xi Jinping told Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Thursday their two countries should be “friends of steel”, as they pledged to raise cooperation to a new level and “decisively” counter the influence of the United States.

    At talks in the Kremlin, the two leaders cast themselves as defenders of a new world order no longer dominated by the U.S.

    In a lengthy joint statement, they said they would deepen relations in all areas, including military ties, and “strengthen coordination in order to decisively counter Washington’s course of ‘dual containment’ of Russia and China”….

  496. Reginald Selkirk says

    Lithuania closes airspace to Slovak and Serb leaders on route to Russia, president says

    Lithuania has closed its airspace to flights carrying the Slovak and Serbian leaders to Moscow for its World War Two victory parade, President Gitanas Nauseda said on Wednesday.

    Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic are among leaders expected to attend World War Two Victory Day commemorations in Moscow, which Russia celebrates on May 9.

    “The decisions are negative,” Nauseda said in a video published by news website 15min, in response to a question on flyover permissions for the two leaders…

    Lithuania, which borders Russia and its close ally Belarus, is among the strongest supporters in the European Union and NATO of Ukraine against Russia’s three-year-old invasion…

    Nauseda said the ban was due to GPS disturbances in the region. He did not name possible source of the jamming, which several European countries have earlier blamed on Russia…

  497. Reginald Selkirk says

    New study reveals wealth inequality was never inevitable

    A groundbreaking study published in the journal PNAS is overturning traditional wisdom regarding the origins and inevitability of wealth inequality. Based on a massive dataset of over 50,000 houses in some 1,000 archaeological sites worldwide, the study suggests that economic inequality is not an inevitable result of societal advancement, agriculture, or population. Instead, it seems to be a consequence of political choices and governance structures.

    Led by Gary Feinman, the MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, the study uses house size as a proxy for household wealth to estimate Gini coefficients—a standard measure of inequality—for societies that encompass 10,000 years of human history and six continents. The research is linked to the Global Dynamics of Inequality (GINI) project, which aims to understand the historical roots and trajectories of social disparities.

    “This is an unprecedented dataset in archaeology,” Feinman said. “It allows us to empirically and systematically look at patterns of inequality over time.” The study analyzed settlements built between the end of the Pleistocene and the onset of European colonialism, across North America and Mesoamerica, Europe, and Asia. By comparing the variability in house sizes, scientists could compare the degree of inequality in each society and how it related to population size and political complexity…

  498. Reginald Selkirk says

    MN Republicans introduce vaccine criminalization bill drafted by Florida hypnotist

    A group of eight Republicans in the Minnesota House have introduced legislation (HF3219) that would designate certain vaccines and medical treatments as “weapons of mass destruction” and make possessing or administering them a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

    The legislation specifically targets messenger RNA (mRNA) treatments, which include several COVID-19 vaccines. Those vaccines have saved millions of lives and are considered one of the most important medical and public health achievements of the 21st century so far.

    The bill’s language appears to have been drafted by Joseph Sansone, a Florida hypnotist and conspiracy theorist who believes that mRNA treatments are “nanoparticle injections” that amount to “biological and technological weapons of mass destruction.”

    Sansone has falsely claimed that “more Americans have died from mRNA injections than in WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam War combined,” and has said he has stood “alongside an Army of the Dead” to file unsuccessful legal complaints against vaccines in Florida…

  499. Reginald Selkirk says

    New RSV vaccine, treatment linked to dramatic fall in baby hospitalizations

    Far fewer babies went to the hospital struggling to breathe from RSV, a severe respiratory infection, after the debut of a new vaccine and treatment this season, according to an analysis published today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    RSV, or respiratory syncytial (sin-SISH-uhl) virus, is the leading cause of hospitalization for infants in the US. An estimated 58,000–80,000 children younger than 5 years old are hospitalized each year. Newborns—babies between 0 and 2 months—are the most at risk of being hospitalized with RSV. The virus circulates seasonally, typically rising in the fall and peaking in the winter, like many other respiratory infections.

    But the 2024–2025 season was different—there were two new ways to protect against the infection. One is a maternal vaccine, Pfizer’s Abrysvo, which is given to pregnant people when their third trimester aligns with RSV season (generally September through January). Maternal antibodies generated from the vaccination pass to the fetus in the uterus and can protect a newborn in the first few months of life. The other new protection against RSV is a long-acting monoclonal antibody treatment, nirsevimab, which is given to babies under 8 months old as they enter or are born into their first RSV season and may not be protected by maternal antibodies…

    It is a surprise to see something like this come out of the CDC without an endorsement of castor oil…

  500. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump administration unveils plan to overhaul air traffic control system after Newark airport outage

    President Trump announced Thursday that his administration wants to replace the technology at thousands of air traffic control sites across the country and build six new coordination centers. Mr. Trump called into a news conference that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was holding to unveil the plan for a new air traffic control system.

    “After decades of originally — and we’re taking about a long time ago — reliable service, air traffic control is long overdue for, not an overhaul really, for a remaking,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s got to be brought up to a modern standard.”

    The president also said he was confident that the current system remains “extremely safe” ahead of the summer travel season.

    Mr. Trump said his administration wanted to replace the technology at more than 4,600 air traffic control sites and build six new air traffic coordination centers. Officials said the plan also called for buying 25,000 new radios, replacing over 600 radars and installing 4,000 new high-speed network connections…

    I’m not saying it isn’t broken, I’m saying that I don’t trust Trump and his army of sycophants to fix it.

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