Comments

  1. says

    Trump pitch fails to move GOP holdouts on agenda megabill

    […] Trump’s pitch for House GOP lawmakers to rally around the party’s “big, beautiful bill” fell flat Tuesday, as two groups of holdouts — hard-line conservatives and moderate blue-state Republicans — are still demanding changes to win their support.

    During a nearly two-hour meeting in the Capitol basement, Trump urged Republicans to support his agenda bill as Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) self-imposed Memorial Day deadline for passing the package inches closer.

    The trouble was, he didn’t seem to change the minds he needed to.

    “The president I don’t think convinced enough people that the bill is adequate the way it is,” said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Several members of the Freedom Caucus are among the loudest critics of the legislation.

    “I can’t support it the way it is right now,” he added. “We’re still a long ways away.”

    On spending cuts, the president urged lawmakers not to “f‑‑‑ with Medicaid,” as those on the right flank demand more changes to the social safety net program.

    On the state and local tax (SALT), meanwhile, the president pressed moderate Republicans from high-tax blue states to relent on their push for a higher deduction cap.

    Those moderates, too, are holding the line. […]

    Picture a powerless Trump.

  2. says

    Here are a few 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-5/#comment-2265626
    Trump promised Americans that Medicaid would go untouched in his second term. Now he’s trying to explain why he’s going back on this word.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-5/#comment-2265614
    Chicago Sun-Times prints summer reading list full of fake books

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-5/#comment-2265578
    I’m starving in Gaza.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-5/#comment-2265562
    The Supreme Court on Monday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to end deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants.

  3. says

    Some new fuckery from the Trump administration: Some 4,500 migrants told to pay fines ranging up to $1.8 million

    The steep fines are part of Trump’s aggressive push to get immigrants in the U.S. illegally to leave the country voluntarily, or “self deport.”

    Wendy Ortiz was surprised to find out she was being fined by U.S. immigration authorities for being in the country illegally — but it was the amount that truly shocked her: $1.8 million.

    Ortiz, 32, who earns $13 an hour in her job at a meatpacking plant in Pennsylvania, has lived in the United States for a decade, after fleeing El Salvador to escape a violent ex-partner and gang threats […] Her salary barely covers rent and expenses for her autistic 6-year-old U.S.-citizen son.

    […] In the last few weeks, […] Donald Trump has started to operationalize a plan to fine migrants who fail to leave the U.S. after a final deportation order, issuing notices to 4,500 migrants with penalties totaling more than $500 million, a senior Trump official said, requesting anonymity to share internal figures.

    Reuters spoke with eight immigration lawyers around the country who said their clients had been fined from several thousand dollars to just over $1.8 million.

    The recipients of the notices were informed that they had 30 days to contest, in writing, under oath, and with evidence as to why the penalty should not be imposed.

    […] The Trump administration plan, details of which were first reported by Reuters in April, include levying fines of $998 per day for migrants who failed to leave the U.S. after a deportation order.

    The administration planned to issue fines retroactively for up to five years, Reuters reported. Under that framework, the maximum would be $1.8 million. The government would then consider seizing the property of immigrants who could not pay. […]

    Immigration lawyers baffled

    The fines reviewed by Reuters were issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but a separate agency — Customs and Border Protection — has been asked to process them and handle potential forfeitures […]

    […] The fines stem from a 1996 law that was enforced for the first time in 2018, during Trump’s first term in office, and target the roughly 1.4 million migrants who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge.

    The Trump administration withdrew fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars against nine migrants who sought sanctuary in churches in his first term after a legal challenge, but proceeded with smaller penalties. Joe Biden’s administration dropped the fines in 2021.

    Robert Scott, a New York City-based immigration lawyer, said he was baffled when one of his clients — a low-income Mexican woman who has lived in the U.S. for 25 years — also received a $1.8 million fine.

    “At first you look at something like this and think it’s fake,” he said. “I’ve never seen a client receive anything like this.”

    Scott said the woman received a final deportation order in 2013 but was not aware of it at the time. The woman filed a motion last year to reopen the removal order, which is still pending, Scott said.

    “She hasn’t been hiding,” he said. […]

    Seeking relief, the targeted

    After crossing the border in 2015, Ortiz was released to pursue her asylum claim when an officer found she had a credible fear of persecution, documents show. But she said she never received an immigration court hearing notice and was ordered deported after failing to show up to court in 2018.

    Ortiz’s immigration lawyer requested humanitarian relief from the U.S. government on Jan. 8, saying she faced danger in El Salvador and that her son would not have access to services for autistic children. The petition asked for “prosecutorial discretion” and for the government to reopen and dismiss her case. […]

    “She is a mother of an autistic child, she has no criminal history, and they have all of her background information,” Stambaugh said. “I just think it’s absolutely insane.”

    Lawyers said clients who received the notices also included spouses of U.S. citizens, who were actively trying to legalize their immigration status.

    Rosa, a U.S. citizen in New York, said her Honduran husband was fined $5,000. She said her husband wasn’t able to leave the country after being granted voluntary departure in 2018 because she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She hopes once she explains the situation, that the fine may be waived. If not, she said, he will have to work many extra hours to pay it.

    “It’s one thing after the other,” she said. “This whole process has cost us so much money.”

  4. JM says

    China’s fresh belt-tightening push takes aim at white elephants, lavish meals and flowers

    White elephant projects, the use of official vehicles, lavish meals and meeting venue decor are all in Beijing’s crosshairs under new rules introduced as part of an intensified government austerity drive.
    The latest revised regulations to “implement frugality and cut waste” among party and government bodies were jointly issued by the Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council, or China’s cabinet, Xinhua reported on Sunday.

    The austerity program is trying to press on spending by the communist party itself. This tends not to do anything in bureaucratic dictatorships but that they are trying at all is a sign of how bad the debt situation is. The little privileges in terms of luxuries is a big selling point for the party on a day to day basis.

    China and the US, its No 1 rival, have each been pursuing their own austerity campaigns to address rising fiscal challenges amid economic pressures and geopolitical tensions. While the US has made drastic cuts to its civil service and public spending, Beijing is doubling down on its own spending reductions, repeatedly telling officials to “get used to belt-tightening”.

    This is a misleading but interesting comparison, you can see what a Chinese paper is making it. Trying to tie the Chinese problems to the US situation to make the US look weaker. The US government is not implementing an organized austerity program, it’s the Republicans trying to reduce government spending so they can cut taxes.

  7. says

    Trump for the second time during this press conference claims that Biden has “stage nine” cancer (he has stage four cancer)

    https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lpkj7b4nnv2t

    Video of Trump sounding stupid is available at the link.

    Comment from a person who viewed the video:

    If shitler is too stupid to know the difference between a Gleason score of 9 & that stages of prostate cancer are either I,II,II,or IV, then he’s too stupid to speak about it. 🍊says stage 9 bc his base are idiots, too, & that prostate cancer makes patients cognitively impaired.It doesn’t.🍊is a pig.

  8. Reginald Selkirk says

    Bottoms enters race for Georgia governor with pledge to fight Trumpism

    Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who gained national prominence scrapping with President Donald Trump before joining President Joe Biden’s inner circle, entered the race for Georgia governor Tuesday with a vow to bring “battle-tested” leadership to the Capitol.

    The Democrat told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution she would work to find consensus even with longtime Republican foes while also insisting that anxious Georgia voters want leaders willing to aggressively combat Trump and his closest allies…

    Bottoms up.

  9. Reginald Selkirk says

    Happy together: Peroxide binds incompatible polymers for recycling

    Polyethylene and polypropylene account for two-thirds of the world’s plastics. But the polymers’ popularity has an equally large downside. Because they have similar densities and physical properties, the polymers are difficult—and expensive—to separate when mechanically recycled together. What results is a weak, degraded material that really isn’t good for anything.

    Now, Cornell researchers have developed an inexpensive and potentially scalable approach that uses a commercially available peroxide to bind the polymers together, thereby creating a more useful, high-quality plastic recycling additive…

    A year and a half—and more than 200 experiments—later, the researchers settled on an organic alkyl peroxide that, when heated, essentially plucks hydrogen molecules off high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and isotactic polypropylene (iPP) so they can be grafted together and form a copolymer material that can be added to a mechanical recycling process for HDPE and iPP mixtures, restoring their properties…

  10. Reginald Selkirk says

    Under RFK Jr., COVID shots will only be available to people 65+, high-risk groups

    Under the control of anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration is unilaterally terminating universal access to seasonal COVID-19 vaccines; instead, only people who are age 65 years and older and people with underlying conditions that put them at risk of severe COVID-19 will have access to seasonal boosters moving forward.

    The move was laid out in a commentary article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, written by Trump administration FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and the agency’s new top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad.

    The article lays out a new framework for approving seasonal COVID-19 vaccines, as well as a rationale for the change—which was made without input from independent advisory committees for the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

  11. birgerjohansson says

    The sound technician of the seventies band ABBA, Michael B. Tretow has died. He was 80.

  12. birgerjohansson says

    According to Huffington Post, the government may have started deporting migrants to South Sudan despite an injunction!

  13. Reginald Selkirk says

    The most dangerous man in America isn’t Trump—it’s Alex Karp

    Alex Karp doesn’t look like a warmonger. The Palantir CEO is often photographed in quirky glasses and wild hair, quoting St Augustine or Nietzsche as if he were auditioning for a TED Talk on techno-humanism.

    But behind the poetic digressions and philosophical posturing is a simple truth: Karp is building the operating system for perpetual war. And he’s winning.

    For years, Karp was treated like a curiosity in Silicon Valley—too weird, blunt and tied to the military-industrial complex. “We were the freak show,” he once said, half-proud, half-wounded.

    But today, he’s not just inside the tent. He’s drawing the blueprint for a new kind of techno-authoritarianism where AI doesn’t just observe the battlefield—it becomes the battlefield.

    Palantir’s flagship product, AIP, is already embedded in US military operations. It helps with target acquisition, battlefield logistics, drone coordination, predictive policing and data fusion on a scale that would make the National Security Agency (NSA) blush.

    Karp boasts that it gives “an unfair advantage to the noble warriors of the West.” Strip away the romantic rhetoric, and what he’s offering is algorithmic supremacy—war by machine, guided by code, sold with patriotic branding.

    And corporate America is buying. Citi, BP, AIG and even Hertz now use Palantir’s product. The line between military and civilian application is evaporating…

  14. Reginald Selkirk says

    Musk says will spend ‘a lot less’ on political campaigns

    Billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday said he was pulling away from spending his fortune on politics, asserting that his Tesla electric car company was doing well despite blowback due to his support of US President Donald Trump.

    “In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk told Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, speaking by video link from Austin, Texas.

    Musk, the richest person on Earth, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Trump’s political campaign, and questions were rife in Washington whether his largesse would continue.

    “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I don’t currently see a reason,” he said in the often tense interview…

    Wow, so he won’t spend a lot until he does. That’s quite a commitment.

  15. Reginald Selkirk says

    Turns Out, Trump’s Qatar Private Jet Wasn’t Even a Gift

    There’s no such thing as a free plane.

    Donald Trump’s administration specifically sought out the luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar’s government to replace Air Force One, despite the president’s insistence that the plane was a gift, sources informed CNN.

    A senior White House official told CNN that Trump tasked Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East (and shady crypto partner), with tracking down a replacement for Air Force One, after Trump learned that Boeing would not have new jets ready for another two years. Witkoff ended up leading initial conversations with the Qatari government, according to the White House official.

    Boeing provided the Pentagon with a list of other clients who might be able to help with America’s search for a new plane, three sources told CNN. One of those sources said that Qatar was included on that list of clients and that the U.S. reached out about purchasing the luxury plane from the Qatari Defense Ministry, which indicated it was willing to sell. There were also discussions about leasing the plane, said another source.

    Legal negotiations over the plane’s transfer are still ongoing, and it’s unclear how the plane went from being a potential purchase to a $400 million gift. Trump and his administration have repeatedly stressed that the plane will be free of charge, a gift of goodwill from a foreign government—sparking major backlash on both sides of the aisle over concerns of foreign corruption…

    Next he will tell us that Mexico is paying for it…

  16. Reginald Selkirk says

    Judge who previously fought for abortion rights wants to join Wisconsin Supreme Court

    A Wisconsin appeals court judge who was an outspoken supporter of abortion rights in the state Legislature announced Tuesday that she is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, taking on an incumbent conservative justice who sided with President Donald Trump in his failed attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.

    Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, 57, becomes the first liberal candidate to enter the 2026 race.

    The election next year won’t be for control of the court in the battleground state because liberals already hold a 4-3 majority. The race is for a seat held by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, who said last month she is running for reelection.

    Liberals won the majority of the court in 2024 and they will hold it until at least 2028 thanks to the victory in April by Democratic-backed Susan Crawford over a conservative candidate supported by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk…

  17. Reginald Selkirk says

    US Capitol rioter who smashed Speaker’s Lobby door charged with burglary in Virginia

    A Virginia man has been charged with felony burglary after being pardoned for his role in the U.S. Capitol riot, which included smashing the door panel that rioter Ashli Babbitt tried to breach before police shot her.

    Zachary Jordan Alam, 33, of Centreville, was arrested May 9 in a neighborhood outside of Richmond, Henrico County police said in a statement.

    Officers had responded to a call of breaking and entering, where the homeowner said an unknown man came in through a back door, police said.

    “The man took several items before he was observed by people in the home and was asked to leave,” police said. “Officers located the man in a nearby neighborhood and arrested him.” …

    Not a federal charge, so no hope for another pardon.

  18. johnson catman says

    re Reginald Selkirk @13:

    Palantir’s flagship product, AIP, is already embedded in US military operations. It helps with target acquisition, battlefield logistics, drone coordination, predictive policing and data fusion on a scale that would make the National Security Agency (NSA) blush.

    Skynet anyone?

  19. says

    The New York Times reported:

    In a setback for Europe’s surging nationalist forces, Nicusor Dan, a centrist mayor and former mathematics professor, on Sunday won the presidential election in Romania, defeating a hard-right candidate who is aligned with President Trump and has opposed military aid to Ukraine. With more than 98 percent of ballots counted, preliminary official results gave 54 percent of the vote in the presidential runoff to Mr. Dan, 55, the mayor of Romania’s capital, Bucharest. His opponent, George Simion, a nationalist and fervent admirer of Mr. Trump who had been widely seen as the front-runner, drew only 46 percent.

    Commentary:

    […] Shortly before voting ended, the far-right candidate claimed without evidence that “many deceased people” had appeared on the country’s electoral lists — a claim that was very much on-brand for the Trump-aligned candidate.

    […] while the results out of Romania led to sighs of relief throughout Europe, NBC News reported that two of Trump’s wealthy White House advisers responded to Dan’s victory by “casting doubt on the state of democracy in Romania.” [That figures. Doofuses and liars.]

    [David Sacks] expressed dissatisfaction with the state of Romania’s democracy. Sacks, a wealthy investor, denounced the result Monday in a post on X as ‘statistically unlikely, if not impossible.’ [Scoff] The statement amounted to an accusation of fraud, although Sacks provided no evidence, and he criticized Romanian authorities for disqualifying a leading pro-Russia candidate, Calin Georgescu. … [Elon Musk] weighed in separately. On X, he amplified an accusation by the head of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, who said the French government had asked him to ban conservative voices in Romania from Telegram ahead of the election.

    To the extent that Republican conspiracy theorists are concerned about evidence, NBC News’ report added that the U.S. embassy in Romania sent several teams to observe the country’s electoral process, and after the votes were tallied, the interim U.S. head of mission Romania congratulated the winner.

    In other words, what we’re left with is an unfortunate but familiar dynamic: On the one side, there are the legitimate election results, embraced by leading democracies and U.S. diplomats, while on the other side, there are Trump’s wealthy White House advisers peddling baseless claims.

  20. says

    Followup to birger @12.

    DHS Sent Detainees To South Sudan On Tuesday In Blatant Defiance Of Judge, Attorneys Allege

    DHS is violating a court order to remove a group of detainees to South Sudan, lawyers told a federal judge on Tuesday.

    Around one dozen people — including a person with a removal order to Myanmar and a person with a removal order to Vietnam — were loaded onto planes and sent to South Sudan on Tuesday, court filings say. The deportations are either currently in progress or have already taken place, lawyers for the group wrote.

    The ruling that DHS is allegedly violating in this case is clear. Last month, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy for the District of Massachusetts ordered DHS to give individuals set to be removed to a country that is not their own written notice in a language they understand, and to offer them the chance to contest their removal. That included providing the detainees a window of at least 15 days in which they could challenge DHS’ efforts to remove them to a third country.

    Attorneys in the case said in Tuesday’s filings that DHS did not do that when it allegedly removed people to South Sudan.

    Per one declaration, an ICE official on Monday afternoon emailed an attorney for a man with a removal order to Myanmar. The email told the attorney his client would be removed to South Africa. Ten minutes later, according to the declaration, ICE told the lawyer that it wished to rescind its email. Then, around two hours later, the document says, ICE told the lawyer that his client would in fact be sent to South Sudan.

    On Tuesday morning, the lawyer emailed the detention facility where his client had been held. An ICE officer replied that the client had been removed “this morning” to South Sudan.

    In another case described in Tuesday’s court filings, lawyers attached an email from the wife of a person with a removal order to Vietnam. Per that account, ICE officials told detainees that they were to be sent to South Africa, before returning to correct themselves and tell the group of their true destination: South Sudan.

    “I called my husband’s ICE officer and was told that he’s been ‘booked out’ but the officer didn’t know where he was sent,” the email reads.

    Attorneys for the group say that the situation “blatantly defies” earlier court orders. It also comes after the Trump administration tried to remove a group of detainees to Libya in potential violation of the same order in the same case. Per the filing, the man with a removal order to Myanmar had been part of the group that was slated to be removed to Libya before the judge blocked that attempt from succeeding.

    The allegations suggest that the Trump administration is taking another opportunity to flout the rule of law. It’s part of a campaign to stage high-profile removals of undocumented migrants, but also to flaunt the power of the executive branch over the last section of government that is still attempting to reign its powers in: the judiciary.

    The status of the deportation flights is unclear. In a motion, attorneys ask the judge to bar the government from removing the detainees, and to order their return if they’ve already been sent to South Sudan.

  21. says

    […] So this did actually happen on Monday. Five justices recused themselves from hearing a copyright dispute over Ta-Nehisi Coates’ novel “The Water Dancer,” where the plaintiff alleged Coates had plagiarized him. Justices Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor all recused themselves. With five justices recusing, there’s no quorum, so the court can’t take up the case. That means the appellate court decision, which found no evidence of plagiarism and dismissed the case against Coates, stands.

    There must be something very spicy going on for this plagiarism case to knock out over half the Court, right? Right?

    Not really.

    Though the justices are not required to explain their reasons for recusal, and none did so here, Barrett, Gorsuch, Jackson, and Sotomayor each have book deals through Penguin Random House, and Penguin’s parent company, Bertelsmann, is a party in the case. Alito didn’t have a book deal with Penguin—can you imagine reading an entire book by someone so eminently whiny and unlikeable?—but speculation is that he may have recused because he may have recently purchased stock in one of the parent companies involved in the lawsuit.

    These recusals are not a bad thing. This is when the justices should recuse themselves from hearing a case, where they have a financial connection—even tangentially—to a party in the case. The Supreme Court’s code of conduct—which lacks an enforcement mechanism—says that justices should recuse themselves when they or someone in their household has “a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding.”

    […] None of this means you have to hand it to the Supreme Court, much less Alito. It’s a mystery why his conscience popped up here of all places […]. In some ways, it’s more depressing to learn that there are times when Alito understands it would be unethical for him to hear a case, but that those times do not include things like “hearing a case about whether the insurrectionist president should get immunity given my family’s open enthusiasm for insurrection” or “hearing a case where an attorney for one of the parties interviewed me for The Wall Street Journal so I could complain about how ill-treated I am.”

    The fact that individual justices voluntarily did the right thing here is great, but the Supreme Court needs an actual binding code of ethics that holds them to the same standards as other federal judges. Without that, we’re all just reliant on the whims of people like Alito, and no one should be subject to that.

    Link

  22. says

    Did President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum use a green energy wind project as a bargaining chip to reopen a gas pipeline?

    Unfortunately, it seems that way.

    In April, Burgum halted Empire Wind 1, a New York-based wind turbine project signed off by Trump in 2017. To justify the decision, he pointed fingers at President Joe Biden for reportedly “rushing through” signing off on the project.

    But a month before, Trump met with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to discuss the reopening of the Constitution gas pipeline, which was closed in 2020. The pipeline brought gas from Pennsylvania’s drilling fields to New York but was halted due to backlash by environmentalists and politicians.

    […] Making an eerie half-threat, he added, “I hope we don’t have to use the extraordinary powers of the federal government to get it done. But if we have to, we will, but I don’t think we’ll have to.”

    It’s unclear if halting a $5 billion wind turbine project estimated to bring in thousands of jobs to New York counts as “extraordinary powers of the federal government” or not, but once the pipeline reopened, the wind turbine project resumed as well. And, of course, Burgum took to social media to celebrate. [snipped Burgum’s bluster]

    And—likely for very different reasons—Hochul also celebrated the news.

    “After countless conversations with Equinor and White House officials, bringing labor and business to the table to emphasize the importance of this project, I’m pleased that President Trump and Secretary Burgum have agreed to lift the stop work order and allow this project to move forward,” she wrote in a press release.

    Meanwhile, with Norwegian company Equinor backing Empire Wind 1, officials in Norway have found themselves in the crossfires of an energy bargaining battle.

    “This is an agreement about natural gas and wind made in the United States,” Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg, former NATO secretary general, told reporters Tuesday.

    And Equinor is no small fish to cast aside. The gas and green energy company has invested $60 billion U.S. energy projects—primarily in gas and oil.

    And for Burgum, the cookie-loving monster has an affinity for dirty energy, signing new oil leases for offshore drilling and pushing for more coal and uranium mines across the United States.

    The Trump administration […] has to bully its way to the bargaining table.

    Link

  23. says

    Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas are pushing a bill that would make the federal government reimburse Texas for its border security costs during Joe Biden’s presidency.

    Though Cruz and Cornyn both have splashy press releases about it, and though Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is sponsoring the companion bill in the House, neither the House nor Senate version has any text. But, of course, there is a breathless Fox News piece about it.

    If we take the press push at its face, the bill would reimburse Texas for border spending from Jan. 20, 2021, onward, and any funds left over at the end of the Trump administration would go toward paying down the national debt. Since we can’t actually read the bill, it isn’t clear whether Texas continues to get reimbursed even now or if it only covers these costs from when Texas was suffering under Biden’s reign of terror.

    Even without being able to read the full bill, it’s clear that it serves two purposes, neither of which has anything to do with border security.

    First, it allows Republicans to keep up the drumbeat that the Biden years were such a catastrophic failure that somehow states still bear the ill effects. And second, it allows Texas to get in on the cash grab. It’s pretty clear that the Trump administration has no ceiling on how much money it will spend on its violent immigration crackdown.

    This is especially rich coming from Texas, the state that spent the Biden era arguing to courts that, despite immigration being wholly a federal concern, the state had the authority to erect wire buoy barriers. And the state spent very handsomely on those barriers, throwing a cool $1 million at “experts” during litigation. Are federal taxpayers now on the hook for that as well?

    […] During President Donald Trump’s first term, Texas spent in the high 9 figures every year, so does it get reimbursed based on that spending?

    You’d think that none of this would be necessary, given how Mexico was going to pay for the wall. But even Texas Gov. Greg Abbott knew that was a lie, which is why he is spending billions of state money to build a wall instead. Or maybe he was going to crowdfund it?

    Cruz and Cronyn are craven, but they’re not stupid. It’s an excellent time to try to tap the federal coffers by demanding money to make life even more miserable for immigrants. So why shouldn’t Texas get some?

    Link

  24. says

    I was a farmer before I was a senator. The GOP’s megabill is a terrible deal., by Jon tester, former senator and current MSNBC political analyst.

    “Republicans love to pay lip service to rural voters, and farmers especially. But actions speak louder than words.”

    Related video, hosted by Nicolle Wallace, is available art the link.

    The recent farm provisions proposed by the GOP-led House of Representatives should give all Americans pause.

    I should know. For the last 50 years, including the 18 that I served as Montana’s U.S. senator, my wife, Sharla, and I have been farming the same land that my grandparents homesteaded in northcentral Montana more than 100 years ago. We know firsthand the challenges of the weather, markets and input costs. We live it every day.

    So I was especially troubled to see that House GOP leadership and Republicans in the House Agriculture Committee ignored decades of tradition and did not bother to gain bipartisan support for their farm bill proposals. Why is this important? Because bipartisan legislation is typically more thoughtful, resilient and more likely to stand the test of time. […]

    In a press release, Rep. G.T. Thompson of Pennsylvania claims his committee’s section of the House’s new reconciliation bill is “strengthening the farm safety net and delivering critical support to the farmers, workers, and communities that keep America fed.” I argue it’s a prime example of one-sided, partisan deal-making.

    [For more insights from Jon Tester, tune in to “All In” tonight, May 20, at 8 p.m. EST]

    And Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., agrees. “Instead of working with Democrats to lower costs from President Trump’s across-the-board tariffs, House Republicans have decided to pull the rug out from under families by cutting the SNAP benefits that 42 million Americans rely on to put food on the table — all to fund a tax cut for billionaires. That’s shameful,” said Klobuchar, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

    Klobuchar continues:

    This means more seniors, veterans, people with disabilities and children will go to bed hungry. It means farmers, who are already operating on razor-thin margins, will see billions in lost revenue. It will mean job losses and lost wages for everyone who is a part of the food system — from truck drivers to local grocers. And ultimately, these cuts threaten the Farm Bill coalition that has delivered bipartisan support for farmers, families and rural communities for decades, and will make it harder for Congress to pass a bipartisan Farm Bill.

    Typically, to get a broad-based bipartisan legislation passed that receives support from both rural and urban America, the Agriculture Committee would work to address both food insecurity — often but not always a bigger issue in urban areas — and family farm agricultural production — which tends to be more tied to rural America. This current House effort does neither.

    […] House Republicans have pushed more SNAP food assistance costs onto the states, which will result in more hungry people and, in turn, result in Washington blaming the states for the SNAP reductions.

    Secondly, Republicans seem intent on making farmers more reliant on subsidies from the federal government. Every farmer I know vastly prefers getting their paycheck from the marketplace, not the government or the American taxpayer. But this bill will increase farm subsidies while reducing the SNAP program.

    […] We need competition in agriculture for capitalism to work. Let’s enforce anti-trust violations and add enforcement language with real teeth.

    Perhaps most alarmingly, those same House Republicans who decry socialism on one hand are pushing American farmers to take more money from the government and less from the marketplace. That sounds a lot like socialism to me. To say nothing of the fact that reducing SNAP, in addition to hurting hungry people, will reduce demand for farm commodities — yet another negative impact on the market.

    And while Republicans in Congress are pushing what amounts to an anti-farmer agenda, the Trump administration’s tariffs haven’t gone away. And a resulting trade war will have devastating effects on agriculture production. Agricultural organizations and exporters have said as much. And so have individual farmers.

    House Republicans want to push through their reconciliation bill as quickly as possible. And they don’t seem to care whether it’s actually good for the American people. My advice would be to go back to the drawing board. Maybe then, they could actually come up with a modern proposal for the 21st century that would both help feed our nation and boost our agricultural production.

    Farms, and farmers, are integral to the health and prosperity of our citizens and our economy. Republicans love to pay lip service to rural voters, and farmers especially. But actions speak louder than words. I should know.

  25. JM says

    Youtube|The Military Show: Russia’s Nuclear Test BACKFIRES in Putin’s Face

    Russia’s planned test of the RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile on May 19, 2025, never happened. Reports from Ukraine’s GUR and independent outlets confirm that pre-launch indicators were present at the Sverdlovsk site, but no launch was detected. The missile’s absence from radar, social media, and press coverage strongly implies a last-minute failure or abort.

    No information on what happened, just no sightings or reports of a launch. It may have been canceled before launch or it may have failed shortly after launch. The RS-24 is supposed to be a very impressive system but appears to be unreliable. This appears to be a pattern for Russian systems, with multiple test launches for multiple systems failing in the past 10 years.
    This takes a lot of wind out of Putin’s threats. The implied threats, where he makes a big public test launch around the same time as another event, such as today’s phone call with Putin don’t work if the systems are not reliable. Even the more direct threats are a lot less threatening if the missiles are failing more then half the time.

  26. Reginald Selkirk says

    @24 Lynna, OM

    I was a farmer before I was a senator. The GOP’s megabill is a terrible deal., by Jon tester, former senator and current MSNBC political analyst…

    Fuck farmers. Trump is talking about taking special steps to protect farmers from being harmed by his tariffs. As a voting bloc, rural voters are as responsible as anyone for putting Trump in office. They deserve to share the harm caused by their poor electoral decisions.

  28. whheydt says

    Re: REginald Selkirk @ #26…
    For what it’s worth… Tester is a Democrat. Very unlikely that he voted for That Felon in the White House.

  29. JM says

    AP: Hegseth orders new review of Afghanistan withdrawal

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered another review of the military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed American troops and Afghans.

    There have already been multiple reviews but it’s easy to write in a way that blames Biden so it’s being done again. It was not well managed but the treaty Trump signed with Afghanistan forced some of the problems on Biden. It forced a hasty of a withdraw and basically handed power over to the Taliban.

  30. Pierce R. Butler says

    Reginald Selkirk @ # 26: … rural voters … deserve to share the harm caused by their poor electoral decisions.

    If, say, an electric power utility made some shady political moves, would you support “harm” to them that would leave millions of their customers without power? How about penalties for pharmaceutical corporations that would disrupt medical supplies? Whacking a crooked telecomms company so that major cities lose internet and phone services?

    As our only president regularly demonstrates, petulance and retribution do not result in improved governance.

  31. KG says

    Lynna, OM@19,

    I wonder if the election result in Romania is the first appearance of the “Trump effect” in Europe, after those in Canada and Australia – voters seeing the chaos caused by Trump, and voting against parties and politicians associated with him. Romania is stuffed with pointless and ever-changing political parties, mostly just the vehicles for an individual (often corrupt) politician, so it’s difficult to analyse the changes from the first round – in which Simion got 40% of the vote, almost twice Dan’s second place vote. It’s notable that Simion got endorsements from supposed parties of the left as well as the right; Dan apparently got most of the votes of the lower-placed candidates in the first round, but as I read the figures, that would not have been enough to make up the deficit. But there was a marked increase in turnout (from 52.21% to 64.72%), so maybe most of that increase was people unimpressed by any candidate enough to vote in the first round, voting against the Mump-backed Simion rather than for Dan.

  32. KG says

    Incidentally, Simion first claimed victory (bfore any results were in), then conceded, now says the election should be annulled because of foreign interference (the reason given for annulling the original first round in which Călin Georgescu, another Trump-alike, came first). There seems to me a genuine question about what degree of “foreign interference” is legitimate. AFAIK, in the current election it is no more than endorsements (to both sides), while Russian interference in the original first round allegedly consisted of running a covert online campaign, over €1 million in undeclared funds, and cyber-attacks on election infrastructure. I had, and still have, some doubts about the wisdom of the annulment, as it gave the far right at home and internationally a plausible grievance – better if possible to have defeated Georgescu in the second round (his first round total was considerably lower than Simion’s). Still, for now, no doubt that this is a heavy defeat for the Putin-Trump-Orbán-Le Pen-etc. fascist axis.

  33. Reginald Selkirk says

    @28 whheydt

    That’s why my displeasure was directed at farmers, not Sen. Tester.
    Trump ready to bail out farmers amid trade war squeeze, Rollins says Apr 27, 2025

    This has more to do with receiving an invitation to my high school reunion than it does with John Tester. I am not sure that I want to spend an evening with a bunch of people who thought it was a great idea to put a convicted felon in charge of appointing federal judges.

  35. Reginald Selkirk says

    Jupiter was formerly twice its current size and had a much stronger magnetic field, study says

    …
    In a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, Konstantin Batygin, professor of planetary science at Caltech; and Fred C. Adams, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Michigan; provide a detailed look into Jupiter’s primordial state.

    Their calculations reveal that roughly 3.8 million years after the solar system’s first solids formed—a key moment when the disk of material around the sun, known as the protoplanetary nebula, was dissipating—Jupiter was significantly larger and had an even more powerful magnetic field…

    Batygin and Adams approached this question by studying Jupiter’s tiny moons Amalthea and Thebe, which orbit even closer to Jupiter than Io, the smallest and nearest of the planet’s four large Galilean moons.

    Because Amalthea and Thebe have slightly tilted orbits, Batygin and Adams analyzed these small orbital discrepancies to calculate Jupiter’s original size: approximately twice its current radius, with a predicted volume that is the equivalent of over 2,000 Earths. The researchers also determined that Jupiter’s magnetic field at that time was approximately 50 times stronger than it is today.

    Adams highlights the remarkable imprint the past has left on today’s solar system: “It’s astonishing that even after 4.5 billion years, enough clues remain to let us reconstruct Jupiter’s physical state at the dawn of its existence.” …

  36. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump’s ‘Pro Life’ IRS Nominee Reportedly Followed NSFW X Accounts

    A new report shows that Billy Long, President Trump’s nominee to run the Internal Revenue Service—a man who, during his run for Congress, characterized himself as “pro-life”—has an X account that recently followed a number of NSFW accounts, including some featuring pregnant women. Predictably, the White House has blamed the account’s preoccupation with racy material on a hack.

    Rolling Stone magazine writes that the X account for Long, a former GOP congressman from Missouri, follows some 8,000 profiles, including several that involve porn or porn-adjacent material. One such account, dubbed “Pregnant Redhead,” is, while not porn, exactly, a prolific poster of tradwife-type content that fetishizes female domesticity. Other accounts Long allegedly followed included more explicit pages featuring naked pregnant women.

    Some of these accounts are a bizarre hodgepodge of material. For instance, one account that RS points to does include a number of videos of naked pregnant women. However, it also includes videos of a lot of other stuff, including WWE and sports clips…

  37. Reginald Selkirk says

    Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly dies at 75

    Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia died Wednesday, his family announced. He was 75 years old.

    Connolly’s death comes weeks after he announced that he would not seek reelection in 2026 and would be stepping back from his post as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee because his cancer had returned…

    House Democrats elected Connolly to serve as the ranking member of the Oversight Committee following the November elections. His decision last month to step down from the top position on the panel set off an internal race among Democrats to succeed him.

    Connolly is the third House Democrat to die this year. Rep. Sylvester Turner of Texas died on March 4, and Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona died on March 13.

  38. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tourists scramble as 600-year-old Chinese tower partially collapses

    Visitors to a centuries-old tourist site in eastern China were sent scrambling after hundreds of roof tiles came loose and cascaded more than two stories to the ground.

    The Fengyang Drum Tower—built in 1375 and used to announce the beginning of ceremonies and the time of day—is one of the largest such towers in China, according to state media.

    The tower is a major tourist attraction in Anhui province, which is around 200 miles away from Beijing, China’s capital.

    But on Monday the quiet around the site was shattered as hundreds of roof tiles began slipping from the roof and crashing to the ground, raising a huge cloud of gray-brown dust.
    …
    “There was no one in the square and no one was injured,” he told state media outlet The Beijing News…

  39. StevoR says

    what if black holes didn’t always begin with a bang? What if, instead, they started quietly—growing inside stars, which still appear alive from the outside, without anyone noticing? Our recent astrophysical research, published in Physical Review D, suggests this could be happening—and the story is far stranger and more fascinating than we imagined.

    The mystery of tiny black holes
    Recent gravitational wave detections have hinted at the existence of near- and sub-solar-mass black holes—far lighter than those typically formed in stellar explosions. That’s puzzling. According to standard models, stars that small shouldn’t be able to collapse into black holes at all. So where are these low-mass black holes coming from?

    One intriguing theory suggests that these objects may originate from dark matter, which we still barely understand. This invisible substance permeates the cosmos, shaping galaxies with its gravity but eluding direct detection. Some researchers believe dark matter could slowly accumulate inside stars. Over long timescales, this buildup might trigger a quiet collapse—forming a tiny black hole at the heart of an otherwise normal-looking star.

    Source : https://phys.org/news/2025-05-black-holes-stars-silently.html

  43. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/jen-psaki

    A White House press briefing re-do (Jen’s version)
    Video is 2:35 minutes

    Trump’s people fall apart under heavy questioning from Senate Democrats
    Video is 5:38 minutes

    ‘I did not waver’: Rep. McIver speaks out on federal charges after ICE center confrontation
    Video is 9:46 minutes

  44. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all Chris Hayes

    Former Sen. Jon Tester warns ‘Congress has ceded all power’ to Trump
    Video is 8:26 minutes

    RFK Jr. grilled over health department cuts
    Video is 5:58 minutes

    ‘Political retribution’: Newark mayor speaks out on Trump DOJ charging Dem congresswoman
    Video is 7:03 minutes

  45. StevoR says

    @ 35. Reginald Selkirk : You beat me to it on the supersized early Jove one there!

    .***

    A newly discovered house-size asteroid is set to make a close, yet harmless approach to Earth today (May 21), passing within one-third of the Earth-moon distance.

    The close approach will happen at approximately 1:30 p.m. ET on May 21 (1730 GMT), at which point the asteroid, designated 2025 KF, will pass a mere 71,700 miles (115,000 kilometers) from Earth, according to NASA.

    During the pass, the asteroid will be travelling at a speed of 25,880 miles per hour (41,650 kph) relative to Earth. Its trajectory will see it pass closest to our planet’s south polar region before continuing its long, looping orbit around the sun.

    Source : https://www.space.com/stargazing/house-size-asteroid-will-pass-between-earth-and-moon-on-may-21

  47. says

    Trump claims gas costs $1.99 per gallon, becoming his newest unnecessary lie

    Video about Trump and the economy is available at the link.

    Asked about Republican plans to cut food aid to low-income families, Donald Trump gave a rambling and dishonest answer that culminated in an unexpected way. “Energy’s down,” the president claimed, apparently referred to consumer costs. “Gasoline? They’re now buying — they’re buying gasoline now for $1.99.”

    It was, among other things, a familiar lie. In fact, in recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly claimed, in a variety of settings, that consumers in unnamed states are paying $1.98 per gallon. During an appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” earlier this month, the president told host Kristen Welker:

    Did you see oil prices? Did you see gasoline is now below, in many cases, in many states, below 2 dollars a gallon? $1.98, $1.99, $1.97? … I have it down to $1.98 in many states right now. When you go that much lower on energy — which is ahead of my prediction because I really thought I could get it down into the $2.50s — we have it down at $1.98 in numerous places.

    None of this was even close to being true. According to AAA’s price tracker, the national average in the United States is $3.18 per gallon, and literally zero states have prices below $2.60 per gallon.

    […] To be sure, Trump lying is hardly unusual. But what strikes me as notable about these claims about gas prices is the simple fact that they’re unnecessary, easily discredited, and ultimately self-defeating lies.

    The problem is simple: American consumers will know the president’s claims aren’t true every time they pass a gas station. Every people fill up their tanks, they’ll know that they aren’t paying “$1.98, $1.99, $1.97.”

    Just as notably, it would be just as easy for Trump to tell the truth. There are different ways to measure energy costs, but by any fair measure, the price Americans pay for gasoline has, in fact, gone down since the president returned to the White House. The drop is largely the result of international fears of a recession, and not because of anything Trump did — in fact, domestic energy companies have faltered during the president’s second term — but if he wants to tell the public that gas is cheaper now than before Inauguration Day, that would be true.

    But as is too often the case, Trump isn’t satisfied with a flattering fact, instead preferring to peddle made-up nonsense that even his most loyal sycophants would struggle to believe.

  48. says

    Just one telling detail from the hearing in which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was questioned by the Senate Appropriations Committee:

    […] As the hearing progressed, and the problem persisted, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington raised a highly provocative point.

    “Secretary Kennedy, listening to your testimony last week frankly left me pretty confused and concerned about what’s happening at your department,” the senator said. “You repeatedly claimed that staffing and funding cuts that have been reported on publicly and even confirmed by [HHS] staff are not happening. So either you’re lying, or you’re not the one making decisions.” […]

    As bad as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is, is he just the face of something worse? It looks like Kennedy is a false front for Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and a false front that is trying to obscure actions taken by DOGE doofuses.

  49. says

    Republicans’ megabill would give to the rich and take from the poor

    “If GOP officials are looking for good news in the Congressional Budget Office’s new report on the party’s reconciliation package, they won’t find any.”

    Related video at the link.

    Common sense might suggest that congressional Republicans would want to know basic details about their giant reconciliation package, such as how much it would cost and the practical implications of its provisions. GOP lawmakers are, after all, federal policymakers. It stands to reason that they’d care enough about governing to want to legislate with open eyes.

    But that’s not the case. Just as Republicans scrambled in 2017 to pass massive tax breaks without waiting for a score from the Congressional Budget Office, GOP lawmakers decided to do the same thing in 2025, deliberately choosing willful ignorance about their own legislation.

    That did not, however, stop congressional Democrats from asking the CBO to scrutinize the House Republicans’ proposal, and as The Associated Press reported, the nonpartisan budget office’s findings were quite brutal.

    A fresh analysis from the Congressional Budget Office said the tax provisions would increase the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion over the decade, while the changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other services would tally $1 trillion in reduced spending. The lowest-income households in the U.S. would see their resources drop, while the highest ones would see a boost, the CBO said.

    For Republicans, there’s plenty of data to chew on in the CBO’s newly released findings, but if GOP officials are looking for encouraging news in the report, they won’t find any. The nonpartisan budget analysts found that the Republicans’ proposal would:
    – decrease household resources for the poorest Americans by 2% in the short term, and 4% by 2033 as additional GOP cuts take effect;
    – increase household resources for the wealthiest Americans, thanks almost entirely to Republican tax breaks;
    increase the budget deficit by $3.8 trillion;
    – take health care benefits from roughly 15 million Americans;
    – cut roughly $700 million from Medicaid;
    – and cut $267 billion from SNAP (better known as food stamps).

    Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement, “This is what Republicans are fighting for — lining the pockets of their billionaire donors while children go hungry and families get kicked off their health care. CBO’s nonpartisan analysis makes it crystal clear: Donald Trump and House Republicans are selling out the middle class to make the ultra-rich even richer. Every word out of Trump’s mouth about helping working Americans was a lie.”

    […] The contemporary Republican Party will ignore the CBO’s findings and hit the gas, hoping members support the legislation before the facts gain traction. [Alert! Call your representative now.]

    As of this writing, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is still under consideration in the House Budget Committee — its members began work on this at 1 a.m. local time — though it is expected to clear the panel in the coming hours.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team have indicated they’d like to see a floor vote before the day’s end, though some far-right members continue to suggest that’s unlikely. Watch this space.

  50. says

    […] In what has been mostly a second-tier immigration case because it doesn’t involve the Alien Enemies Act, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy of Boston has been trying to rein in the Trump administration’s deportation of migrants to third countries without notice or a chance to raise concerns about their safety.

    But that case has morphed into what is increasingly looking like a constitutional showdown, with Murphy holding an emergency hearing last night after evidence emerged that as many as a dozen migrants were flown yesterday to South Sudan without notice or hearing, in apparent violation of Murphy’s temporary order.

    “Based on what I have been told, this seems like it may be contempt,” Murphy said, according to the NYT, one of the few news outlets able to cover last night’s emergency hearing.

    During the hearing, the Trump administration lawyers either didn’t know or refused to divulge key information to Murphy, claiming the details of the removals – including the status of the plane and its ultimate destination – were classified.

    One key but unverified piece of information emerged in the hearing, which Murphy recessed a couple of times for the Trump administration lawyers to try to obtain more details. As to one particular migrant whose initials are N.M. and is from Myanmar, a Trump DOJ lawyer said he was returned home to Myanmar, not South Sudan, the NYT reports. That contradicts the notice that N.M.’s lawyers say they were given by ICE. Sending him back to his home country probably would not violate Murphy’s existing order.

    To buy time, Murphy ordered the Trump administration “to maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful.”

    Ahead of another hearing in the matter set for 11 a.m. ET today, Murphy directed the government to be prepared to provide specific information about these removals. As for N.M, Murphy zeroed in on even more specific information, including which government officials were involved: “Defendants must nonetheless be prepared to address the details of his removal, including when and to where he was removed, the names of individuals personally involved in executing his removal, and any information currently in Defendants’ possession regarding his current whereabouts.”

    […] a number of examples of egregious Trump administration conduct:
    – In one aspect of the case involving a gay Guatemalan man deported to Mexico, the Trump DOJ canceled a deposition of a government official at the last minute and filed a notice of error that it didn’t have evidence it had previously claimed in court to have – and in the notice outed the man by name.
    – Judge Murphy was forced to issue a clarification to head off the Trump administration from deporting a group of migrants – including N.M. above – to Libya.
    – Judge Murphy has already ordered discovery into whether the Trump administration violated his order by flying Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo before removing them to El Salvador. The Trump administration said it wasn’t a violation of the order because the flights were conducted by the Defense Department, not the Department of Homeland Security.

    Link

  52. birgerjohansson says

    Farron Cousins:

    “Trump Shocks Kennedy Center Crowd With Vulgar Threats”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=NavzJIWvYlw

    Nothing shocking aboot it, unless you have been living in denial since 2016.
    (I know it is spelled “about”, I choose the Canadian pronounciation)

  53. says

    Democrats Don’t Need To Apologize. They Need To Attack., by Mark Sumner

    As I’m writing this, CNN commentator Van Jones and CNN host Jake Tapper are nodding sagely to each other, calling on Democrats to apologize for a “crime against the Republic.” As charter members of the Joe Biden-so-old chorus, Jones and Tapper are adamant that every member of the Democratic Party needs to get on their knees, rend their clothing, and above all, acknowledge just how right Tapper & Co. were in being the first to board U.S.S. Backstab.

    Well, here’s the TL;DR version of the article that follows: Fuck their apology. And fuck them.

    Democrats don’t need to apologize. […]

    The only ones demanding an apology from Democrats are the asshats who want a big ol’ pat on the back for being so gosh-darn clever. They can take that advice and shove it.

    The enemy is there, on the field, surrounded by an army of sycophants and psychopaths blythly engaged in the dismantling of our nation. They are not pausing. They are not swayed by falling approval numbers, falling markets, or gathering storms. They aren’t conducting internal polls to see what positions the public finds palatable. They are not bothering to hold up a finger to test the political winds. […]

    They. Are. Winning.

    For any American who has spent more than five minutes of this year looking at something other than Real Housewives, White Lotus, or Fortnight—a percentage of the population that seems to be shockingly small—the fact that Donald Trump has set a record for lowest approval rating at the end of 100 days in office has to be somewhat heartening. It may even look like progress. It’s not.

    Despite that seemingly damning approval number, those who voted for Trump—even those who don’t consider themselves “MAGA”—don’t regret their vote. […]

    Those counting on a mid-term election to bring in a Congress that will at least slow Trump’s dictatorial drive had better think again. Unlike the run-up to the 2018 elections, the Republican Party currently enjoys a significant advantage over the Democratic Party in public approval. And that advantage has only grown since Trump took office. [!!]

    If those mid-term elections were held today, there’s a good chance that Republicans would extend their lead in both chambers.

    That’s not because Republicans have better ideas. It is because Republicans spend exactly zero days, zero hours, and zero minutes apologizing. They don’t apologize for Trump even when he’s clearly wrong (which he always is). They don’t apologize for abdicating the powers of Congress. They don’t apologize for spending two full years investigating a $5000 car loan Biden made to his son while ignoring Trump lusting after a $400 million pleasure dome in the sky or his renting out the presidency for direct bribes paid in cryptocurrency. They don’t apologize for celebrating the domestic terrorists who had them cowering under their desks in 2021.

    Republicans have thrown away their reverse gear and shitcanned any who weren’t marching in lockstep. And it has benefited them greatly. […]

    The RNC “autopsy” on the 2012 election is a bracing critique […] That carefully constructed report insisted that the Republicans would “never win again” unless they reached out to women and minorities, threw away tax ideas that were harmful to the working class, and stopped opposing policies that would benefit those “unemployed or disabled and in need of help.”

    Instead, the Republicans did none of that. They doubled down on racism, tripled down on misogyny, and pentupled down on their love of billionaires. And they won. […]

    This doesn’t mean that racism is good policy or popular with the American public. It doesn’t mean that degrading women enjoys wide approval. It doesn’t mean that shifting the tax burden onto the shoulders of the working class is anything less than a disaster.

    It means that sticking with your principles, defending those principles, and refusing to surrender your principles is a winning combination; even if the principles suck.

    Democrats can win because they have better ideas than Republicans. Democratic ideas benefit more people, offer more opportunity, and provide real security rather than tough-guy posturing. But Democrats can only win if they are out there every day, every hour, attacking Trump, attacking the Republicans, and pushing their own ideas without qualm or reservation. They can not apologize their way to victory.

    The belief that there is some developing schism in the Republican Party that will push Republicans in the House to oppose to Trump is beyond foolish. […]

    Why are Democratic Party numbers still falling? Because voters (rightly) perceive many Democratic officials as being more concerned about their polling numbers than they are about the end of the free press, illegal searches and seizures, or massive corruption.

    Tapper and Jones aren’t alone. There’s still a burgeoning class of professional political consultants and cable news seat warmers who offer a 24/7 stream of advice for the Democratic Party, or worse, pretend to represent the party. Their advice is inevitably, inexorably, and undeniably awful.

    They only self-reflecting the Democratic Party needs is wondering why it ever listened to this feeble collection of cowardly couch potatoes in the first place. […]

  54. JM says

    USA Today: Trump administration asks Supreme Court to block disclosure in FOIA fight over Musk’s DOGE

    In an emergency request filed on May 21, the Justice Department asked the court to pause judicial orders requiring DOGE produce documents and testimony about its operations as a federal court decides whether the Department of Government Efficiency started by Elon Musk must comply with the Freedom of Information Act.

    I like the meta level blockage that Trump’s DOJ is trying here. They are asking the Supreme Court to block federal court from determining if DOGE is subject to FOIA requests. This pure stalling tactic, somebody has to make this decision and it will likely be appealed back to the Supreme Court no matter what the federal court decides.
    Plus notice the underlying two step the Trump administration is trying to pull. DOGE is just a special advisory council and not subject to FOIA requests, but it gets to make major decision on hiring and policy for other departments of the government. They have tried issuing orders to groups that are not even part of the executive branch. One of these two should be wrong. An advisory group should be making public recommendations, only an official part of the government subject to FIOA requests should be making policy decisions.

  56. says

    JM @54: “DOGE is just a special advisory council and not subject to FOIA requests, but it gets to make major decision on hiring and policy for other departments of the government. […] An advisory group should be making public recommendations, only an official part of the government subject to FIOA requests should be making policy decisions.”

    True. And well said. It is revealing that the Trump administration is trying so hard to obscure DOGE operations.

  57. says

    Trump admin accepts jet from Qatar, ignoring legal restrictions and bipartisan pushback

    “Team Trump’s decision to accept the Qatari “gift” doesn’t end the controversy […]”

    Related video at the link.

    When the news broke last week that Donald Trump was poised to accept a superluxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar, some of the relevant players made clear that the plans had not yet been finalized. In fact, a spokesperson for Qatar’s government referred to the “possible transfer” of the aircraft, adding that “no decision has been made.”

    A week later, however, it’s apparently a done deal. The New York Times reported:

    The United States has accepted a 747 jetliner as a gift from the government of Qatar, and the Air Force has now been asked to figure out a way to rapidly upgrade it so it can be put into use as a new Air Force One for President Trump, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

    Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement, “The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations. The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the president of the United States.”

    The Times’ report added that the Defense Department “has not given an estimate of when the work on the Qatari plane might be done, even though Mr. Trump and the White House have made clear the president wants it soon, perhaps even by the end of the year.”

    What the president “wants” is likely to prove irrelevant: NBC News recently reported that converting the luxury jet will “take years to complete.”

    Indeed, it’s worth emphasizing that the administration’s decision to accept the Qatari “gift” doesn’t end the controversy; it starts the controversy.

    […] Where will Trump find the money to pay for this “free” plane? Why does he keep pretending that this “gift” isn’t for him personally, even after he’s publicly suggested otherwise? How does Trump intend to overcome the seemingly obvious fact that the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause still exists, and it appears to prohibit exactly this kind of arrangement?

    How does Trump plan to explain away his earlier condemnations of presidents accepting foreign gifts? Why is the president apparently indifferent to the fact that even many of his Republican allies have expressed opposition to this idea?

    […] a group of Senate Democrats last week formally requested that the Pentagon’s inspector general’s office open an investigation into the matter, which might actually happen.

    This story, in other words, is just getting started. […]

    On March 4, Sean Parnell discussed some DOGE findings.

    […] “At the DOD, we’ve been working hand in hand with the DOGE team,” Parnell said. “And as the secretary said, we welcome that process because that process will make us more lethal. And that means that our warfighters on the battlefield will be more successful.”

    Among the DOGE findings, Parnell highlighted $1.9 million for holistic diversity, equity and inclusion transformation and training; $6 million to the University of Montana to “strengthen American democracy by bridging divides”; $3.5 million by the Defense Human Resources Activity to support DEI groups; and $1.6 million to the University of Florida to study the “social and institutional detriments of vulnerability and resilience to climate hazards in [the] African Sahel.” […]

    Link

    That tells you what kind of Trump lackey Parnell is

  58. says

    Judge Finds DHS Violated Court Order In Sudden South Sudan Removal Scheme
    Followup to comment 50.

    The Trump administration sent a planeload of detainees to South Sudan on Tuesday, according to the detainees’ lawyers, allegedly violating a clear court order to provide people sent to third countries with notice and time to challenge their removal.

    It’s the latest example of brazen defiance of the courts from the Trump administration. […]

    Judge Murphy said he would take the government at its word that using O.C.G.’s full name in a filing was a mistake. Noting that the government had corrected the error, Murphy said no further court action is needed. […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/stephen-miller-throws-dart-at-map

    “Stephen Miller Throws Dart At Map, Deports Migrants To … South Sudan?”

    “Is that legal when the country’s on the edge of civil war? South Sudan, we mean.”

    In apparent violation of a court order, the Trump administration has begun deporting migrants from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan. Or to be carefully accurate since these shitbags never tell the truth about what they’re doing, the government appears to have begun flying deportees from those two countries to South Sudan, because their own governments refuse to accept back their deported citizens. Last night, a federal judge ordered the government to keep the deportees in its custody while he considers whether to order they be returned to US soil.

    The order, by US District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts, requires the government to

    “maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful.”

    While Murphy left the details to the government’s discretion, he said he expects the migrants “will be treated humanely.”

    And yes, that was an order, not a hope. Whether the government will follow it is anyone’s guess, since it already appears to have sent the Asian deportees to an unstable African nation that’s on the brink of civil war. That also seems like a pretty blatant violation of Murphy’s own April 18 order blocking such “third country removals,” unless the government follows some very clear fucking rules. […]

  60. says

    […] Ric [Ric Grenell, who Donald Trump now has simultaneously trying to negotiate Americans out of Venezuelan prison and pulling off a culture-cancelling hostile takeover at the Kennedy Center for The Performing Arts] is already out here yip-yapping that they have found CRIMES there (at the Kennedy Center, not in Venezuelan prison), announcing at a dinner Monday night for Kennedy Center board members and hangers-on that there was “$26 million in phantom revenue, fake revenue” in the Kennedy Center’s books. “It’s criminal,” he said. “We’re going to refer this to the US attorney’s office here. We’re lucky enough to have the attorney general on the board of the Kennedy Center who heard all the details. Today she heard the details, and this is unacceptable in America to have a fake revenue of $26 million fraud on previous donors.”

    Oh yeah, we almost forgot Pam Jo Bondi has (at least) a third job too, serving on the Kennedy Center Board when she isn’t being attorney general or weaponizing the law and shame with Ed Martin over at the Weaponization Working Group, official keepers of the Trump enemies list. [video of Trump at Kennedy Center Board dinner]

    Noted the New York Times, “It was not immediately clear what officials thought might be criminal, or why they thought it merited the attention of federal investigators.” Something something deferred revenue that dumdums who know nothing about running a nonprofit don’t understand.

    Never mind, the important thing is that the Kennedy Center hurt the feelings of the world’s most sensitive and dramatic diva long ago, and he vowed to take his vengeance, and stand on the bones of his enemies while doing that double-handjob dance to “Memory” from Cats.

    […] Before Ric made this announcement Monday night, though, Trump got up and treated the Board to a half-hour performance that included his hit song, STOLLEN ELECTION.

    “And then they rigged the election, and then I said, ‘You know what I’ll do? I’ll run again and I’ll shove it up their ass.”

    […] he finally got around to ranting specifically to the reason he was there:

    To announce that in addition to “Lay Miz,” he will also bring back The Phantom of the Opera, with its wholesome hero, a disfigured basement-dweller who stalks women. Trump looooves The Phantom of the Opera and its Andrew Lloyd Webber synth-organs, because as it’s often been noted, his taste froze in 1989. Some People Have Been Saying that playing The Phantom of the Opera is one of the few ways to soothe an overheated Trump. [video at the link]

    […] He said some blah blah blah DEI:

    The programming was out of control with rampant political propaganda, DEI, and inappropriate shows. They had dance parties for quote ‘queer and trans youth.’ And I guess that’s all right for certain people.… But that wasn’t working out too well.

    And yet, appearing at the MAGA Kennedy Center will be Mrs. Doubtfire, Chicago, and Spamalot, which all have drag parts. Lez Miz also seems pretty political, too, and not in a “Let’s celebrate the fascist takeover” kind of way? Go figure. (Donald Trump does not understand the plot of Les Misérables or any other musical.)

    The Kennedy Center has been on Trump’s retribution list since at least 2017, after Kennedy Center Honors awardees Norman Lear and dancer Carmen de Lavallade threatened to boycott if Trump attended […]

    Intriguing character, that Ric Grenell. During Trump’s last campaign, he was the only person who was able to lure Melania out of her gazillion-dollar closet to come wheedle money at his Log Cabin Republican lunch, which was her only campaign appearance other than the convention. […]

    It’s all part of a war on the arts, and, well, war on everybody! Which has always been part of the right-wing wish list. Trump’s 2026 budget takes it farther than ever, calling for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, and dozens of organizations have been notified that grants have been rejected or rescinded. Moreover, he is demanding a DEI purge of all institutions. What will be left of our arts institutions, museums libraries, universities, etc., in the future remains to be seen. […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trumps-yip-yap-dog-ric-grenell-gonna

  62. says

    Another embarrassing Oval Office meeting, in which Trump displays his ignorance while insulting a world leader.

    Trump confronts South African leader with ‘white genocide’ accusations

    […] Trump pulled South African President Cyril Ramaphosa into an extended and at times tense debate about claims of “genocide” against white farmers in South Africa, playing a video in the Oval Office to support his allegations.

    The otherwise cordial meeting began to devolve after a reporter asked Trump what it would take to convince him there is no genocide targeting white farmers, like the president and other allies have claimed. Ramaphosa jumped in to say it would take Trump listening to the voices and perspectives of native South Africans, including some who joined him on the U.S. trip.

    Trump then motioned for an aide to queue up a video, a sign he and his team were prepared to defend their controversial claims. The roughly four-minute video, which the White House later shared on the social platform X, included clips of South Africans saying “kill the farmer” and chanting about shooting Afrikaners.

    “This is very bad. These are burial sites right here … over a thousand of white farmers and those cars are lined up to pay love on Sunday morning, each one of those white things you see are a cross. There’s approximately a thousand of them, they’re all white farmers,” Trump said during a part of the video.

    “I’d like to know where that is. Because this I’ve never seen,” Ramaphosa said of the burial sites.

    Ramaphosa pushed back on Trump’s assertions that white farmers were having their land taken away and being killed. He acknowledged there was “criminality” in the country, but he noted that a majority of victims of crime in South Africa were Black.

    South African Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen, who is white, spoke during the meeting to denounce the language in the video. He said the individuals from the clips are leaders of the opposition parties in South Africa and said the Ramaphosa government has made an effort to keep them out of power.

    […] A reporter in the Oval Office asked what Trump would like the South African president to do about the situation.

    “I don’t know. I don’t know. Look, these are articles over the last few days. Death of people,” Trump said, going through online news articles printed out on paper. “Death. Death … white South Africans are fleeing because of the violence and racist laws.”

    Ramaphosa replied, “Our government policy is completely, completely against what you were saying, even in the Parliament. […]

    At one point, Trump also mentioned that Tesla CEO Elon Musk is from South Africa, suggesting he didn’t want to drag Musk into the debate while the billionaire stood in the Oval Office behind Vice President Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

    Additionally, Trump blamed the media for not reporting on South Africa, mentioning that an NBC reporter asked about the Qatari airplane gift to Trump after the video was played instead of asking about the Afrikaner “genocide.”

    “I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” Ramaphosa said before laughing.

    “I wish you did, I’d take it,” Trump said. “If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it.”

    Ramaphosa came to the meeting with a plan to try to assuage Trump’s concerns and appeal to him on a personal level, bringing with him famous South African golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen. Trump is known to be a big golf fan and a frequent player and referred to both as friends.

    Els appealed to Trump about the importance of the U.S. as an ally for South Africa, with Trump praising his remarks. […]

    South African officials have rejected the Trump administration’s claims, saying there is no evidence of genocide or persecution of Afrikaners in the country. […]

    Link

  63. says

    New York Times link

    “The Spy Factory: Russia’s intelligence services turned Brazil into an assembly line for deep-cover operatives.”

    Artem Shmyrev had everyone fooled. The Russian intelligence officer seemed to have built the perfect cover identity. He ran a successful 3-D printing business and shared an upscale apartment in Rio de Janeiro with his Brazilian girlfriend and a fluffy orange-and-white Maine coon cat.

    But most important, he had an authentic birth certificate and passport that cemented his alias as Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich, a 34-year-old Brazilian citizen.

    After six years lying low, he was impatient to begin real spy work.

    “No one wants to feel loser,” he wrote in a 2021 text message to his Russian wife, who was also an intelligence officer, using imperfect English. “That is why I continue working and hoping.”

    He was not alone. For years, a New York Times investigation found, Russia used Brazil as a launchpad for its most elite intelligence officers, known as illegals. In an audacious and far-reaching operation, the spies shed their Russian pasts. They started businesses, made friends and had love affairs — events that, over many years, became the building blocks of entirely new identities.

    Major Russian spy operations have been uncovered in the past, including in the United States in 2010. This was different. The goal was not to spy on Brazil, but to become Brazilian. Once cloaked in credible back stories, they would set off for the United States, Europe or the Middle East and begin working in earnest.

    The Russians essentially turned Brazil into an assembly line for deep-cover operatives like Mr. Shmyrev.

    One started a jewelry business. Another was a blond, blue-eyed model. A third was admitted into an American university. There was a Brazilian researcher who landed work in Norway, and a married couple who eventually went to Portugal.

    Then it all came crashing down.

    For the past three years, Brazilian counterintelligence agents have quietly and methodically hunted these spies. Through painstaking police work, these agents discovered a pattern that allowed them to identify the spies, one by one.

    Agents have uncovered at least nine Russian officers operating under Brazilian cover identities, according to documents and interviews. Six have never been publicly identified until now. The investigation has already spanned at least eight countries, officials said, with intelligence coming from the United States, Israel, the Netherlands, Uruguay and other Western security services.

    Using hundreds of investigative documents and interviews with dozens of police and intelligence officials across three continents, The Times pieced together details of the Russian spy operation in Brazil and the secretive effort to take it out.

    Dismantling the Kremlin’s spy factory was more than just a routine bit of counterespionage. It was part of the damaging fallout from a decade of Russian aggression. Russian spies helped shoot down a passenger plane en route from Amsterdam in 2014. They interfered in elections in the United States, France and elsewhere. They poisoned perceived enemies and plotted coups.

    But it was President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 that galvanized a global response to Russian spies even in parts of the world where those officers had long enjoyed a degree of impunity. Among those countries was Brazil, which historically has had friendly relations with Russia.

    Brazil’s investigation dealt a devastating blow to Moscow’s illegals program. It eliminated a cadre of highly trained officers who will be difficult to replace. At least two were arrested. Others beat a hasty retreat to Russia. With their covers blown, they will most likely never work abroad again.

    At the heart of this extraordinary defeat was a team of counterintelligence agents from the Brazilian Federal Police, the same unit that investigated Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for plotting a coup.

    […] In early April 2022, just a few months after Russian troops rolled into Ukraine, the C.I.A. passed an urgent and extraordinary message to Brazil’s Federal Police.

    The Americans reported that an undercover officer in Russia’s military intelligence service had recently turned up in the Netherlands to take an internship with the International Criminal Court — just as it began to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

    The would-be intern was traveling on a Brazilian passport under the name Victor Muller Ferreira. He’d received a graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University under that name. But his real name, the C.I.A. said, was Sergey Cherkasov. Dutch border officials had denied him entry, and he was now on a plane to São Paulo.

    With limited evidence and only hours to act, the Brazilians had no authority to arrest Mr. Cherkasov at the airport. So, for several anxious days, the police kept him under heavy surveillance while he remained free at a São Paulo hotel.

    Finally, the officers got a warrant and arrested him — not for espionage, but on the more modest charge of using fraudulent documents.

    […] His blue Brazilian passport was authentic. He had a Brazilian voter registration card as required by law and a certificate showing that he had completed compulsory military service.

    All were genuine.

    […] It was only when the police found his birth certificate that Mr. Cherkasov’s story — and the entire Russian operation in Brazil — began to crumble.

    […] Brazil seemed an ideal place for Mr. Putin’s chosen spies to build their lore. The Brazilian passport is one of the world’s most useful, allowing visa-free travel to nearly as many countries as the American one. Someone with European features and a slight accent is unlikely to stand out in multiethnic Brazil.

    And while many countries require verification from a hospital or doctor before issuing birth certificates, Brazil allows a niche exception for those born in rural areas. The authorities will issue a birth certificate to anyone who declares, in the presence of two witnesses, that a baby was born to at least one Brazilian parent.

    The system is also decentralized and vulnerable to local corruption.

    With a birth certificate in hand, it’s just a matter of applying for voter registration, military papers and, finally, a passport.

    Once this is obtained, a spy can go nearly anywhere in the world. […]

    Much more at the link.

  64. Reginald Selkirk says

    Microsoft Says 394,000 Windows Computers Infected By Lumma Malware Globally

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC:

    Microsoft said Wednesday that it broke down the Lumma Stealer malware project with the help of law enforcement officials across the globe. The tech giant said in a blog post that its digital crimes unit discovered more than 394,000 Windows computers were infected by the Lumma malware worldwide between March 16 through May 16. The Lumma malware was a favorite hacking tool used by bad actors, Microsoft said in the post. Hackers used the malware to steal passwords, credit cards, bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets.

    Microsoft said its digital crimes unit was able to dismantle the web domains underpinning Lumma’s infrastructure with the help of a court order from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The U.S. Department of Justice then took control of Lumma’s “central command structure” and squashed the online marketplaces where bad actors purchased the malware. The cybercrime control center of Japan “facilitated the suspension of locally based Lumma infrastructure,” the blog post said.

    “Working with law enforcement and industry partners, we have severed communications between the malicious tool and victims,” Microsoft said in the post. “Moreover, more than 1,300 domains seized by or transferred to Microsoft, including 300 domains actioned by law enforcement with the support of Europol, will be redirected to Microsoft sinkholes.” Cloudflare, Bitsight and Lumen also helped break down the Lumma malware ecosystem.

  65. Reginald Selkirk says

    Ukrainian ex-top official shot dead outside Madrid school

    A former leading Ukrainian official has been shot dead outside an American school in the Spanish capital Madrid, authorities have confirmed.

    Andriy Portnov, 51, had just dropped his children off at the school in the Pozuelo de Alarcón area of the city and was walking to his car in the school parking area.

    At least one unidentified attacker fired several shots at the victim before fleeing into a wooded area in a nearby public park, witnesses said.

    Portnov had been an MP and deputy head in the administration of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president ousted in 2014 after months of protests.

    He had previously been an MP in Yulia Tymoshenko’s governing party, but switched to Yanukovych’s team when he won the presidential election in 2010.

    He left Ukraine after the revolution only to return in 2019 after Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president.

    He then left Ukraine again, and in 2021 was sanctioned by the US Treasury, which said he had been “widely known as a court fixer” who had taken steps to control the judiciary and undermine reform efforts.

    It was not clear who was behind the shooting that took place at about 09:15 local time (07:15 GMT) on Wednesday, reportedly as children were still entering the school…

    But the motive behind Wednesday’s attack is not yet known. Emergency services at the scene could only confirm that that Portnov had suffered several bullet wounds in the back and the head…

    Ukraine’s SBU security service had also opened a case for suspected treason over Russia’s annexation of Crimea but that was dropped when it concluded no offence had been committed.

    Although Ukraine’s intelligence services have been linked to several killings in Russia and occupied areas of Ukraine, a fatal attack in Spain in February last year was linked to Russian hitmen…

  66. Reginald Selkirk says

    Poland intervenes as Russian ‘shadow fleet’ ship spotted near power cable

    Poland’s military intervened after a ship from the Russian “shadow fleet” was seen performing suspicious manoeuvres near a power cable connecting Poland with Sweden, Poland’s prime minister said on Wednesday…

    “A Russian ship from the ‘shadow fleet’ covered by sanctions performed suspicious maneuvers near the power cable connecting Poland with Sweden,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X. “After the effective intervention of our military, the ship sailed to one of the Russian ports.”

    “Shadow fleet” refers to vessels used by Russia to ship oil, arms and grains in violation of international sanctions imposed after the Ukraine invasion.

    Speaking later to reporters, Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said a patrol flight scared the ship off and said the Polish Navy’s ORP Heweliusz was sailing to the scene.

    Vice Admiral Krzysztof Jaworski, Poland’s maritime component commander, told Reuters that the tanker in question was called Sun and it sailed under the Antigua flag…

  67. Reginald Selkirk says

    Charges dropped against conservative activist in Texas over false voter fraud claim

    Texas prosecutors on Tuesday dropped charges against a prominent conservative activist in Houston related to allegations he had been part of what authorities have called a baseless voter fraud conspiracy theory in which a man was run off the road and held at gunpoint over claims he was holding fraudulent voter ballots.

    Dr. Steven Hotze, 74, had been facing four charges related to allegedly helping plan an assault against an air conditioner repairman in October 2020.

    Prosecutors alleged the repairman was run off the road and held at gunpoint by Mark Aguirre, a former Houston police officer. Aguirre had worked for a firm hired by Liberty Center for God and Country, a nonprofit organization that Hotze runs, to pursue a voter fraud investigation.

    Aguirre had claimed the repairman was the mastermind of the voter fraud scheme and that the man’s truck had been filled with fraudulent ballots when Aguirre ran his SUV into it, according to authorities.

    Police who responded to the incident searched the repairman’s truck and found only air conditioning parts and tools, prosecutors said.

    Hotze was charged with four counts — aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, engaging in organized crime and unlawful restraint.

    On Tuesday, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office dropped all four counts against Hotze and three of the five counts against Aguirre, who is still facing charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful restraint.

    … Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said in a statement. “We look forward to vigorously prosecuting the remaining charges in this case that stand up to legal scrutiny.” …

    The article says nothing about why some charges were dropped or why they might not “stand up to legal scrutiny.”

  69. JM says

    @59 birgerjohansson: Frieren is one of the best anime series in years without being particularly unique. The setting is a fairly generic fantasy setting and the main character is a classic “elf in the party of heroes” trope. It manages to be great simply through excellent writing. It starts with the rarely addressed question of how does an elf look at these things a couple of decades after the heroes save the world? When the human heroes are dying of old age and what they did are stories told to children but she is exactly the same.

  71. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Tangible incremental progress after the court ruling restoring USIP.

    Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):

    Great news! I’m told a few moments ago US Institute of Peace Board Chair Amb. George Moose went to the USIP building where he and legal counsel were able to retake possession after the recent court decision. They were accompanied by a small team securing the building and assessing maintenance needs.

  72. John Morales says

    Reginald @70, huh.

    “Fluid left in bongs and water pipes can no longer be part of the total weight of a controlled substance when authorities charge people with drug offenses, under a clause tucked into a judiciary and public safety bill that has been sent to Gov. Tim Walz to sign.”

    What that tells me is that if coppers got someone’s bong, they might have a gram or so of dope but 70+ grams of water that counts as dope for the purposes of controlled substances. Basically, bong water is considered a controlled substance.

    (Oh, yeah, and perhaps pedantically, I can’t help but notice that bong water is bong water, whether or not it’s ‘dirty’ — in fact, if the water’s ‘dirty’ epithet is merited only after the bong has had a hit off it, then it’s just ‘water’, not ‘dirty water’)

  73. John Morales says

    Just saying, it’s quite convenient for cops when laws are bullshitty, since the nature of the job is such that one can generally adopt discretion regarding whether to enforce any given regulation — especially this small scale stuff.

    (This verity has consequences such as encouraging corruption)

  74. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    A little more on Booker and the new France ambassador.

    TNR – Why did Cory Booker vote to confirm Jared Kushner’s dad?

    [Kushner had blackmailed his sister for turning witness against him, by paying a sex worker to seduce her hisband, Kushner paid a private investigator $25k for videotaping.]
    […]
    Booker and the Kushners go way back. Charles Kushner helped fund Booker’s first failed mayoral campaign in 2002, and Booker came to his defense when he was convicted in 2005.
    […]
    In 2013, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner hosted Booker at their home in a fundraising event that raised $41,000 for Booker. He defended this relationship in 2017, well after their (unsurprising) conservative turn.
    […]
    So how does Booker explain his most recent vote? Especially after his bleeding-heart filibuster?

    Daily Beast – Lone Dem scrambles to defend confirming Ivanka’s father-in-Law

    Booker explained that […] he voted to confirm him largely because of his role in helping pass the bipartisan First Step Act […] in 2018, aimed to reform the federal prison system by giving nonviolent drug offenders the opportunity to reduce their sentences through rehabilitation programs, and by reducing penalties for other drug-related crimes.

    [“]Kushner, whose experience in prison profoundly affected him and led him to become an advocate for needed reforms. Without his efforts, the bill wouldn’t have become law. […] I supported his confirmation because he has been unrelenting in reforming our criminal justice system and has substantively helped achieve the liberation of thousands of people from unjust incarceration,”
    […]
    During his confirmation hearing […] Kushner admitted he was “not a perfect person.” “I made a very, very, very serious mistake […] I think that my past mistakes actually […] make me more qualified to do this job,”

  75. Reginald Selkirk says

    RFK Jr. calls WHO “moribund” amid US withdrawal; China pledges to give $500M

    China is poised to be the next big donor to the World Health Organization after Trump abruptly withdrew the US from the United Nations health agency on his first day in office, leaving a critical funding gap and leadership void.

    On Tuesday, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Guozhong said that China would give an additional $500 million to WHO over the course of five years. Liu made the announcement at the World Health Assembly (WHA) being held in Geneva. The WHA is the decision-making body of WHO, comprised of delegations from member states, which meet annually to guide the agency’s health agenda…

    Although the US has cut all ties with the WHO—and reportedly still owes the agency $260 million in 2024–2025 dues—US health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made an unexpected appearance at the WHA via a six-minute video.

    In the abrasive, pre-recorded speech, Kennedy described the WHO as “moribund” and “mired in bureaucratic bloat [and] entrenched paradigms.”

    “WHO’s priorities have increasingly reflected the biases and interests of corporate medicine,” Kennedy said, alluding to his anti-vaccine and germ-theory denialist views. He chastised the health organization for allegedly capitulating to China and working with the country to “promote the fiction that COVID originated in bats.”

    Kennedy ended the short speech by touting his Make America Healthy Again agenda. He also urged the WHO to undergo a radical overhaul similar to what the Trump administration is currently doing to the US government—presumably including dismantling and withholding funding from critical health agencies and programs. Last, he pitched other countries to join the US in abandoning the WHO…

  76. Reginald Selkirk says

    Vance says Roberts is ‘profoundly wrong’ about Supreme Court’s role to check the executive branch

    During a wide-ranging podcast interview with the New York Times posted Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance said Chief Justice John Roberts was “profoundly wrong” for recent comments he made on the Supreme Court’s role to check the excesses of the executive.

    “I thought that was a profoundly wrong sentiment. That’s one half of his job. The other half of his job is to check the excesses of his own branch,” Vance stated. “You cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they’re not allowed to have what they voted for. That’s where we are right now,” Vance continued.

    Vance’s comments occurred while discussing the administration’s immigration policies and initiatives, which have been met with swift legal actions. Vance said the White House believes Trump “has extraordinary plenary power.” …

    What a flagrant idiot, to lecture the chief justice of the Supreme Court on constitutional law.

    Does Vance not understand the meaning of ‘unconstitutional’? If the people disagree with what’s in the constitution, the way to do that is not to keep electing demented narcissistic fuckwits who will break the law, it is to pass amendments to change the constitution. This person not only attended Yale Law School, he actually graduated‽

  77. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Fact check for #62.

    SkyNews has footage of the meeting that includes the crosses video.

    Trump showed old videos, took crosses out of context in South Africa

    “These are the—these are burial sites right here,” Trump said of the footage. “Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there’s approximately a thousand of them. They’re all white farmers[“]
    […]
    In reality, the video shows a protest that took place on Sept. 5, 2020, near Normandien, South Africa. […] the crosses were placed along a section of the protest route […] temporarily as part of a processional protest following the murders of [two white farmers], who were killed on their farm in Normandien in KwaZulu-Natal. The crosses were removed afterwards,”
    […]
    Trump also displayed a printout of a blog post featuring an image of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Trump suggested the image had been taken in South Africa.
    […]
    the overall murder rate in South Africa is high, with 45 murders per 100,000 people, according to data collected in 2023, but there is no indication that the murders are race-driven.

    The expropriation law, which has not been used is detailed below.
    SANews – President Ramaphosa signs Expropriation Bill into Law (2025-01-24)

  78. John Morales says

    In my YouTube feed, for some reason*: WATCH: Trump brutally exposes South African President’s lies
    Sky News Australia
    5.56M subscribers

    * I have never ever clicked on that channel

  79. John Morales says

    [meta]

    BTW, StevoR and/or others: this site implements a limited subset of markdown, and the escape character is ‘\’ — so one asterisk is italics and two are bold, but if they are unbounded they don’t work as plaintext. So that’s why asterisks as the beginning of a span but with no terminating asterisks are ignored by the preprocessor.

    For example, here is that very same text copypasted but with escape characters to show how the markup works:
    and the escape character is '\' -- so one asterisk is \*italics* and two are \**bold**

  80. John Morales says

    [um, I might have been confusing to people with the terminology; markdown is a type of markup. Polysemy]

  81. lumipuna says

    In recent days, international media have made some alarmist headlines on the expansion of Russian military bases near the Finnish border (and the Norwegian border in the same region, though Norway only has a tenuous land connection to Russia in the far north).

    This development has been ongoing for a couple years now, and has been occasionally reported on by the Finnish media after intelligence reports. As I’ve noted here before, it seems to be mostly a posturing response to Finland and Sweden’s Nato accession shortly after the 2022 escalation in Ukraine. The accession was framed as vaguely threatening in the Russian official rhetoric, and “concrete measures” were promised in response. Then, a plan was announced to reinforce some of the regular army bases in the northwestern border area, where land forces have been relatively scant compared to the naval and air bases near Murmansk and St. Petersburg.

    There is speculation from various Western security experts that Russia might try to encroach on some eastern Nato countries (most likely Baltic countries) once its preoccupation in Ukraine is over, and some years have been spent to rebuild the massively damaged Russian military. Preparation for a land invasion would require more than the currently publicly planned/observed development. Still, Europe needs to prepare, in addition to supporting Ukraine more.

    This article is a pretty good summary on what is going on: nothing dramatic or immediately concerning, just a lot of little stuff in the general context of tense relations with Russia.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/21/finland-expects-russia-to-build-up-troops-at-border-after-ukraine-war-ends

    (As an aside, even Donald Trump was asked by a reporter at some press event if he’s concerned about the Russian “military buildup” near the borders of Finland and Norway. He confidently responded “no”, which, as the Guardian notes, is kind of in line with the general view here in Finland. Of course, this being Trump, one can suspect it’s not because he has a balanced understanding of the situation, but rather because he’s not paying attention.)

  82. Reginald Selkirk says

    China finds a previously unknown microbe on its space station

    Chinse scientists have found a previously unknown species of microbe on the nation’s Tiangong space station, and it may have evolved characteristics that help it to survive in space.

    As explained in a paper published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, astronauts aboard China’s Tiangong space station use sterile wipes to take samples of the craft’s interior. Analysis of swabs taken in May 2023 turned up a strain of Niallia– an organism found in many places on earth – with different DNA than any terrestrial strain.

    It’s useful DNA, too: The paper states it has “structural and functional differences in proteins … which may enhance biofilm formation, oxidative stress response and radiation damage repair, thereby aiding its survival in the space environment.”

    The paper proposes the name “Niallia tiangongensis” to recognize the bug’s place of origin…

  83. Reginald Selkirk says

    Quebec To Impose French-Language Quotas On Streaming Giants

    Quebec Culture Minister Mathieu Lacombe has introduced Bill 109, which would require streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify to feature and prioritize French-language content. CBC.ca reports:

    Bill 109 has been in the works for over a year. It marks the first time that Quebec would set a “visibility quota” for French-language content on major streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney and Spotify. […] The legislation, titled An Act to affirm the cultural sovereignty of Quebec and to enact the Act respecting the discoverability of French-language cultural content in the digital environment, would apply to every digital platform that offers a service for watching videos or listening to music and audiobooks online. Those include Canadian platforms such as Illico, Crave and Tou.tv. It would amend the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to enshrine “the right to discoverability of and access to original French-language cultural content.”

    If the bill is adopted, streaming platforms and television manufacturers would be forced to present interfaces for screening online videos in French by default. Those interfaces would need to provide access to platforms that offer original French-language cultural content based on the government’s pending criteria. Financial penalties would be imposed on companies that don’t follow the rules. If the business models of some companies prevent them from keeping to the letter of the proposed law, companies would be allowed to enter into an agreement with the Quebec government to set out “substitute measures” to fulfil Bill 109 obligations differently. “We don’t want to exempt them. We’re telling them, ‘let’s negotiate substitute measures,'” Lacombe told reporters.

  84. Reginald Selkirk says

    Usage of Semicolons In English Books Down Almost Half In Two Decades

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:

    “Do not use semicolons,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut, who averaged fewer than 30 a novel (about one every 10 pages). “All they do is show you’ve been to college.” A study suggests UK authors are taking Vonnegut’s advice to heart; the semicolon seems to be in terminal decline, with its usage in English books plummeting by almost half in two decades — from one appearing in every 205 words in 2000 to one use in every 390 words today. Further research by Lisa McLendon, author of The Perfect English Grammar Workbook, found 67% of British students never or rarely use the semicolon. Just 11% of respondents described themselves as frequent users.

    Linguistic experts at the language learning software Babbel, which commissioned the original research, were so struck by their findings that they asked McLendon to give the 500,000-strong London Student Network a 10-question multiple-choice quiz on the semicolon. She found more than half of respondents did not know or understand how to use it. As defined by the Oxford Dictionary of English, the semicolon is “a punctuation mark indicating a pause, typically between two main clauses, that is more pronounced than that indicated by a comma.” It is commonly used to link together two independent but related clauses, and is particularly useful for juxtaposition or replacing confusing extra commas in lists where commas already exist — or where a comma would create a splice.

    The Guardian has a semicolon quiz at the end of the article where you can test your semicolon knowledge.

  85. Reginald Selkirk says

    A former Florida Republican congressional candidate gets 3 years for threatening primary opponent

    A former Florida Republican congressional candidate accused of stalking and plotting to have his primary opponent murdered by a purported foreign hit squad was sentenced Wednesday to three years in federal prison.

    William Robert Braddock III, 41, of St. Petersburg was sentenced in Tampa federal court, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in February to sending an interstate transmission of a threat to injure.

    In 2021, Braddock and U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna were both candidates in the primary election to represent the 13th Congressional District of Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives. Luna eventually won the primary and later the general election. She was re-elected last year.

    Braddock spent months disparaging Luna and attempting to inject himself into her life, investigators said. During a June 2021 telephone call with Luna’s friend, GOP activist Erin Olszewski, Braddock threatened to have Luna murdered by a “Russian-Ukrainian hit squad” if she continued to poll well in the race for the 13th District.

    There was no evidence that Braddock, a former Marine, had such contacts in foreign organized crime or took any steps to carry out a murder plot.

    Later that year, Braddock flew to Thailand and eventually settled in the Philippines, officials said. He remained there until surrendering to authorities in Manila in 2023. He was taken back to the U.S. last fall to face trial.

    Wow, he was in a political contest with Luna, and he was the less sane one. Must be a very weird district.

  86. Reginald Selkirk says

    Kim Jong Un’s fury after watching North Korea’s new navy destroyer crippled in botched launch

    North Korea’s newest warship was severely damaged during a launch ceremony Wednesday, with leader Kim Jong Un, who witnessed the accident, saying it brought shame to the nation’s prestige and vowing to punish those found responsible, state media reported.

    In a rare admission of failure, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said a malfunction in the launch mechanism caused the stern of the as-yet unnamed 5,000-ton destroyer to slide prematurely into the water, crushing parts of the hull and leaving the bow stranded on the shipway.

    Kim called the launch failure “a criminal act” and blamed it on “absolute carelessness” and “irresponsibility” by multiple state institutions – including the Munitions Industry Department, Kim Chaek University of Technology and the central ship design bureau.

    According to a South Korean military analysis, the vessel is lying on its side in the water, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) spokesperson Lee Sung-joon said during a press briefing on Thursday…

  87. JM says

    Independent: Most books pulled from Naval Academy library are back on the shelves in latest DEI turn

    All but a few of the nearly 400 books that the U.S. Naval Academy removed from its library because they dealt with anti-racism and gender issues are back on the shelves after the newest Pentagon-ordered review — the latest turn in a dizzying effort to rid the military of materials related to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

    The back-and-forth on book removals reflects a persistent problem in the early months of the Trump administration, as initial orders and demands for an array of policy changes have been forced to be reworked, fine-tuned and reissued because they were vague, badly defined or problematic.

    Still trying to purge DEI but no more blanket ban based on words. They are paying more attention to what they remove and the initial removals are small. What will happen if the Republicans stay in power is that those bans will become larger and larger slowly over time.

  88. JM says

    Guardian: US supreme court blocks religious charter school in split ruling

    The 4-4 ruling left intact a lower court’s decision that blocked the establishment of St Isidore of Seville Catholic virtual school. The lower court found that the proposed school would violate the US constitution’s first amendment limits on government involvement in religion.
    Conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, leaving eight justices rather than the full slate of nine to decide the outcome. Barrett is a former professor at Notre Dame Law School, which represents the school’s organizers.

    No explanation for the ruling or listing of who votes which way. This is complex issue for the Supreme court because the government is not allowed to favor religion but it’s not allowed to be biased against religion either. So when religion and government action overlap there is always a lot of hair splitting in the rulings.

  89. Reginald Selkirk says

    @88

    To be clear: religious schools already exist and are perfectly legal. The legal issue here is whether the government can pay for such schools. I.e. they want to use my tax money to indoctrinate students in religion.

  90. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all Chris Hayes

    ‘I regret voting for you’: Van Hollen clashes with Marco Rubio in heated exchange
    Video is 8:06 minutes

    ‘We need to do some rewriting’: Trump official caught trying to alter intel report
    Video is 7:06 minutes

  91. JM says

    NY Times: How Trump Officials Debated Handling of the Abrego Garcia Case: ‘Keep Him Where He Is’

    In the days before the government’s error became public, D.H.S. officials discussed trying to portray Mr. Abrego Garcia as a “leader” of the violent street gang MS-13, even though they could find no evidence to support the claim. They considered ways to nullify the original order that barred his deportation to El Salvador. They sought to downplay the danger he might face in one of that country’s most notorious prisons.
    And in the end, a senior Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, who counseled bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States, was fired for what Attorney General Pam Bondi said was a failure to “zealously advocate on behalf of the United States.”

    Yep, DHS wanted to claim that Abrego Garcia was a leader of MS-13 even though they couldn’t prove he was even a member. These papers make clear that the DOJ was being reasonable, they wanted to follow standard procedure for a mistaken deportation. Bring him back and then consider what to do. DHS from the start wanted to keep him in El Salvador even if it required making things up.

    As Mr. Reuveni pointed out to the group, the case potentially “jeopardizes many far more important initiatives of the current administration.” If the government fought and lost, it could have legal repercussions, not least of which for the nearly 140 Venezuelans who were sent to the same facility under the authority of a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

    The officials understood that bringing Abrego Garcia back would look bad and make the rest of the cases harder. Reuveni was the most reasonable of people involved, the DOJ official that was fired for not fighting hard enough in court.

    Mr. Abrego Garcia had been under deportation orders, but there was a catch: In 2019, an immigration judge found that he could be deported to anywhere except El Salvador, his homeland, because his life was in danger there.
    But on March 15, El Salvador is where the United States sent him, on one of three charter planes with scores of other immigrants. While Mr. Abrego Garcia was not deported under the Alien Enemies Act, he was a last-minute addition to the flights after someone in front of him was taken off the manifest.

    Some more details of how he was accidentally deported and what exactly was illegal about it. It confirms what I have suspected all along. If Abrego Garcia was brought back to the US he probably could be deported someplace else but the PR of doing that would just be too bad.

  94. Reginald Selkirk says

    Nano-engineered Thermoelectrics Enable Scalable, Compressor-Free Cooling

    Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, have developed a new, easily manufacturable solid-state thermoelectric refrigeration technology with nano-engineered materials that is twice as efficient as devices made with commercially available bulk thermoelectric materials. As global demand grows for more energy-efficient, reliable and compact cooling solutions, this advancement offers a scalable alternative to traditional compressor-based refrigeration.

    In a paper published in Nature Communications on May 21, 2025, a team of researchers from APL and refrigeration engineers from Samsung Research demonstrated improved heat-pumping efficiency and capacity in refrigeration systems attributable to high-performance nano-engineered thermoelectric materials invented at APL known as controlled hierarchically engineered superlattice structures (CHESS)…

    The results were striking: Using CHESS materials, the APL team achieved nearly 100% improvement in efficiency over traditional thermoelectric materials at room temperature (around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, or 25 C). They then translated these material-level gains into a near 75% improvement in efficiency at the device level in thermoelectric modules built with CHESS materials and a 70% improvement in efficiency in a fully integrated refrigeration system, each representing a significant improvement over state-of-the-art bulk thermoelectric devices. These tests were completed under conditions that involved significant amounts of heat pumping to replicate practical operation…

    “Beyond refrigeration, CHESS materials are also able to convert temperature differences, like body heat, into usable power,” said Jeff Maranchi, Exploration Program Area manager in APL’s Research and Exploratory Development Mission Area. “In addition to advancing next-generation tactile systems, prosthetics and human-machine interfaces, this opens the door to scalable energy-harvesting technologies for applications ranging from computers to spacecraft — capabilities that weren’t feasible with older, bulkier thermoelectric devices.” …

  95. says

    Trump loses it at Peter Alexander: “What are you talking about? You oughta get out of here … you’re a terrible reporter. You don’t have what it takes to be a reporter. You’re not smart enough … Brian Roberts and the people that run that place they ought to be investigated.”

    https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lpp2mtmkpy2c

    Video at the link.

    Commentary:

    […] The president went on for quite a while, attacking Alexander’s professionalism and intellect,

    […] At face value, it was jarring to see an American president respond to a perfectly legitimate journalistic question [Peter Alexander asked about accepting the luxury jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar] by raising the prospect of an investigation. But just as notable was the larger pattern: When targeting his perceived foes, Trump keeps calling for investigations.

    Earlier this week, for example, Trump said he wanted “a major investigation” into a variety of prominent entertainers — Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Bono — as part of an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory related to the 2024 campaign season.

    That came on the heels of Trump insisting that pollsters “should be investigated” for releasing survey data that he considered unreliable.

    In previous weeks, Trump has also called for investigations into CBS News, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey, the bipartisan House Jan. 6 committee, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the elected government of South Africa, schools that allow transgender student athletes to compete in sports, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

    To be sure, there’s little to suggest that federal officials are following each of Trump’s comments as literal directives […] but it’s still unsettling to see “there should be an investigation” effectively become a punctuation mark the president uses to end sentences about perceived foes.

    Link

  96. says

    Followup to Sky Captain @77.

    In making his case against South Africa, Trump relied on ‘evidence’ that wasn’t real

    “These are burial sites,” Trump said, pointing to his video of South Africa. “Over a thousand of white farmers.” His evidence, however, wasn’t real.

    Related video hosted by Nicolle Wallace is available at the link.

    Trump isn’t the kind of guy who’s overly concerned with evidence. [He] relies on preconceived ideas, assorted conspiracy theories, rumors he’s heard via conservative media and routine assumptions he creates out of whole cloth, but he’s never shown any real interest in concepts such as proof and substantiation.

    But when he sat down with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Trump wanted to make a case against his guest’s home country, Trump suddenly became deeply invested in evidence, holding a pile of printed articles that he offered as support for his baseless claims about South Africa. The American president even showed a video intended to bolster his “white genocide” conspiracy theories: It featured what Trump said were “burial sites” of “over 1,000” white farmers in South Africa.

    But the evidence of racial persecution against white South Africans was not what Trump said it was. [See comment 77]

    The Washington Post came to the same conclusion about the validity of the video shown in the Oval Office. […]

    “These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. Over a thousand of white farmers,” Trump declared as if he were certain that his evidence was real.

    He was plainly and demonstrably wrong. Trump didn’t just peddle conspiracy theories more commonly found on fringe websites, he also aired “video evidence” that he brazenly misrepresented.

    It’s possible — if not likely — that White House staffers were to blame, since Trump almost certainly didn’t prepare the video himself. But the end result was the same: Trump invested his personal credibility in this presentation, hoping to bolster his months-long offensive against South Africa, but his proof wasn’t real.

    This was not the only problem with the contentious Oval Office gathering. As a separate Times analysis noted, Trump “seemed more intent on relaying the talking points from leaders of Afrikaner lobbying groups” than engaging in constructive diplomacy.

    But the fact that he also presented bogus and misrepresented evidence — amplified by the White House via social media, in posts that have not been taken down — served as a timely reminder about Trump’s […] indifference toward reality-based foreign policy.

  97. says

    It’s not just Medicaid: Why the Republicans’ bill would likely force Medicare cuts, too

    “The CBO said the GOP’s megabill would lead to $500 billion in cuts to Medicare. Two days later, 215 House Republicans voted for it anyway.”

    Related video hosted by Lawrence O’Donnell is available at the link.

    […] Despite Donald Trump’s promise not to cut the health care program, GOP legislation would cut roughly $700 billion from Medicaid in the coming years, and with just hours remaining before the bill reached the floor, party leaders added new and punitive Medicaid provisions to shore up support from far-right members.

    But as important as the future of Medicaid is, the legislation’s impact on Medicare matters, too.

    If people were to dig into the 1,000-page bill to look for the provisions related to Medicare cuts, they won’t find them. But there’s a difference between the literal text of the legislation and the practical effects of the legislation.

    In fact, as The Washington Post reported, the Congressional Budget Office found that the Republicans’ megabill would add so many trillions of dollars to the national debt, “it could force nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare” — with some cuts taking effect as early as next year. As the Post noted, the higher deficits would force budget officials “to mandate across-the-board spending cuts over that window that would hit the federal health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities.”

    When legislation significantly adds to the national debt, which already exceeds $36.2 trillion, it triggers ‘sequestration,’ or compulsory budgetary reductions. In that scenario, Medicare cuts would be capped at 4 percent annually, or $490 billion over 10 years […]

    Referencing Congress’ Pay-As-You-Go (“PAYGO”) Act, Boyle said in a written statement, “This Republican budget bill is one of the most expensive — and dangerous — bills Congress has seen in decades. The nonpartisan CBO makes it clear: The deficit will explode so badly it will trigger automatic cuts, including over half a trillion dollars from Medicare.”

    […] Though it’s unlikely that congressional Republicans read it, the CBO published a relatively brief three-page summary of its Medicare findings on Tuesday night, ahead of Thursday morning’s vote.

    […] The CBO told the House that the Republicans’ reconciliation package would lead to $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, and two days later, 215 House Republicans voted for it anyway.

  98. Reginald Selkirk says

    Russia To Enforce Location Tracking App On All Foreigners in Moscow

    The Russian government has introduced a new law that makes installing a tracking app mandatory for all foreign nationals in the Moscow region. From a report:

    The new proposal was announced by the chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, who presented it as a measure to tackle migrant crimes. “The adopted mechanism will allow, using modern technologies, to strengthen control in the field of migration and will also contribute to reducing the number of violations and crimes in this area,” stated Volodin.

    Using a mobile application that all foreigners will have to install on their smartphones, the Russian state will receive the following information: Residence location, fingerprint, face photograph, real-time geo-location monitoring.

  99. says

    An Outspoken Christian Nationalist Pastor Expands His Sway In Trump’s DC

    “Idaho pastor Doug Wilson is bringing his church to DC, and says he met with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in recent weeks.”

    Idaho pastor Douglas Wilson […] once wrote that “slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races.” He’s said that “sodomy” is worse than “slavery”; abortion, he’s written, is “as great an evil as slavery” due to what he sees as its ability to spark a civil war. He told me last year that he regards the American state as the “biggest blasphemer” of them all.

    But beneath the provocations is a vision of a remade — and Christianized — America: One in which the government aggressively promotes and enact the preferences of the evangelical right.

    Now, months into the second Trump administration, Wilson sees a unique opportunity. Last year, as TPM first reported, he shared a stage with now-OMB Director Russ Vought. Wilson told TPM this week that he recently met with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth while delivering a sermon at Hegseth’s Tennessee church. A video of the sermon appears to show the two shaking hands and talking. Asked about the meeting, which has not previously been reported, a Pentagon spokesperson told TPM that Hegseth is an admirer of the pastor.

    […] Wilson is seeking to expand his religious empire — already capacious — into the capital. He’s launching a new church in Washington this summer.

    At the same time, the Trump administration has begun to take actions that appear to benefit Wilson and his movement. On Tuesday, the DOJ civil rights division sued an Idaho town for denying a land use permit to Wilson’s church. Hegseth held a prayer service in the Pentagon on Wednesday where he praised President Trump as an instrument of God while standing alongside his own, Nashville-based pastor, who is himself a longtime member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), the movement that Wilson founded. [JFC]

    “The Secretary is a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell told TPM when asked about Wilson’s claim that he had met Hegseth earlier this month. “The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”

    Friends in high places
    Hobnobbing with powerful conservatives isn’t necessarily anything new for Wilson. His September 2023 speech alongside Vought took place on Capitol Hill in the basement of the Senate’s Dirksen Office building. It was dedicated to making the “Christian Case for Immigration Restriction,” […]

    Wilson spoke with TPM this week about his plans to “plant” a church in D.C., which were first reported by Mother Jones. The church, he said, would serve as a hub for his brand of evangelicalism: pastors from Wilson’s Moscow, Idaho-based network would use fundraised money to fly in to D.C. and preach to the congregation. […]

    The Trump administration is full of evangelicals […] Wilson told TPM that he met with Hegseth earlier this month […]

    For Wilson, the D.C. church, CREC, and high-level connections to Hegseth and Vought are part of an expanding counter-cultural kingdom: there’s a podcast platform, a college, a network of schools that offer classical education, and a publisher […] The Case for Christian Nationalism. That book rails against the “gynocracy,” legal gay marriage, and the end of limits on immigration by national origin. It calls for a “measured and theocratic caesarism.”

    By all accounts, Hegseth is an enthusiastic member of the community that Wilson has helped forge. He once said that he would be willing to pay for his kids to attend Wilson’s college — New St. Andrews — but not Harvard. […]

    Storming the beaches
    Julie Ingersoll, a professor at the University of North Florida who has studied Wilson and the movement, told TPM that CREC requires its members to pass a “theological grilling” before joining. That means a check to make sure that lay members agree with CREC’s stated beliefs, which include opposing female combat troops and believing that homosexuality is sinful. Senators grilled Hegseth during this confirmation hearing over his statements on a podcast last year, during which he clarified that he was “straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.”

    “I don’t think you can be a member of these churches and disagree on these positions,” Ingersoll said.

    […] Wilson sees the initiative [the new church in D.C.] as a huge opportunity. […] He titled a blog post announcing it “a mission to Babylon,” […] “perhaps the task is more like an effort to bring Babylon into the New Jerusalem.”

    During the sermon he gave at Pilgrim Hill, Hegseth’s church, Wilson toyed with another metaphor. This time, it was far more martial, and had to do with Joshua leading the chosen people to conquer Canaan. […]

    “What that poster ought to be is a panoramic view of Normandy beach, with amphibious craft about ready to hit the beach,” He said. “[…] You are going into conflict.”

  100. says

    New York Times link

    “Trump Administration Halts Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students”

    The Trump administration on Thursday halted Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation in the administration’s efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with Trump’s agenda.

    The administration notified Harvard about the decision after a back-and-forth in recent days over the legality of a sprawling records request as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation, according to three people with knowledge of the negotiations. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

    The latest move is likely to prompt a second legal challenge from Harvard […] The university sued the administration last month over the government’s attempt to impose changes to its curriculum, admissions policies and hiring practices.

    “I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked,” according to a letter sent to the university by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.

    About 6,800 international students attended Harvard this year, or roughly 27 percent of the student body, according to university enrollment data. That was up from 19.7 percent in 2010.

    […] Tuition at Harvard is $59,320 for the school year that begins later this year, and costs can rise to nearly $87,000 when room and board are included. International students tend to pay larger shares of education costs compared with other students.

    […] Ms. Noem posted the letter on social media later on Thursday.

    In a news release confirming the administration’s move, the Department of Homeland Security sent a stark message to Harvard’s international students: “This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.”

    Leo Gerden, a senior at Harvard from Stockholm who has been a staunch advocate on campus for international students, said he was devastated by the news.

    “Without its international students and without its ability to bring in the best people from around the world, Harvard is not going to be Harvard anymore,” said Mr. Gerden, who graduates next week. […]

  101. says

    Wall Street Journal link

    “Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster Clubs Are Taking In More Money Than Ever”

    “The president has raised entry fees at many of his resorts, which attract donors seeking to influence White House policy”

    I do not have access to this paywalled article.

  102. says

    Sean Duffy is busy shilling for Tesla as flights are grounded

    Airports continue to suffer delays due to persistent staffing shortages as the busy summer travel season approaches.

    On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground delay at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas due to staffing issues—the second such incident in the last couple of weeks. On May 11, similar delays were reported due to a shortage of air traffic controllers. […]

    “Central Texans can expect more such delays throughout the busy summer months, as the FAA and the Trump Administration continue to shrink the FAA workforce and delay proper safety measures for our overwhelmed, overworked local controllers,” he [Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas] wrote.

    […] Texas’ airplane groundings came just a few hours after the FAA announced that it would be reducing the number of incoming and departing flights at Newark Liberty International Airport by nearly 25% percent due to recent staff shortages and disturbing system blackouts. [Details that show the system is falling apart.]

    Meanwhile, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy was busy posting promotional videos while touring Tesla facilities, doing influencer-style bits with Elon Musk to promote the “future of autonomous vehicles,” which Musk has promised—and failed to deliver—for a little under a decade.

    Last week, Duffy made a video of himself rummaging through the basement of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy to find a painting of Jesus, which he moved up a few floors to a “place of prominence” at the academy. [Priorities.]

    […] Duffy blamed diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives under the Biden administration for the country’s aviation infrastructure problems.

    Since January, the Trump administration has significantly exacerbated aviation woes. This is due in no small part to the wholesale firings and forced resignations of government employees, including aviation specialists, carried out by Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. [The DOGE effect.]

    As with other essential government roles, the Trump administration has been scrambling to rehire many of the people it labeled “waste and fraud” just a few weeks earlier.

    Travelers should expect continued uncertainty and delays in air travel for the foreseeable future.

  105. says

    […] Yesterday we learned that the two guys newly put in charge of vaccine policy at FDA want to restrict Pfizer and Moderna shots going forward as follows:
    – Only for people over the age of 65
    – Only for people 6 months to 65 years old with high risk medical conditions

    They have already restricted Novavax to: People over age 65
    – People over age 12 with high risk medical problems

    Expanding anything beyond this will require difficult, expensive, and possibly unethical randomized controlled trials.

    These trials will only look at the usual obvious stuff like acute symptoms, hospitalizations and deaths, with no mention of longer term surveillance or deeper dives into long Covid prevention, excess mortality reduction, rates of conditions like dementia, coronary artery disease, Parkinson’s, and stroke.

    It is fairly pointed out that most other countries have narrowed their recommendations. So why not us, too? But the US should not restrict Covid vaccine eligibility simply because other countries do so, as America has unique healthcare system complexities, demographic characteristics, and equity challenges that made universal recommendations more practical and effective than risk-based restrictions.

    Limiting access will create unnecessary barriers while undermining individual choice and community protection benefits, particularly given that the majority of US adults already have qualifying risk factors, and restricting eligibility will just reduce overall vaccine uptake and public trust. […]

    Link

    Much, much more at the link.

  106. says

    […] The options for paying tribute to [Trump], his kin, and the MAGA movement are now legion. There are even exciting new opportunities to protect your business by reaching a “settlement” with the leader of the free world. Or you can just hand over a 747 for him to use as Air Force One, as Qatar did. Best of all, these creative funding methods might not even be against the law—especially for Trump. (Thanks, SCOTUS!) So here’s your guide to participating in the brave new Trumpworld of executive enrichment. […]

    10 Ways to Enrich the Trumps and the MAGA Movement

    Much more at the link.

  108. says

    Deported migrants, mostly Asian and Latino, will be in Djibouti for 2 weeks, White House says

    “Karoline Leavitt commented on a deportation flight reportedly linked to South Sudan, blaming a judge after he ruled the Trump administration had violated a previous court order.”

    A flight with eight migrants that left Texas this week, reportedly headed for South Sudan, will now remain in the East African country of Djibouti for two weeks to comply with a court order, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday.

    During a press briefing, Leavitt placed blame on the U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts, following a hearing Wednesday after eight people from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and South Sudan had been deported to a third country. Lawyers had said the flight was headed for South Sudan, but the Department of Homeland Security says it won’t confirm.

    Murphy had said in the hearing the Trump administration was in violation of a previous injunction that prevented people from being sent to countries other than their own without opportunities to voice their fears of torture or persecution or without proper notice ahead of time.

    Murphy ordered that the individuals be provided legal counsel and an opportunity to raise their fears. He also ordered the deportees to be given at least 15 days to reopen immigration proceedings and challenge their deportation in the event the government still aims to send them to a third country.

    Leavitt said Murphy’s order was an attempt to “bring these monsters back to our country.”

    “Now Judge Murphy is forcing federal officials to remain in Djibouti for over two weeks threatening our US diplomatic relationships with countries around the world and putting the agents’ lives in danger by having to be with these illegal murderers, criminals and rapists,” Leavitt said. [Leavitt has that phrasing ” illegal murderers, criminals and rapists” running on a continuous loop.]

    […]

  109. says

    A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday issued an injunction blocking the Trump administration from dismantling the Department of Education and ordering that fired employees be reinstated.

    “The record abundantly reveals that Defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute,” U.S. District Judge Myong Joun wrote, noting “the Department cannot be shut down without Congress’s approval.”

    The judge said an injunction was necessary because “The supporting declarations of former Department employees, educational institutions, unions, and educators paint a stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations.”

    […] A spokesperson for the Education Department, Madi Biedermann, said officials “will immediately challenge this on an emergency basis.”

    Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement that the “President and his Secretary of Education have the legal authority to make decisions regarding the agency’s reorganization, and a leftist judge’s ruling cannot change that reality. We look forward to appealing this misguided decision and achieving ultimate victory.”

    The administration filed a notice of appeal Thursday afternoon.

    The firings of 1,300 employees were announced in March after Trump pledged to shutter the department, and days before he issued an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” the judge noted.

    In her confirmation hearing, McMahon testified that the administration would not attempt to abolish the department without congressional approval, as required by law, and said that she would present a plan that senators could get on board with.

    “We’d like to do this right,” she said, adding that shutting down the department “certainly does require congressional action.” […]

    [The court’s ruling] also blocks the department “from carrying out the President’s March 21, 2025 Directive to transfer management of federal student loans and special education functions out of the Department.” […]

    Link

  110. birgerjohansson says

    The arseholes passed the big bastard bill.
    It was made possible by Democrats sending old people to congress three of whom have died since the election. But most of you probably already know that.

    Meanwhile Bernie Sanders is like the energizer bunny in the battery ads a generation ago. He keeps walking.
    Rump is glitching and being weird but no one in the media bothers to bring it up, because The Book about the former president is more interesting than the mental capacity of the current one.

  112. Reginald Selkirk says

    Denmark to raise retirement age to highest in Europe

    Denmark is set to have the highest retirement age in Europe after its parliament adopted a law raising it to 70 by 2040.

    Since 2006, Denmark has tied the official retirement age to life expectancy and has revised it every five years. It is currently 67 but will rise to 68 in 2030 and to 69 in 2035.

    The retirement age at 70 will apply to all people born after 31 December 1970.

    The new law passed on Thursday with 81 votes for and 21 votes against.

    However, last year Social Democrat Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the sliding scale principle would eventually be renegotiated.

    “We no longer believe that the retirement age should be increased automatically,” she said, adding that in her party’s eyes “you can’t just keep saying that people have to work a year longer”…

  113. Reginald Selkirk says

    Person did Nazi salute outside Ontario Chick-fil-A while blasting Kanye West’s ‘vile’ antisemitic song

    A Jewish advocacy group has strongly condemned a “vile” video of an unknown person performing what appears to be fascist salute in the parking lot of the U.S.-owned Chick-fil-A restaurant in Burlington, Ont.

    The video, shared on X by controversial rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, features someone riding a motorized scooter with flashing lights and a video monitor. The person comes to a stop before twice doing what appears to be a Nazi salute while Ye’s new song Heil Hitler plays on the monitor.

    The video, which was posted just after 6 a.m. ET on May 14, had garnered more than two million views before it was deleted on Wednesday…

  114. Rob Grigjanis says

    birger @52:

    I know it is spelled “about”, I choose the Canadian pronounciation [sic]

    Have you met many Canadians? I’ve lived in Canada for 57 years, and never heard anyone, in conversation, say ‘aboot’. Sounds more like a Scottish thing. I’m guessing there are similar silly misconceptions between Scandinavian languages.

  116. Reginald Selkirk says

    North Dakota governor vetoes the housing budget — by mistake

    When North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong took up an agency budget bill approved by the legislature, he vetoed a couple line items. At least, that was his intention Monday. Instead, he accidentally vetoed $35 million for the state’s housing budget.

    Now the state is figuring out how to deal with the unusual problem of a mistaken veto.

    “I have no recollection of anything like this happening in the 37 years I’ve been here,” John Bjornson, legislative council director, said Thursday. “So, yeah, I’d say it’s a little extraordinary.”

    The governor’s staff called his veto of the housing budget in Senate Bill 2014 a markup error. Armstrong’s staff met with the legislative council Thursday morning to discuss options.

    “This was an honest mistake, and we will fix it,” a statement from the governor’s office read.

    Armstrong, a Republican who served three terms in Congress, was elected governor in 2024. The legislative session that adjourned earlier in the month was his first as governor.

    In a message accompanying the veto, Armstrong wrote he had intended to veto a $150,000 grant to fund a Native American homelessness liaison position. The budget veto would take effect July 1…

  117. says

    NBC News:

    Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim had spent the evening at an event dedicated to bringing together war-torn and politically divided regions of the world when a man with a gun killed the soon-to-be engaged Israeli Embassy staffers Wednesday.

  118. says

    NBC News:

    The Supreme Court on Thursday granted a Trump administration request that allows the president to fire members of independent federal agencies. The move to pause a lower court ruling formalizes a temporary decision along similar lines on April 9 that allowed President Donald Trump to fire Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

  120. says

    NBC News:

    A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal statuses of international students at universities across the U.S. In the injunction, District Judge Jeffrey S. White in Oakland also prohibited the administration from arresting or detaining any foreign-born students on the basis of their immigration status while a case challenging previous terminations moves through the courts.

  121. says

    New York Times:

    Top economic policymakers from the United States and other advanced economies agreed on Thursday to continue to support Ukraine and warned Russia of additional sanctions if there was no progress on peace, demonstrating a rare show of unity despite festering tension over tariffs and trade.

    Finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of 7 nations continued to blame Russia for the war in Ukraine, despite some initial resistance from the United States, and pledged to provide resources to help Kyiv sustain its economy and pay for its reconstruction. Officials also discussed tightening the price cap that they enacted on Russian oil exports as a measure to further squeeze Russia’s economy.

    “We condemn Russia’s continued brutal war against Ukraine and commend the immense resilience from the Ukrainian people and economy,” they said in a joint statement, or communiqué. “The G7 remains committed to unwavering support for Ukraine in defending its territorial integrity and right to exist, and its freedom, sovereignty and independence toward a just and durable peace.”

    The statement added that if a cease-fire is not reached, “we will continue to explore all possible options, including options to maximize pressure such as further ramping up sanctions.” […]

  122. birgerjohansson says

    (Trigger alert)
    This 1980s manga exists under several names, approximate translation  ‘The Apothecary is gonna make this ragged elf happy’ 
    (The excerpt is the first third, read by youtuber  KenRecaps)
    I include it as a counterweight to the many cynical or downright vicious stories you stumble over in manga and anime.
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=BhCeIqJIli8

    (From MAL or Mangadex)

  123. birgerjohansson says

    Speaking of dark, Japan-related things, I recall that during his tenure as Texas politician Dubya supported Japanese efforts to block legal action forcing Japan to pay restitution to Koreans that were subjected to forced prostitution during WWII but I have forgotten the details.
    It just seems relevant with the current administration of dung politicians, collaborating with Putin or assorted Gulf dictatorships.

  124. says

    Why Pete Hegseth leading a Christian prayer service at the Pentagon is so problematic

    In early April, the State Department encouraged employees to report allegations of anti-Christian bias within the agency, and soon after, the Department of Veterans Affairs took the same step. The developments were largely overlooked, but they were early indications of a larger effort.

    A couple of weeks later, for example, Attorney General Pam Bondi convened a meeting of a task force charged with eradicating “anti-Christian bias” within federal agencies. The Washington Post reported at the time, “[E]ven before the group’s inaugural meeting, critics have assailed its mission as a bald attempt by government to elevate one faith over others and to rewrite recent history under the guise of protecting religious freedoms.”

    The critics obviously had a point. After all, the attorney general and her colleagues didn’t say they were focused on perceived “anti-religion bias” within the government; they focused only on perceived “anti-Christian bias” within the government. The Trump’s task force clearly had a faith-specific focus.

    Among those joining Bondi for the inaugural meeting of the group was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who, it turns out, held a related event one month later. The New York Times reported:

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth led a Christian prayer service in the Pentagon’s auditorium on Wednesday morning, during working hours, in which President Trump was praised as a divinely appointed leader. The event, billed as the “Secretary of Defense Christian Prayer & Worship Service,” was standing room only and ran for about 30 minutes, with Brooks Potteiger, the pastor of Mr. Hegseth’s church in Tennessee, as the main speaker.

    This was not a one-time gathering: The Times report added that the Pentagon chief said that he wants these prayer services to become monthly events.

    Hegseth and his allies will likely argue that his “Christian Prayer & Worship Service” shouldn’t be seen as controversial because he’s an American citizen with the same First Amendment rights as everyone else. If you and I can host and/or attend prayer services, why can’t he?

    The answer is simple: Context matters. If Hegseth led a Christian prayer service on his own time in a house of worship, that would be no one’s business but his own. The Pentagon, however, doesn’t belong to Hegseth — it belongs to all of us. When he, as a public official, commandeers it for a faith-specific event, it’s easy to make the case that this was an inappropriate use of government resources. [True]

    Similarly, Hegseth and his allies are likely to argue that attendance was voluntary, so no one was coerced into attending the event. But the details matter on this front, too: The Times’ report added that the Cabinet secretary “encouraged the uniformed military personnel and civilian employees there to tell their co-workers about it.”

    The message hardly seemed subtle […] As Potteiger, the pastor of Hegseth’s church in Tennessee, the Times quoted the reverend’s Trump-specific comments at the Pentagon.

    In his sermon, the pastor said, “We pray for our leaders who you have sovereignly appointed — for President Trump, thank you for the way that you have used him to bring stability and moral clarity to our land. And we pray that you would continue to protect him, bless him, give him great wisdom. … We pray that you would surround him with faithful counselors who fear your name and love your precepts.”

    For those concerned about the administration and the emergence of Christian nationalism, this was a step in an unsettling direction.

  125. birgerjohansson says

    What are you going to do with the Trump era Republican congressmen after Trump is gone?
    It seems to me, if the Democrats go along with any bipartisan deals before every MAGA congressman has been replaced they are happy to work with collaborators.

  127. says

    Followup to comment 117.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-wouldnt-use-tragic-israeli

    “Trump Wouldn’t Use Tragic Israeli Embassy Shooting As Excuse To Go (More) Fascist, Would He?”
    “Thank goodness serious adults Pam Bondi and Judge Boxwine are in charge.”

    […] The suspected shooter, who police identified as Elias Rodriguez, a Chicago resident in his early 30s, was reportedly recorded on video shouting “Free, free Palestine!” as security guards at the museum took him into custody. […]

    Washington Police Chief Pamela Smith said in a press conference last night that the shooter had been seen pacing back and forth in front of the museum, and then he fired a handgun at a group of four people as they exited, hitting the two victims. Emergency responders were unable to revive them.

    Lischinsky and Milgrim had been attending an event at the museum for young Israeli diplomats sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. The AJC said that Milgrim was an American from Overland Park, Kansas.

    As you’d expect, the murders have been condemned by both American and international leaders. It’s a horrible crime, and it goes without saying that it should be fully investigated and the shooter should be prosecuted to the proverbial full extent of the law. We just wish we had even a shred of confidence that the Trump administration won’t also use it as an excuse to push the US even farther into fascism.

    Donald Trump condemned the murders on social media with the characteristic gravitas you’d expect from a sociopath attempting to feign empathy, but mostly interested in seeking enemies to punish:

    “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen!”

    At last night’s press conference, Attorney General Pam Bondi went Full Tough Prosecutor, taking care to emphasize that Donald Trump is watching closely and that “his prayers are with all of us, all of especially the Jewish community,” because it’s such a comfort to be blanketed by the love and prayers of that racist convicted felon. [video of press conference is available at the link]

    Bondi […] was also very careful to say that the crime would be investigated by our “great US Attorney, Jeanine Pirro,” whose full title — acting interim stand-in unconfirmable 120-day US attorney — she forgot to mention, since Judge Boxwine was until two weeks ago a word-slurring Fox News panelist who hadn’t done any prosecuting since 2005. We almost said she hadn’t “seen the inside of a courtroom” since then, but we don’t know for sure where she gave her deposition in the lawsuit Fox lost over its 2020 election lies.

    Hours before the shooting yesterday, Pirro herself was busy proving to America what a serious member of the legal community she is, posting a video to Twitter to complain that the federal government had wasted money on foreign aid to people who were starving and dying (oh! but also bad things, like “Sesame Street in Iraq”!), but she actually is expected to pay seven entire US dollars a month into the bottled water club at her office.

    Hi everyone, it’s Judge Jeanine. I’m at the water cooler in the United States Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC. And you may recall that the United States gave something like $44 billion a year through USAID for things like dance classes in Wuhan, China, and Sesame Street in Iraq. But here in the United States, in the United States Attorney’s Office, where we prosecute crime on behalf of the victims, on behalf of the people who are targeted by criminals, the US attorneys, as well as the staff, in order to get water, they have to join a water club and they have to pay.

    Today they asked for our patience. Why? Because we couldn’t get water delivered today. Today there was no water delivered to the United States Attorney’s Office. And remember, it’s only for those who pay $7 a month.

    Now, ain’t it grand to be a part of the government, and I’m just thrilled to be here.

    As far as we know, the water faucets in the building work just fine.

    We should be clear that even with Bondi’s ritualistic declarations of greatness and the insistence that the administration will “be doing everything in our power to keep all citizens safe, especially tonight our Jewish community,” or Pirro’s batshit wish for bottled water or at least boxed wine, nobody in the administration has said anything outright insane about the embassy murders. But it’s early in the day, and we still have tonight’s Fox News opinion shows to get through.

    At today’s daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated that Trump is “saddened and outraged” by the murders, adding that “the evil of antisemitism must be eradicated from our society,” which coming from most people is a noble enough sentiment. No room for hate and all that.

    But it also sounds a bit chilling coming from an administration that’s already made clear it will use the excuse of fighting antisemitism to try to take control of universities and purge their faculties, or to deport non-citizen students for co-authoring an editorial or participating in campus protests.

    We won’t be the least bit surprised if, in coming days, Trump and his people start talking about how there’s been entirely too much free speech, which will justify cracking down on critics of Israel’s war in Gaza. After all, the administration has already made clear that it’s devoted to combating antisemitism whenever it isn’t coming from the president’s dinner guests.

    But gosh, that sounds terribly paranoid of us, doesn’t it? It’s not like they’re out to arrest political opponents, even members of Congress, or to threaten to jail anyone who opposes their fascist tactics. We’d love to be wrong, and if in the next six months Trump doesn’t invoke this awful tragedy to crack down (further) on dissent we will publicly apologize. (Offer void if dissent is otherwise criminalized even without any mention of the embassy murders.)

    Can’t imagine they’d try to use this as some sort of Reichstag Fire pretext for whatever they want to do next.

  128. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The approval rating of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is poised to skyrocket after he visited the Oval Office on Wednesday and was subjected to Donald J. Trump acting like a dick.

    Ramaphosa, who was struggling with 35 percent approval before Trump’s tantrum, should see that rating surge to 75 or higher, experts predict.

    Moments after the meeting, Ramaphosa received congratulatory calls from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Canada’s Mark Carney, both of whom saw their fortunes soar thanks to Trump’s dickish antics.

    After the meeting, Trump took pride in standing up for “the horribly oppressed white South Africans,” noting, “These poor farmers can’t enjoy white supremacy in their own country, so they have to move here for it.”

    Link

  129. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a series of furious Truth Social posts penned in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Donald J. Trump claimed that the singer Bruce Springsteen was not born in the USA.

    “If he has a US birth certificate, which I seriously doubt, then the middle name on it would be Untalented,” Trump wrote. “He’s not half as good a singer as Kid Rock.”

    “Even if he was born in the USA, that would not automatically make him a citizen,” he added. “Pam Bondi is looking into this.”

    Offering a rationale for his claim, Trump noted, “Springsteen is a Kenyan name.”

    Link

    The Borowitz Report is satire.

  130. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Excerpt for #101.

    WSJ

    It now costs a record $1 million to join Mar-a-Lago […] up from about $500,000 during his first term. […] Bedminster, N.J., rose to $125,000, surging from $75,000 in recent years […] Another Trump golf club in Florida, near Mar-a-Lago, now charges more than $300,000 to join […]

    Trump has encouraged Republican Party officials to hold events at his clubs […] also attracted a new clientele of donors seeking to influence policy […] including cryptocurrency executives pushing for deregulation, advocates seeking pardons for allies, and business leaders looking for exemptions from tariffs […]

    One of the biggest such events yet is set to take place Thursday at Trump’s golf course outside Washington […] for his $TRUMP memecoin’s biggest holders. Many of the investors are foreign, and some of the top givers have been promised official tours of the White House, according to the advertisement […] He is forging ahead with the event over the objections of some of his own aides and lawyers, who were initially shocked that he had agreed to it […] Organizers asked prospective guests to take part in background checks, but the White House hasn’t extensively vetted them
    […]
    After the announcement last month of the May 22 dinner […] Several [Wite House] aides with access to his calendar said they weren’t aware of such a dinner, and some suspected it was potentially fake. The Trump Organization had nothing to do with the event, people familiar with its planning said. Trump had agreed to do it, telling aides it was a “private business engagement”

  131. says

    America Set To Pay $5 Million To Insurrectionist’s Family For Cruelly Not Letting Her Attack Congress

    Let this be a message for any insurrectionists plotting against the United States: if you storm into the Capitol at the head of a mob of crazed [people], and you rush headlong toward the House chamber while screaming and breaking glass and just generally giving the impression that you are feeling a bit more murderous than your average visitor to the seat of American government, and a police officer charged with protecting lawmakers shoots you in their defense while you’re barreling straight at the room where they are cowering in fear for their lives, then the government will pay your surviving relatives $5 million to compensate them for you being a colossal asshole.

    But only if you’re doing it for Donald Trump. That makes all that Not Bad Anymore.

    Yep, $5 million smackaroonis. That is the amount our government is reportedly set to pay the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was shot and killed while storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, at the head of a crowd that was screaming for blood […]

    The payment to Babbitt’s family would be to settle a wrongful death lawsuit her relatives filed last year, in which they sought $30 million in damages. The case was scheduled to go to trial in July of 2026. Frankly, we’re sorry it’s settling, because we’d love to have watched the Babbitt family’s wingnut attorneys try to convince a DC jury that the braying mob just wanted to exercise its right to register objections to the election results, as if at that point we had not had two months of lawsuits finding that all those objections were loads of horse-hockey.

    Because there is no doubt about what happened. None. We’ve all seen the video of Babbitt being the first to crawl through a window someone had just smashed so the mob could get through locked doors into the Speaker’s Lobby outside the House chamber, where they would have been one locked door away from a chamber full of the people’s representatives. A police officer stopped her with one shot, which broke the crowd’s fever and might very well have stopped a lot more bloodshed from occurring.

    The Department of Justice had initially opposed settling the case. Then Donald Trump returned to office in January and brought Pam Bondi along as his attorney general. […]

    [T]he Justice Department has agreed to pay just under $5 million to Babbitt’s family, with about one-third to go to their attorneys, who include the conservative group Judicial Watch[.]

    Ah, Judicial Watch, the ambulance-chasing wingnut legal chop shop founded by […] Larry Klayman and currently headed by Tom Fitton and his wardrobe of way-too-small shirts. (We get it, bro, you go to the gym.) Judicial Watch has a long history of glomming onto every conspiracy theory that bubbles up […]

    The organization also has long defended Donald Trump, if not in court, then certainly in the right-wing media. Fitton has been a regular on Fox News for years, where he has talked about the Babbitt case, among other things. And everyone knows appearing on Fox is the best way to get Trump’s attention.

    We’re not saying representing Babbitt’s family is a cynical grift to squeeze money out of the federal government and into Judicial Watch’s own coffers by sucking up to Donald Trump. But we’re also not not saying that.

    In addition to the Babbitt settlement, Trump has been making noises about setting up a compensation fund for convicted January 6ers who were unfairly charged with crimes they were caught on video committing, and in many cases being sent to prison after being convicted by juries of their peers […]

    We guess pardoning all 1,600 of them and releasing anyone in prison back into society to commit more crimes, as one was arrested for this goddamn weekend, wasn’t enough. They have to get handed checks from the US Treasury as well.

    […] There is just nothing for the MAGA crowd to celebrate here with the Babbitt settlement, though they will anyway. […] Ashli Babbitt was protesting something nonexistent. She was protesting and rioting based on a lie, led on by an orange-faced narcissist who wound her up and pointed her at the Capitol while he safely snacked on a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder behind layers of armed security a mile away.

  132. says

    Sky Captain @130, thank you.

    In other news (satire):

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a bombshell report that stirred controversy on Tuesday, a prominent conspiracy theorist claimed that Joe Biden concealed his health problems by making the American economy boom for four straight years.

    “Biden thought he could hide his health issues by making the U.S. economy the envy of the world,” the conspiracist, Harland Dorrinson, said. “Low unemployment, a surging stock market, and a stable dollar all played their parts in the cover-up.”

    Strengthening NATO and bolstering relationships with allies were also key components of Biden’s elaborate scheme to hide his health woes, Dorrinson said.

    “Biden kept the media distracted by making the US trusted and respected around the world,” he said. “Trump would never do that.”

    Link

  133. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    NPR – Upending norms, the Senate votes to undo California’s EV rules

    The Senate has overruled the guidance of the parliamentarian, a nonpartisan staffer who interprets the Senate’s rules, and voted 51 to 44 to overturn a waiver allowing California to set its own air pollution standards for cars that are stricter than national regulations. […] The Senate also voted to revoke two waivers related to heavy-duty trucks. One allowed California to mandate zero-emission trucks, and the other permitted stricter emissions standards for new diesel trucks.

    Congress is using a law called the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, as a mechanism to revoke the federal waivers that allowed California to set these rules. […] But there are significant questions about whether this use of the CRA is legal; the Government Accountability Office and the Senate parliamentarian, who serve as referees within the federal government, both determined that it is not.

    The GAO’s opinion is merely advisory. The parliamentarian’s guidance is also non-binding, but the Senate has traditionally followed it. While disregarding this advice is not unprecedented, it’s extremely rare.
    […]
    In the first Trump administration, the EPA withdrew a waiver that allowed California to set vehicle standards. A legal battle ensued. […] became moot after the Biden administration reinstated the waiver.

    The House also did it 3 weeks ago.

    rules that are reversed under the CRA may not be reissued in “substantially the same form” unless Congress passes a new law authorizing that specific rule.

    The Congressional Review Act also states that actions taken under it are not subject to judicial review, meaning that courts can’t overturn Congress’ decision. But if the California waiver is in fact revoked under the CRA, expect legal challenges anyway.

    Mark Stern (Slate):

    The Senate parliamentarian is about to nix parts of the reconciliation package under the Byrd Rule, holding that they are subject to the [filibuster] 60-vote threshold. Senate Republicans have now overruled the parliamentarian once this Congress—why not do it again?

  134. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Seth Cotlar (US history professor):

    Trump’s tariff foolishness tanked the Oregon shrimp industry. So in the name of efficiency he’s having the government buy it, to, I don’t know, serve at White House functions where he entertains Jews who keep kosher?
    [Feds buys $16M of Oregon seafood]

    Rando: “One thing they will absolutely not do is use it to feed the poor.”

    92 percent of Trump’s China tariff proceeds has gone to bail out angry farmers

    Mark Rice (History professor):

    High tariffs + govt subsidies to offset the inefficiencies caused by said tariffs are evidence no. 1 that I point to when discussing the flaws in the old ISI model when I teach Latin American economic history.

    Policy-wise in comparative economic history, we’re kinda at Argentina in 1953. You guys aren’t going to like how the next few decades play out.

  135. birgerjohansson says

    Mallen Baker: (19 minute analysis of the South African visit scandal)
    “Trump Is Clueless On What He Just Did To Himself”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=bL75pSKrsx0

    I prefer Baker’s calm style of presenting facts to most of the other commenters on Youtube. Also, I had not thought on this angle: antagonising a country just for being part of BRICT.

  137. John Morales says

    USA news:

    The Bitcoin hum that is unsettling Trump’s MAGA heartlands
    For the last five years, a loud hum has been a continual backdrop to birdsong and the occasional barking dog in the village of Dresden, New York state.

    Coming from the nearby Greenidge Generation power plant, which had been mothballed for years before, the sound has angered some local people.

    “It’s an annoyance,” says Ellen Campbell, who owns a house on Seneca Lake a short distance away. “If I sit out by the lake, I would rather not hear that.

    “We didn’t sign up for the constant hum.”

    The issue here in Dresden, a village of about 300 people surrounded by winding country roads, single-track rail lines and farms growing grapes and hops, sounds like a familiar story about the tension between nature-loving locals and economic development.

    But their annoyance is also a signal of something less expected – policies of US President Donald Trump meeting resistance from people in the rural areas whose votes drove his return to the White House.

    And the cause? Bitcoin mining.

    An energy-intensive process that relies on powerful computers to create and protect the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin mining has grown rapidly in the country over recent years. The current administration, unlike Joe Biden’s, is intent on encouraging the industry.

    Trump has said he wants to turn the US into the crypto-mining capital of the world, announcing in June 2024 that “we want all the remaining Bitcoin to be made in the USA”. This has implications for rural communities throughout the US – many of whom voted for Trump.

    Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.

    The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.

    But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.

    As is often the case, externalities are what bothers the burgers.

  138. birgerjohansson says

    KG @ 136
    Yes, if we find “planet nine” developing the kind of technology to send a probe there would also create technology to make probes able to reach the distance of the ‘solar focus’.

    Gravity microlensing is currently used for detecting planet systems in the lensing star system with automated camera surveys.
    If we launch probes with cameras to be in position with a line-up of Alpha or Beta Centauri whenever they pass before a background star we could detect Earth-mass planets and directly learn their mass. This require the probes to travel much more modest distances, achievable with current technology.

  140. birgerjohansson says

    Mano Singham has a very important post:
    “Reflections on the working poor”

    The inadequate education is designed to fail the majority!

    .https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2025/05/21/reflections-on-the-working-poor-2/

    Excerpt:
    “The natural conclusion of this line of reasoning was spelled out in a speech that Woodrow Wilson gave in 1909, three years before he was elected President of the United States.  He said: “[W]e want to do two things in modern society. We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 18, 1908-1909, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1974, p. 597.)

  142. birgerjohansson says

    Trump is now siggesting 50% tariffs for the European Union.
    He makes the claim that the European Union was created to take advantage of the United States.
    .
    Factcheck:
    The primary purpose for the creation of the European Union and its organisational predecessors (like the coal- and steel union and the European Economic Community) has always been to prevent another big European war by integrating the economies.
    EU also has introduced requirements for freedom of the press, human rights, health and reduction of pollution. It is an inherently humanitarian project.
    (The planned crackdown on economic robber barons is the reason the Brexit campaign in Britain got so much donations)
    The friction is for instance about how costs affect different membership countries.
    Here in Sweden, a big issue is to preserve the sale of Snus, a relatively safe oral tobacco product that is banned in the rest of EU. Important,
    but not case of totalitarian repression.
    As the world’s largest free trade bloc EU can tell multinational companies to get their shit together if they want to do business in Europe. Billionaires like Musk hate that.

  143. Reginald Selkirk says

    DanaBot Malware Devs Infected Their Own PCs

    The U.S. unsealed charges against 16 individuals behind DanaBot, a malware-as-a-service platform responsible for over $50 million in global losses. “The FBI says a newer version of DanaBot was used for espionage, and that many of the defendants exposed their real-life identities after accidentally infecting their own systems with the malware,” reports KrebsOnSecurity. From the report:

    Initially spotted in May 2018 by researchers at the email security firm Proofpoint, DanaBot is a malware-as-a-service platform that specializes in credential theft and banking fraud. Today, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and indictment from 2022, which said the FBI identified at least 40 affiliates who were paying between $3,000 and $4,000 a month for access to the information stealer platform. The government says the malware infected more than 300,000 systems globally, causing estimated losses of more than $50 million. The ringleaders of the DanaBot conspiracy are named as Aleksandr Stepanov, 39, a.k.a. “JimmBee,” and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin, 34, a.k.a. “Onix,” both of Novosibirsk, Russia. Kalinkin is an IT engineer for the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. His Facebook profile name is “Maffiozi.”
    …
    “In some cases, such self-infections appeared to be deliberately done in order to test, analyze, or improve the malware,” the criminal complaint reads. “In other cases, the infections seemed to be inadvertent — one of the hazards of committing cybercrime is that criminals will sometimes infect themselves with their own malware by mistake.” …

  144. birgerjohansson says

    During a visit in Tallin, Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that he thinks the European countries can handle Russia without USA. He referenced the Russian army looking ragged like ruffians in Mad Max.

  145. birgerjohansson says

    The BBB congess just passed should be interpreted as the Big Bond-maket Bomb.
    While the Treasury bonds just moved up to 4.53% every hundreth of a per cent counts. There is a real concern in Wall Street about the increased debt and we have seen the bond market can get ugly fast.

  146. Reginald Selkirk says

    @100

    Future queen of Belgium caught up in Harvard foreign student ban

    Princess Elisabeth, the 23-year-old future queen of Belgium, has just completed her first year at Harvard University but the ban imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on foreign students studying there could jeopardise her continued studies.
    The Trump administration revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students on Thursday, and is forcing current foreign students to transfer to other schools or lose their legal status in the U.S., while also threatening to expand the crackdown to other colleges…

    That’s a bad combination. Imagine transferring to a different university, only to have it attacked the next year.

  147. Reginald Selkirk says

    Man in Norway wakes to find huge container ship in garden

    A man in Norway woke up to find a huge container ship had run aground and crashed into his front garden.

    The 135m-ship (443ft) missed Johan Helberg’s house by metres at about 05:00 local time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday.

    Mr Helberg was only alerted to the commotion by his panicked neighbour who had watched the ship as it headed straight for shore, in Byneset, near Trondheim.

    “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Mr Helberg told television channel TV2.

    “I went to the window and was quite astonished to see a big ship,” he added, in an interview with the Guardian…

  148. birgerjohansson says

    Phil Moorhouse :

    How British EU deal makes food safer.
    “Media Won’t Report This Aspect of EU Deal”
    . https://youtube.com/watch?v=cICcLqEb94s

    Re. Myself @ 142
    -Note the EU is also working for food safety in member nations. Any local Trump wannabee cannot fire the EU food inspectors in a fit of hubris. Tiny despots like Viktor Orban hate such restrictions of their power.

  151. birgerjohansson says

    Another small news item from the awful fighting in Ukraine
    BFBS force news:

    “Sweden’s 1940s answer to the British Sten gun spotted in Ukraine”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=frRePte68nE

    We were issued these in the Swedish Air Force in 1981. They are perfectly good for rear echelon personnel the way the .30 carbine was used by USA.  And since the Russians are running out of protective vests 9mm parabellum will make a hole in invaders even 80 years after this gun was designed.
    You can even fire single shots just by adjusting the pressure of the finger, no complex mechanism that can fail.
    (For long-range shooting – like 30 km- the Archer is better. And it is hurting the Russian artillery badly)

  154. birgerjohansson says

    GOP Sen. on Trump tariffs: ‘Whose throat do I get to choke if this proves wrong?”
    .https://youtube.com/shorts/6rT7WvbiXQQ
    If he really grew up in a trailer park it might account for him not trusting everything the government claims, due to empathy with those with least margins.

  156. StevoR says

    But here’s where things get really interesting. Kepler-10c, affectionately dubbed “Godzilla” by researchers, weighs in at about 11 Earth masses and boasts a radius 2.3 times larger than our home planet. Initially, scientists thought this made it just another massive rocky world. Recent observations using the Galileo National Telescope in the Canary Islands have completely flipped that assumption on its head.

    What if Kepler-10c isn’t rocky at all? What if it’s actually a frozen ocean world with no atmosphere, covered entirely in ice despite its impressive size? That’s exactly what researchers publishing in Astronomy & Astrophysics are suggesting.

    Source : https://3dvf.com/en/the-frozen-ocean-world-kepler-10c-challenges-everything-we-know-about-planetary-formation/

  159. Reginald Selkirk says

    Scientists propose novel way of treating mosquitoes for malaria

    Mosquitoes should be given malaria drugs to clear their infection so they can no longer spread the disease, say US researchers.

    Malaria parasites, which kill nearly 600,000 people a year, mostly children, are spread by female mosquitoes when they drink blood.

    Current efforts aim to kill mosquitoes with insecticide rather than curing them of malaria.

    But a team at Harvard University has found a pair of drugs which can successfully rid the insects of malaria when absorbed through their legs. Coating bed nets in the drug cocktail is the long-term aim…

    Nets are both a physical barrier and also contain insecticides which kill mosquitoes that land on them.

    But mosquitoes have become resistant to insecticide in many countries so the chemicals no longer kill the insects as effectively as they used to…

    The researchers analysed malaria’s DNA to find possible weak spots while it is infecting mosquitoes.

    They took a large library of potential drugs and narrowed it down to a shortlist of 22. These were tested when female mosquitoes were given a blood-meal contaminated with malaria.

    In their article in Nature, the scientists describe two highly effective drugs that killed 100% of the parasites.

    The drugs were tested on material similar to bed nets.

    “Even if that mosquito survives contact with the bed net, the parasites within are killed and so it’s still not transmitting malaria,” said Dr Probst…

    She says the malaria parasite is less likely to become resistant to the drugs as there are billions of them in each infected person, but less than five in each mosquito.

    The effect of the drugs lasts for a year on the nets, potentially making it a cheap and long-lasting alternative to insecticide, the researchers say…

  160. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all Chris Hayes

    Trump admin escalates fight with Harvard, bars enrollment of international students
    Video is 9:02 minutes

    ‘Met Gala of pay-for-play’: Trump crypto dinner is brazenly corrupt, says Hayes
    Video 8:08 minutes

  162. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/jen-psaki

    ‘They don’t want anyone to know’: Straight answers to White House briefing questions
    Video is 4:41 minutes

    Despite ‘MAHA’ fuss, truth of Trump admin’s health priorities seen in drastic cuts
    Video is 4:42 minutes

    Backlash: Republicans head home to face constituent wrath over rich-get-richer budget bill
    Video is 5:38 minutes

  163. says

    The White House came up with a handful of talking points to defend the president’s meme coin scheme, but they were all unbelievable.

    Related video at the link.

    When Donald Trump unveiled a meme coin a few days before his second inaugural, the ethical mess was obvious. The Campaign Legal Center’s Adav Noti explained at the time, “It is literally cashing in on the presidency — creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office. It is beyond unprecedented.”

    But when the president and his partners launched a contest of sorts last month, it took the story to a new level: Those interested in investing in Trump’s meme coin — and by extension, giving the president money — were told they’d have a chance to win special access to Trump and the White House.

    Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said of the scheme, “This isn’t Trump just being Trump. The Trump coin scam is the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done. Not close.”

    The gambit proved predictably lucrative. NBC News reported this week:

    More than 200 wealthy, mostly anonymous crypto buyers are coming to Washington on Thursday to have dinner with President Donald Trump. The price of admission: $55,000 to $37.7 million. That’s how much the 220 winners of a contest to meet Trump spent on his volatile cryptocurrency token, $TRUMP, according to an analysis by the blockchain analytics company Nansen. The top $TRUMP coin holders at a specific time — determined by the dinner’s organizers — secured a seat.

    The dinner nevertheless happened at a Trump-owned property in Virginia on Thursday night, and it was described by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes as “the Met Gala of presidential pay-for-play.” Chris added that the dinner was “the most brazen act of corruption by a president in our lifetimes, probably in a century, possibly ever.”

    For its part, the White House hasn’t said who attended the event or exactly how much money ended up in the president’s pockets. Hours before the dinner, however, press secretary Karoline Leavitt did take some time to offer her most detailed defense of the scandalous arrangement to date.

    The president’s chief spokesperson was asked, for example, whether Trump was using the gathering to enrich himself. Instead of answering directly, Leavitt said the president was re-elected “because he was a successful businessman.” The problem with this, of course, was (a) she didn’t answer the question; (b) he wasn’t a successful businessman; and (c) there’s no evidence to suggest Trump’s private-sector background contributed to his successful 2024 candidacy.

    At the same briefing, Leavitt also argued that Trump was attending the crypto dinner in his “personal time,” which made even less sense, given that presidents while in office don’t have the luxury of simply taking off the presidential hat and acting as a private citizen for a while. Ethical norms and legal standards always apply to the nation’s chief executive, especially when interacting with those eager to give them financial rewards.

    But I was especially interested in Leavitt’s third point: Trump’s assets, she insisted, are in a “blind trust” managed by his adult sons, which necessarily mitigates potential ethical conflicts. [Video at the link]

    This almost resembles a credible point, but there’s a problem: Trump’s “trust” isn’t actually “blind.”

    When the president’s first term began, many urged the Republican to avoid ethical quandaries by utilizing a blind trust, but Trump refused. After he was elected to a second term, he did transfer assets into a trust controlled by his eldest son, but to call it “blind” is to stretch the definition to an unreasonable degree.

    Indeed, The New York Times spoke to Dennis Kelleher, the chief executive of Better Markets, a nonprofit that pushes for more transparency on Wall Street, who emphasized the family connection. “This is not a blind trust with an independent trustee, where people can have confidence that the conflicts of interest are in fact removed,” he explained.

    In other words, after having plenty of time to come up with a defense for Trump’s meme coin scheme, the White House came up with a handful of talking points, and all three fell apart rather quickly.

    All things considered, that’s not too surprising: Defending the indefensible isn’t easy.

  164. says

    RFK Jr. pushes a misguided ‘do your own research’ line as he unveils MAHA report

    “The more Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talks about people doing their own research, the more important it is to explain why he’s wrong.”

    Related video at the link.

    Donald Trump and his White House team unveiled “The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again” to some fanfare on Thursday afternoon, and as The New York Times noted, “The document echoes talking points Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed for decades.”

    With this in mind, few were surprised when the White House report started crumbling under scrutiny. The Washington Post reported, “Some of the report’s suggestions … stretched the limits of science, medical experts said. Several sections of the report offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.”

    But also of interest was what RFK Jr. had to say shortly after the document reached the public. NBC News reported:

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who released a long-awaited report on the causes of chronic disease in children, said in an interview with CNN tonight that people should be skeptical of ‘any medical advice’ and that ‘they need to do their own research.’

    […] about a month ago, Kennedy sat down with Phil McGraw, the television personality known as “Dr. Phil,” and the Cabinet secretary told the host that he advises parents of newborns to “do your own research” before vaccinating their infants.

    […] People do research online all the time, looking up movie reviews or the best place to buy a toaster, so what’s wrong with people taking advantage of available resources when making decisions on matters related to science and health care?

    In case the answer to this question isn’t obvious, The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse wrote a compelling column on this a few weeks ago.

    It probably goes without saying, but just in case: Researching a vaccine is substantially more complicated than researching a stroller. You research strollers by typing ‘best strollers’ into Wirecutter and buying whichever one has cupholders. You research a vaccine by getting a PhD in immunology or cellular and molecular biology, acquiring a lab in which you can conduct months or years worth of double-blind clinical trials, publishing your findings in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and then patiently navigating the government and industry regulations that are required to make sure your vaccine is safe and effective.

    […] I, for example, don’t have a background in medicine or scientific research. So I’m not in a position to go online and make competent assessments on matters related to immunology. Instead, I rely on the scientific consensus crafted by knowledgeable and experienced scientific professionals, whose work has been subject to extensive scrutiny by other knowledgeable and experienced scientific professionals.

    In other words, I can’t do my own research, because I’m not qualified to do that research. […]

    RFK Jr. appears to approach these issues with the assumption that the scientific canon is inherently suspect because it’s crafted by those who reject his conspiratorial and unscientific perspective. When he advises Americans to “do their own research,” it’s a recommendation rooted in the idea that people should poke around the internet until they find sites that give them information that seems true — or that they want to be true.

    But that’s not a responsible approach to public health. On the contrary, it’s madness.

    As my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem recently explained, “Laypeople cannot understand more technical information about vaccine ingredients, efficacy reports or safety assessments on their own, since understanding that information requires specialized knowledge and a broader contextual understanding of the diseases they guard against. Instead, people have to rely on expert intermediaries to interpret and explain that information for them.”

    That the incumbent U.S. secretary of health and human services doesn’t understand this fact should be the source of widespread concern.

  167. says

    The Supreme Court Just Handed A Match To An Arsonist

    The Biggest News Of The Week

    In a tumultuous week that marked four months since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, nothing will have as long-lasting and damaging an effect on American democracy as the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to upend 90 years of its own precedent and strip independent agencies of their independence.

    The high court’s six-justice conservative majority fundamentally altered the structural balance of power among the branches of the federal government. It handed vast new power to the White House to put politics above expertise, partisanship above reason, and power over principle.

    All of that would have been bad enough at any other time, but the Roberts Court just handed a match to a confirmed arsonist in Donald Trump. […]

    The immediate result of their decision will be to enable and encourage Trump’s rampage across federal government to bring it to heel to his whims in dramatic and disturbing ways. […]

    One wonders how independent agencies will even function. They were created and have existed over the course of nearly a century under a certain set of assumptions about the importance of experts, consistency in policy-making, and insulation from partisan politics. What is their use or reason for being now if they’re merely appendages of the White House doing its bidding?

    The Damage Is Long Term And Lasting

    Political scientist Don Moynihan makes an insightful point about the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision:

    With unitary executive theory, Congress cannot write robust new legislation that modernizes the civil service and stops politicization. A President could just ignore it. Even if Trump leaves office, and a new President looks to restore nonpartisan competence, their promises are only good for four or eight years before another President can come in and rip up the terms of their employment. And over time, why would even a good government President invest effort in restoring capacity if their successor can undermine it?

    With unitary executive theory, the public sector becomes permanently viewed as an unstable and chaotic workplace that we are seeing now. The most capable potential employees decide its not worth the bother, and the workforce becomes a mix of people who cannot get a job elsewhere, and short term political appointees.

    SCOTUS’ Special Carveout For The Fed

    Last month, Todd Phillips warned of the intellectual dishonesty afoot if the Supreme Court did what it ultimately did do yesterday in overturning its Humphrey’s Executor precedent while carving out a special exception for the Federal Reserve: “In short, there is simply no principled way of ensuring the Fed’s removal protections stand while striking down those of all other agencies.”

  168. Reginald Selkirk says

    Mysterious hacking group Careto was run by the Spanish government, sources say

    More than a decade ago, researchers at antivirus company Kaspersky identified suspicious internet traffic of what they thought was a known government-backed group, based on similar targeting and its phishing techniques. Soon, the researchers realized they had found a much more advanced hacking operation that was targeting the Cuban government, among others.

    Eventually the researchers were able to attribute the network activity to a mysterious — and at the time completely unknown — Spanish-speaking hacking group that they called Careto, after the Spanish slang word (“ugly face” or “mask” in English), which they found buried within the malware’s code.

    Careto was never publicly linked to a specific government. But TechCrunch has now learned that the researchers who first discovered the group were convinced that Spanish government hackers were behind Careto’s espionage operations.

    When Kaspersky first revealed the existence of Careto in 2014, its researchers called the group “one of the most advanced threats at the moment,” with its stealthy malware capable of stealing highly sensitive data, including private conversations and keystrokes from the computers it compromised, much akin to powerful government spyware today. Careto’s malware was used to hack into government institutions and private companies around the world…

  169. says

    Summarized from NPR:

    Voice of America: The Trump administration’s silencing of the government broadcaster can continue after the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a stay pending appeal to remain in place.

  172. says

    Here’s some crazy sh-t Trump says that the White House is now hiding

    The White House has scrubbed its website of transcripts from President Donald Trump’s speeches and appearances, hiding his lies, unhinged comments, and even moments when world leaders have rebuked his statements.

    NBC News reports that while transcripts for some of Trump’s appearances were on the official White House website as recently as Sunday, they have been pulled due to a shift in the administration’s communications policy. Now, only videos of those moments are available and there is no accompanying transcript.

    The transcripts of the remarks do exist, because official government stenographers are recording all of Trump’s public appearances—but the White House has chosen not to put them on the website. It is a dramatic change from the way the White House operated under former President Joe Biden, when even gaffes and remarks that caused controversy were published in black and white for the public and the world to read.

    The removal of the Trump transcripts raises new questions about what the administration is trying to hide. Are the hidden transcripts meant to further tighten control over Trump’s image, even as mainstream media outlets decline to report stories that are critical of him? Or are there larger issues about Trump’s mental and physical health that the White House wants to obscure by keeping transcripts out of the public eye?

    A look back at recent Trump appearances that are no longer available in transcript form reveals some unflattering moments that it appears the White House would like the world to forget about.

    For instance, the White House website does not have the transcript of this odd moment from April, when Trump ranted about washing his hair while signing an executive order on water pressure. [video at the link] [I snipped Trump’s blather about lather.]

    Another hidden transcript involves Trump pushing a fantasy in March that he “invaded Los Angeles” to turn on water there during wildfires. [video at the link]

    […] Trump promised during the 2024 campaign that he would reduce the cost of eggs on his first day in office, which did not happen. Trump went on in April to lie about eggs seeing a dramatic price drop—but the transcript is not on the White House website. [video at the link]

    […] While meeting with UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on May 15, Trump made a bizarre remark about the word “groceries” which can no longer be found on the White House website. [video at the link]

    […] On Wednesday, Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and gave a presentation on nonexistent “white genocide” in Africa. As part of that tirade, Trump flipped through a series of web pages purporting to prove his point (they turned out to be fakes). The transcript of the encounter is not available on an official government website. [video at the link]

    […] When recently elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited the White House in May, he told Trump to his face that the nation was not for sale, rebuking Trump’s argument that Canada should be annexed and become the U.S.’s 51st state. Those remarks are not on the White House site. [video at the link]

    […] The transcript omissions make it clear that the White House wants to hide as much of Trump as possible and protect him from scrutiny.

    By keeping this information offline, the real Trump is obscured. Americans have already made it clear they don’t like what makes it past the White House filter—meaning things would probably be much worse if his bizarre ramblings were on full display.

  173. says

    Judge temporarily blocks Trump administration’s foreign students ban at Harvard

    A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s decision to revoke Harvard University’s certification to enroll foreign students.

    Within hours of Harvard filing suit against the move, Boston-based U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs agreed to halt the revocation until she can receive further arguments. She scheduled a May 29 hearing on whether to grant a longer pause.

    Burroughs noted Harvard’s warning that “it will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”

    “Thus, a TRO [temporary restraining order] is justified to preserve the status quo pending a hearing,” the judge, an appointee of former President Obama, wrote in her brief order. […]

  175. Reginald Selkirk says

    How penguin poop can help to mitigate climate change

    … The ammonia in penguin guano — or poop — could help to reduce the impacts of climate change by contributing to increased cloud formation, a paper published in Communications Earth & Environment on Thursday found.

    Penguins, a key species in Antarctica, are “major emitters” of ammonia, according to the paper. When the ammonia reacts with gases that contain sulfur emitted from phytoplankton in the ocean, it increases the creation of aerosols, which give water vapor a surface to condense upon and leads to cloud formation, Matthew Boyer, a researcher at the University of Helsinki’s Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research and lead author of the paper, told ABC News…

  176. says

    Followup to comment 163.

    […] Trump’s crypto-grifto dinner happened last night, for the 220 people who bribed him an average of $1.8 million each in $TRUMP memecoin, at the Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia.

    Good for these protestors shouting outside! SHAME THOSE PEOPLE! [Photos and video at the link]

    And at some point the 25 biggest crypto-spenders were supposed to get a “VIP Tour” of the White House, though the reference to the White House later disappeared from the site. CNN reports that those top 25 donors did at least get “access to a small VIP reception with the president.”

    Who bought their way in via the purchase of this intangible “product,” which according to its disclaimer is “not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type”? Well, that is a SECRET that Trump will not tell you! And some of the purchasers even showed up in disguise, like this guy in some kind of bug/robot mask.

    But Trump did publish a “leaderboard” where the top donors were identified by their wallet addresses and nicknames four letters or less, such as “REKT”, “HYPE” and “MEOW.”

    Bloomberg and other outlets have done some sleuthing, though! And Bloomberg found that “many of the wallets with the largest holdings are not listed on the leaderboard,” and also all but six of the top 25 bribecoin buyers were using foreign exchanges that do not allow customers to register if they live in the US. HMM!

    The biggest investor, according to itself, was a company called GD Culture Group, which is made up of eight Chinese investors and spent $300 million. The company recorded zero revenue last year from an e-commerce business it runs on TikTok, and disclosed last month that it was in danger of losing its Nasdaq listing because it had failed to meet certain financial requirements. So whither and from whom did it get $300 million? Why, from a stock sale to an unnamed entity in the British Virgin Islands! And that is all we know. However, the company’s annual report notes that “The Chinese government may intervene or influence its operations at any time,” as is the Chinese government’s way. So whoever it is, it is no one who the Chinese government would disapprove of.

    […] the largest personal holder of $TRUMP coin, the coin for strumpets, is one Justin Sun […]

    Sun was born in China, and is also the Prime Minister of a micronation named Liberland. He started a blockchain named Tron, and before Trump was elected he had been charged with fraud and market manipulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But he bought $75 million shares of Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto, and then $18.6 million of his memecoins, and the investigation was magically put on “pause”! Not only that, but two weeks ago the United Arab Emirates announced they were going to put $2 billion with a B into a World Liberty Financial stablecoin, which will be integrated Sun’s Tron blockchain. [Nothing suspicious here … not at all troubling.]

    Market manipulation, did somebody say market manipulation? The value of Trump’s memecoin had been sinking, but after the dinner and tour announcement its value surged 58 percent. The Trump family controls about 80 percent of the coin but can’t sell large amounts without tanking the value. But since the family also makes money on every trade of $TRUMP, any and all activity, even sell-offs, bring in cash.

    It’s a new day, though! Sun put it at his dinner speech last night,

    [J]ust 100 days ago, they were hunting down crypto people everywhere, and we could not have such a grand event in Washington gathering all practitioners in the U.S. to build the crypto industry together. This is the most beautiful thing I can think of in my life.

    And then there’s the lower-level scumbags: CREW reports that 50 of the $TRUMP memecoin dinner invitees hold crypto assets named for Pepe the Frog, that 4Chan symbol of racist, antisemitic chuds […] In addition to Trump coins, those wallets’ holdings include coins with names like “‘FUCK THE JEWS,’ while another is simply the n-word. Four others are variations on the word ‘swastika,’ such as ‘Swasticoin’ and ‘Swastika Coin.’” [Well that bodes well.]

    There was Morten Christensen, the 39-year-old onetime poker player who now runs a crypto website. “The whole week I was talking to my wife and father, ‘Wouldn’t it be insane if I get to meet the president of the United States based on a memecoin competition?’”

    […] Also in attendance, Vincent Liu, Sheldon Xia, Kain Warwick, and Oh Sang-rok, founders of crypto companies with headquarters or operations in Taiwan, the Cayman Islands, Australia, and South Korea, respectively. [I snipped more examples.]

    Also Lamar Odom was there, the former basketball player perhaps best known for his brief marriage to Khloé Kardashian, and ODing in a Nevada cathouse. He has now launched his own memecoin, which is called $ODOM. Question for your born-again friends, if Trump was Satan on earth and his inner circle were demons from hell, how would this look any different?

    The bribery is so balls-out that even some Republicans took time out of their day from taking food out of the mouths of hungry children and healthcare away from the sick to rebuke it.

    “This is my president that we’re talking about, but I am willing to say that this gives me pause,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis, of Wyoming.

    And Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski did not like how the bribery came with a White House tour, which seems like the LEAST concerning thing about it, but whatever. […]

  178. Jean says

    Since this crypto scam is done on his personal time, as per the MAGA Barbie, does that mean he has no immunity for anything related to it? Of course that would require a DOJ that actually takes action to respect the rule of law which isn’t the case now but that could change in the future.

  179. Reginald Selkirk says

    America’s Leading Alien Hunters Depend on AI to Speed Their Search

    Harvard University’s Galileo Project is using AI to automate the search for unidentified anomalous phenomena, marking a significant shift in how academics approach what was once considered fringe research. The project operates a Massachusetts observatory equipped with infrared cameras, acoustic sensors, and radio-frequency analyzers that continuously scan the sky for unusual objects.

    Researchers Laura Domine and Richard Cloete are training machine learning algorithms to recognize all normal aerial phenomena — planes, birds, drones, weather balloons — so the system can flag genuine anomalies for human analysis. The team uses computer vision software called YOLO (You Only Look Once) and has generated hundreds of thousands of synthetic images to train their models, though the software currently identifies only 36% of aircraft captured by infrared cameras.

    The Pentagon is pursuing parallel efforts through its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which has examined over 1,800 UAP reports and identified 50 to 60 cases as “true anomalies” that government scientists cannot explain. AARO has developed its own sensor suite called Gremlin, using similar technology to Harvard’s observatory. Both programs represent the growing legitimization of UAP research following 2017 Defense Department disclosures about military encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena.

  180. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/tabs-friday-may-23-2025

    Your morning news roundup and things to read!

    Donald Trump and more than 200 of his most remunerative meme coin purchasers had dinner at Trump’s Virginia trash palace last night after investors snapped up $148 million of the worthless online tokens, producing millions of dollars in trading fees for Trump’s family. Ethics, schmethics! The top 25 buyers also got an exclusive meeting with Dear Leader beforehand, and what a Night Gallery of rogues they were! Or at least the ones who can be identified. The White House explained Trump wasn’t making money off his presidency because the dinner was on his personal time, mmm-hmmm. [Politico / The Intercept]

    The Trump administration took $365 million that was supposed to build out solar energy in Puerto Rico, to help make the island less dependent on coal and gas, which have to be delivered by sea, and diverted the money to build up the island’s dependency on coal and gas, which have to be delivered by sea. The Department of Energy lied that the move would make Puerto Rico’s power grid more reliable. The grid still fails regularly, and local solar and storage microgrids were intended to keep power on at clinics and public housing. [AP]

    […] the Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation of Media Matters, which Elon Musk just happens to have a grudge against. [Joe. My. God]

    People on the interwebs had a lot of fun mocking a list of “summer books” published in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer because while it included a number of popular authors, the titles and descriptions of all the new books were hallucinated by some stupid AI chatbot. Oops. The list was part of an insert on Summer Fun Things from once-respected King Features, owned by Hearst, and the whole thing was completely embarrassing. [Vice]

    […]

    Embedded links are available at the main link.

  181. says

    Supreme Court temporarily allows Trump administration to shield DOGE documents

    The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily allowed the Trump administration to shield Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from freedom of information requests seeking thousands of pages of material.

    Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay that puts lower court decisions on hold while the Supreme Court considers what next steps to take.

    For now, it means the government will not have to respond to requests for documents and allow for the deposition of the DOGE administrator, Amy Gleason, as a lower court had ruled.

    At issue in the ongoing litigation is whether DOGE, which has played a key role in firing government workers and cutting federal grants and spending, is technically a government agency and therefore subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows members of the public to seek internal documents.

    The Trump administration says that, despite its name, DOGE is merely a presidential advisory body that is not subject to public records requests under FOIA.

    Further complicating matters, when DOGE was set up, it effectively took the place of a previous government entity called the U.S. Digital Service. The Trump administration now refers to the body as the U.S. DOGE Service, or USDS.

    The case arose when watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) brought a freedom of information request in January soon after Trump took office seeking information about DOGE. CREW later filed suit.

    In March, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington ruled DOGE is “likely” covered by FOIA and that “the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in unearthing the records CREW seeks.”

    Cooper ordered DOGE to process CREW’s several FOIA requests for information on an “expedited timetable” and to begin producing documents on a rolling basis “as soon as practicable.” The court also ordered the government to preserve “all records” that may be responsive to CREW’s FOIA requests.

    In addition to the more than 100,000 documents the Office of Management and Budget has that are responsive to the FOIA request ordered by Cooper, DOGE itself said it has approximately 58,000 documents responsive to the request.

    The documents in question all relate back to the question of whether DOGE is a government agency.

    CREW’s lawyers said in court papers said that Cooper had merely issued a “narrowly-tailored discovery order” to ascertain whether DOGE is a federal agency. The Supreme Court, they added, “rarely intervenes in ongoing discovery disputes” and there was “no basis for such extraordinary intervention here.”

  182. says

    Followup to comment 131.

    […] “Ashli Babbitt was shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever shot her,” Trump said, adding, “Nobody on the other side was killed.”

    This was wrong and offensive for a variety of reasons — Trump’s condemnation of the officer was absurd — but of particular interest was his description of law enforcement as “the other side.”

    In other words, for the incumbent president, there’s an “us” and a “them.” The rioters who attacked the Capitol in Trump’s name are part of the former, while the police are part of the latter. […] as far as Trump’s concerned, the officers who served on Jan. 6 were the opposition.

    Congressional Republicans know this, which helps to explain why the plaque that should’ve been installed months ago is gathering dust in a closet.

    About the plaque:

    “[…] a permanent plaque to honor the law enforcement personnel who helped protect the U.S. Capitol against right-wing rioters. By statute, the plaque would list the names of the officers who served; it would be placed on the western side of the building; and it would be in place by March 2023.

    […] Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin confirmed during a congressional hearing last month that his office needs approval from the House speaker’s office — that and Johnson still hasn’t given his approval. […]

  183. says

    Why Trump’s new tariff threat against Apple is likely to fail

    Donald Trump’s on-again/off-again affection for Apple goes back several years. Nearly a year before his first term as president began, for example, the then-Republican candidate called for a national boycott against the tech giant, though Trump apparently didn’t mean it; he continued to use Apple products; and his offensive was quickly forgotten.

    More recently, the president was pleased when Apple promised to spend more than $500 billion in the United States over the next four years — much of the investment had been planned long before Trump returned to power — though his satisfaction didn’t last long.

    Last week during his trip to the Midde East, Trump seemed especially concerned about Apple’s international production process. “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I said to him, ‘My friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.’”

    A week later, Trump made an unexpected announcement. NBC News reported:

    Apple shares dropped as much as 3% Friday after President Donald Trump threatened the tech giant with a 25% tariff if it does not start producing iPhones in the U.S. — his latest salvo directly targeting a U.S. company over how it conducts its business.

    “I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s [sic] that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote in a message published to his social media platform. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your [sic] for your attention to this matter!”

    There are multiple angles to a story like this one, though the NBC News report highlighted one of the most important elements: “Presidents typically avoid giving the appearance of dictating individual companies’ strategies, but Trump has broken with that norm. Instead, he has begun ramping up direct attacks against U.S. companies whose responses to his tariffs he dislikes, including Amazon, Mattel and Walmart.”

    […] it’s far from normal for an American leader to declare, in effect, “Follow my commands on your production plans or my government will punish your company.”

    But that’s not the only problem. A CNBC report noted, for example, that Apple is likely to blow off Trump’s threat, even if the White House decides to follow through on it.

    Analysts said it would probably make more sense for Apple to eat the cost rather than move production stateside. “In terms of profitability, it’s way better for Apple to take the hit of a 25% tariff on iPhones sold in the US market than to move iPhone assembly lines back to US,” wrote Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on X.

    Complicating matters further, even if Apple were to agree to shift production to the U.S., Trump would see this as a tremendous win, but American consumers would not: A New York Times report noted that the company would be forced to at least double the price of an iPhone.

    The Times quoted Wayne Lam, an analyst with TechInsights, a market research firm, who called Trump’s demand “absurd” and “not economically feasible.”

    As for Apple’s competitors, their optimism about the developments should probably be kept in check: Trump announced, hours after publishing his online missive, that he would similarly punish Samsung and any other company that fails to make its phones on American soil.

    When a reporter specifically asked Trump if he has the legal authority to impose tariffs on a specific company, he dodged the question.

  184. says

    The New York Times reported:

    The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday opened an investigation into Media Matters, a liberal advocacy organization that has published research on hateful and antisemitic content on X, according to two people familiar with the inquiry. The regulator said in a letter sent to the organization that it was investigating the group, which is aligned with Democrats, over whether it illegally colluded with advertisers, according to the people.

    Commentary:

    […] It’s worth emphasizing for context that Trump’s top campaign donor and White House adviser, Elon Musk, sued the progressive media watchdog a couple of years ago, raising similar allegations, and as the Times’ article noted, the FTC’s regulators “also asked Media Matters to turn over all the documents it had produced or received from X in that litigation.”

    Media Matters’ president, Angelo Carusone, said in a statement, “Right-wing media figures holding key posts and abusing government power to target critics are two hallmarks of the Trump administration. Threats won’t work, our mission continues.” […]

    if you’re thinking it seems as if there have been a lot of these kinds of probes lately, it’s not your imagination.

    The public has learned in recent weeks that the administration […] is also investigating and/or prosecuting a variety of Democratic officials and candidates, including Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

    This dovetails with the president directing the Justice Department to go after Christopher Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; which came on the heels of Trump pressing the Department of Homeland Security to investigate Miles Taylor, a former high-ranking DHS official.

    The president did this not because there’s evidence of Krebs or Taylor having done anything wrong, but because they defied him several years ago. They went on his enemies list, and now he’s exacting revenge.

    Around the same time, Trump also directed the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s most important fundraising platform.

    And did I mention the investigation into former FBI director James Comey? Because that’s underway, too.

    The Times also recently highlighted the broader pattern:

    Mr. Trump and his allies are aggressively attacking the players and machinery that power the left, taking a series of highly partisan official actions that, if successful, will threaten to hobble Democrats’ ability to compete in elections for years to come.
    Trump and his team are also going after law firms, universities and news organizations they consider political foes of the White House.

    What’s more, given Ed Martin’s new responsibilities at the Justice Department, this overtly and abusive partisan pattern is likely to intensify.

    My conservative readers will likely see this and say, “Well, during the Biden administration, Donald Trump was subjected to investigations, so what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

    But that talking point remains absurd. Trump faced federal criminal investigations, not because of a retaliatory agenda, but because of voluminous evidence that he committed a variety of alleged felonies.

    Axios recently noted, “In the final days of the 2024 campaign, Axios identified a list of perceived adversaries who fit what Trump ominously described as ‘the enemies from within.’ As president, he has taken steps to retaliate against virtually all of them.”

    That was two months ago. The problem is vastly worse now, and there’s no reason to believe conditions will improve anytime soon.

    Link

  185. says

    Washington Post link

    “We’re international students at Harvard. We’re afraid to write this. But we have to speak up.”

    “Three student leaders on Trump’s attempts to throw them out of the country.”

    Writing this letter carries a great deal of personal risk for all of us. The ordeals of Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil make clear that the Trump administration does not hesitate to snatch international students off the streets and put them in detention facilities for speaking up. But we refuse to silence ourselves at a time when our community is under attack. We can’t afford to be silent. Neither can Harvard.

    For each of us, the day we received acceptance letters from Harvard was possibly the happiest of our lives. We were heading to a university and country that offer endless opportunities, to the very center of free thought and innovation. Both the U.S. and Harvard offered something that was not available to us at home. […]

    Now, we are caught in a battle between the White House and Harvard. On Thursday, the Trump administration escalated an ongoing dispute with the university by revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. Though a federal judge put a temporary hold on the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to revoke Harvard’s certification, if the order stands, international students — more than a quarter of the undergraduate student body — will not be able to return to campus in the fall. Thousands of students like us will see their dreams shattered. They come here to become physicians, scientists, engineers and teachers. And without Harvard’s ability to bring together the smartest people from around the world, Harvard will simply not be Harvard anymore.

    We should make no mistake about President Donald Trump’s strategy: He is trying to install himself as provost of our university. He seemingly wants to dictate who can be admitted, what classes can be taught and which professors should be fired. Disagreeing with the current administration, whether an economics professor opposing tariffs or a medical researcher debunking anti-vaccine myths, could lead to punishment. In Trump’s world, there is no such thing as an independent institution.

    To this end, he is using us international students as poker chips in this authoritarian game. He is trying to pressure Harvard by putting our futures at risk.

    But among Trump’s victims will be the U.S. itself. Across labs, research centers and classrooms in American universities, domestic and international students and researchers work hand in hand. Deporting thousands of people and deterring others from coming to the U.S. to study and conduct research will severely impact America’s place at the forefront of innovation.

    […] Even if the Trump administration backs down now or loses in court, it will take many years for American universities to regain the trust of students around the world […]

    Trump is trying to give the university the illusion of a choice: give in to some of my demands, or I will deport all of your international students. But we know that Trump is a highly predictable poker player. If we start to give in — say, by handing over the names of students who have been involved in protests or firing professors — he is going to come back for even more. We have no choice but to take the fight now, or we will have surrendered our independence.

    But we can’t take this fight alone. We need the support of universities and students across America to show that his attempts at intimidation will not work. We need Republicans in Congress, many of whom are graduates of Harvard, to oppose Trump’s actions. […]

    Doing nothing would be a shame to the ideals and values of the country we came to and believe in. Now more than ever, we all need to stand up for them.

    Abdullah Shahid Sial, Lahore, Pakistan
    Leo Gerdén, Stockholm
    Karl Molden, Vienna

    Sial is a sophomore at Harvard University and co-president of the Harvard Undergraduate Association. Gerdén is a senior, Molden is a sophomore, and both are co-founders of Students for Freedom, a coalition of international and American students speaking up against the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education.

  187. birgerjohansson says

    A comment to Lynna, OM @ 185

    “…If we start to give in — (snip)— he is going to come back for even more. ”

    The problem with Danegeld is, the Dane keeps coming back.

  188. John Morales says

    So much Trump all the time!

    —

    https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/414024/new-research-clownfish-climate-adaptation

    During a severe heat wave in 2023, scientists scuba diving off the coast of Papua New Guinea captured clownfish to measure their bodies. Between February and August, they calculated the length of 134 of these iconic, orange and white fish once a month, taking a total of six measurements for each fish.

    Those measurements revealed something peculiar: Most of the fish shrank.

    This week, the researchers reported their findings in Science Advances, concluding that the fish got shorter — on the scale of a few millimeters, or a small, single-digit percent of their length — in response to the heat wave.

    “We were so surprised to see shrinking in these fish that, to be sure, we measured each fish individual repeatedly over a period of five months,” said Melissa Versteeg, a doctoral researcher at Newcastle University, who led the study in collaboration with Mahonia Na Dari, an environmental organization, and Walindi Resort. “In the end, we discovered [that downsizing] was very common in this population.”

    Versteeg and her colleagues don’t know how, exactly, the fish are shrinking — one untested idea is that the fish might be reabsorbing some of their bone material or tissue. But getting smaller isn’t a problem. In fact, the study found, it may be an adaptation to help clownfish survive hotter ocean temperatures.

  189. Reginald Selkirk says

    US judge strikes down Trump order against law firm Jenner & Block

    A U.S. judge in Washington on Friday overturned President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting law firm Jenner & Block, dealing another setback to his administration’s crackdown on prominent firms that represented Trump’s political adversaries or employed lawyers who investigated him in the past.

    Trump’s order had suspended security clearances for Jenner’s lawyers and restricted their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work.

    U.S. District Judge John Bates, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, ruled that the directive violated core rights under the U.S. Constitution, mirroring a May 2 ruling that struck down a similar executive order against law firm Perkins Coie.

    Trump’s order, Bates wrote, “makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed.””Going after law firms in this way is doubly violative of the Constitution,” the judge said, finding it infringed Jenner’s rights to free speech and sought to “chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers.” …

  190. says

    In South Africa, Trump’s false claims spark a renewed racial reckoning. That’s a Washington Post link.

    False claims made by U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday that South Africa’s Black majority is trying to wipe out White Afrikaners have roiled this country — forcing race to the forefront of a national conversation in a way rarely seen since the end of apartheid.

    The “born frees,” young people who came of age after the country’s first free elections, in 1994, and were promised a bright future in a new South Africa, describe uncomfortable conversations with friends and colleagues that navigate racial tensions largely unfamiliar to their generation.
    White South Africans — Afrikaners or not — have given voice to long-suppressed anger about the perceived failure of the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress, to deliver on its promises of an equal, nonracial society.

    South Africa, heralded three decades ago by Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu as the “rainbow nation,” is the most unequal society in the world, according to the World Bank. It is marred by massive economic disparities and unequal access to jobs and education for Black citizens. Many neighborhoods are still segregated by race. Violent crime remains a scourge.

    A day after the meeting at the White House between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump’s explosive and unfounded claims of a “genocide” against White farmers dominated headlines, social media and chatter across South Africa.

    Some outlets applauded Ramaphosa for remaining calm as Trump went on the offensive […]

    “Trump has forced SA to confront our crime scourge,” read an editorial from News24, the country’s biggest online publication.

    “This genocide debate is awkward, man, I don’t know,” said Relebogile Thekiso, 27, a Black graphic design intern in Johannesburg. “Today at work, everyone was talking about it, even making jokes. But some White colleagues didn’t participate.”

    “It got me wondering if they are quiet because they agree with Trump,” she continued. “This week, I will maintain a social distance from my [White] friend until the situation blows over.”

    Ramaphosa hoped his visit to Washington would reset relations at a time when South Africa has cut spending and is weighed down by debt. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said Wednesday that the economy was expected to grow at a rate of 1.4 percent this year, down half a point from projections in March.

    […] In 2023, according to IRR data, there were 49 people killed on farms, some of them Black. Nationwide, there were 27,621 killings that year; about 80 percent of the victims were “poor, under- or unemployed young Black males,” Endres said.
    Ernst van Zyl, head of public relations for AfriForum, a rights group for Afrikaners, said many had become disillusioned with party politics in South Africa, but denied that large numbers wanted to leave the country.

    […] Tshepo Madlingozi, an official at the South African Human Rights Commission, said the country remains fractured along racial lines and has yet to fully confront its painful history. “This really shows we have a long way to go in building a nation,” Madlingozi said.

    South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established 30 years ago to unearth apartheid-era atrocities, was widely praised. But critics said it prioritized national reconciliation at the expense of justice for victims.

    “We were not honest with one another about what happened and who did what to whom, and how do we fix it,” Madlingozi said. “That was a big mistake.”

    He said Trump’s false claims about genocide were “very painful and a bit of a betrayal” to Black South Africans, many of whom are still dealing with deep-rooted institutional racism. “I am talking about universities and schools that still uphold Whiteness, where Whiteness is still the norm, where White privilege is still supported,” Madlingozi said. […]

  191. Reginald Selkirk says

    You Only Look Once: Deep Learning Closes Technology Gap in Tart Cherry Counting

    When it comes to counting tart cherries and estimating yield, USU researchers are adopting YOLO: You Only Look Once.

    YOLO is an object detection algorithm that uses cameras to capture an image of the collected tart cherries and count the yield. Yield estimation is important to generate yield maps and aid in orchard management. Knowing how much fruit each tree produces can affect measures taken to improve soil, crop health and irrigation management to reduce water use while increasing yield.

    Utah Water Research Laboratory graduate student Anderson Safre is taking YOLO to the next level. He used two versions of the algorithm, YOLOv8 and YOLO11, combined with a tracking algorithm to count tart cherries as they were harvested. The number output was then compared to the actual weights of the harvested fruit from individual trees to see how accurate the deep learning framework is at estimating yield and detecting individual cherries on the harvester…

    Their research noted sources of uncertainty in the study, like the fact that the relationship between fruit count and fruit weight isn’t always linear. Some trees have lots of small cherries, while others have fewer but larger ones. Camera quality and angle on the conveyer belt also significantly impacted ability to detect the individual tart cherries, as well as pile-ups on the conveyer belt that hide cherries behind each other, also known as occlusion…

  193. says

    More about that corrupt Crypto Dinner at which Trump raked in a bunch of cash:

    […] Trump hosted a dinner Thursday night for the biggest spenders on his memecoin, a corrupt affair where rich people—many of them foreign and unable to donate to Trump’s political campaigns—paid for access to the president.

    Trump held the event at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, using a taxpayer-funded military helicopter to get there.

    He then appeared before a podium emblazoned with the presidential seal, even though earlier in the day White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that the event was not part of his official duties.

    In fact, Leavitt’s claim that the dinner was a personal event and not an official one could open Trump up to legal peril, as the right-wing Supreme Court said Trump is only immune from prosecution for official acts. [See Jean’s comment 178]

    Meanwhile, the people who attended—many of them foreign nationals who would otherwise be banned by law from donating to Trump’s political campaign—explicitly admitted that they spent millions on Trump’s shitcoin to gain access to Trump, The New York Times reported. That’s as blatant of a “pay-to-play” scandal as it gets. [For an example, See https://x.com/justinsuntron/status/1925780215764046285 ]

    […] “Americans didn’t send us to Congress to help Trump turn the White House into a crypto cash machine,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said on Thursday. “We can’t look the other way when the President hosts a private dinner for his top meme coin buyers—or pass crypto bills like the GENIUS Act that would further line his pockets.”

  194. Reginald Selkirk says

    Inside Competitive Cheese-Rolling: Through Bumps and Bruises, These Pros Are Legen-Dairy

    … the small village of Brockworth, England for the annual Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake competition… Abby Lampe…

    While most of the women slide down on their butts, Lampe takes an approach more akin to the men’s style: running for as long as she can before launching herself into a somersault. She recalls her face “getting pressed into dirt” over and over again…

    Much to Lampe’s surprise, her special technique won her the race in 2022, and a video of her flying past the competition went viral on TikTok. She won again in 2024, and on May 26, she will compete for a third time…

    It started as a small, local tradition, but social media and news outlets have brought the event immense popularity. People now travel from all over the world to compete — and it’s not an easy commute. Lampe says she had to take a plane, then a train, then a bus and then hike 30 minutes to reach the spot.

    But, even with this type of popularity, the event doesn’t have any official organizers as they could get in legal trouble if someone got hurt…

  195. Reginald Selkirk says

    No charges for shooter in Roseland double homicide sparked by argument over cheese

    Authorities said Friday that they will not file murder charges against a person who allegedly fatally shot two men at a Roseland (Illinois, USA) restaurant earlier this week, saying he acted in self-defense.

    The shooting was sparked by an argument over what kind of cheese was being put on a customer’s sandwich at Momty’s Grill, 9 E. 111th St., on Monday afternoon, according to a Chicago police report.

    An employee became upset with the customer, who was yelling at her about the cheese, the Chicago police report said. The woman called her son to the restaurant.

    After the son came, a group of men also entered the restaurant, and two of them hit the son in the face, according to the report. The son ran out of the restaurant, chased by the men.

    Shots rang out, and responding officers found two men, Dexter Williams and Monte Potts, with multiple gunshot wounds, the report said.

    The police report said the son “was responsible for” at least one of the deaths. He checked himself into a Roseland hospital in good condition. He was placed into police custody, but an assistant state’s attorney declined to pursue charges, saying he acted in self-defense, the police report states…

  196. says

    Link for text quoted in comment 193.

    In somewhat related news: To Ensure Proper Level Of Economic Chaos, Trump Wants High Tariffs On EU, iPhones, Plumbuses. Some of this was covered in comment 183.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/to-ensure-proper-level-of-economic

    […] Donald Manbaby must have woken up cranky this morning. […] Trump must have been sad that the economy was insufficiently chaotic, so he took to his Twitter substitute, Truth Social, and sent back-to-back wordblurts announcing he wants huge new tariffs, for reasons.

    First he said he would place a 25 percent tariff on Apple products unless all iPhones sold in in the US are made here too. As we all know, it’s easy to just build a new tech factory and hire all the workers you need; should be ready by next Thursday.

    Then, since that apparently didn’t improve his mood any, Trump followed that up 20 minutes later with a threat to impose new 50 percent tariffs on all imports from the European Union, because they’re supposedly our allies but they need to be slapped around some so they know who’s boss. That would be considerably higher than the new temporarily-reduced 30 percent tariff on goods from China, at least until Trump decides to jack those up again.

    While outlets like the AP settled for excerpts from Trump’s unhingery, Yr Wonkette put on protective gloves and eye shielding so we could bring you the undiluted rants. Trump claimed that Tim Apple knows good and well that Trump told him LONG AGO that iPhones must be made here in the USA, so now it’s time to move production stateside. [Social media post at the link]

    I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your for your attention to this matter!

    We appreciate his final line, as if he were dictating a letter to his lawyer. […]

    Never mind that building iPhones in the US would drive up the cost substantially. […]

    Apple stocks were down about three percent Friday morning following the threat, although we’d bet dollars to bronuts that Apple will find some way to appease the angry toddler and get the tariff reduced or eliminated. Maybe if the company offers to install nice iPhones and other toys in Qatar Force One?

    Trump then aimed his [complaining] at the EU, in a far more ranty rant. Get ready, it’s far crazier than the Apple one, so you know for sure Trump wrote this one: [social media post at the link]

    The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with. Their powerful Trade Barriers, Vat Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against Americans Companies, and more, have led to a Trade Deficit with the U.S. of more than $250,000,000 a year, a number which is totally unacceptable. Our discussions with them are going nowhere! Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

    Again with the “thank you for your attention to this matter” shit. Guess he wrote both? Let’s also point out once more that a trade deficit is NOT any kind of theft from the USA, it just indicates that we’re buying stuff we want at good prices, and we actually get to keep that stuff, or even use it to manufacture other stuff.

    And as with the threat to Apple, and all the other threats, the rest of the world knows by now that Trump always changes his mind on broad tariffs, so ain’t nobody going to be building no new factories here. They know damn well that long before they even applied for a building permit, Trump would be doing some other damn thing that would make a new US plant a stranded asset. [True!]

    Still, Trump certainly got the chaos he seems to have wanted! US and global markets all clutched their chests […]

    Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 1.5% and Nasdaq futures tumbled 1.7% before the bell. Oil prices fell and Treasury yields sank. […]

    European markets fell nearly immediately after Trump’s post on his own Truth Social site. Germany’s DAX quickly swung to a 1.9% loss, while the CAC 40 in Paris fell 2.4%. London’s FTSE 100 shed 1.1%. […]

    U.S. Treasury yields tumbled after jumping earlier in the week over concerns about mounting U.S. government debt.

    The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.48% while the two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for action by the Federal Reserve, slipped to 3.92%.

    And so the cycle begins anew. We’ll have a holiday weekend full of renewed expectations of a coming recession, Trump will brag about all the deals he’s making now (none of which will actually materialize) and at some point Trump will reverse himself, leading to even more churn. And while the stock market is not the economy, all the chaos will continue to take its toll and we will indeed keep slouching toward recession and inflation. […]

    UPDATE: Just in case markets weren’t already crazy enough going into the long weekend, Trump continued to vamp on the theme this afternoon, telling reporters in the White House that he didn’t just mean iPhones, but all smartphones will be subject to the 25 percent tariff until they’re made in the USA. [video of the Orange Doofus being an asshole is available at the link.]

  198. Reginald Selkirk says

    Why are more than 300 people in the US still dying from COVID every week?

    More than five years after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the United States, hundreds of people are still dying every week.

    Last month, an average of about 350 people died each week from COVID, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)…

    The experts said there are a few reasons why people might still be dying from the virus, including low vaccination uptake, waning immunity and not enough people accessing treatments…

    During the 2024-25 season, only 23% of adults aged 18 and older received the updated COVID-19 vaccine as of the week ending April 26, according to CDC data.

    Among children, just 13% of them received the updated COVID vaccine over the same period, the data shows…

    Additionally, Poland said that immunity from COVID-19 vaccines wanes over time, increasing the likelihood of being infected.

    This is why the current recommendation for those aged 65 and older is to receive two doses of the updated COVID vaccine six months apart…

    Currently, there are treatments for COVID-19 patients in the form of antiviral pills, including molnupiravir from Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Paxlovid from Pfizer…

    There is also remdesivir, an intravenous medication that must be started within seven days of COVID symptoms appearing…

    Moody said it’s possible some COVID patients are coming down with symptoms but are not going to the doctor until their symptoms become severe. Alternatively, some people are not undergoing COVID testing when they have symptoms and, therefore, are missing COVID diagnoses…

  199. Reginald Selkirk says

    Car Parts Supplier DEI Caught Up In Trump’s Culture Wars

    While there may still be some consequences for outright racism and homophobia, more nebulous attacks on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” or DEI, continue to proliferate after being branded “woke” by President Trump and his high-profile advisors. Apparently, trying to make sure jobs don’t all go to the hiring manager’s unqualified buddies is bad, somehow, but one unexpected casualty — beyond Target’s stock price — is automotive parts supplier Design Engineering, Inc. That DEI just wants to make car stuff, but is now dealing with unwanted fallout from an unwanted political association, the Wall Street Journal reports…

  200. Reginald Selkirk says

    X is down

    Elon Musk’s X appears to be in the midst of a significant outage. Feeds aren’t loading, and reports indicate that neither are DMs.

    A quick check of Downdetector shows a spike in reports that appeared to start shortly after 8AM ET and rise sharply before beginning to fall. Elsewhere on social media, people have already been complaining about issues with the network for a couple of days, though — one of the top posts on the r/Twitter Reddit community is a screenshot of an error message on the X login screen, with many replies saying they’re unable to log in.

    Global internet monitor NetBlocks writes that X “has been experiencing international outages for some users for a second time in a week,” adding that the issue isn’t “related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.”

    The issue comes after a fire reportedly broke out in an Oregon data center owned by X on Thursday morning. Wired writes that multiple unnamed sources told it that the fire, which forced “an extended response from emergency crews,” involved batteries in one of the data center’s rooms. Following reports of the fire, there were complaints that X was down, but the outage then seemed comparatively small.

    X did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.

    Update May 24th: Added that NetBlocks reports the outage is international.

  201. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/jen-psaki

    ‘Fired for telling the truth’: U.S. intelligence being twisted to serve Trump’s narratives
    Video is 7:27 minutes

    Why Donald Trump’s tariffs on Europe will backfire for American manufacturing
    Video is 4:25 minutes

    Comey waves off bullying by Trump; mocks Patel for struggling with ‘reality-based world’
    Video is 8:41 minutes

    Trump cashes in on crypto side hustle as rich-get-richer budget comes into focus
    Video is 6:03 minutes

  203. says

    Zelensky condemns Russia’s large-scale attack on Ukraine amid prisoner swap

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky early Saturday condemned Russia’s overnight strikes on several areas in Ukraine, including Kyiv, as the two sides began the first stages of a prisoner swap this week.

    Zelensky wrote on social media that the overnight attack targeted the Odesa, Vinnytsia, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kyiv and Dnipro regions, which suffered heavy damages. He added that the Kremlin’s drones and missiles “targeted” civilians.

    “There are fatalities. My condolences to the families and loved ones,” he wrote on social platform X. “With each such attack, the world becomes more certain that the cause of prolonging the war lies in Moscow.”

    “Ukraine has proposed a ceasefire many times — both a full one and one in the skies. It all has been ignored,” the Ukrainian leader added.

    Zelensky stressed that only sanctions, imposed by the U.S. and Western Europe, will force Russia into agreeing to a ceasefire.

    The Kremlin fired ballistic missiles and targeted Kyiv with drones overnight, injuring 15 people and damaging several apartment buildings, according to Ukrainian officials. The attacks came after Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia earlier this week, including deep inside the Kremlin’s territory.

    The overnight attacks unfolded as the two sides, engaged in the war for over three years, had successfully swapped prisoners. Early Saturday, each side brought home 307 soldiers as part of the deal, ironed out in Turkey, to ultimately exchange 1,000 prisoners.

    Zelensky said that, so far, 697 prisoners have been brought back to Ukraine, with more expected to be swapped on Sunday.

    “Among those who returned today are warriors from our Armed Forces, the State Border Guard Service, the National Guard of Ukraine,” Zelensky wrote in a separate post on Saturday. “I thank everyone involved in the exchange process, those who have been working around the clock.” […]

  204. says

    There’s unhinged, there’s MAGA unhinged, and then there is South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace unhinged. Her weirdest hits include Bathroom Genital Obsession, Handshaked To Death, I Was Raped So Trump Can’t Be A Rapist, Screaming At A Constituent In Ulta Beauty, and most recently, Showing Blurry Naked Pictures Of Herself On The House Floor. [Embedded links are available at the main link.]

    It says a lot about the current state of Republican crazy and Nancy Mace crazy that the Showing Blurry Naked Pictures Of Herself On The House Floor story barely raised one of our eyebrows.

    “That was weird,” we shrugged.

    But now the word “blackmail” has popped up, and our interest is piqued!

    Peep this Daily Beast headline: “Nancy Mace Named by Former Aide in Naked Photos ‘Blackmail’ Plot.”

    The accusation comes from a deposition taken of Mace’s former aide and political advisor, Wesley Donehue, who claimed that Mace had been trying to use pictures from the phone of her former fiancé, Patrick Bryant, to blackmail Bryant into giving her full ownership of two pricey pieces of property, worth $5.5 million, that they’d purchased together in happier times. HMM!

    Rewind, if you have also not been following this drama:

    Back in February, Mace gave an hour-long “stunningly graphic speech” interspersed with Bible verses, accusing four men — her former fiancé Patrick Bryant, and also Brian Musgrave, Eric Bowman and John Osbourne — of “incapacitating women,” rape, voyeurism, sex trafficking, witness intimidation, and “premeditated, calculated exploitation of innocent women and girls in my district.” And she displayed a poster with their pictures and the word ​​“PREDATORS” in large type across the top, and “STAY AWAY FROM” across the bottom.

    “Today I’m going scorched earth. […] Today I’m going to free myself from the monster who broke me. Today I’m going to free other women who fell prey to the same man.” [video at the link]

    Very serious accusations! Holy defamation!

    Her whole speech is quite wild. At one point she even pulls out a safe, claiming that Bryant tried to hide his phone from her “in a safe just like this one.”

    However, none of the four men have been charged with any crimes. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said that they opened an investigation of Mace’s accusations way back in December of 2023, but 17 months later, they have not found enough evidence to charge anyone with anything. Mace claims no one has been charged because South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson is a doing a coverup, but Wilson claims “our office has not received any reports or requests for assistance from any law enforcement or prosecution agencies regarding these matters.”

    Complicating things, Wilson is likely to be Mace’s opponent if she runs for governor of South Carolina in 2026.

    And Mace was not done after that speech. Last Tuesday, during a hearing for the House Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation Subcommittee, which Mace chairs, titled “Breach of Trust: Surveillance in Private Spaces,” she brought out stills that she said were of herself being secretly recorded, from videos she claims she got from Bryant’s devices that she happened to be combing through after she found him on dating apps […] [video at the link]

    The accused men deny everything. [Social media post from Bryant]
    [I snipped some other denials from the men, and of Mace’s claim that she was “incapacitated, raped and filmed”]

    So now, on to the blackmail accusations:

    Mace’s former aide and political advisor, Wesley Donehue, testified in a deposition that he was tasked by Mace to call up Bryant and tell him that Mace had found pictures of women on his phone, to blackmail him into giving her ownership of the two pieces of property Mace and Bryant bought together, a $3.9 million home on the Isle of Palms, and a $1.6 million Capitol Hill townhouse that had been the subject of an ethics complaint. [As far as I know, taxpayers pay the salaries of Mace’s aides.]

    From the Daily Beast’s Farrah Tomazen, who claims to have a copy of the deposition:

    One [photo] allegedly showed a girl on a couch, seemingly passed out with a blanket over her, and another was said to be a photo of someone being photographed up their skirt.

    Donehue claimed that Mace’s aim was “to use all the information that she found as leverage to gain 100 percent ownership” of two homes they shared: one in Washington D.C., and the other in South Carolina’s Isle of Palms. […]

    From the Daily Mail’s Geoff Earle, who also said he saw the deposition:

    ‘Did she specifically say to you ‘Please meet with Patrick and show him these images and tell him I’ll make them public if he doesn’t give me both houses?’ a lawyer for Bryant asked the former Mace advisor.

    ‘Yes,’ he responded.

    Asked if it was ‘effectively an effort to extort or blackmail Patrick,’ Donehue responded, ‘Yeah.’

    Donehue says he told her,

    Nancy, as your campaign consultant, if it ever comes out that you knew of women being harmed and you didn’t do anything about it, your career is over.

    Donehue also claimed in the deposition that Mace told him she was physically assaulted by Bryant, and showed him bruises. And yet, Donehue said, Mace planned a vacation with Bryant in the Caribbean, over Donehue’s protests.

    “I said, ‘Nancy, you can’t say you fear for your safety and you’re going to the Caribbean with him and some of his friends,’” he said. “Then she said — I remember as clear as day —“I’m taking my free vacation to the Caribbean.”

    Donehue testified that he fired Mace as a client not long after, because “her emotional stability was crumbling” and she “was coming across as erratic and unstable.” He was also uncomfortable with her bawdy talk.

    Nancy talks about her sex life in a way that I’ve never heard a client or a woman talk about, it’s like every conversation would devolve into what’s going on in her sex life…something that she talked about all the time and I always felt uncomfortable with.

    Bletch.

    Hey, is blackmail covered by the Speech or Debate clause?

    Four days after Mace first made accusations, her and Bryant’s DC condo sold for $1.98 million, a tidy profit. How much Mace put into the properties from her $174,000 Congressional salary and whatever book royalties we don’t know, or how much she got of the proceeds; she’s filed an extension of her financial disclosure. But previous disclosures show she’s been renting out the South Carolina house they bought together with a $2.9 million mortgage, and pocketing the proceeds on that, somewhere in the range of $100,000-$1,000,000 a year.

    Make of that what you will!

    All we know for sure is, don’t buy property with somebody you aren’t married to, at least not without some kind of contract specifying what happens when you break up. It is always a mess.

  205. says

    Here is the link for text quoted in comment 204: https://www.wonkette.com/p/rep-nancy-maces-former-aide-testified

    In other news, Math? Why should the Treasury Secretary of the USA know anything about that?

    […] it was at least a little interesting to watch Bessent [Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent] being interviewed by Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer Friday morning. […]

    HEMMER: You mentioned economic growth there during your comment there. This bill adds trillions to our debt. How is that acceptable to this administration?

    BESSENT: Well, a-again, uh (clears throat) you’re referring to the CBO scoring, I believe, which is ten-year scoring, and it’s DC-style scoring. (almost cracks smug grin so he looks like the Cheshire Cat with expensive hair plugs)

    The other name for “DC-style scoring” is math. The Congressional Budget Office is doing that sneaky Swamp trick known as math.

    Yes, the CBO uses a ten-year window when scoring budget bills because the Senate’s Byrd Rule limits the amount that a bill being passed through reconciliation can add onto the national debt. Bessent, shockingly, never explains why this is bad, and they should be scoring with … what, an infinity-year window?

    He went on:

    “We think that we can both grow the economy and control the debt. What is important, Bill, is that the economy grows faster than the debt. … What is the total debt to GDP? Because we can grow our way out of this. If we change the growth trajectory of the country, of the economy, then we will stabilize our finances and grow our way out of this.”

    […] The writer Jonathan Bernstein noted that Bessent’s performance on Fox News was not about conning the voters, who are going to notice when they can’t get their Social Security checks on time and hospitals close due to lost Medicaid funding. It’s about conning Congress and themselves.

    […] It is silly to say that the US can “grow our way out of” whatever “this” is. […] This is just trickle-down economics, which this country has tried multiple times before and has blown out the deficit and the debt on it multiple times before.

    Bessent was also asked about President Tariff Otaku’s post early Friday morning that he’s going to slap a 25% tariff on iPhones if Apple keeps making them overseas. Hemmer pointed out that even if Apple brings production to the United States, such a transition can take a long time. You have to site a factory, build it, train the workers, and so on. This is a years-long process, and at the end of it, iPhones will be twice as expensive and people will buy way fewer of them.

    On the other hand, if you slap a huge tariff on imported iPhones, they will also be twice as expensive and people will buy way fewer of them. This is a dilemma that Bessent and Trump and their entire economic team just glide past every time they are asked.

    Anyway, Hemmer asked Bessent what’s a “realistic” timeframe for Apple to move all its production to the US. The Treasury Secretary responded that he “doesn’t know from company to company, so we’ll have to see.” This strikes yr Wonkette as simply another corruption opportunity. If Tim Cook buys up a boatload of Trump’s memecoin, will Trump turn around and give him all sorts of subsidies right out of the treasury to make the move? Sure, why not. Now repeat that for dozens of companies and see how it goes. […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/treasury-secretary-wishes-to-know

  206. says

    Followup to comment 203.

    Trump rushes to announce largest Russia-Ukraine POW swap of the war

    “Kyiv kept the process highly secretive due to safety concerns, until Trump posted about it on social media.”

    Ukraine and Russia started their largest prisoner-of-war exchange on Friday, trading 390 prisoners in a swap that will continue on Saturday and Sunday.

    Friday’s POW exchange was the first batch of a 1,000-prisoner swap that both sides agreed on at the first direct talks between the two countries in three years, pushed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

    Kyiv kept the process highly secretive due to safety concerns for the first 270 soldiers and 120 civilians, who were about to be swapped on the border with Belarus.

    […] Then Trump woke up in Washington.

    “A major prisoner swap was just completed between Russia and Ukraine. It will go into effect shortly. Congratulations to both sides on this negotiation. This could lead to something big???” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday.

    In reality, the first stage of the prisoner swap had not even started when Trump posted his message.

    “[Trump] wanted to be the first to break the news about it,” a Ukrainian official told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “Fortunately, [Trump’s rushed post] did not have any effect,” the official said. “But we usually do not report on the ongoing exchanges, as you never know with Russians. Our boys were too close to the enemy.”

    […] Kyiv is still trying to keep the U.S. president in efforts to broker peace in Ukraine.

    This prisoner swap has become the only big success of Trump-brokered direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. The first night of the exchange, Russia attacked Ukraine with 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles, while claiming that it would present its own version of a peace proposal after the end of the POW exchange. Ukraine attacked Russia with 94 drones the same night.

    […] As the buses stop and the first soldiers come out, there’s a happy scream heard nearby, where Tetiana, a young woman waving the Ukrainian marines’ flag, sees the face of her husband.

    “I haven’t seen him since 2022, since Mariupol. […],” Tetiana happily screams as a tired hand waves at her from the bus.

    Most of the 390 Ukrainian prisoners released on Friday had been in prison for three years. [!] As they came out of the buses, some were ushered to a hospital for treatment.

    But some stayed to look at the hundreds of pictures of others, who are missing, like Zabrodina’s husband. For many, they are the only light of hope. Russia still does not disclose the exact number of prisoners it has captured in Ukraine.
    […]

    “They let us bathe for 20 minutes instead of the usual five. They gave us new clothes. But I still refused to believe until we landed in Gomel [a city in Belarus near the border with Ukraine],” Vitaly said. “Russians liked to trick us while transferring between the prisons. They told us they were going home. But we weren’t. I guess it was funny to them,” the soldier, who spent 22 months in Russian prisons, added
    .
    […] more than 8,000 Ukrainians illegally kept in Russian prisons are waiting for their turn to be freed.

  207. says

    […] reporting on a University of Pennsylvania analysis of a close-to-final draft of the GOP tax bill, noted:

    The top 0.1% of households would rake in over $390,000 in after-tax income.

    The top 1% would gain $44,190.

    Households making $51,000 to $92,999 a year would get an additional $815.

    The lowest-income households, though, will see their after-tax income shrink by $940.

    Yes, that voter making under $50K, they get to deal with Trump’s price-raising tariffs and a tax hike. […]

    Link

  208. JM says

    Rawstory: ‘Worst food I’ve ever had’: Underwhelmed Trump investors slam private dinner

    TikTok prankster Nicholas Pinto, 25, who was among the guests at President Donald Trump’s exclusive dinner for buyers of his meme coin on Thursday, was unimpressed by the event.
    “It was the worst food I’ve ever had at a Trump golf course. The only good thing was bread and butter,” he told WIRED.
    Trump reportedly left the event immediately after his speech. He departed the venue in a golf cart bound for his helicopter, per the WIRED report. “Trump could have at least given the top people their watches himself,” Pinto said.

    Grifters hoping to make some connections with the Trump administration instead got grifted. Cheap dinner and Trump left immediately after a typically rambling speech.

  209. Reginald Selkirk says

    Bird Feeders Have Caused a Dramatic Evolution of California Hummingbirds

    Science magazine reports that hummingbird feeders “have become a major evolutionary force,” according to research published this week in Global Change Biology. (At least for the Anna’s hummingbird, a common species in the western U.S.)

    Over just a few generations, their beaks have dramatically changed in size and shape…. [A]s feeders proliferated, Anna’s hummingbird beaks got longer and larger, which may reflect an adaptation to slurp up far more nectar than flowers can naturally provide. Developing a bigger beak to access feeders “is like having a large spoon to eat with,” says senior author Alejandro Rico-Guevara, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington. This change was more pronounced in areas where feeders were dense. But in birds that lived in colder regions north of the species’ historical range, the researchers spotted the opposite trend: Their beaks became shorter and smaller. This finding also makes sense: The researchers used an infrared camera to show for the first time that hummingbirds use their beaks to thermoregulate, by dissipating heat while they are perched. A smaller beak has less surface area — and would therefore help conserve heat…

    The most surprising finding, though, was how quickly these changes took place. By the 1950s, hummingbirds were noticeably different from those of the 1930s: a time span of only about 10 generations of birds, Alexandre says.

    …

  210. Reginald Selkirk says

    Northern B.C. researchers want your help finding and collecting bear poop

    …
    Researchers in Prince George, B.C., are asking for the public’s help to identify and collect bear scat so they can then analyze it and compare the health of urban bears to those outside the city.

    Biologist Laura Graham, a professor at the College of New Caledonia, is embarking on a multi-year study of the physiological differences found in urban bears to identify what’s bringing them to the city. Ultimately, the researchers aim to find ways to manage the bears and reduce conflict with humans…

  211. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Trump admin releases people to shelters it threatened to prosecute for aiding migrants

    [ICE] continued to ask shelters in Texas and Arizona to house people […] something that FEMA appeared to say might be illegal. Both agencies are part of the Department of Homeland Security.
    […]
    FEMA awarded $641 million to dozens of state and local governments and organizations across the country in the 2024 fiscal year to help them deal with large numbers of migrants who crossed the border from Mexico. FEMA has suspended payments during its review
    […]
    Catholic Charities […] was counting on up to $7 million from FEMA. The shelter closed with loss of nearly $1 million, after not receiving any FEMA money.

    Holding Institute […] cut paid staff and volunteers to seven from 45 […] To save money, it delivers most meals without protein. Language differences have been challenging.

    Rando: “The idea being, of course, to shutter them completely.”

    Joshua Erlich (Civil rights lawyer): “There is no complying with the law under fascism. It’s illegal if you do it and illegal if you don’t.”

  212. Reginald Selkirk says

    Neo-Nazi leader accused of inspiring school shooting, plotting NYC attack extradited to US

    Federal officials extradited an international neo-Nazi group leader they say inspired a teen to commit a school shooting in Tennessee earlier this year and plotted to commit a mass casualty attack in New York City targeting Jewish people.

    The terrorist group’s leader, 21-year-old Michail Chkhikvishvili, orchestrated deadly attacks around the globe, prosecutors said. The citizen of the nation of Georgia was extradited from Moldova on May 22 after he was arrested in July…

    Hmmm. Is the U.S. government planning to prosecute him, or offer him a cabinet position?

  213. Reginald Selkirk says

    KTLA 5 crew encounters man armed with guns outside Pasadena Apple store
    In which “KTLA” is a Los Angeles television station

    A frightening moment played out in front of a KTLA news crew along a popular shopping corridor in Pasadena Friday morning.

    While setting up a live shot outside an Apple Store on Colorado Boulevard, KTLA reporter Kimberly Cheng and photojournalist Andre Cox encountered an agitated man carrying several cases.

    The man appeared to be rambling on the phone about a custody dispute, and Kimberly reported she could hear a dispatcher’s voice on the other line.

    The man set the cases on the ground outside the doors to the Apple Store and when he opened them, the KTLA employees spotted several long guns. Kimberly and Andre quickly backed away from the scene and called for police.

    In video captured by the KTLA camera, the man could be seen counting the guns, saying he had six. He even asked two passersby if they wanted to see his guns.

    When Pasadena police arrived, one officer tried to take the man into custody, but the man resisted, leading to a brief scuffle. Another officer jumped in to help and both officers were able to handcuff the man on the ground.

    Police say the man had an outstanding warrant. The guns were later determined to be unloaded…

  214. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/should-trump-have-to-give-kids-in

    Should Trump Have To Give Kids In Baby Jail ‘Food’? Y/N/Go F*ck Yourself.

    The Trump administration is finally getting back to one of its most basic principles, which is that anything it does to children of undocumented migrants is justified because after all they are ILLEGAL, not people, and that means anything goes. In a move that many have been expecting — […] already tried it in his first term — Team Trump is trying to vaporize fundamental protections for the rights and safety of migrant children in federal custody, because having to provide basic food, water, shelter, and clothing is inconvenient.

    […] On Thursday, the Justice Department filed a motion asking a federal court to dissolve the “Flores Settlement Agreement,” the 1997 consent decree in a class-action case that requires the government to provide undocumented children in its custody with the most basic services and conditions. Edible, nourishing food, clean living spaces, toothbrushes and toothpaste, beds with actual blankets, not Mylar survival sheets. Luxuries like that. [!]

    The Flores Agreement (“FSA” in court shorthand) also requires that minors in immigration custody have access to lawyers and that court monitors be allowed to check the conditions in facilities holding them. Possibly most important after the basic food and shelter conditions, it requires that kids taken into custody at the border be moved from Border Patrol holding cells to the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and that children then be released to the custody of a sponsor, usually a parent or other family member. [Trump has been busy hobbling all the agencies that provide services. He is firing employees. Or letting DOGE do the firing and the hobbling.]

    The DOJ asks the court to “terminate the FSA completely,” claiming that it has been an incentive for more immigration of families and unaccompanied minors […]

    Shorter version: The administration wants to be free of the court’s supervision under the Flores Agreement, because that’s one of the few things keeping it from doing whatever it wants. In a very telling line early in the motion, the DOJ gripes that the court has no business getting in its way, claiming that the federal court in Los Angeles needs to butt out because

    After 40 years of litigation and 28 years of judicial control over a critical element of U.S. immigration policy by one district court located more than 100 miles from any international border, it is time for this case to end.

    […] Trying to eliminate the Flores Agreement is simply the latest in a string of actions the administration has taken to Get Tough on migrant kids, because what good is making life hell for undocumented people if you have to feed, house, and provide clothing for their children? The administration has already expanded family detention, and as the Guardian explains, even with the Flores Agreement in place, that’s turning out to be a nightmare, and now the DOJ wants a free hand to make it worse:

    Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children’s access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid.

    “Eviscerating the rudimentary protections that these children have is unconscionable,” said Mishan Wroe, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.”

    […] So what if it means a little generational trauma? Keeping America white justifies just about any degree of cruelty. […] Trump supporters are very big fans of taking the gloves off and getting tough.

    As we say, this wasn’t a surprise; Trump tried and failed in 2019 to nuke the Flores Agreement because it yearned to jail entire families while they wait years for an asylum hearing, and it made many of the same arguments back then. It was also widely condemned by anyone who heard that Trump wanted to deny toothbrushes and blankets to migrant children in our baby jails. All that’s changed is that everything else under Trump has become more authoritarian this time around, making it harder for everyone to keep track of which atrocious policy the administration is pursuing at any given moment.

    The notion that the Flores Agreement is no longer necessary simply doesn’t hold water, particularly when you consider that it was needed even during the Biden administration, when immigrants rights groups sued last year to stop the Border Patrol from keeping families with kids penned up in open-air camps at the border — like the ones in the photo up top. [photo at the link] And that “one district court located more than 100 miles from any international border” — presided over by US District Judge Dolly Gee, of the Central District of California, who has upheld Flores any number of times in the past decade — made the government knock it off.

    […] So far, Flores has held up in the courts. Whether that remains the case is anyone’s guess. It’s one more atrocity we need to fight like hell, and let’s just hope that once more, it will turn out that Americans won’t stand for recordings of little children sobbing in detention.

  216. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council) on May 21:

    ICE operations at immigration courts intensified today. […]
    – A person facing removal shows up for a hearing.
    – At the hearing, ICE unexpectedly asks the immigration judge to dismiss the case without prejudice.
    – If the judge says yes, the hearing ends, court is over.

    Once the hearing is over, the person leaves the courtroom. At that point, they are no longer in any “removal” process. What happens next has varied at different courts around the nation. In Miami, ICE officers descended on several men in the hallways of the court itself, handcuffing them. Dozens of people were reportedly taken into custody at immigration courts around the country. Many of them were for people who were hoping to file asylum applications.

    ICE’s admitted goal for this? Place these people through “expedited removal”—no judge, order them deported on the spot.

    There are still many questions about this ill-advised and chaotic operation, including how targets are being picked. […] an example of this happening to a Cuban man who entered in 2021, and couldn’t legally be placed through expedited removal.

    There are also a lot of questions about what happens next with the people. If ICE is using expedited removal, anyone arrested has a right to a credible fear interview, which screens for asylum. If they pass, they get… put back into court. But if they don’t…

    To understand why they would do something like this, you have to understand that the Trump admin’s immigration policy is run by people who are extraordinarily angry that migrants have been allowed to access the immigration court system and not put through expedited removal.

    They don’t want process. Immigration court is THE big legal bottleneck for mass deportation. The law requires it. You need a removal order to remove someone, and immigration judges issue the removal orders.

    The big exception to that is expedited removal, where a single DHS officer can just sign the paperwork himself.

    Expedited removal was created in 1996, and Congress authorized it to be used on anyone who has been here for less than two years. Trump was the first person to authorize the use that broadly—and we’ve never had a situation where it’s been used like this, AFTER immigration court was started.

    Rando: “I have over a decade and a half of immigration experience and can’t think of any situation where I’ve seen ER used outside of border apprehensions.”

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on May 22:

    even where the judges are NOT dismissing cases, ICE is still detaining people in some cases. ICE officers are showing up at courts with lists of names (it remains unclear exactly how those lists are generated) and arresting most everyone on the list when they can. Afterwards, they are putting anyone whose cases was dismissed through expedited removal—with the goal of deporting them quickly.

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:

    Here’s a picture […] showing the ICE officers masked up in the hallways […] there is no verified evidence that Proud Boys or J6ers or anyone who is not a federal law enforcement officer is taking part in these operations. ICE has been pulling thousands of people from CBP, FBI, DEA, ATF, IRS, USPIS, and more. That explains much of the mishmash.

    ICE is authorized to go plainclothes during arrest operations and this is their version of that. I completely agree with concerns about masking and the (extensively-reported) refusals to identify themselves or the agency […] they do show their ID to the courthouse staff on arrival (especially since they have to get through the metal detector).

    Rando: It is a bad idea to arrest people in courthouses. This discourages people, innocent and guilty alike, from coming to court to address their problems legally and peacefully

    Yes, 100%. Setting aside the sheer human impact, it’s bad as a matter of public policy; it undermines the rule of law by discouraging compliance.

    Southpaw (Lawyer): Again, why do they dress like a band of highwaymen instead of a properly constituted police force? They’re inside the security envelope of a public courthouse.”

  217. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Lynna @204.
    Mace-like antics are why calling congress members worries me a little sometimes, offering name and location. IIRC years ago, there was a (fed or state) legislator that DID target a constituent. That and explaining the harm of bills would seem to encourage them. Strength in numbers by not sticking out at least.

  218. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    * Well MAGA antics. I couldn’t have imagined Mace-like.

  219. Reginald Selkirk says

    God saved Trump to give Europe last chance to get its act together, says Albanian prime minister

    Donald Trump coming to power has given Europe a “last chance get its act together”, the prime minister of Albania has said.

    Edi Rama, who has just secured his fourth term as prime minister of Albania, warned Europe had been “sleepwalking” and should use Trump’s presidency as an opportunity to “become a major power” on the world stage…

    He sounds multi-delusional.

  220. John Morales says

    He sounds competent, Reginald.
    “Edi Rama, who has just secured his fourth term as prime minister of Albania”, you quoted.

    (Well, maybe it’s just luck)

  221. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    U.S. hurricane forecast: ‘Everything is in place’ for another above-average season

    NOAA predicts that the 2025 hurricane season could see 13 to 19 named storms, six to 10 of which could strengthen into hurricanes and three to five of which could become major storms—Category 3 or higher. […] Hurricane season officially begins June 1 and ends November 30.

    CNN – DHS inserts staffers at FEMA in major shakeup before hurricane season

    homeland security officials will replace several longtime FEMA leaders […] critical advisory positions under new acting FEMA administrator David Richardson […] They appear to have limited experience managing natural disasters […] Like Richardson, most of them have been serving in the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office at DHS, and some will split their time with their other roles […] Only two of Richardson’s seven advisors currently hold positions at FEMA, and neither have served in such a senior role
    […]
    An internal assessment obtained by CNN last week acknowledged that the agency “is not ready” for hurricane season. […] Roughly 10% of FEMA’s staff have left since January, and the agency is projected to lose close to 30% of its workforce by the end of the year, according to a FEMA official […] Richardson told the agency that more steep staffing cuts are expected in the months ahead.

     
    Samantha Montano (Emergency management):

    This is really well written. Clear explanation of why handing emergency management off to the states is a terrible idea.
    [Alt-FEMA – The creation of FEMA: Historical context]

     
    Rando: “You know those old PSA films where a kid would wish like, rubber had never been invented and then some creepy little gnome would show him a world without tires or shoes or whatever? It sucks that we’re living in one of those where the kid said ‘society’ and the gnome is ketamine addled.”

  223. says

    Humanitarian group calls Israel’s lifting of Gaza aid blockade ‘a smokescreen’, by Chris Hayes.

    “As countries such as Canada, France and Britain speak out against Israel’s renewed siege, there has barely been a peep about it from the U.S. government.”

    Related video at the link.

    Last Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would lift Israel’s blockade on Gaza and “allow a basic amount of food for the population to ensure that a hunger crisis does not develop,” though it seems a bit late for that. Food security experts warn that Gazans remain at “critical risk of famine.” Since March, an estimated 2 million Palestinians have been penned up behind a total Israeli blockade.

    Netanyahu said this just hours after Israeli forces launched new extensive ground operations in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians have died in that offensive. On Wednesday, at least 82 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike, including several women and a week-old infant, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry and area hospitals. (The Israeli military has repeatedly said it does “everything possible to limit civilian casualties in Gaza.”)

    As the Israeli military carries out Netanyahu’s order to take full control of the region, residents of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, were forcibly displaced. People of all ages filled the streets, weakened by starvation and malnutrition, leaving with whatever they could still carry.

    Doctors Without Borders called Israel’s aid announcement “a smokescreen,” writing: “The Israeli authorities’ decision to allow a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid into Gaza after months of an air-tight siege signals their intention to avoid the accusation of starving people in Gaza, while in fact keeping them barely surviving.” [!!]

    After days of delay, the United Nations confirmed aid deliveries were reaching warehouses inside Gaza, but officials said the shipment was only a fraction of what was needed. Experts say it would take at least 500 aid trucks a day to stave off total famine. Earlier this month, a U.N. study concluded that 1 in 5 Gazans face starvation.

    As countries such as Canada, France and the United Kingdom speak out against the siege and blockade in Gaza, threatening “concrete actions” against Israel if it does not stop its new offensive, there has barely been a peep about it from the U.S. government.

    Donald Trump recently returned home from a Mideast tour that didn’t include Israel. Administration insiders have told reporters that Trump is tired of the war and frustrated with Netanyahu, with one telling The Washington Post that “Trump’s people are letting Israel know, ‘We will abandon you if you do not end this war.’” [Trump is “tired” of the war?]

    Notwithstanding those reports, the United States seems pretty checked out on the largest current humanitarian crisis in the world today. The Trump administration has not publicly criticized Israel’s renewed offensive. And without action, as Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is part of a small group of American politicians who have been openly calling for an end to the bombardment and an immediate flood of aid, has said, the U.S. is “complicit” in the ongoing starvation in Gaza.

  224. says

    Sky Captain @217: “Mace-like antics are why calling congress members worries me a little sometimes, offering name and location.”

    Yep. I hear that. My Congress Critters seem to know who I am and they have my address. So far, they only harass me with stupid emails full of lies.

  225. KG says

    As countries such as Canada, France and the United Kingdom speak out against the siege and blockade in Gaza, threatening “concrete actions” against Israel if it does not stop its new offensive – Lynna, OM@223 quoting MSNBC’s Chris Hayes

    These “concrete actions” amount to the square-root of fuck-all, given the urgency of the situation. As a recent opinion article in the Guardian argued, international law calls for military intervention to prevent genocide.

  226. says

    Locals oppose ‘insane’ plan to sell 500K acres of public lands for housing in Nevada and Utah

    For years, Nevada’s congressional delegation and leading Las Vegas officials have been pushing Congress to pass the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, which would allow tens of thousands of acres of public lands currently managed by the federal government to be sold at auction to cities and developers looking for space to expand.

    So Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee might have expected some applause when the committee passed a late-night amendment to the budget reconciliation bill that would do just that.

    But the amendment, intended to help the federal government afford the Trump administration’s tax cuts, had none of the existing bill’s stipulations to benefit Nevadans and conserve other areas. Instead of accolades, it has drawn the ire of nearly every group backing the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act. They have called the amendment a “land giveaway” to developers.

    Reps. Mark Amodei (R-NV) and Celeste Maloy (R-UT) added amendments to the budget reconciliation bill just before midnight last Tuesday that would sell more than half a million acres of public land in Nevada and Utah for housing development in the two states. Opponents say the amendments would fuel unsustainable growth across Nevada and southern Utah that would not provide affordable housing, but would threaten tribal sovereignty by disposing of public lands bordering the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, take more water out of the already declining Colorado River and set a path for the federal government to begin the sell-off of public lands across the country. [True. And all of that is very bad news.]

    The amendment for Nevada would pave the way for the development of thousands of acres up to the boundaries of national monuments Avi Kwa Ame and Gold Butte, in addition to the Pyramid Lake Reservation.

    “Our two states are the test case,” said Mathilda Miller, the government relations director for Native Voters Alliance Nevada. “If this land grab goes through quietly, they’ll use the same exact playbook somewhere else. The amendment was dropped at midnight. It was dropped in a massive budget bill. And it was rushed through without meaningful public input. If they can do that near Avi Kwa Ame, Gold Butte and the boundaries of Pyramid Lake, then they can and they will do it to somebody else’s homelands.”

    […] the House committee was excited about making money off sales of public lands.

    […] Attempts to privatize public lands or give them to states date back decades, with the movements gaining momentum in the 1970s and 80s during the so-called “sagebrush rebellion.” The Trump administration and some Republicans in Congress have touted public-lands sales as a solution to the country’s housing shortage, but experts have disputed that claim. Even some Republican members of Congress have pushed back on recent attempts to sell off federal lands.

    […] “The sagebrush rebels of today don’t drive cattle. They drive Porsches and Mercedes.”

    [Map of proposed public land sell off is available at the link.]

    The proposed sell-off in Utah has drawn less scrutiny than the disposal of public lands in Nevada has, though environmental groups also oppose sales there. The bill would allow public lands to be sold for development in southern Utah, primarily for the fast-growing city of St. George. [A city that already has water shortage problems.]

    But that land follows the pathway of the planned Lake Powell pipeline, a decades-long and highly controversial attempt by Utah to pipe water from the dwindling Colorado River’s second-largest reservoir, which is roughly 33 percent full, to fuel growth in the state. Attempts to build the pipeline in the past have drawn intense scrutiny from both environmentalists and other states that depend on Colorado River water. […]

    The bill will be considered by the full House of Representatives in the coming weeks.

    Public lands are managed by the federal government for the benefit of all Americans, allowing for the creation of national parks and wilderness areas, and for extraction of resources by logging, mining and energy companies. But in some cases, they can be disposed of—meaning sold—typically to developers for housing or extraction projects.

    Growth in Las Vegas, for example, has long relied on bills that dispose of public lands to expand, as the federal government owns roughly 85 percent of the land within the state’s borders, far more than in any other state. But those bills had conservation requirements, and the funds generated by the land sales were earmarked for conservation and local schools. The latest Clark County lands bill—the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act—would also give land back to the Moapa Band of Paiutes and provide further protection for other public lands in Nevada.

    Money from the sale of public lands authorized by the new amendment would go to the U.S. Treasury, rather than to local communities.

    While Amodei’s amendment to sell off public lands in Nevada pulls from existing land bill proposals, it leaves out the conservation components. In a statement, U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who proposed the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, called Amodei’s amendment “an insane plan that cuts funding from water conservation and public schools across Nevada.”

    “This is a land grab to fund Republicans’ billionaire giveaway tax bill, and I’ll fight it with everything I have,” she said. […]

    building on public lands, often in remote areas away from major urban centers, like the lands proposed near Las Vegas, would expand sprawl, forcing more people to commute long distances to and from work, Tanager said. That means more air pollution in communities of color or low-income areas along congested highways, on top of disruptions to wildlife, increasing water demand in an arid region and the buildout of more energy infrastructure to power homes—likely in the form of natural gas plants that increase ratepayers’ bills, she said.

    “I hope this is the dawn of a new day,” Tanager said of the opposition to Amodei’s amendment, “where we all come together and refuse to sell off our public lands for corporate greed and at the expense of communities across the entire state of Nevada, but also across the country.”

  229. says

    Jennifer Rubin:

    When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrested Istanbul Mayor and rival Ekrem İmamoğlu, mass protests erupted. But Erdoğan is hardly the only autocrat pulling that stunt.

    “A major opposition leader and former prime minister of Chad was arrested early Friday, fueling fears of another crackdown on dissent in a country that has repeatedly used state power to silence critics,” the New York Times reported. Meanwhile, CNN reports: “Tanzania’s main opposition leader Tundu Lissu told his supporters to have no fear as he appeared in court on Monday for the first time since his arrest on charges that include treason.”

    Domestic critics of these autocrats and the international community rightly condemn such blatant abuse of power. So why has the reaction to Donald Trump’s arrest of political opponents and judges not been greeted with equal outrage?

    If the corporate media could tear themselves away from selling hysterical tell-all books and kvetching over who knew what about former President Joe Biden’s aging, they might report to the American people that the current president is acting no better than autocrats in Turkey, Chad, or Tanzania. Trump’s out-and-out thuggery, indistinguishable from dictators using state power to jail opponents, strikes at the heart of our democratic system. If we are to retain the rule of law, such conduct can never be countenanced.

    Commentary:

    Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ10) was charged with assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement by U.S. District Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba in connection with a May 9 incident at an ICE facility. We should not ever get used to the arrest of political opponents merely for political opposition, ever.

    Link

    Adrienne Matei of Guardian describes the state and processes of “hypernormalization.”

    “Welcome to the hypernormalization club,” [Rahaf] Harfoush said in a response video. “I’m so sorry that you’re here.” […]

    First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening.

    The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation. […]

    The increasing instability of the US’s democratic norms has prompted these references to hypernormalization.

  230. says

    […] Sec. 60004. State and local law enforcement presidential residence protection of this budgetary train wreck/US Treasury heist legislation. [Referencing Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”] Here, he is highlighting subsection 60004(a) Presidential residence protection.

    If you read the text under that heading, you see $300 million in FEMA funds being appropriated for “the reimbursement of extraordinary law enforcement personnel costs for protection activities directly and demonstrably associated with any residence of the President that is designated pursuant to section 3 of the Presidential Protection Assistance Act of 1976 …”

    If I read this legislative text correctly, it seems that Mango Mussolini’s accomplices in the House MAGA Republican caucus have approved an all-but-blank check to siphon off a huge chunk of FEMA’s already-decimated budget to pay for a massive build-up of state and local law enforcement personnel at all of his golf courses and Trump Tower (if he still owns it) in the event of some undefined “national emergency.”

    Am I being paranoid, or is this little “Easter Egg” intended to back up a future declaration of martial law under false pretext(s)? […]

    Understand that this is not the only “Easter Egg” planted in this abominable piece of legislative bull manure to help tRump and his technofascist billionaire bros deep-six American democracy (Mockler reveals more of these “gems” in his podcast). It is, however, key to funding the execution of a future presidential declaration of martial law. In addition, this provision would effectively defund FEMA as a credible federal resource for disaster relief. […]

    Please note that nothing in this section refers to any cost other than state and local law enforcement. If FEMA is shut down, US states and territories—and DC—will be on the hook for all other disaster recovery costs.

    This is why I raised a red flag about a militarized “emergency response” following a presidential declaration of martial law. Also note that subsection (b)(1)(C) potentially covers all tRump properties, as I noted in the original version of this post. […]

    Link to “House-Passed One Big Beautiful Bill Includes $300M FEMA Carve-Out for All Trump Properties”

    I don’t know. Sounds a bit fringe-ish to me.

    Posted by readers of the article:

    This appears to be intended to defray the extra expenses he is grifting off of us every golf weekend, rather than any particular emergency. And it ends shortly after his term does.
    ———————-
    So the major portion of this $300 mill can flow into Donald’s pocket when they are forced to bunk down and get their meals at the late Marjorie Merriweather Post’s former residence. He charged them in his first term, so he will do it again if he can.
    ———————————
    I have a different take. It’s well known that when Trump travels to any of his properties, Secret Service personnel are required to book a bunch of rooms and the properties charge them many times their usual rate in order to funnel more profits directly from the US Treasury to Trump. What this looks like to me is that now they want to station Secret Service personnel like this at all Trump properties at all times, even when Trump is not there. That way they can multiply this very lucrative profit pipeline to serve as a huge gift to Trump. They don’t even have a real reason to do this other than to curry favor, because Trump was going to sign the bill regardless.
    ————————–
    don’t understand the connection to martial law, but I definitely see this as more grift by the Grifter in Chief. The government already pays for the Secret Service to stay at Trump properties. Why not local and state agencies too? Or private agencies?

  231. says

    Washington Post link

    “Millions of Americans hit with bad credit after missed student loan payments”

    “The credit score drop is akin to filing for bankruptcy, and some borrowers are finding out when they try to get car loans or rent apartments.”

    Millions of Americans are suddenly facing dramatically lower credit scores from delinquent student loans, making it tougher for them to secure housing, insurance, car loans, even employment at a vulnerable time for the U.S. economy.

    Credit scores dipped by more than 100 points for 2.2 million delinquent student loan borrowers, and 150 points or more for more than 1 million in the first three months of 2025, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It’s the kind of credit score drop that follows a personal bankruptcy filing. Roughly 2.4 million of those Americans previously had favorable credit scores and would have qualified for cars loans, mortgages or credit cards before these delinquencies were reported, researchers said.

    The slide in credit scores could lead to pricier loans for millions as borrowing costs are near 20-year highs. The Federal Reserve has signaled that it doesn’t plan to cut interest rates right away.

    Already there are signs that lower credit scores are making it harder for more Americans to get loans, with rejection rates for auto loans, credit cards and mortgage refinancing all ticking up in February, compared to a year earlier.

    [I snipped details of a personal story]

    “Nothing, no email, no phone call, no letter — I could’ve avoided all this if I had known,” said Tina Johnson, 44, who lives in Fleming County, Kentucky.

    Johnson’s expected car payment of $350 a month nearly doubled overnight, making it unaffordable […] “I took care of the accounts, but there’s nothing else I can do,” she said. “It’ll take me years to get those 200 points back.”

    Federal student loan payments were paused early in the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, offering millions of Americans relief at a time of economic upheaval and high unemployment. Although payments started back up in late 2023, the Biden administration offered a year-long grace period. That ended on Sept. 30, but millions of borrowers have yet to make a payment on their student loans.

    This month the federal government restarted collection efforts for defaulted student loans and said it plans to resume seizing wages, tax returns and Social Security payments this summer, making the stakes even higher.

    Nearly 1 in 4 borrowers required to make loan repayments were more than 90 days behind at the end of March, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York analysis. And although younger Americans tend to hold the most student debt, borrowers ages 40 and older are most likely to be behind on their loans, suggesting that years of inflation are making it harder for middle-aged Americans to keep up with payments.

    “This is the beginning of something big, and we need to be paying attention,” said Dominik Mjartan, chief executive of American Pride Bank in Macon, Georgia. “There’s a very high cost to having a low credit score in America. Your cost of living goes up — your cellphone bill, your utilities, your insurance payments, everything. And that trickles down through the economy.”

    [I snipped explanation of how credit scores are figured.]

    […] Economists expect another decrease in credit scores in the coming months, as more student loans get flagged as overdue. Although 2.7 million borrowers were reported newly delinquent in February, twice as many — 5.4 million — had not been marked delinquent even though they haven’t made any student loan payments since October, according to FICO.

    […] “The fact that student debt can be garnished from your wages — that becomes a very different risk,” said Mjartan of American Pride Bank. “It’s a downward spiral: If you can’t keep up with your student loans and your wages get garnished, then you can’t pay your other debts, either, and you can’t spend.” […]

    Personal impact stories, and graphs showing nationwide changes in student loan delinquencies, credit scores, etc. are available at the link.

  232. says

    New York Times link

    “Why Vietnam Ignored Its Own Laws to Fast-Track a Trump Family Golf Complex”

    When officials in the home province of Vietnam’s top leader went door to door recently, pressing residents to sign letters agreeing to the Trump Organization’s plans for a new golf community, Le Van Truong wanted to refuse.

    Planning documents promised a “new benchmark in luxury, recreation and business.” Mr. Truong, 54, pictured something else: the uprooting of a cemetery with five generations of his ancestors and the loss of rich farmland that has sustained local families for centuries.

    Yet he signed anyway, because, as he put it, “there’s nothing I can do.”

    […] This $1.5 billion golf complex outside the capital, Hanoi, as well as plans for a Trump skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City, are the Trump family’s first projects in Vietnam — part of a global moneymaking enterprise that no family of a sitting American president has ever attempted on this scale. And as that blitz makes the Trumps richer, it is distorting how countries interact with the United States.

    To fast-track the Trump development, Vietnam has ignored its own laws, […] granting concessions more generous than what even the most connected locals receive. Vietnamese officials, in a letter obtained by The New York Times, explicitly stated that the project required special support from the top ranks of the Vietnamese government because it was “receiving special attention from the Trump administration and President Donald Trump personally.” [Note the personal involvement of Trump.]

    And Vietnamese officials […] face intense pressure to strike a trade deal that would head off President Trump’s threat of steep tariffs, which would hit about 30 percent of Vietnam’s exports.

    Eric Trump, the president’s second son, stands at the center of the drama. [Eric] was in Vietnam to break ground for the golf project on Wednesday, less than a year after meeting a local building partner, Dang Thanh Tam. Inside a tent with a gold facade [Photos at the link] […]

    The White House said, in an emailed statement, “All of the president’s trade discussions are totally unrelated to the Trump Organization.” It argued that there are no ethical issues as the president’s family develops about 20 Trump-branded properties worldwide, because the president’s sons run the businesses. [OMFG] President Trump’s financial disclosure report, however, shows that he still personally benefits financially from most of these ventures. [!]

    […] as the deal-making accelerates and collides with U.S. threats to free trade, the line between Trump the president and Trump the tycoon is now seen by diplomats, trade officials and corporations worldwide as so obviously blurred that governments feel more compelled than ever to favor anything Trump-related. [True]

    While other Trump deals are happening in Serbia, Indonesia and the Middle East, Vietnam has become a case study for how the Trump brand wields influence and gains advantage, challenging local norms and encouraging leaders to rush approvals, to please the Trump family.

    […] Vietnamese officials have allowed the Trump project to break ground without completing at least a half-dozen legally required steps, from securing all the land and financing to conducting environmental reviews.

    […] In the Khoai Chau district of Hung Yen province — where the Trump project will take up nearly four square miles along the Red River — a sense of betrayal has been rumbling.

    At town-hall meetings in early April, officials told hundreds of residents that the best they could expect was about half of what their land would have sold for even before the golf project was announced in October.

    Amid a chorus of outrage at one meeting, nearly everyone stormed out. Word of the offered rate spread through streets and into the fields. Opposition has hardened as farmers fear losing investments in saplings that take years to mature, and the security that the land has provided for generations.

    […] On top of that, the project is planned in a riverfront area that flooded during a typhoon last year, and the province is dotted with unexploded ordnance from the Vietnam War. A 200-pound bomb was discovered six months ago.

    […] residents rushed to the site of the groundbreaking, only to find that some construction had already begun. A black Rolls-Royce Phantom (valued at about $500,000, belonging to the Trump partner, Mr. Tam) sat near excavators […]

    Several lawyers and developers said that while Vietnam’s bureaucracy can be slow, the Trump project’s pace was unprecedented, illegal and unfair to other investors.

    Residents said their needs were being tossed aside to please the already rich.

    “They’ll have hotels, golf courses and swimming pools,” Mr. Truong said. “We’ll have nothing.”

    […] Vietnam’s government sees Mr. Trump’s administration and the Trump Organization as one.

    […] The Trump project, initially announced as a golf community, now includes a lot more, and residents who had gathered near the groundbreaking demanded greater transparency about what it entails and how it will affect them.

    Mr. Tam, the Trumps’ local building partner in Vietnam, promised at the groundbreaking to continue working quickly before handing over the private golf project to the Trump Organization to operate.

    […] the pace of change makes trouble look inevitable and close at hand.

    “In just five days, they filled up all that farm’s land and put up that tent for the ceremony,” said Do Thi Suat, 63, watching the groundbreaking from a row of saplings. “Why are they moving so fast?”

    “They will take our land away,” she said. “Then what will we do with our lives?”

    They are moving so fast because Donald Trump’s time in office is limited.

  233. says

    Ukraine’s Zelenskyy denounces U.S. silence after massive Russian drone-and-missile attacks

    “Russian forces launched a massive overnight barrage as 367 drones and missiles targeted multiple Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv.”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday criticized the United States and the international community for remaining silent after Russia unleashed what Ukrainian officials are describing as the largest aerial assault on the country since the war began.

    Russian forces launched a massive overnight barrage Saturday as 367 drones and missiles targeted more than 30 cities and villages across Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv. At least 12 people were killed, according to officials, including three children in the northern region of Zhytomyr.

    “The silence of America, the silence of others in the world only encourages Putin,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. “Every such terrorist Russian strike is reason enough for new sanctions against Russia.”

    Saturday’s massive air raid follows a drone attack Friday that killed four people, and also coincided with the final day of a large-scale prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia.

    Meanwhile, frustrations remain over shifting U.S. policy as Ukraine and its allies push for a ceasefire deal.

    […] Trump has called for an end to the war, but his administration has taken a softer line on Russia than previous ones, shifting American policy from supporting Ukraine toward accepting some of Russia’s account of the war.

    The approach marks a sharp departure from the full-throated support Ukraine enjoyed from Washington under President Joe Biden.

    While Ukraine and its European allies have pushed for a 30-day ceasefire as a step toward ending the three-year war, those efforts suffered a setback last week when Trump declined to impose additional sanctions on Moscow for not agreeing to an immediate pause in fighting. […]

  234. Reginald Selkirk says

    Young US men are joining Russian churches promising ‘absurd levels of manliness’

    “A lot of people ask me: ‘Father Moses, how can I increase my manliness to absurd levels?'”

    In a YouTube video, a priest is championing a form of virile, unapologetic masculinity.

    Skinny jeans, crossing your legs, using an iron, shaping your eyebrows, and even eating soup are among the things he derides as too feminine.

    There are other videos of Father Moses McPherson – a powerfully built father of five – weightlifting to the sound of heavy metal.

    He was raised a Protestant and once worked as a roofer, but now serves as a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) in Georgetown, Texas, an offshoot of the mother church in Moscow.

    ROCOR, a global network with headquarters in New York, has recently been expanding across parts of the US – mainly as a result of people converting from other faiths.

    In the last six months, Father Moses has prepared 75 new followers for baptism in his church of the Mother of God, just north of Austin.

    “When my wife and I converted 20 years ago we used to call Orthodoxy the best-kept secret, because people just didn’t know what it was,” he says.

    “But in the past year-and-a-half our congregation has tripled in size.”
    Theodore, pictured holding his child in his arms.

    During the Sunday liturgy at Father Moses’s church, I am struck by the number of men in their twenties and thirties praying and crossing themselves at the back of the nave, and how this religion – with traditions dating back to the 4th century AD – seems to attract young men uneasy with life in modern America…

  235. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Not satire. This is the guy withholding Covid vaccines.

    FDA Commissioner Marty Makary (on Fox): “maybe we need to treat more diabetes with cooking classes, not just throwing insulin at people.”

    Makary said he “could not be more excited” about the MAHA report.

    “It talks about 70% of the diet being ultra-processed,” he added. “It talks about pesticides, microplastics, natural light exposure in children, sleep quality. Remember, Republican, Democrat, and independent moms showed up in high numbers to vote for President Trump over this very issue.”

    Ofc anything said on Fox can’t be trusted to materialize, esp when brown nosing.

  239. says

    More than a dozen US officials sold stocks before Trump’s tariffs sank the market, by ProPublica

    The week before […] Trump unveiled bruising new tariffs that sent the stock market plummeting, a key official in the agency that shapes his administration’s trade policy sold off as much as $30,000 of stock.

    Two days before that so-called “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2, a State Department official sold as much as $50,000 in stock, then bought a similar investment as prices fell.

    And just before Trump made another significant tariff announcement, a White House lawyer sold shares in nine companies, records show.

    More than a dozen high-ranking executive branch officials and congressional aides have made well-timed trades since Trump took office in January, most of them selling stock before the market plunged amid fears that Trump’s tariffs would set off a global trade war, according to a ProPublica review of disclosures across the government.

    All of the trades came shortly before a significant government announcement or development that could influence stock prices. Some who sold individual stocks or broader market funds used their earnings to buy investments that are generally less risky, such as bonds or treasuries. Others appear to have kept their money in cash. In one case unrelated to tariffs, records show that a congressional aide bought stock in two mining companies shortly before a key Senate committee approved a bill written by his boss that would help the firms.

    Using nonpublic information learned at work to trade securities could violate the law. But even if such actions aren’t influenced by insider knowledge, ethics experts warn that trading stock while the federal government’s actions move markets can create the appearance of impropriety. The recent trades by government officials, they said, underscore that there should be tighter rules on how, or if, federal employees can trade securities.

    “The executive branch is routinely engaged in activities that will move the market,” said Tyler Gellasch, who, as a congressional aide, helped write the law on insider trading by government officials and now runs a nonprofit focused on transparency and ethics in capital markets. “I don’t think members of Congress and executive branch officials should be trading securities. To the extent they have investment holdings, it should be managed by someone else outside their purview. The temptation to put their own personal self-interest ahead of their duties to the country is just too high.”

    There is no evidence that the trades by government officials identified by ProPublica were informed by nonpublic information. Still, when government officials trade stock at opportune times, Gellasch said, even if it was based on luck and not inside information, it undermines trust in government and the markets

    […] Questions about trades based on nonpublic information have swirled around Congress for years and began anew after Trump’s tariffs announcements led to wild swings in the market. Lawmakers’ trades are automatically posted online and, after multiple congressional stock-trading scandals, are widely scrutinized as soon as they become public.

    But less attention is paid to the trades of executive branch employees and congressional aides whose work could give them access to confidential information likely to influence markets once made public.

    Last week, ProPublica reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media, the president’s social media company, on April 2. After the market closed that day, Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs, sending the market reeling. […]

    Earlier this week, ProPublica reported that Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, sold shares in almost three dozen companies on Feb. 11, two days before Trump announced plans to institute wide-ranging “reciprocal” tariffs. A Transportation Department spokesperson said Duffy’s account manager made the trades and that Duffy had no input on the timing.

    Using insider government information to buy or sell securities could violate the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK, Act. But no cases have ever been brought under the law, and some legal experts have doubts it would hold up to scrutiny from the courts […]

    [….] ProPublica examined hundreds of records for trades shortly before major tariff announcements or other key government decisions. Trump, of course, repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he intended to institute dramatic tariffs on foreign imports. But during the first weeks of his term, investors were not panic selling, seeming to assume that his campaign promises were bluster. Several tariff announcements by Trump early on shook the markets, but it wasn’t until he detailed his new tariffs on April 2 that stocks dived.

    Among those who sold securities before one of Trump’s main tariff announcements was Tobias Dorsey. Dorsey, a lawyer in the executive branch since the Obama administration, was named acting general counsel for the White House’s Office of Administration in January, when Trump was inaugurated. […]

    On Feb. 25 and 26, disclosure records show, Dorsey unloaded shares of an index fund and nine companies, including cleaning products manufacturer Clorox and engineering firm Emerson Electric. The total dollar figure for the sales was between $12,000 and $180,000. (He purchased one stock, defense contractor Palantir, which was selling for a bargain after recently plummeting on news of Pentagon budget cuts.)

    At the time of Dorsey’s trades, investors were still largely in denial that Trump was going to go through with the massive tariffs he had promised during the campaign. But the next morning, Trump posted on social media that significant tariffs on Mexico and Canada “will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled” in several days, and that “China will likewise be charged an additional 10% Tariff on that date.” [Yep, that does look like suspicious timing on Dorsey’s part.]

    The S&P 500, a stock index that tracks a wide swath of the market, fell almost 2% that day alone and ultimately dropped nearly 18% in six weeks.

    [I snipped Dorsey’s denial.]

    On March 25 and 27, Stallings [Marshall Stallings, the director of intergovernmental affairs and public engagement for Trump’s Trade Representative.] sold between $2,000 and $30,000 of stock in retail giant Target and mining company Freeport-McMoRan. The sales appear to have been an abrupt U-turn. He had purchased the shares less than a week earlier. Days after Stallings’ sales, Trump unveiled his most dramatic tariffs. Target stock fell 17%. Freeport-McMoRan fell 25%.

    [Snipped details regarding Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath, who until April was ambassador to Peru, also appeared to make a bet against the stock market. I also snipped details regarding the ambassador to Slovakia, etc.]

    […] Executive branch employees are barred from taking government actions that would narrowly benefit them personally, and some are required to sell stock in companies and industries they have purview over in their jobs. But like members of Congress, they are allowed to trade securities.

    […] Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene bought between $21,000 and $315,000 of stock the day before and the day of the announcement. […]

    ProPublica’s review of disclosures also found trades by congressional aides that took place before the market tumbled. [I snipped examples]

    […] Two days after White’s last purchase in April of the mining companies’ shares, however, the firms got some good news. A bill White’s boss introduced to make it easier for mining companies like Hecla and Coeur to operate on public lands was approved by a Senate committee, an important step in passing a bill. […]

    Any suggestion that the committee passing the bill played a role in his stock purchases “is a stretch and patently false,” he said, adding that the legislation “has not become law and even if it does, would take decades to have any appreciable impact.”

    Posted by a reader of the article:

    No one in government cares about the appearance of impropriety any more. In fact, no one seems to care much about verifiable impropriety, either. Among his many assaults on civil society, trump’s successfully normalizing and trivializing upper crust crimes like bribery, money laundering, and insider trading.

  240. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Heidi Li Feldman (Law professor):

    Democratic Senators and Representatives have introduced a bill to put the U.S. Marshals […] under the supervision of the federal judiciary rather than the executive branch DOJ. […] Marshals enforce judgments of contempt of court
    […]
    Of course, it seems unlikely that a Republican controlled Congress would advance the MARSHALS Act out of committee let alone pass it; and of course Trump would veto it. […] I applaud the bill’s sponsors for introducing and publicizing it. This is what an opposition party in Congress should be doing: demonstrating what it would do were it in control.

    WSJ

    legislation that would allow the Chief Justice [Roberts] and Judicial Conference to appoint the head of the Marshals, placing the courts in charge of their own security.
    […]
    Judge John Coughenour […] who had the SWAT team called on him, called the proposal […] a “wonderful idea.”
    […]
    Judges say that more money is urgently needed to meet growing security needs. Staffing for judicial security has remained largely flat in recent years, even as the Marshals Service reports threats […] have doubled.
    […]
    In addition to judicial protection, marshals have wide-ranging responsibilities, including transporting prisoners, apprehending fugitives and operating the Witness Protection Program.

    Senate Democrats’ Announcement

  244. KG says

    If a former Israeli prime minister calls out Israel for war crimes, does that mean I can do the same without being called an anti-semite? – birgerjohansson@236

    Nope. It just means that fomer Israeli prime minister will be called a self-hating Jew.

  245. birgerjohansson says

    Crossposted
    -Instead of throwing bombs, maybe we should come down like a load of bricks on anyone who helps to normalise the machtubernahme?

    I am thinking of the Curb Your Enthusiasm guy criticizing Bill Maher.
    I am thinking of Bernie Sanders criticising CNN for settling with Il Duche.
    I am thinking of every Democratic voter disgusted with their congresscritters voting to confirm a Republican
    .
    Also: Primary the collaborators the hell out of congress.
    For instance make them clearly state if they are in favor of adding more seats to the Supreme Court beyond the current 9.
    If their answer is “no” or “maybe” = Primary their asses!

  246. birgerjohansson says

    The number of base jumpers killed at the Norwegian mountain Kjerhag just reached 16. The first one died 1996, so it is every other year.

  248. birgerjohansson says

    First Dog on the Moon  :

    “Isn’t that nice? Woodside are willing to keep selling gas solely for the benefit of all Australians:
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/may/26/isnt-that-nice-woodside-are-willing-to-keep-selling-gas-solely-for-the-benefit-of-all-australians

    :EU officials accuse bloc of taking ‘little to no meaningful action’ on Gaza” | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/26/eu-officials-accuse-bloc-of-taking-little-to-no-meaningful-action-on-gaza

  249. birgerjohansson says

    I have spotted an increasing sense of “string up the bastards” on various threads.
    Remember, violence is their game.
    Our game is ‘civil disobedience’.
    At least until they start building camps at which moment all bets are off.

    Also, primary the hell out of any lazy or complacent Dem politician you see. There is no place for opportunists when facing existential dangers.

  250. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: birgerjohansson @249:

    I have spotted an increasing sense of “string up the bastards” on various threads.

    In this thread, that’s been you, by far—maybe even exclusively this year. You’ve been reminded so many times that comments have slipped by because what’s even the point anymore.Fantasizing, redaction, implication, impracticability, juxtaposing ‘unrelated’ violence… mod boundaries are for knowing what to steer clear of, not to play chicken with. You’ve been told that too.

    KnowYourMeme – In Minecraft

  251. KG says

    At least until they start building camps at which moment all bets are off. – birgerjohansson@249

    Have they not done so? At least, people are being whisked away and renditioned to torture centres abroad, or sent to holding centres in distant states from which they have problems communicating with family or legal help.

  252. says

    Sky Captain @250, birger @249 and KG @251, I do not agree with any “string up the bastards” or other advice that alludes to doing physical violence to other human beings in order to achieve a political outcome.

    In other news, How Newark Airport became America’s canary in the coal mine

    Related video at the link.

    […] NBC News called Newark a “no-fly zone” while wits online claimed EWR — the airport’s call letters — means “Enter With Regret.” They weren’t kidding. On May 4 alone, there were 482 flight delays and 141 out-and-out cancellations. This particularly affected United Airlines, which operates more than 70% of the passenger flights at Newark — one of the most monopolized hubs in the country.

    But the issues at Newark aren’t Newark’s alone. Denver International Airport, for instance, experienced a similar 90-second air traffic control outage earlier this month. Across the country, the air traffic control system is crumbling due to antiquated infrastructure and chronic understaffing.

    The Federal Aviation Administration, which operates the world’s largest and most complex air traffic control system, needs to at long last fully staff, equip and fund that system. This long-standing problem dates back to when President Ronald Reagan fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Since then, air travel has tripled in the U.S., but staffing and modernization of systems have not kept pace.

    As Sean Duffy, Donald Trump’s new transportation secretary, acknowledges, air traffic control systems have suffered from “decades of neglect.” But the Trump administration is saying one thing and doing another. Its DOGE arm has laid off critical FAA support staff. And threatened terminations and senseless memos from Elon Musk have depleted controller morale.

    […] After decades of neglect, there is no quick fix for Newark’s air traffic control woes. As a result, the FAA is looking to long-term cutbacks in the number of flights allowed in and out of the troubled airport. It is now soliciting comments on imposing slot controls at Newark. If implemented, the FAA will actively monitor and limit the number of hourly takeoffs and landings, as it currently does at New York’s LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, as well as Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C.

    Because of its hub operation, United and its subsidiary United Express control most of EWR’s market share. But the airport is also serviced by five low-fare airlines, including Spirit, Frontier and Allegiant.

    These low-cost airlines are already under siege: Today, the Big Four carriers of American, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United control an unprecedented 80% of the domestic market, and we have fewer carriers (and fewer new entrants) than we’ve had in a century. Dozens of mergers in recent years have left us with an oligopoly that makes flying more expensive and treats customer service as an afterthought.

    The FAA must ensure these low-budget carriers are fairly represented in Newark slot allocations. Many passengers don’t realize that they benefit from all low-fare airlines even without flying them, because these companies force even the Big Four to lower fares on competitive routes. […]

  254. birgerjohansson says

    Farron Cousins:
    “Trump Accused Of Market Manipulation As He Causes Stocks To Tank AGAIN”

    Even Adam Kinzinger (R) is accusing Trump of stock market manipulation.
    BTW what is the time after such a crime during which it can be prosecuted? Five years?

  255. birgerjohansson says

    Oops. Sorry, I did not mean for you to see Trump’s face.
    But I like the idea of him getting his ass dragged into court again.

  256. says

    More Than 50 Men Entered The US Legally Only To Later Be Sent To CECOT, Report Finds

    More than two months after the Trump administration flew more than 200 people to a detention camp in El Salvador, there’s still a lot that remains unclear.

    We still don’t know who, exactly, the government sent there. We don’t know how many people were aboard each plane that went from Texas to El Salvador on March 15; we don’t know who was removed under the wartime Alien Enemies Act, and who was removed under more standard immigration authorities. The question of whether non-citizens that the U.S. government is paying El Salvador to hold are entitled to habeas corpus protections is also, somewhat ominously, unanswered.

    It’s shocking given the lawlessness of the operation: the Trump administration sought to shield these removals from judicial scrutiny from the start, and, per the finding of one federal judge, sought to delay a court hearing until the airplanes could depart for El Salvador.

    A report published this week by the Cato Institute adds another egregious fact to this story: many of those sent to El Salvador entered the United States legally.

    The researchers behind the study attempted to learn as much as they could about a list of 238 men rendered to CECOT, the El Salvador prison, on March 15, obtained and reported by CBS News. They found that at least 50 of the more than 200 men sent to El Salvador complied with U.S. immigration law as they entered the country.

    […] having entered legally, they were removed extralegally. The administration branded these people as members of a Venezuelan gang, in many cases — without any evidence — before flying them to El Salvador for indefinite detention.

    Many of those that Bier [David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute] identified came as refugees. One entered on a tourist visa before later requesting refugee status. Four were approved as refugees before their arrival. The remaining 45 entered via the CBP One app; around half of those later were paroled.

    The Trump administration has tried to justify these peoples’ indefinite incarceration in CECOT by casting them broadly as criminals. In addition to labeling them as members of Tren de Aragua, a legal necessity under the proclamation Trump issued, they’ve touted the invocation of the law as a “promise kept.” Vice President JD Vance called them “violent criminals and rapists,” border czar Tom Homan has called it an effort to “remove public safety threats and national security threats.” DHS calls those removed “illegal aliens.”

    The report shows that apart from largely lacking criminal records, many of those removed were not, in fact, “illegal.”

    In spite of that, the result was that they were removed to CECOT without any trial or opportunity to contest the government’s decision-making in any form.

    “The fact that you got advance permission to travel here was no protection against potentially being subject to rendition to a foreign prison,” Bier said.

  258. says

    The Memorial Day history forgot: The martyrs of the race course

    A pencil drawing and a grainy photo in the Library of Congress are all that is left of the cemetery where 257 Union soldiers were buried after the Civil War, on what had been a horse race course in Charleston, South Carolina. [Image at the link] Nor has much been written about the memorial celebration held by more than 10,000 mostly newly freed blacks, which was one of the first, if not the first memorial held for those who fought to end slavery.

    Civil War historian David Blight, who first surfaced the history, describes the event for the Zinn Education Project:

    […] After a long siege, a prolonged bombardment for months from all around the harbor, and numerous fires, the beautiful port city of Charleston, South Carolina, where the war had begun in April, 1861, lay in ruin by the spring of 1865. The city was largely abandoned by white residents by late February. Among the first troops to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the Twenty First U. S. Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the formal surrender of the city.

    Thousands of Black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters’ horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some twenty-eight Black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

    This had to have been an amazing scene:

    Then, Black Charlestonians, in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders’ race course. The symbolic power of the lowcountry planter aristocracy’s horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”

    Naval chaplain Padre Steve recounts what happened to the cemetery in his own Memorial Day post:

    The “Martyrs of the Race Course” cemetery is no longer there. The site is now a park honoring Confederate General and the White Supremacist “Redeemer Governor” of South Carolina Wade Hampton. An oval track remains in the park and is used by the local population and cadets from the Citadel to run on. The Union dead who had been so beautifully honored by the Black population were moved to the National Cemetery at Beaufort South Carolina in the 1880s and the event conveniently erased from memory. Had not historian David Blight found the documentation we probably still would not know of this touching act which so honored those that fought the battles that won their freedom.

    The African American population of Charleston who understood the bonds of slavery and oppression, the tyranny of prejudice in which they only counted as 3/5ths of a person and saw the suffering of those that were taken prisoner while attempting to liberate them stand as an example for us today. Within little more than a decade they would be subject to Jim Crow and again treated by many whites as something less than human. The struggle of them and their descendants against the tyranny of racial prejudice, discrimination and violence over the next 100 years would finally bear fruit in the Civil Rights movement whose leaders, like the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. would also become martyrs.

    For those of you who have an interest in American history, I’d strongly suggest that you add David Blight’s book, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,” to your shelf. […]

  259. birgerjohansson says

    If the people at the Cato institute did not have such a weird, unrealistic ideology they would be great. At this point we have to be grateful for any group that has the resources -and willingness- to dig up the dirt on the US administration.
    Likewise, if the new pope can get some former R supporters to reconsider it would be nice.

    Having followed the situation in Poland, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and – going back decades – eastern Europe, the tyrants seem to be invincible…right up to the point when they fall.

  261. says

    The Kremlin responded Monday to President Trump’s criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing “emotional overload” at this “very important moment.”

    “We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organizing and launching this negotiation process,” said Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov when asked about Trump’s remarks, according to Reuters.

    “Of course, at the same time, this is a very crucial moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reactions.”

    The comments come after the American president has lashed out at Putin in recent days, a noticeable shift in tone that many have interpreted as a sign Trump is losing his patience with the Russian leader amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.

    “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” Trump wrote Sunday night on Truth Social.

    Earlier that day, the president said he was “not happy” with his Russian counterpart as he prepared to board Air Force One.

    “I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” Trump told reporters.

    Russia overnight launched a record number of drones into Ukraine, along with nine cruise missiles, according to The Associated Press. […]

    The attack followed a similar onslaught Saturday, when the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv came under fire from a barrage of Russian drones and missiles, killing at least 12 people. […]

    Trump’s comments are some of his toughest yet directed at Putin, though Trump has also ratcheted up his criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

    “Likewise, President Zelenskyy is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does,” Trump said in his remarks Sunday before boarding Air Force One.

    Link

  262. says

    Time to repost this guideline for The Infinite Thread: You should not fantasize about violence when posting in The Infinite Thread, nor should you propose that others do violence. The rule holds even if you are speaking metaphorically or jokingly.

    Thank you.

  264. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump raises politics in Arlington Memorial Day remarks

    President Donald Trump, marking Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, waded into politics during remarks to pay tribute to those who died in America’s wars.

    Trump took a swipe at the previous administration after speaking about the first soldiers who died at Bunker Hill.

    “Those young men could never have known what their sacrifice would mean to us, but we certainly know what we owe to them. That valor gave us the freest, greatest and most noble Republic ever to exist on the face of the earth. A republic that I am fixing after a long and hard four years. That was a hard four years we went through,” Trump said, prompting some applause from the audience.

    “Who would let that happen? People pouring through our borders unchecked,” he continued, though he did not explicitly mention former President Joe Biden by name. “People doing things that are indescribable and not for today to discuss.”

    Still, Trump continued: “We will do better than we’ve ever done as a nation, better than ever before. I promise you that.” …

  268. says

    QUEENS, NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—In what has become a Memorial Day tradition for him, on Monday Donald J. Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Podiatrist.

    Trump made his annual pilgrimage to pay homage to the heroic doctors who issued bogus diagnoses to ensure that their privileged patients never answered the call of duty.

    In an emotional tribute, Trump thanked the fallen foot specialists who bravely risked their medical licenses so that others facing military service could be free.

    Choking back tears, he said, “They gave everything so people like me could give nothing.”

    https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-honors-those-who-helped-others-1aa

  269. says

    Washington Post link

    Colton George felt sick. The 9-year-old Indiana boy told his parents his stomach hurt. He kept running to the bathroom and felt too ill to finish a basketball game.

    Days later, he lay in a hospital bed, fighting for his life. He had eaten tainted salad, according to a lawsuit against the lettuce grower filed by his parents on April 17 in federal court for the Southern District of Indiana.

    The E. coli bacteria that ravaged Colton’s kidneys was a genetic match to the strain that killed one person and sickened nearly 90 people in 15 states last fall. Federal health agencies investigated the cases and linked them to a farm that grew romaine lettuce.

    But most people have never heard about this outbreak, which a Feb. 11 internal Food and Drug Administration memo linked to a single lettuce processor and ranch as the source of the contamination. In what many experts said was a break with common practice, officials never issued public communications after the investigation nor identified the grower who produced the lettuce.

    From failing to publicize a major outbreak to scaling back safety alert specialists and rules, the Trump administration’s anti-regulatory and cost-cutting push risks unraveling a critical system that helps ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply, according to consumer advocates, researchers and former employees at the FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    […] work on the lettuce outbreak wasn’t completed until Feb. 11. At that time, the decision was made by the Trump administration not to release the names of the grower and processor because the FDA said no product remained on the market.

    The administration also has withdrawn a proposed regulation to reduce the presence of salmonella in raw poultry […]

    Federal regulators also want states to conduct more inspections, according to two former FDA officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. But some Democratic lawmakers say states lack the resources to take over most food safety inspections. […]

    Foodborne illnesses exact a major economic toll in the United States, according to federal data, and cost thousands of lives each year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the deaths, chronic illness, medical treatment, and lost productivity from food-related illnesses amounted to $75 billion in 2023.

    Each year, about 48 million people in the U.S. get sick with foodborne illnesses, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    […] In March, the agency said it would delay from January 2026 to July 2028 compliance with a Biden-era rule that aims to speed up the identification and removal of potentially contaminated food from the market.

    […] By the time Colton’s mother brought him to the emergency room that November day, the bacteria were releasing toxins and damaging his blood cells and kidneys […] their son was in kidney failure and the next 24 to 72 hours would determine whether he would survive, the father recalled.

    […] The FDA said in its February internal summary that the grower wasn’t named because no product remained on the market. […] the information is still important because it can prevent more cases, pressure growers to improve sanitation, and identify repeat offenders.

    It also gives victims an explanation for their illnesses and helps them determine who they might take legal action against […]

    “The whole ‘Make America Healthy Again,’ the focus on taking food color dyes out of cereal?” said Chris George, who objects to the Trump administration’s decision to redact information about the grower in the February report. “How about we take E. coli out of our lettuce, so it doesn’t kill our kids?”

  270. says

    Used Cybertrucks plunge in value as Musk’s nightmare year gets worse

    Owners of Tesla’s Cybertruck hoping to trade in their vehicles to Tesla dealerships are now learning that the value of their recently purchased truck has declined considerably in a short time. It’s another black eye for Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

    Electrek reported on Sunday that Tesla is offering Cybertruck owners $65,400 for their model year 2024 vehicles—down from the $100,000 those trucks were originally sold for. That is a decline of 34.6% in a year. By comparison, Electrek noted that traditional pickup trucks usually drop 20% in value in a year and only hit the mark offered by Tesla after 3-4 years. [Almost any truck is better than a Cybertruck.]

    Musk touted the odd-looking Cybertruck as a technological marvel and received enormous media coverage when the truck was first announced and as it rolled out. Initially, Tesla said that 1 million advance reservations had been made for Cybertrucks—but ultimately only 40,000 of those converted to sales.

    The data point about Tesla trade-ins are another bad mark in a bad year for the automaker. This year Tesla reported a sales decline for the first time in company history and profits have dropped considerably.

    The bad news has coincided with Musk’s decision to go all-in for President Donald Trump. Musk donated millions in service of Trump’s election in 2024 and has been a key figure in his administration, leading the DOGE team that has laid waste to multiple U.S. government agencies.

    Musk’s highly visible role as a Trump cheerleader and enabler has attracted mockery and protest. He kicked things off by offering a Nazi salute on Trump’s Inauguration Day in January and things have continued downhill since.

    […] As the company’s fortunes have been dragged down, Trump has tried to help. In March, Trump put on a sales show for Tesla cars on the grounds of the publicly owned White House. He read from Tesla sales materials, trying to convince the public to buy his donor’s wares. […] The Trump dog and pony show doesn’t appear to have worked.

    Musk claimed on Tuesday that he was stepping back from politics to focus on his businesses like Tesla, adding that he has “done enough.” But the next day he was hovering in the Oval Office, looking on as Trump pushed a racist “white genocide” conspiracy theory while speaking to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Musk, who is originally from South Africa, has pushed many of the same falsehoods on his X account.

    […] Cybertruck, and other Tesla vehicles, have become synonymous with intolerance and incompetence, and that isn’t something people want to drive home.

  274. birgerjohansson says

    Science for Everyone
    “What Secrets Are Hidden Inside The Black Sea?”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=y22LWThUD90

    If the bottom is anoxic, it should preserve sunken driftwood from the entire Black Sea catchment area.
    The origin of each log could be deduced from the isotope abundances, and you could theoretically get dendrochronological sequences from all over the catchment area, potentially going back to the ice age.

    As for the possibility of finding partially preserved organisms that now are extinct, I do not know how well animal tissue survives in water containing sulfides.
    It would be interesting to find the carcass of some ice age animal that has floated to the sea and then sunk as the internal gas buildup escapes. Would DNA survive?

  276. birgerjohansson says

    “We’ve Found Something Strange On The Moon”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=piQSi6bn_Gk
    The South Pole-Aitkin basin may hide the metal from a huge metal asteroid that created the structure. But I doubt it would ever be profitable extracting whatever is under the surface.
    As for Helium-3 the lunar poles will not catch as much from the solar wind compared to the equator.

  277. Reginald Selkirk says

    Harvard Strips Tenure From HBS Superstar Prof Francesca Gino

    For what many believe is the first time in its long history, Harvard University has stripped a one-time superstar professor at Harvard Business School of tenure.

    The decision, announced in a closed-door meeting with business faculty this past week, officially puts to an end Gino’s lifetime employment protections at HBS. Tenure revocation represents the most severe discipline a university can impose.

    For Gino, the university decision is a potentially career ending decision unless she can provide evidence that the data at issue was not intentionally falsified. Even if she is able to accomplish her innocence in her $25 million lawsuit against Harvard, this is a huge hit to her career and reputation.

    It has been nearly two years since Harvard’s Office of the President notified Gino on July 28 of 2023 that it had begun the process of reviewing her tenure over allegations of research misconduct. The tenure review was initiated by HBS Dean Srikant Datar who by then had put Gino on an unpaid administrative leave, banned her from campus, revoked her named professorship, and prevented the professor from publishing on Harvard Business School platforms…

    An award-winning behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, Gino was first accused of fabricating data by Data Colada in July of 2021 when authors of the blog approached Harvard Business School with their allegations. According to her lawsuit, Dean Datar negotiated a secret agreement with Data Colada, putting off the publication of their posts until HBS had the opportunity to investigate the claims. After an 18-month-long investigation by a three-person committee of former and current HBS professors, the panel concluded that Gino was responsible for research misconduct. Dean Datar accepted the committee’s verdict and suggested punishment on June 13th of this year…

  278. Reginald Selkirk says

    Germany’s Merz says there are no more range restrictions on the weapons supplied to Ukraine

    Germany’s new chancellor said Monday that his country and other major allies are no longer imposing any range restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine as it fights the Russian invasion.

    Friedrich Merz has plunged into diplomatic efforts to try to secure a ceasefire and keep Western support for Ukraine intact since becoming Germany’s leader nearly three weeks ago.

    On Monday, he said that “there are no longer any range restrictions for weapons that have been delivered to Ukraine — neither by the British, nor by the French, nor by us, and not by the Americans either.”

    “That means Ukraine can also defend itself by, for example, attacking military positions in Russia,” Merz said at a forum organized by WDR public television. “Until a while ago, it couldn’t. … It can now.”…

  279. says

    Deadly strikes hit Gaza as new aid delivery system remains in limbo

    “A second official resigned from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private aid organization backed by the U.S. and Israel and aimed at distributing food in Gaza.”

    Deadly Israeli airstrikes hit a school turned shelter and other targets in Gaza on Monday, according to rescue workers and witnesses, even as the two top officials resigned from an already lagging effort to get food and aid into the enclave following a two-month Israeli blockade. [Bad news and horror.]

    Faris Afana, an ambulance driver in Gaza who was at the scene of the strike, said that civil defense crews demolished walls to reach victims trapped under burning debris. He said he counted at least 30 fatalities and that, with many more suffering severe burns, he expected the death toll to rise.

    “The school is very large and shelters thousands of displaced people; even the courtyards and playgrounds are filled with tents,” said Afana. He said the school “showed no signs of any armed presence.”

    The strikes killed at least 25 people, according to Zaher al-Wahidi, an official at the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says most of those killed in the war are women and children.

    […] Late Sunday, Jake Wood, the head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private aid organization aimed at distributing food in the Gaza Strip, abruptly resigned, saying that the group’s plans could not be consistent with what he called the “humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” The chief operating officer, David Burke, has also resigned, according to people familiar with the situation who, like others discussing the aid situation, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

    […] The GHF is a nonprofit registered both in Switzerland and Delaware and backed by the United States and Israel, which aims to use armed private contractors to provide security at Israeli-designated corridors and distribution “hubs,” from which aid groups would distribute food packages to vetted Gazans.

    As the group’s future remained in question, an aid distribution center in the city of Rafah, one of four that have been constructed by contractors in southern Gaza, began operating, although it was not publicly announced as part of the foundation’s plan […]

    The United Nations and established humanitarian groups have repeatedly voiced their refusal to work with the group, citing concerns that its plans to get aid into Gaza violate humanitarian principles, would militarize aid delivery and could force further displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime.

    […] On Monday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, told broadcaster WDR: “Harming the civilian population to such an extent, as has increasingly been the case in recent days, can no longer be justified as a fight against Hamas terrorism.” […]

    More at the link, including statements from Israeli officials.

  280. says

    Paris and Berlin join EU calls for crackdown on Hungary over pride ban

    “The move comes as EU diplomats warn the bloc is inching closer to deploying its “nuclear option” against Hungary.”

    The majority of EU countries — including France and Germany — want the European Commission to crack down on Hungary over Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s plan to ban upcoming Pride celebrations in Budapest, according to a joint statement seen by POLITICO.

    The move piles pressure on the Commission to penalize Budapest, just as EU diplomats warn of increasing momentum to deploy the “nuclear option” against Hungary over its obstructionism on Ukraine.

    Sixteen countries backed the statement, which was coordinated by the Dutch foreign ministry, to call on Brussels to “expeditiously make full use of the rule of law toolbox at its disposal” to make Budapest relent on its Pride ban.

    “We are highly alarmed by these developments,” reads the letter, signed by Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden.
    France and Germany have also signed on, an EU diplomat told POLITICO.

    A series of Hungarian laws which threaten fines against organizers of and participants in LGBTQ+ events, under the guise of child protection, “run contrary to the fundamental values to human dignity, freedom, equality and respect for human rights as laid down in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union,” the statement reads.

    The text doesn’t spell out which measures Brussels should take. The obvious option, though, would be to impose “interim measures” against Hungary, which are tantamount to EU legal injunctions against a government to prevent harm, in this case by ordering Budapest to allow the Pride celebration.

    Brussels, which is withholding €18 billion in EU funds from Hungary over rule-of-law violations, has so far balked at further coercive action. Equality Commissioner Hadja Lahbib pushed back on the idea of imposing interim measures during a meeting last week, according to a participant. A failure to implement the measures could then trigger penalties.

    Lahbib told the lawmakers she lacked support from her boss, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for further action. […]

  281. says

    Trump floats sending $3B in Harvard grants to trade schools

    “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!,” Trump wrote on Monday.

    […] Trump on Monday threatened to redistribute $3 billion in grant money from Harvard to trade schools, opening up yet another chapter in his escalating fight with the university.

    “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He slammed the school as “very antisemitic” in the post, but did not delve into the specifics around any potential plan to redistribute funds, what grant money he might pull or when the action could take place.

    Trump last week halted Harvard’s ability to bring in international students, who comprise roughly 27 percent of the university’s total enrollment, over what Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said was Harvard’s failure to comply with an extensive public records request from DHS. A federal judge blocked that action Friday.

    “We are still waiting for the Foreign Student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country,” Trump wrote Monday. “Harvard is very slow in the presentation of these documents, and probably for good reason!” [Yikes! Threatening.]

    […] The president first clashed with the university in April, when Harvard said it would not comply with Trump administration demands to revamp its admission, disciplinary and governance standards. Almost immediately, the White House responded by blocking $2.2 billion in federal grants from reaching the school.

    In early May, the president announced he would revoke the university’s tax-exempt status. “It’s what they deserve!” he wrote on social media.

    Harvard, meanwhile, has sued the White House — both over its freeze on funding and attack on the school’s foreign student enrollment.

  285. John Morales says

    For even further reference, here is the bubbly AI chatbot regarding Ukraine:

    Here are estimated percentages of Ukraine’s losses due to the war:
    – Territory: Ukraine has lost approximately 24.4% of its total land area, including Crimea and occupied regions in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
    – Population: Ukraine’s population was 41 million before the full-scale invasion. With 6.4 million refugees and 3.7 million internally displaced, about 23% of its pre-war population has been affected.
    – GDP: Ukraine’s GDP fell by almost 30% in 2022. The total economic loss is estimated at over 20% of its potential output.
    These figures are estimates and subject to change as the war continues.

    (With citations, such as https://www.lvivherald.com/post/calculating-ukraine-s-territorial-losses-an-analytical-approach )

  286. JM says

    Our Big Book: CIA 2010 covert communication websites

    The discovery of these websites by Iranian and Chinese counterintelligence led to the imprisonment and execution of several assets in those countries, and subsequent shutdown of the channel by the CIA when they noticed that things had gone wrong.

    Back in 2010 Iran uncovered a series of websites used by the CIA to communicate with people around the globe. This article goes over a bunch of the websites, how they were setup, how they were used to communicate and other things. The sites are the sort of random mix of sites you would find on the internet, various news sites, fan sites and sports sites make up the majority. Done in a wide range of languages, for people in Iran a soccer site in Farsi is a lot more innocuous then anything in English. The article makes a big point of the sites seeming to target many countries but that is expected, the CIA is gathering information about enemies, potential enemies and things allies don’t want us to know about. On the sites if you try to open a certain URL it opens a little app that is a secure chat window.
    It’s also interesting seeing the flaws in the system. The sites used too many sequential IP addresses, so once one was found entire blocks could be discovered. The same technology was used across sites without enough obscuring, again leading to multiple discoveries once one was uncovered. As a group they are very generic sites but that is probably only obvious in retrospect, when you have a bunch to look at.

  287. KG says

    Man arrested after car hits pedestrians during Liverpool FC victory parade – birgerjohansson@272

    The police have confirmd that he’s a white British man – but I knew that as soon as they said it wasn’t being investigated as possible terrorism. I doubt it will prevent the fascists claiming the police are lying about his identity.

  288. KG says

    Republican Senator Tim Burchett Says He Won’t Use Straws Because “That’s What Women Do” – birgerjohansson@271

    Amazing that numpties like Burchett don’t realise they are advertising that their sense of their own masculinity is eggshell-fragile.

  289. KG says

    “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” Trump wrote Sunday night on Truth Social.

    Earlier that day, the president said he was “not happy” with his Russian counterpart as he prepared to board Air Force One.

    “I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” Trump told reporters. – Lynna, OM@261 quoting The Hill

    Putin, of course, is behaving with exactly the same crude gangsterism as he’s displayed ever since he came to power at the turn of the millennium.

  291. KG says

    Lynna, OM@252,

    I intended, @251, only to query birger’s implication that the Trump regime had not started “building camps”, or the moral equivalent; not to advise violence in response.

  294. birgerjohansson says

    General comment: This is what happens when the dominant opinion players keep saying “you are exaggerating” until it’s too late.
    Can we please finally ostracise any wankers who consistently underestimated the authoritarian threat? They do not deserve being taken seriously.
    (I refer to both media and politicians).

    On top of everything else, New York Times is normalising Trump by giving a censored summary of his latest speech, not revealing the scope of his drivel.

  296. birgerjohansson says

    Factoid.
    The Pope speaks six languages.
    The prime ministers of tiny countries like Liberia (Africa) and Luxemburg (Europe) speak four each.
    The president of USA speaks one. Poorly.

  297. birgerjohansson says

    The Nepali sherpa Kami Rita has scaled Mount Everest for the 31st time.
    (That sounds like a both very heavy and effong dangerous job)

  299. StevoR says

    One for my American friends esp. Hate Musk but the Starship is a marvel & SpaceX have made SF dreams & visions become real & history. Respect their rocket scientists, engineers & workers even if I cannot stand their boss. 7.30 pm American EDT. Think that’ll be sometime early morning Aussie time but really nor sure.:

    SpaceX has unveiled the target date for its next Starship megarocket launch, hoping the third time will be the charm after two failures earlier this year. But if you plan to watch the launch live, you’ll need to know when to tune in and for that, space fans, we’ve got you covered.

    The Starship Flight 9 launch, as it’s called, is scheduled to launch no earlier than Tuesday, May 27, at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT) from SpaceX’s Starbase test site near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas. Like its name suggests, this will be the ninth test flight of the giant SpaceX rocket, but it is the first to attempt to reuse the giant Super Heavy booster, the first stage of Starship.

    Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-starship-flight-9-launch-what-time

  300. JM says

    Guardian: White House stunned as Hegseth inquiry brings up illegal wiretap claims

    The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap.
    The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of leaks.

    The story is convoluted and hard to follow as it involves multiple layers of people lying to each other. People around Hegseth claimed that proof of the leaks had been gained from illegal wiretaps but it appears that this didn’t happen. Instead the people near Hegseth were making things up to justify firings that were more political then fact based.
    Hegseth is a complete cluster who is running the DOD just as well as Trump is running the executive branch. He probably gets chucked by Trump at some point but will do a lot of damage to the DOD’s upper command staff along the way.

  301. KG says

    StevoR@299,
    Wait until “Starship” has actually fulfilled the promises made for it. I think you’ll wait a very, very long time.

  302. JM says

    @289 KG: I suspect that the Russians have over played their hand with Trump a little. Trump is easily manipulated but is also obsessed with appearing to be in control and powerful. In treating the latest round of talks in Istanbul as a joke they made Trump look a foolish because he promoted those talks.

    Putin, of course, is behaving with exactly the same crude gangsterism as he’s displayed ever since he came to power at the turn of the millennium.

    Putin’s style has changed over the years. When he first came to power his control over the Russian government was not total, he had to play nice to stay in power. The longer he has stayed in power the more he depends on rule by fear then popular support. And he seems to be suffering from the usual dictator problems of having a smaller circle of trusted allies, becoming more paranoid, and getting worse information over time.

  303. says

    KG @291, thank you for that explanation.

    In other news: Facing criticism from the right, the FBI’s Dan Bongino revives Biden-era cases

    “The FBI deputy director could’ve shrugged off recent criticisms from the fringe. Instead, he appears to be taking steps to make the right happy.”

    When right-wing provocateur and podcaster Dan Bongino became the FBI’s deputy director in March, conservative activists had every reason to be delighted. He had, after all, spent years telling them what they wanted to hear, including a boast in which Bongino declared, “My entire life right now is about owning the libs. That’s it. The libs, because they have shown themselves … to be pure, unadulterated evil.” [well that’s not reassuring]

    The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg added in a recent column, “When a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts last year, the conservative podcaster Dan Bongino made a veiled threat on social media. ‘The irony about this for the scumbag commie libs, is that the cold civil war they’re pushing for will end really badly for them,’ he wrote. Liberals, said Bongino, had been playing at revolution, and would now get a taste of the real thing. ‘They’re not ready for what comes next.’” [I would not called that a “veiled threat,” more like an obvious threat.]

    But his honeymoon period with the Republican base was short-lived: After Bongino appeared on Fox Business and dismissed conspiracy theories about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, some far-right conspiracy theorists who’d seen the FBI deputy director as a political ally turned on him. [Of course.]

    In theory, Bongino could’ve shrugged off the criticisms from the fringe and focused on his weighty professional responsibilities at the bureau. In practice, however, he appears to be taking steps designed to make the right happy. NBC News reported:

    Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino said Monday that his agency will revive or devote more resources into several investigations of unsolved cases from the Biden administration that have ‘garnered public interest’ and have long ignited claims of corruption by allies and supporters of President Donald Trump.

    As part of Bongino’s announcement, the bureau will apparently reassess three specific cases:
    – The investigation into the pipe bombs that were found near the Democratic Party and the Republican Party headquarters Jan. 6, 2021;
    – The investigation into a bag of cocaine found at the White House in 2023 [not necessary, probably a waste of time];
    – The investigation into the 2022 leak of the unpublished Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case that overturned Roe v. Wade.

    This doesn’t appear to be a situation in which investigators uncovered new evidence that generated a fresh round of attention. Rather, Bongino decided to “either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention, to these cases” due to “public interest.”

    That, of course, seems like a curious way of saying, “The earlier investigations didn’t turn up anything, but some people still occasionally still talk about these cases, so we’re giving it another try.”

    For what it’s worth, there are some broader concerns about the integrity of these upcoming re-evaluations. Indeed, Bongino is on record peddling conspiracy theories about the very cases he’s now examining: As the NBC News report noted, it was earlier this year when Bongino accused the FBI of lying about not knowing the identity of the pipe bomber, saying the agency “just doesn’t want to tell us because it was an inside job.” [JFC. I had forgotten about that.]

    As for the White House case, Bongino is on record claiming, “[T]here’s absolutely ZERO chance anyone other than a family member brought that cocaine inside the White House complex.”

    There is no publicly available information to support either of these assertions, though FBI personnel will apparently go look for some.

  305. says

    New York Times also reported:

    President Trump floated a new plan on Monday for the $3 billion he wants to strip from Harvard University, saying in a social media post that he was thinking about using the money to fund vocational schools. ‘I am considering taking THREE BILLION DOLLARS of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,’ Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform.

    Commentary:

    [Trump] apparently envisions a model in which billions of dollars that were supposed to go to Harvard will simply be redistributed to vocational schools.

    This is worth dwelling on because it reflects Trump’s ignorance about the basic elements of the fight he picked unnecessarily.

    Harvard didn’t earn grants because federal officials thought it was a good school; it received scholarly research grants that were awarded after a competitive process. When the National Institutes of Health partnered with Harvard on biomedical research, for example, the investment wasn’t about helping the university, it was about helping us.

    There’s nothing wrong with vocational schools, but they’re not in a position to do the kind of world-class biomedical research that Harvard received grants to do. Trump can try to redirect the resources, but then that biomedical research won’t happen, and it’s the public that will suffer the consequences.

    Harvard also received a grant, for example, to understand why military veterans are more likely to be diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease). Other frozen grants include money to fund other medical research intended to help veterans.

    The more Trump tries to punish Harvard, the more people who have nothing to do with the university will feel the effects of the president’s offensive.

    Link

    Related video at the link.

  306. says

    On Friday morning, for reasons that still aren’t clear, Donald Trump published an online statement that read in part, “I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025.” […]

    Hours later, despite months of rhetoric about his eagerness to strike trade deals, Trump told reporters that he’s no longer “looking for a deal” with the E.U.

    […] Two days after telling the world to expect the U.S. to impose “a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union,” Trump announced that he’d agreed to pause his policy until July, following a phone meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, who leads the European Commission. The new goal is to reach the deal that he said two days earlier that he didn’t want.

    […] As this latest example of avoidable turmoil unfolded, Trump was asked on Friday about who’ll pay for his trade tariffs. He responded that, as far as he’s concerned, “Sometimes the country will eat it; sometimes Walmart will eat it; and sometimes there’ll be something to pay something extra.” He added that some American businesses should prepare to “take out some of their profits.” [video at the link]

    It was a timely reminder that those who saw Trump as the “pro-business” candidate in the 2024 race had it backwards. As recent events have made clear, the United States now has a president who tells American businesses to accept fewer profits, where they should make their products, what their private employment practices should be, how many products they should expect to produce, and when the stock market should be considered important. […]

    Link

  307. says

    By all appearances, the criminal case against former Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins was quite strong. Prosecutors assembled evidence of the Virginia Republican accepting over $75,000 in bribes in exchange for deputy badges for wealthy local businessmen, who would use their status to get out of traffic tickets or carry concealed firearms.

    A jury of Jenkins’ peers heard the evidence, which included testimony from two undercover FBI agents who gave Jenkins envelopes with $5,000 and $10,000 cash. Jurors found the defendant guilty, and he was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

    He will not, however, spend a day behind bars. The Washington Post reported:

    President Donald Trump announced on Monday his pardon of former Culpeper County, Virginia, sheriff Scott Jenkins, who was convicted of federal bribery and fraud charges in December. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said Jenkins was a victim of the ‘Biden Department of Justice, and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail.’

    [I snipped many other examples of pardons issued by Trump]

    Trump appears to have created an entirely new legal/political dynamic, without precedent in the American tradition, in which pardons are available to perceived political allies with whom the president sympathizes — with a special emphasis on shielding corrupt public officials from legal accountability.

    […] the White House has gone out of its way to create the very dynamic Republicans claimed to be against.

    […] The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Trump “has turned the pardon process into the Wild West. […]”

    The Journal added, “Pardon seekers are shelling out to hire lawyers and lobbyists who tout access to those in the president’s inner circle. Others seek to make their case to Trump or his inner circle at places they frequent, showing up at events at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, GOP hangouts on Capitol Hill and a collegiate wrestling match. And still others connect with conservative influencers, pitching their case on shows Trump consumes.”

    The same report went on to note that the White House is expected to announce “a substantial batch of pardons in the coming weeks.”

    Link

  308. says

    National Public Radio sued President Donald Trump on Tuesday and accused him of trying to violate the organization’s First Amendment right to free speech.

    The suit was jointly filed by NPR along with Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio, and KUTE, Inc., an owner of several public radio stations in Colorado and New Mexico. In the suit, the stations allege that Trump’s May 1 order instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to halt its funding of NPR and PBS stations is illegal.

    “The Order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the President dislikes and chill the free exercise of First Amendment rights by NPR and individual public radio stations across the country,” the suit says.

    The suit also said Trump “expressly aims to punish and control Plaintiffs’ news coverage and other speech the Administration deems ‘biased.’”

    This is accurate. Trump’s order was titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media” and complains that NPR and PBS do not present a “fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.” Conservatives have historically made this allegation about news reports that accurately reflect news events and do not toe the right-wing line.

    CPB was created by Congress in 1967 as an unbiased entity to distribute public funding to the media, which the organization then disburses to local stations. These stations then purchase programming from NPR and PBS.

    In April, CPB sued Trump after he emailed three of the company’s five directors and claimed that they had been terminated. In a statement, CPB asserted that it is not a government entity and that Trump has no say over the composition of its board. […]

    Link

  309. says

    King Charles III provided an overview of the legislature’s priorities for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government and said that Canada will stay “strong and free” in light of President Trump’s talks about annexing the U.S.’s northern neighbor.

    Charles, who is Canada’s head of state, is the first British monarch to speak on the first day of Canadian parliament in nearly 70 years.

    “The True North is indeed strong and free,” Charles said, in reference to Canada’s national anthem.

    “Every time I come to Canada, a little more of Canada seeps into my bloodstream and from there straight to my heart,” the monarch told the lawmakers on Tuesday. “I’ve always had the greatest admiration for Canada’s unique identity, which is recognized across the world for bravery and sacrifice in defense of national values and for the diversity and kindness of Canadians.”

    Charles and Queen Camilla arrived in Canada, a member of the British Commonwealth, on Monday. The trip marked his first huddle with Canadian politicians since he became the head of state.

    Charles did not directly name Trump, who has said he is serious about talks of Canada becoming the U.S.’s 51st state, something Carney and other Canadian lawmakers have strongly rejected.

    “Canada faces another critical moment, democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, self-determination and freedom are values which Canadians hold dear and ones which the government is determined to protect,” Charles said on Tuesday.

    […] “Prime minister and the president of the United States, for example, have begun defining a new economic and security relationship between Canada and the United States, rooted in mutual respect and founded on Common interests to deliver transformational benefits for both sovereign nations,” Charles said.

    Link

  310. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/blowies-for-billionaires-bill-also

    “Blowies For Billionaires Bill Also Makes Trump King And AI Ungovernable!”

    “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

    ] […]But also in this 1,082-page treasure trove of goodies are two sections that fulfill the wildest dreams of a certain aspiring dictator and his technocrat henchbuddies: stripping power from the judiciary and mandating an AI dystopia that could effectively make government services cease to function, among other terrible things!

    […] First, there’s the Take The Judiciary’s Power To Check The Government part, Section 70302, which is on page 562, if you care to follow along at home. This prohibits the judiciary from enforcing contempt citations against the regime unless a plaintiff posts some undefined amount as bond at the outset of the case.

    But, and, ALSO, the new rule would be retroactive to the dawn of time. So not only would, say, families of oops-deported migrants have their lawsuits dropped and have to re-file them after putting up some amount of money for the privilege of asking the government to quit breaking its own laws, all of the cases where the government had ever been the defendant would be invalidated. School desegregation orders, for instance. Every case ever where the government was found in contempt would be dropped, then have to be re-filed and start its journey through the court system all over. It’s a complete bulldozer to the separation of powers. Which is the entire point, of course!

    Courts have so far ruled against the administration 177 times: firings, department dismantlings, budget freezes, birthright citizenship, DOGE, the environment, press access, deporting people with no due process, etc., etc. All of those lawsuits would simply go away, and have to be re-filed in what would then be a clogged-to-the-gills federal court.

    And there’s the AI part, which is section 43201, which starts on page 291. This sets aside $500 million to modernize federal systems “through the deployment of commercial artificial intelligence, the deployment of automation technologies, and the replacement of antiquated business systems in accordance with subsection (b).”

    This would legitimize DOGE’s ongoing deployment of an AI chainsaw inside of government systems to delete whatever, currently the subject of a few dozen lawsuits, including two at the Supreme Court right now.

    Assuming that “AI” isn’t just what DOGE plans to blame for its mistakes, reminder that AI is not some kind of omnipotent genie, just a powerful microchip that can do multiple functions at once. And AI systems have an insanely high error rate: Columbia Journalism Review found AI news search engines “cite incorrect news sources at an alarming 60% rate.” More often wrong than right!

    As hard as programmers have been trying, they have not been able to keep AI from making things up between 3 to 27 percent of the time. Even if AI “only” mistakenly deletes 3 percent of Social Security recipients because it has decided they’re dead, that is more than 2 million people! And then when those people call up to complain, guess who they get? The chatbot! Because all of the government workers are fired! Want to sue the government about it? Good luck affording a bond with that check you did not get!

    Private companies have been increasingly abandoning their AI initiatives, because while AI is useful for some tasks, sorting through confident-sounding confabulations to weed out the mistakes also makes more work. […]

    And there’s more! The budget bill makes it ILLEGAL for states to try to regulate AI or any kind of “automated decision” system in any way for 10 years! […] Can the AI hoover up copyrighted works and spit them back out? Sure! [I snipped other examples] Use it to deny health insurance claims? Already happening! […]

    There’s more than 500 proposed state laws regulating the use of AI, and they’d all be blocked by this bill.

    Unknown when the Senate will be voting on this flaming paper bag of dogshit.

    Sen. Ron Johnson says he has enough votes to hold it up, not because it will transform our country into a dictatorial hellscape of robot overlords, but because he wants more cuts, of course.

    They’re terrible people! Spread the word!

  312. says

    Trump said:

    “We’re going to have a big, big celebration, as you know, 250 years. In some ways, I’m glad I missed that second term where it was because I wouldn’t be your president for that most important of all. In addition, we have the World Cup and we have the Olympics.

    “Can you imagine I missed that four years, and now look what I have. I have everything. Amazing the way things work out. God did that. I believe that, too! I believe it. […]

    You know I got the World Cup and I got the Olympics, the 250 years was not mine, I’d like to take credit. But I got the Olympics, I got the World Cup when I was president, and I said boy it’s too bad, I won’t be president then, and look what happened, I turned out … and we’re gonna have a great time.

    “We’re going to have a great celebration. But most important of all is the 250th anniversary. That blows everything away, including the World Cup and including the Olympics.”

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/senile-old-loser-thinks-his-birthday

    Video at the link.

  313. says

    Trump Media says it’s raising $2.5 billion to buy bitcoin

    “The Truth Social parent company’s move is another example of Trump’s push to be seen as the first ‘crypto president.’ ”

    LAS VEGAS — Trump Media announced Tuesday a $2.5 billion raise from institutional investors to bankroll one of the largest bitcoin treasury allocations by a public company.

    Shares of the company fell about 10% following the news.

    It’s the latest and most ambitious move in its evolution from a free-speech social platform to a financial services player.

    The deal includes $1.5 billion in common stock and $1 billion in convertible notes, with proceeds earmarked for the purchase of bitcoin, which the company will now hold as a core treasury asset. the company said it has subscription agreements with about 50 institutional investors.

    The company also confirmed the bitcoin will be held with Anchorage Digital and Crypto.com — the same platform that recently inked a deal to help Trump Media launch its first exchange-traded funds.

    The announcement comes as bitcoin nears record highs and the year’s biggest gathering of digital asset enthusiasts gets underway on the Las Vegas Strip: Bitcoin 2025. The conference helped solidify President Donald Trump’s image as the country’s first “crypto president.”

    This year, it’s a full-court press from the Trump White House at the conference, with Vice President JD Vance, Don and Eric Trump, crypto czar David Sacks, and other top officials all attending.

    Trump Media’s stock remains volatile, with shares down nearly 30% this year so far. The company has a market cap of about $5.3 billion, despite reporting just $3.6 million in revenue and a $400 million loss in 2024.

    […] Devin Nunes, the company’s CEO and a former California congressman, called bitcoin an “apex instrument of financial freedom” and said this was just the first of many “crown jewel” acquisitions the firm would pursue.

    He framed the move as a defensive strategy, saying it would help protect the company from what he described as ongoing “discrimination by financial institutions” against conservative businesses. […]

    More details, as well as related video, are available at the link.

  316. JM says

    EW: Marvel and DC’s next comic crossover revealed: Deadpool and Batman — See a first look (exclusive)

    From time to time, going as far back as 1976 with the arrival of Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, “the Big Two” comic brands have been known to bring their superhero titans together for the kind of convergence that their cross-pollinating fan bases crave. The last time they did this was in 2003, when JLA/Avengers kicked off a comic book arc that played out into the following year, but there hasn’t been a collaboration of this magnitude since.

    The unspoken context is that in the past these DC/Marvel cross overs have happened when both companies wanted to juice sales. Either because the companies were in financial trouble or some other reason. Neither company is in trouble but they likely want to push their regular comics, including the digital only distribution. Neither company wants to end up dependent on movies and TV, both companies realize those are to erratic to sustain them in the long run.

  317. says

    Cartoon: Puppet master

    Related: Trump admits to treating Putin with kid gloves

    […] “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. “He’s playing with fire!”

    It’s unclear if Trump, who is objectively a moron, understood that he was admitting that he hasn’t held Putin accountable—whether it be for the war in Ukraine or Putin’s interference in American politics.

    But the admission comes as even some GOP senators, who normally refuse to go against Dear Leader, say they’ve had enough with Putin’s attacks on Ukraine and are calling on Trump to respond. […]

  318. Reginald Selkirk says

    Jordan Peterson stuns atheist debaters by refusing to identify as Christian in viral exchange

    Famed Canadian psychologist and speaker Jordan Peterson debated twenty atheists in a video posted Sunday that quickly went viral after Peterson shocked the group by refusing to clarify whether he’s a Christian.

    The academic appeared on the YouTube channel Jubilee in a video currently titled, “Jordan Peterson vs 20 Atheists” on Sunday. The video was originally titled, “1 Christian vs 20 atheists,” according to Newsweek.

    The popular YouTube channel frequently publishes videos where one person debates 20-25 other people who hold a contrary view on politics, religion or other polarizing issues.

    In the roughly-90-minute video, Peterson debated several atheists on claims about belief in God, Christianity and atheism. About halfway through the video, one debater who said his name was “Danny,” pressed Peterson on his understanding of Catholicism, as Peterson reportedly attends a Catholic Church with his wife, who converted to Catholicism last year.

    When Peterson asked Danny why he was asking him about this, Danny responded, “Because you’re a Christian.”

    “You say that. I haven’t claimed that,” Peterson replied.

    His answer drew laughs from the atheists. Danny retorted, “Oh, what is this? Christians versus atheists?” referring to the title of the debate.

    “I don’t know,” Peterson responded.

    “You don’t know where you are right now?” Danny mocked, with Peterson chiding his debater to “not be a smart—.”

    “Either you’re a Christian or you’re not,” Danny said. “Which one is it?”

    Peterson refused to answer his question, replying, “I could be either of them, but I don’t have to tell you. It’s private.” …

  319. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/does-jordan-peterson-need-a-grownup

    “DOES JORDAN PETERSON NEED A GROWNUP OR A POLICEMAN?”

    “In which Lobster Man debates 20 atheists, without knowing what the word ‘atheist’ means or whether he’s supposed to be a Christian or not.”

    Having just watched an hour and a half of Jordan Peterson “debating” a group of atheists, I have come to the conclusion that either someone secretly replaced my allergy meds with psilocybin, I have had some recent head trauma that I do not recall, or Jordan Peterson is a logically incoherent blowhard who has absolutely no idea what he is talking about, but still really wants to win the argument.

    […] it’s not entirely clear why they chose this as the set-up. Peterson may be something of a guru for young men who are looking to become as deeply repulsive to women as it is humanly possible for them to be, but he’s hardly a religious leader.

    […] it wouldn’t have been that much of a problem if he were not so insistent on making up his own definitions of things like “God” and “Christianity,” or if he were even willing to identify himself as a Christian, which he was not.

    In fact, while Peterson was refusing to say whether he was a Christian or not, one of his interlocutors pointed out that the entire event was supposed to be one Christian — presumably Peterson! — versus 20 atheists. Out of … we guess … embarrassment? they went back and changed the title of the entire video.

    […] The first assertion people were challenged to debate him on was his claim that “Atheists reject God, but they don’t understand what they’re rejecting.”

    There are a number of problems with this statement, starting with the fact that “rejection” implies existence. Atheists don’t “reject” God, we simply do not believe there is one, and these are very different ideas. […]

    […] Jordan Peterson has one weird trick to prove his point, and it is “using a definition of God that is entirely different from what literally everyone else means when they talk about God.”

    Rather, he claims that “God is the unity on which moral claims are based.” I suppose this sounds very deep to him, but it’s not remotely helpful when debating the existence of a supernatural, omnipotent, infallible, all-knowing deity who is also his own son. And a bird (or however you depict the holy spirit). He also claims that God is one’s conscience, which is also not remotely what anyone is talking about when they are talking about the Christian God.

    When David, one of the atheist debaters, tried to help him understand that even if it were the case that atheists “didn’t know what they were rejecting,” that not knowing what one is rejecting does not necessarily imply belief in that thing […] Peterson simply seemed to not grasp what he was talking about. David then pointed out that Pew Research had found that atheists actually tend to know more about the foundational beliefs and stories than religious people, also undermining the idea that people are rejecting something they don’t understand. [True, and a good point.]

    “That’s because they’re more religious than they think they are,” Peterson responded. “Well, they’re concerned with deep matters, and one of the defining characteristics of someone who’s oriented in a religious direction [his face becomes increasingly smug at this point] is that they’re concerned with deep matters. In fact, it’s virtually definition.”

    “Right, but they also have to identify with a religious tradition and accept the foundational stories that go along with that,” David explained.

    “Well that would mean more that they’re sectarian than that they’re religious,” Peterson responded, because words have no meaning at all.

    Peterson’s next claim was that “Morality and purpose cannot be found in science,” which is just a little bit of a strawman argument — although one debater did an excellent job of explaining that there is an evolutionary/survival purpose to empathy, which Peterson did not seem to grasp.

    Parker, one of the debaters who came up during this section, tried to explain to Peterson that he was using a different definition of “God” than the God Christians believe in; Peterson then claimed that Cardinal John Henry Newman said that God was the “conscience” and demanded Parker respond to that, instead, because Cardinal Newman was a Christian.

    Cardinal Newman, actually, did not believe that God was the conscience, but rather that the conscience was the voice of God, a divine gift from God and therefore proof of his existence. He called it the “aboriginal Vicar of Christ.” This is very different from saying that the definition of God is one’s conscience in the way that Jiminy Cricket was Pinocchio’s conscience.

    […] Peterson then gave his own definition of believe, which was “If you believe something, you stake your life on it,” which is also no one else’s definition of that word. “You live for it,” he continued, “and you die for it, that’s what I mean by that. It isn’t something that you say, it isn’t something that’s associated with logical consistency, it’s not declarative, it’s not propositional, it’s not a figment of your imagination, it’s the presupposition of your attention and your action. And you’re either fragmented, in which case you worship multiple Gods, or there’s some unity at the bottom of it that makes you an unstoppable force.”

    […] Parker then asked if there were ever a situation in which lying could save someone’s life, to which Peterson asserted that this would only happen to someone “steeped in sin.”

    “If you’re in Nazi Germany and there are Jewish people in your attic, and you’re trying to protect them, would you lie to the Nazis?” Parker asked.

    “I would have done everything I bloody well could so I wouldn’t be in that situation to begin with” Peterson responded — […] “By the time you’ve got there, you’ve made so many mistakes, that there’s nothing you can do that isn’t a sin.”

    […]
    How in the living fuck was this man a professor of anything?

    Peterson’s next claim, which also made no damn sense, was “Everyone worships something, even atheists, even though they might not know it.” And, you know, that’s a true statement, because the concept of “worship” does not necessitate a belief in the supernatural. I can say “I worship Cher” and still be an atheist all day long, because Cher is a real person who exists and (as far as we know) does not have any magical powers.

    The first debater to challenge him on that was Zina, who asked him how he defines “worship” and he said “prioritize” or having a “hierarchy of preferences,” and that “whatever you’re attending to, you’re worshiping.” Or whatever you “prioritize and sacrifice for.”

    The Oxford dictionary, however, defines worship as “the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity” or “adoration or devotion comparable to religious homage, shown toward a person or principle.”

    These things are not the same.

    She also asked him what makes someone a Christian and what makes someone not a Christian.

    “Probably the deepest answer to that is willingness to shoulder your cross voluntarily and trudge uphill regardless of circumstances” he said, adding that it also means that “you believe that the cosmos itself is founded on the principle of voluntary self-sacrifice.”

    They also got to talking about pre-Christian morality, during which Peterson more or less said that because the Greek philosophers and other thinkers came up with similar morals to the Christians without being Christians, that made them “like 8/12ths Christian.” […]

    Then came Danny. Danny is the one that you may have seen already from a clip that went viral from the debate. Let’s admire it here! [video at the link]

    Danny asked, again, what Peterson meant by “worship” — which he said meant “prioritize, attend to and sacrifice for,” and, again, that is no one’s definition but his own.

    Danny asked if, by that definition, Catholics or Eastern Orthodox believers “worship Mary” — a notably controversial claim. Peterson was bewildered by this and kept saying “there’s a hierarchy.” He then asked if Peterson understood Catholic doctrine and the immaculate conception, which he sort of shrugged off.

    “You’re a Christian,” Danny says.

    “I haven’t claimed that,” Peterson responded.

    Danny was quite surprised, given that the whole point of this was supposed to be one Christian vs 20 atheists, but Peterson still refused to say whether or not he was a Christian, which I guess works for him since no words have any meaning at all as far as he is concerned. [video at the link]

    His next claim was “Atheists accept Christian morality but deny the religion’s foundational stories” […] I can believe a lot of things religious people believe, but as long as I do not believe in a God, as long as I do not believe in anything supernatural, I am an atheist. Because words have meanings.

    Ian, the first debater to respond to that claim, started out with a litany of horrible things God told people to do in the Bible (“they have a goddamned baby barbecue in Numbers”), asking Peterson if they were in line with “Christian ethics.” Peterson said no, but all of the genocide and whatnot were just taken out of context and also tried to claim, I guess, that God was perfect but people understood him imperfectly? And thus … I don’t know, got their wires crossed? But Ian points out that if God were perfect and omnipotent, he could have made people receptive to what he really meant from the beginning. […]

    The next debater, Liam, asked him what he meant by adhering to Christian morality, to which he said, “It means to aim up as high as you can, no matter what happens to you,” which I don’t think is anywhere in the Bible. Liam also pointed out that there are many philosophical and religious beliefs that have similar morals and ethics to the Bible.

    This part, I have to tell you, was not easy to follow. Basically, Peterson explained that he had read about other belief systems and religions and gods and that he learned a lot from them but felt that Christianity was the most “comprehensive” of all of them. Liam said that he learned things from Christian beliefs but didn’t necessarily believe in them or God, to which Peterson responded that this was more or less the same thing as believing. Then Liam suggested that it could be seen as similar with Peterson getting something out of Taoism, which Peterson flatly rejected.

    I do not understand how this man is a “public intellectual.” I do not understand how he has legions of followers hanging on his every word. It’s not even just that he’s horribly sexist or transphobic or a fascist or a giant weirdo … it’s that he’s profoundly stupid. I mean, he’s smart when it comes to being able to make what he’s saying sound especially deep or profound, but nothing of any actual substance is coming out of his mouth. He’s an excellent bullshit artist who is very good at pushing his particular agenda, but beyond that … there’s not much “there” there.

    Yep. A “bullshit artist.”

  320. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-notices-for-first-time-putin

    Donald Trump seems to be having trouble coming to terms with the fact that Vladimir Putin might not actually be the happy-go-lucky fun-loving cool dad he’s always been in their […] meetings. Of course, accepting reality would involve a whole set of facts Trump is in no way equipped to process, so he’s grasping in other directions. [social media post at the link]

    Trump also said to reporters on Sunday, “I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot of people, and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.”

    Oh no, has Putin changed? Something has happened to him? […] It’s like he’s killing people just for sport, like some kind of murderous thug?

    Huh.

    Also this is somehow Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s fault, and he better stop, because Trump doesn’t like it?

    Huh.

    Well, we’re sure Zelenskyy will stop saying all those bad things Trump thinks he’s saying, just like Trump is Hereby Demanding. Trump is obviously in charge of this situation, even if he’s on day 125 of ending the Russia/Ukraine war on day one of his second presidency.

    So yes, Donald Trump is going through some things.[…] Fiona Hill, his Putin expert in his first term, could tell him that Putin makes fun of him to his face, and behind his back, that he plays Trump like a fiddle, that Putin’s love for him is actually not equal to his love for Putin, that Putin sees him as an easy mark, a stupid motherfucker he can manipulate with flattery […]

    But that’s the self-awareness stuff Trump doesn’t have the mental capacity, […] to stare straight in the face.

    […] Putin is gallivanting around like he doesn’t even want peace, indiscriminately bombing and capturing villages. It was the third night of that when Trump had his little meltdown about it. One of the nights of bombing was the biggest drone attack of the entire war. Another was the biggest combined aerial attack of the entire war. (Combined because there were missiles in that one.) Russia is ignoring ceasefire proposals, where Ukraine is agreeing to them, and it’s building up to attack more later in the summer. [Yep. All true.]

    (What happened to Putin wouldn’t dare doing all these things if Trump had just been president? Seems like Putin is pants-ing Trump and demonstrating what he can get away with […])

    In response to the situation on the ground, the European Union is threatening more sanctions, Germany is lifting all restrictions on how Ukraine can deploy the weapons it provides, and Trump is up there on Truth Social saying PIPER NOOOOOOOOOO!

    Is it possible Trump will continue knowing that Putin doesn’t want peace? The Fucking News points to French President Emmanuel Macron sounding a hopeful tone, saying, “I believe that President Trump has realized that when President Putin told him he was ready for peace, he was lying.” [Even if that were true for five minutes, it wouldn’t last.]

    And will Trump do anything about it? […]

    CNN reports that he’s considering new sanctions, and on Sunday he said “absolutely” he would consider doing that. He has of course not done that yet.

    And the Wall Street Journal editorial board is mocking Trump’s rose-colored glasses about Putin, and the fact that he is finally allegedly noticing that his Russian patron is, in factual actuality, a murderous bastard, and has been this whole time:

    Mr. Trump may be the only person in the world still surprised by how Mr. Putin is behaving. The Russian is the same man he’s been for two decades, bent on reconstituting as much of the old Soviet empire as he can get away with. Ukraine is his obsession. He’s not going to modify his ambitions merely because Mr. Trump alternates between begging for peace and scolding outbursts on social media.

    [Trump is delusional about his influence and/or power.]

    They’re calling for Republican senators to fast-track Lindsey Graham’s Russian sanctions bill through the Senate.

    Putin spox Dmitry Peskov meanwhile says Trump’s Sunday tantrum was just “connected to an emotional overload of everyone involved,” emphasis on the word emotional […]

    So the Kremlin seems real worried. Can’t wait to see how they respond to Trump’s latest yip-yaps: [social media post at the link]

    […] No more mister nice Russian intelligence asset?

    Believe it when we see it.

  321. birgerjohansson says

    This year’s Polar Music Prize goes to the rock band Queen, to Herbie Hancock and to the Canadian artist Barbara Hannigan.
    The award ceremony was in Stockholm.

  322. says

    A court case reveals Putin’s profound fear, by Vladimir Kara-Murza

    “The Russian president’s supposed popularity is a myth. He is terrified of real electoral competition.”

    Charges leveled against political prisoners in Russia — now numbering more than 3,000, far more even than during the late Soviet period — give an idea of what Vladimir Putin’s regime most fears. First and foremost, it is public protests against the war in Ukraine, the most common reason for political imprisonment in Russia over the past three years. Each one of these protesters exposes the lie behind propaganda claims of “universal public support” for Putin’s war. Another fear is of the opposition movement — in particular, of anyone connected with Alexei Navalny, who died last year in an Arctic prison. Even the lawyers who defended him and the journalists who covered his trials are now in prison themselves.

    But one verdict issued this month by Moscow’s Basmanny District Court was particularly telling. Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Golos, Russia’s most respected independent election watchdog, was handed a five-year prison sentence simply for doing his job. The formal charge was working with an “undesirable organization” — in this case, the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations, one of many international NGOs blacklisted by Putin’s government. But prosecutors didn’t bother to provide any evidence, and no one who followed the trial was left in doubt as to what constitutes Melkonyants’s crime in the Kremlin’s eyes: defending Russian citizens’ right to elect their leaders.

    It is ironic that one of the most enduring myths created by Kremlin propaganda — and still sometimes repeated in the West — is the myth of Putin’s popularity with Russians. The fact is that Putin has never won an election that could be considered free and fair by international standards. The closest he came was in March 2000, when Russian media was still free and when opposition candidates were still allowed on the ballot. Putin’s official result in that election was about 53 percent, just enough to avoid a runoff. But a subsequent media investigation revealed that large-scale ballot-stuffing in several Russian regions had pushed Putin across the line.

    […] Tricks employed around the country included ballot-stuffing, busing voters to cast ballots at multiple locations, replacing real ballot boxes with fake ones, rewriting vote tallies, voting by dead people, forced removal of monitors, and so on. Golos, with its nationwide network of election observers, meticulously recorded each case of fraud — in total, more than 1,500 election-day violations. One of the most egregious cases was documented at Moscow’s polling station No. 6, where United Russia’s 128 votes were changed in the official tally to 515, while the liberal Yabloko party went from 134 votes to just four. […]

    More at the link.

  323. says

    New York Times link

    “Trade Crime Is Soaring, U.S. Firms Say, as Trump’s Tariffs Incentivize Fraud”

    “President Trump’s steep global tariffs have supercharged efforts to evade them. Some U.S. companies say the government is ill equipped to keep up.”

    As President Trump’s tariffs have ratcheted up in recent months, so have the mysterious solicitations some U.S. companies have received, offering them ways to avoid the taxes.

    Shipping companies, many of them based in China, have reached out to U.S. firms that import apparel, auto parts and jewelry, offering solutions that they say can make the tariffs go away.

    “We can avoid high duties from China, which we have already done many in the past,” read one email to a U.S. importer.

    “Beat U.S. Tariffs,” a second read, promising to cap the tariffs “at a flat 10%.” It added: “You ship worry free.”

    […] The proposals — which are circulating in emails, as well as in videos on TikTok and other platforms — reflect a new flood of fraudulent activity, according to company executives and government officials. As U.S. tariffs on foreign products have increased sharply in recent months, so have the incentives for companies to find ways around them.

    The Chinese firms advertising these services describe their methods as valid solutions. For a fee, they find ways to bring products to the United States with much lower tariffs. But experts say these practices are methods of customs fraud. The companies may be dodging tariffs by altering the information about the shipments that is given to the U.S. government to qualify for a lower tariff rate. Or they may move the goods to another country that is subject to a lower tariff before shipping them to the United States, a technique known as transshipment.

    […] many American companies say the scale of illicit activity now far outweighs the ability of these governments to thwart it.

    These schemes […]are leaving honest companies that pay tariffs deeply frustrated and worried about being left at a financial disadvantage to dishonest competitors.

    […] Tariff Dodging 101

    The U.S. government charges tariffs based on the item, its declared dollar value and its country of origin. Several schemes exist to try to evade tariffs by changing those factors.

    One method, people in the industry say, involves reporting a lower value for a product than its actual worth. Doing so lowers the tariff that must be paid since it’s charged as a percentage of the import price.

    Another scheme is to misclassify the item. An importer might report to the U.S. government that a shipment of shirts is made with a material that’s subject to a lower tariff.

    A third method involves sending the products to another country before they go to the United States to take advantage of different tariff rates applied to different countries.

    […] If the company takes parts of a shoe made in China and puts them together in Malaysia, for example, the shoe may technically qualify as Malaysian. But if a product is manufactured in China and just routed through another country to disguise its origin, that is a violation of U.S. law.

    […] In April, for example, Chinese exports to the United States fell 21 percent from a year earlier, but Chinese exports to Southeast Asian countries rose by the same percentage.

    Many of these Chinese goods are sent through Southeast Asia. But U.S. officials are also increasingly focused on the role Mexico plays as a funnel for Chinese goods to the United States. An analysis by Exiger, a data analytics firm, found that more than 3,000 companies in Mexico depended on Chinese shipments for 75 percent or more of their supply chain. Many of these companies are subsidiaries of Chinese state-owned enterprises, and most sell products to the United States, the report said. […]

    More at the link.

  325. says

    Judge strikes down Trump executive order targeting law firm, extending his losing streak

    “I have concluded that this Order must be struck down in its entirety as unconstitutional,” a judge ruled.

    Related video at the link.

    As last week came to an end, a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush blocked one of Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting a law firm. As this week gets underway, as Reuters reported, a different federal judge appointed by the same Republican president went even further.

    A judge in Washington on Tuesday struck down an executive order targeting law firm WilmerHale, marking the third ruling to overwhelmingly reject President Donald Trump’s efforts to punish firms he perceives as enemies of his administration. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, said Trump’s order retaliated against the firm in violation of U.S. constitutional protections for free speech and due process.

    “The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting,” Judge Richard Leon wrote. “The Founding Fathers knew this! Accordingly, they took pains to enshrine in the Constitution certain rights that would serve as the foundation for that independence.

    “I have concluded that this Order must be struck down in its entirety as unconstitutional.”

    […] only a handful of law firms fought back against the White House — most of the president’s targets tried to appease the president — but those that have resisted are on quite a winning streak. [I snipped details]

    […] four of the targeted firms fought back rather than give in, and all four have — at least for now — prevailed, stopping Trump’s gambit in its tracks.

    […] The New York Times reported last week that four of the top partners at Paul Weiss — one of the legal giants that gave in to the White House — announced that they are leaving to create their own law firm.

    This came on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that said another firm in the same position, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, is finding that its deal with Trump “is backfiring,” with the agreement “pushing more lawyers to leave, people familiar with the matter said, spurred by anger that the firm capitulated to Trump instead of fighting back against an administration campaign that many in the industry believe to be unconstitutional.”

    Of course, for firms that didn’t choose to placate the president, it’s worth noting that it’s not too late for them to reverse course, end their deals with Trump and join with the firms that keep winning in court.

  326. says

    NBC News:

    President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding if California did not stop a transgender girl in high school from competing in state track and field finals, and said he would discuss it with Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday.

    Yes, you read that correctly. This is about one student athlete.

  327. says

    CBS News:

    Security for Trump administration border czar Tom Homan costs more than $500,000 a month, multiple sources within the administration told CBS News, an amount that has drawn attention from allies of President Trump who have been seeking to shrink government spending. The total cost of Homan’s security — with roughly $500,000 in salaries for agents plus airfare, hotel bills and other travel expenses for his protective bubble — adds up to around $1 million per month for the Trump appointee, another administration official said.

  328. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    KG @288

    birgerjohansson link: Tim Burchett says he won’t use straws

    Amazing that numpties like Burchett don’t realise they are advertising that their sense of their own masculinity is eggshell-fragile.

    Burchett was fine with straws in Nov 2024 and 2017.
    Amazing that his voters aren’t insulted by the fragile idea of them that he panders to.

  329. Reginald Selkirk says

    @319

    Rather, he claims that “God is the unity on which moral claims are based.”…

    Peterson’s next claim was that “Morality and purpose cannot be found in science,” which is just a little bit of a strawman argument — although one debater did an excellent job of explaining that there is an evolutionary/survival purpose to empathy, which Peterson did not seem to grasp…

    I think that shared moral values, to the extent they exist, can largely be explained by shared evolutionary history.

    For example, is it moral to bite the head off a spouse after copulation? Most primates, including humans, would say it is not. But if praying mantises were polled, the answer might be different. I call this the argument from more people should read science fiction.

  330. Reginald Selkirk says

    #319

    Peterson then gave his own definition of believe, which was “If you believe something, you stake your life on it,” which is also no one else’s definition of that word…

    FFS. I believe that the Philadelphia Eagles won the most recent Super Bowl. But I certainly wouldn’t stake my life on it.

    This is word games, not serious philosophy.

  333. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump to pardon reality TV couple convicted on federal fraud charges

    President Donald Trump called two of the children of imprisoned reality television couple Todd and Julie Chrisley from the Oval Office on Tuesday, informing them of his plans to pardon their parents as soon as Wednesday.

    The pair, known for their roles on the TV show “Chrisley Knows Best,” sought pardons from Trump in February after they were convicted for allegedly bilking banks out of tens of millions of dollars in 2022, NBC News previously reported.

    A judge had handed down a sentence of 12 years for Todd Chrisley and seven years for his wife, Julie Chrisley in November 2022, after an Atlanta jury found them guilty of fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to defraud the United States following a weekslong federal trial…

    Prosecutors said that Todd and Julie Chrisley had conspired to defraud Atlanta-area banks of more than $36 million in personal loans by submitting false bank statements and other records, which they spent on luxury cars and travel.

    They later defrauded the Internal Revenue Service, evading collection of $500,000 in taxes owed by Todd Chrisley, prosecutors alleged, while raking in millions of dollars from their TV show. The Chrisleys also allegedly failed to file tax returns or pay any taxes for tax years 2013 through 2016…

    Inquiring minds want to know: were they loyal and vocal Trump fans, or did they pay a bribe?

  334. Reginald Selkirk says

    How ‘laughing gas’ became a deadly – but legal – American addiction

    Nitrous oxide – known colloquially as “laughing gas” – has many uses, from a painkiller during dental procedures to a whipping agent for canned whipped cream.

    While its euphoric side effects have long been known, the rise of vaping has helped create a perfect delivery vehicle for the gas – and a perfect recipe for an addiction, experts warn.

    (sad story of an example)… The progression of Ms Caldwell’s addiction – from youthful misuse to life-threatening compulsion – has become increasingly common. The Annual Report of America’s Poison Centers found there was a 58 % increase in reports of intentional exposure to nitrous oxide in the US between 2023-2024.

    In a worst-case scenario, inhalation of nitrous oxide can lead to hypoxia, where the brain does not get enough oxygen. This can result in death. Regular inhalation can also lead to a Vitamin B12 deficiency which can cause nerve damage, degradation of the spinal column and even paralysis. The number of deaths attributed to nitrous oxide poisonings rose by more than 110% between 2019 and 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Possession of nitrous oxide was criminalised in the UK in 2023 after misuse among young people increased during the pandemic. But while many states have also outlawed the recreational use of the product in the US, it is still legal to sell as a culinary product. Only Louisiana has totally banned the retail sale of the gas.

    Galaxy Gas, a major manufacturer, even offers recipes for dishes, including Chicken Satay with Peanut Chili Foam and Watermelon Gazpacho on their website. With flavours like Blue Raspberry or Strawberries and Cream, experts warn this loophole – as well as major changes in packaging and retail – has contributed to the rise in misuse…

  337. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    404Media – ICE taps into nationwide AI-enabled camera network

    a license plate-scanning tool that is primarily marketed as a surveillance solution for small towns to combat crimes like car jackings or finding missing people is being used by ICE […] more than 4,000 nation and statewide lookups by local and state police done either at the behest of the federal government or as an “informal” favor to federal law enforcement, or with a potential immigration focus […] Flock does not have a contract with ICE […] Law enforcement agencies are able to search their own Flock cameras, but also those in other states or even nationwide. […] 77,771 total devices
    […]
    It is particularly notable that the data in question came from an Illinois police department, because Illinois is one of the few states that specifically bans the use of [plate reader] data for immigration enforcement. […] Danville’s own data is showing that these searches by other police departments are in fact happening
    […]
    “Law enforcement really likes license plate readers […] They don’t feel like they need a warrant. Oftentimes there are no restrictions whatsoever on what they search,”

    Ryan O’Horo (Security engineer, with an interest in Flock):

    Flock Safety says EXPLICITLY that THEY do not use their cameras for immigration enforcement, but their customers sure do. Flock is very insistent that the data BELONGS to the customers. That means customers aren’t meaningfully constrained by Flock’s policies.

    Surveillance startup broke the law while trying to reduce crime (2024-02)

    Flock has failed to obtain correct permitting for hundreds of its camera installations. Installing “devices” on state infrastructure without prior DOT approval is a crime in Florida, Illinois, and South Carolina, and the company has also run into issues with Texas and Washington over its lack of permits. […] the company’s cameras now “cover almost 70 percent of the population”
    […]
    In June of 2022, an Illinois DOT official […] told the company it had many repeated, error-filled permit applications for camera installations. A Flock representative gave the IDOT official a thinly-veiled threat that if they didn’t fast-track the process, Flock would send “about 30 different police chiefs” to their office to talk to them about it. Good system we have that the cops will assist the ones breaking the law when it benefits them.

    Matthew Guariglia (EFF, Historian of surveillance):

    worth noting that this is a *marketing* strategy that surveillance companies use. Build portals for large agencies that *are not your paying customers* to get access to your customers’ data. In exchange, ICE, DHS, etc now have an incentive to promote Flock use among local LEAs.

    Rando: “like when Ring so enthusiastically partnered up with police departments.”

    Flock’s newest police tool

    a new product called Nova […] providing more data via one […] platform to law enforcement officers and medical personnel responding to emergencies.
    […]
    some of the data that can be accessed via the platform reportedly comes from breaches, not just public records or other generally above-board commercially available information. The idea is to “supplement” the data gained from license plate recognition by personal information collected from other sources […] some of the data came from a hacked parking meter app.
    […]
    “An officer having someone’s entire online persona one click away after a license plate reader scans their plate is an open invitation for police retribution and reprisals based on a person’s First Amendment-protected expression and affiliations,” Guariglia said.

    The DeFlock project is a crowdsourced map of their cameras.
    https://deflock.me/

  338. StevoR says

    Well, as they said on a live youtube clip that I’ve seen they made progress. Starshp again flew today :

    SpaceX launched its Starship megarocket for the ninth time ever today (May 27), on a bold test flight that featured the first-ever significant reuse of Starship hardware.

    Starship’s two stages separated as planned on Flight 9, and the upper stage even reached space, which was an improvement over the giant vehicle’s most recent two flights. But SpaceX ended up losing both stages before they could accomplish their full flight goals.

    “Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight!” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on social media after the flight. “Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review.” Musk said the next three Starship test launches could lift off every three to four weeks in the days ahead.

    Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-launches-starship-flight-9-to-space-in-historic-reuse-of-giant-megarocket-video

  339. StevoR says

    Good AJ Op-Ed here :

    Trump has deployed in his administration and in his relationships with billionaires a group of the old and new eugenicists. Some of these leading men believe in a philosophy known as longtermism. For humanity to survive and spread itself across the galaxy in its trillions in the eons to come, men like them must steer the way. For it is they who must make the tough decisions of allowing a significant number of present-day humans to die off to protect this distant future. And with Trump, men like Musk are guiding US domestic and foreign policies in eugenicist and longtermist ways, leaving millions in actual or potential peril.

    Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/5/23/from-fringe-to-federal-the-rise-of-eugenicist-thinking-in-us-policy

  340. John Morales says

    StevoR, so the opinion is that this is the opinion of some leading men in Trump’s administration.
    A sound opinion.

    Matches my own opinion, except for what you may consider a triviality, but what I consider quite salient:
    I think they are not “guiding US domestic and foreign policies in eugenicist and longtermist ways”, rather they are guiding US domestic and foreign policies in what they believe are eugenicist and longtermist ways. Not the same thing.

    (What those policies are is stupid in the short, the medium, and the long term, of course)

  341. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Mark Stern (Slate):

    The Supreme Court refuses to consider whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act bars the government from destroying a sacred Western Apache site by turning it into a copper mine.

    Gorsuch, joined by Thomas, has an incandescently angry dissent. Gorsuch suggests that the Supreme Court is effectively discriminating against Native faiths and favoring mainstream religions by allowing the government to destroy a sacred Native site. (I certainly agree that SCOTUS tends to favor Christianity over all else!)

    For those asking why the liberal justices didn’t step in here: I think they are VERY hesitant to expand the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act after the conservative justices badly abused it in Hobby Lobby. I’m not justifying their votes, but I suspect that was the overriding concern.

    Rando 1: “It’s fun how Gorsuch turns into a completely different, much better jurist when tribal affairs are involved. I mean good for them, I just wish that guy could show up for some other cases, too.”

    Rando 2: “Did Thomas actually side with Western Apache people?”
    Mark Stern: “Yes (likely due to his attachment to religious supremacy rather than sympathy for the tribe).”

  344. John Morales says

    “A history of domestication, provided by Philomena Cunk.”

    Heh. A Meta (Zuckerberg) link to a one-note pony.

    (Once was funny-ish, now is cringe)

    —

    Facebook is for facebook users.

  348. birgerjohansson says

    Interacting with big, potentially dangerous cattle. Remember, big animals- even domesticated ones that are furry and cuddly- should always be treated with respect. Here the bull Rufus wants to monopolise the cookies handed out. When treated properly, he is just a big, 1-tonne softie.
    .https://youtube.com/shorts/mE9ACTmGKSo

  350. Reginald Selkirk says

    RFK Jr. Poses for Weird Photos With Argentina’s President as They Plot Alternative to World Health Organization

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a fringe anti-vaxxer who somehow became head of America’s health agencies under President Donald Trump, met with the president of Argentina and discussed establishing a new alternative to the World Health Organization, according to a tweet from Kennedy on Tuesday. And while the substance of their meeting is important, all anyone can notice on social media is their bizarre photoshoot.

    Your eyes don’t deceive you. That’s the Secretary of Health and Human Services holding a chainsaw that belongs to Milei and reads “las fuerzas del cielo” in Portuguese. Translated into English, it means “the forces of heaven.” …

  351. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/jen-psaki

    Reality splashes cold water on Patel, Bongino, conspiracy theorists now White House insiders
    Video is 4:53 minutes

    Russia mocks Trump’s ’emotional’ meltdown over his failure to secure peace for Ukraine
    Video is 6:47 minutes

    Contradictions in Trump’s pardon spree expose his weak value set
    Video is 8:32 minutes

  353. says

    Donald Trump’s West Point commencement speech over the weekend could’ve gone better. As Politico’s Jeff Greenfield summarized, the president’s remarks were “a narcissistic [and] deranged rant.” What’s more, while other modern presidents have stuck around after their speeches to shake hands with cadets, Trump did not — a move Greenfield described as “just another insult.”

    But of particular interest was the president using the platform to touch on one of his curious national security priorities. USA Today reported:

    The president did briefly mention his plan of investing $25 billion toward building a massive anti-missile defense shield that seeks to cover the country with three layers of aerial protection, according to military officials. ‘We’re building the Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland and to protect West Point from attack, and it will be completed before I leave office,’ Trump said.

    Yes, he’s still serious about this.

    Trump spent much of 2024 talking up the idea of an “Iron Dome” comparable to Israel’s defense system, though he seemed to struggle with the details: The whole point of Israel’s “dome” is to protect it from short-range missiles. Unless Trump is worried about Canada or Mexico launching a surprise attack, it stands to reason that the United States would focus on other national security priorities.

    Nevertheless, in early 2024, Trump told a New Hampshire audience, in reference to a proposed shield and those who would oversee it, “And they calmly walk to us, and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out, right. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.”

    I still don’t know what that was supposed to mean.

    Nevertheless, in time, the idea evolved. “Iron dome” became “Golden Dome” (because everything related to Trump now must be gold), and instead of developing a shield to intercept short-range missiles, the president apparently envisions a system that would intercept all missiles.

    There’s no shortage of problems with such an idea. For example, U.S. officials have been trying to make a system like this work for decades, and they’ve always failed. What’s more, Trump told the public last week that the “total cost” of such an initiative would be “about $175 billion,” which is laughable: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the actual cost of the president’s “Golden Dome” could be as high as $831 billion.

    But I’m also stuck on the idea that this nonexistent, experimental, technological breakthrough will be ready to go within three years. As The Hill reported, it’s an idea that left experts “scratching their heads.”

    Such a system, as called for by Trump via a January executive order, would take far more than the ‘two and a half to three years’ he boasted in the Oval Office on Tuesday, according to Melanie Marlowe, a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defense Project. ‘Golden Dome is not going to be an impenetrable missile shield across the entire United States of America,’ Marlowe told The Hill, adding that the system will require both short- and long-term effort to come together. … ‘We will not have space-based interceptors in three years,’ she told The Hill.

    The New York Times’ W.J. Hennigan added that the “Golden Dome” would also likely “consist of 100 or more programs to be stitched together for a coast-to-coast, border-to-border shield against aerial attacks. Once those components are built, the military will need a way to orchestrate it all through a command-and-control system.”

    The more Trump suggests that all of this can be done quickly, effectively and affordably, the more he sets himself up for inevitable failure.

    Link

  354. says

    Hegseth’s Pentagon chooses a controversial new spokesperson, ignoring bipartisan concerns

    “Even some Republicans have expressed concerns about Kingsley Wilson’s radical rhetorical record. In Hegseth’s Pentagon, she received a promotion anyway.”

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

    As Pete Hegseth got to work as the nation’s new defense secretary earlier this year, he tapped Sean Parnell to serve as the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson. The choice was not without controversy: This was the same Parnell who was forced to abandon a Republican U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania four years ago, following abuse allegations from his estranged wife, which he denied.

    Nevertheless, a few months later, as Hegseth struggled to address multiple overlapping controversies, he overhauled his DOD leadership team and promoted Parnell to the role of senior adviser. That, of course, meant there was a vacancy in the office of the Pentagon press secretary.

    Evidently, it’s been filled. The New York Times reported:

    The Defense Department announced that Kingsley Wilson, the deputy press secretary who has drawn attention for past remarks criticized as antisemitic and racist, was promoted to be press secretary, the lead spokeswoman for the Pentagon. The American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group, had criticized her for the remarks back in March: “Anyone who posts antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook should not be in public office.”

    For those unfamiliar with Wilson, a Mother Jones report published a couple of months ago summarized her record this way: “She’s also an overt internet troll with a long history of bigoted, xenophobic, and deliberately provocative s—posting.”

    In fact, it reached the point in March that even some congressional Republicans raised public concerns about Team Trump’s vetting process. Politico reported:

    The backlash over a top Pentagon aide who has touted antisemitic views, white supremacist conspiracy theories and Kremlin-like statements on social media grew wider in a sign of increasing frustration among Republicans about the Trump administration’s seemingly unvetted appointees. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson’s posts — which include comparing the murders of Israeli babies during the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks to abortion and spreading the far-right ‘great replacement theory’ — have angered lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

    Republican Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska told Politico, in reference to Wilson’s remarks, “It’s horrible, it’s just not appropriate.”

    A senior Republican congressional aide added, “We’ve got enough real, serious challenges from outside without having to worry about Pentagon staff who like to spread antisemitism or Russian propaganda. I’m amazed at who this administration has been willing to trust with national security responsibilities.”

    […] Last week, the Trump administration nevertheless responded to these concerns — by giving Wilson a promotion.

  355. says

    JD Vance accuses courts of trying to ‘literally overturn’ the will of American voters

    “It is not the job of the courts to defer to a branch of government based on election results. The vice president apparently finds this confusing.”

    Related video at the link features Joyce Vance.

    The more Donald Trump and his administration push the legal envelope, the more they lose in court. In fact, Adam Bonica, a political science professor at Stanford, found that the president has faced a variety of legal fights this month, and he’s lost 96% of the time. Even when Trump’s cases have landed before Republican-appointed judges, he’s still lost 72% of the time.

    For assorted partisans, there are competing ways to interpret the White House’s many legal setbacks. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, for example, recently pitched reporters on the idea that an elaborate conspiracy against Trump has made it nearly impossible for the president to succeed in a corrupted justice system. And while that was hysterical nonsense, Trump himself has gone further, accusing judges who dare to rule in ways he doesn’t like of being anti-American “monsters” and “lunatics” who “who want our country to go to hell.”

    JD Vance hasn’t used comparable rhetoric, but when the vice president sat down last week with The New York Times’ Ross Douthat, he did voice concern about “a real conflict between two important principles in the United States.” From the transcript of the interview:

    Principle 1, of course, is that courts interpret the law. Principle 2 is that the American people decide how they’re governed. That’s the fundamental small-d democratic principle that’s at the heart of the American project. I think that you are seeing, and I know this is inflammatory, but I think you are seeing an effort by the courts to quite literally overturn the will of the American people.

    […] Elon Musk appeared on Fox News and argued, “If the will of the president is not implemented and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, and that means we don’t live in a democracy.”

    The argument reflects a certain child-like logic: Trump won a democratic election, so to deny the president’s will is to defy democracy. Of course, if the U.S. were an autocracy; if the rule of law didn’t exist; and if the powers of the presidency were indistinguishable from that of a king, then Musk’s pitch might make sense. But since that isn’t the case, Musk’s argument is both absurd and at odds with how our Madisonian political system is designed to work.

    The trouble, of course, is that Vance’s pitch was similar — and similarly wrong. […]

    It falls on the judiciary to evaluate legal disputes on their merits. It is not the job of the courts to defer to another branch of government based on election results. In our system, there is no such rule that suggests, “If people vote for a candidate, the candidate’s platform instantly becomes legal.” […]

    It’s a point worth keeping in mind the next time one of Trump’s allies peddles this absurdity.

  356. whheydt says

    Re: Lynna, OM @ #353….
    The media should do reports comparing what happened the last time an anti-ballistic missile system was tried…in the Reagan administration.

    One critic of that system, an expert in computer systems, pointed out that the command and control system would be an order of magnitude more complex than any software project attempted to that time, PLUS it had to work perfectly the first time it was used.

    The low level component of the ABM system was developed. The missile was called Sprint and It was designed to take out an incoming warhead at altitudes up to about 10 miles. Takeoff acceleration was about 100 Gs–about 1000 m/sec**2. Within 3 seconds of launch, the outside of the nosecone was hotter than the inside of the engine. It was intended to take out an incoming warhead by a proximity detonation of…a nuclear bomb. (Can you say EMP?) One problem with this is that the explosion would blind any tracking radar near by.

  358. John Morales says

    whheydt, it’s a bit of a joke, but quite Reaganish, indeed.

    Golden Dome & U.S. Missile Defence – What is it, Can it Work, and the Economics of Missile Defence

    In the 1980s, the U.S. announced an ambition to build a space-based missile shield that could intercept Soviet ICBMS and make nuclear weapons functionally ‘obsolete.’

    It never happened.

    The technology wasn’t there, the costs would have been astronomical and there was always a risk of the Soviets out-scaling the system.

    After the Cold War ended, U.S. homeland missile defence efforts refocused on rogue and minor actors like North Korea.

    Now, with the announcement of “Golden Dome’, it appears that the U.S. is once again expanding its missile defence ambitions. And so today we look at what’s been announced and funded, how it might work, and the brutal economics of complex missile defence.

    Timestamps:
    00:00:00 — Opening Words
    00:01:58 — What Am I Talking About?
    00:04:08 — America’s Iron Dome?
    00:13:38 — What Do We Know?
    00:19:17 — More Ambitious Asks
    00:38:12 — High-end Defence
    00:39:42 — Missile Defence Math
    00:54:05 — Going Back to Boost Phase
    01:02:02 — What if It Worked?
    01:05:15 — Channel Update

  359. says

    whheydt @356, thanks for that additional information. I think Trump is interested in being able to say “golden dome,” and in being able to pretend that he is doing something.

    Cartoon: Trump vs. Harvard

  360. says

    White House Nazi Barbie Karoline Leavitt loyally marched over to Fox News last night to spread the regime’s propaganda, wearing of course that “What’s that smell” look that’s apparently permanently affixed to her Mar-a-Lago face.

    The subject of the evening was “education.” You know how MAGA loves “education.” And of course you know what the Trump regime is doing trying to remove all international students not only from Harvard but also just everywhere else.

    And she said:

    “The president is more interested in giving that taxpayer money to trade schools and programs and state schools where they are promoting American values but, most importantly, educating the next generation based on skills that we need in our economy and our society. Apprenticeships, electricians, plumbers — we need more of those in our country and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University, and that’s what this administration’s position is.”

    [video at the link]

    […] Leavitt also said something about the “illegal, criminal, antisemitic behavior that we saw at Harvard,” […]

    Let’s peel away the layers of the white supremacist, Christian nationalist bigotry, fascism and government-enforced mediocrity this asshole is trying to force on America on behalf of her Dear Leader.

    For one thing, as we’ve been discussing, these fuckers sure do hate education!

    As Scott Pelley explained in his viral Wake Forest commencement speech, fascists need you ignorant. They need you stupid. They need you uneducated. They need you utterly unable to think for yourself, and people in big fancy colleges with big fancy “LGBT graduate majors” […] are there learning critical thinking, which is kryptonite to fascist regimes.

    […] fascism needs electricians and plumbers. And there’s nothing wrong with those professions, for people who want them, who want to become the most excellent electricians and plumbers and build those businesses! Democrats have forever been supporting programs that encourage apprenticeship and alternate paths that recognize that college isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for all people! [True.]

    But that’s not what this is.

    […] Greg Sargent notes at The New Republic this morning that Trump and his army of mouths are now augmenting their bullshit arguments about how his war on international students is “designed to root out the antisemites, woke radicals, and dangerous terrorists supposedly nesting in their ranks,” adding in the fantasy that somehow this will now give spots at Harvard and other elite institutions “back” to working class American students who are getting pushed out.

    As Trump said this weekend:

    “We have Americans who want to go there and to other places,” Trump told reporters over the weekend, adding angrily that many of Harvard’s international students are “bad” and are taking Americans’ slots: “They can’t go there because you have 31 percent foreign.”

    […] Meanwhile, as Sargent explains, the Republicans’ Big Beautiful Bill is chock-full of measures that will make it more and more difficult for working class students to access higher education. It’s almost like everything these people say is absolutely full of shit.

    No, attacking international students and attacking Harvard isn’t about helping regular people. It’s about seizing money for rich people’s tax cuts and it’s about grift and it’s about shutting down free thought and expression and advancing white Christian supremacy, but it ain’t about helping people.

    What if we had a country where we could have elite institutions like Harvard where people could study whatever the fuck they want — even gay homosexual transgender woke stuff! — and also had a thriving infrastructure for people who didn’t want to go to college, who maybe wanted to become plumbers or electricians? […]

    What if they weren’t lying to MAGA voters about bringing back manufacturing […]

    What if MAGA grappled with the fact that “woke” and “electricians and plumbers” aren’t mutually exclusive? What if they met all the woke electricians and plumbers we know, who hate Stupid Hitler as much or more than we do? […]

    Keep talking, you fucking weirdos. People get it more and more when you show them who you really are.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/aryan-stock-photo-karoline-leavitt

  362. says

    Yikes. That was fast.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/bomb-in-war-on-colleges-all-international

    […] child of Cuban refugees Marco Rubio has cabled all US embassies directing them to stop scheduling international student visa interviews, while the State Department combs through applicants’ social media profiles in search of UNGOODTHINK. So it is possible that there will be few to no international students at US universities in the fall. Maybe a handful of “refugee” white South Africans?

    Even if universities sue and prevail — and a judge just blocked the administration from pulling the same move at Harvard within 24 hours last Friday — an atmosphere of students shoved into vans by masked men, […] hundreds of student visas chaotically revoked then restored, fear of free speaking, threatening letters from the DHS, […] is … a damper.

    And stopping the flow of 1.1 million foreign students will massively shrink or shut down hundreds of colleges dependent on their tuition money for financial survival. […] schools have become dependent on the $44 billion or so that foreign students bring to fund hundreds of thousands of jobs, as most foreign students pay full price. Harvard’s undergraduate enrollment is 28 percent foreign students, and 14 other schools have a higher percentage than that, including Carnegie Mellon (44 percent), Columbia (40 percent), and Barron Trump’s own NYU (37 percent).

    Oh hey there, Columbia! Remember how after the regime took $400 million of their funding and dragged one of their students, Mahmoud Khalil, to ICE jail, their Board of Trustees unconditionally surrendered and immediately began colluding with the administration anyway? Columbia banned all protests, punished students for past protesting, and fingerpointed students suspected of being at protests, even ones who were just there to report for the student newspaper, then tried to hold their diplomas hostage unless they participated in fact-finding meetings. They appointed a special senior vice provost to oversee the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies departments, to direct changes to faculty members’ curricula to make sure it was “balanced.” Columbia rolled over for all that, and where did it get them? They ruined their reputation only to be just as fucked as everybody else, and still didn’t get their $400 million back, and have had to lay off 180 staffers (so far).

    […] [The] bill that the House just passed would tax college endowments, with levels starting at 1.4 percent, and going to up to 21 percent (same as the current corporate income rate) based on a college’s assets per student, meaning that Harvard would owe the IRS more than $11 billion a year, and Columbia would owe $3 billion.

    […] As MAGA philosopher, Steve Bannon buddy, and JD Vance/techbroligarch whisperer Curtis Yarvin once opined on a podcast, to take over, “you can’t continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past the start of April.” And he pounded on his Substack that “regime change” would require that “all accredited universities be both physically and economically liquidated.”

    […] Anyway, all of this is awful, but students and schools are fighting back! There was a big protest at Harvard yesterday: [video at the link]

    […] Won’t somebody actually think of the earnest, smart, hardworking children, and all the nice scientists trying to cure cancer who are being traumatized by all this?

    Other countries are. The Japanese government is urging its universities to accept more international students, and Hong Kong’s Education Secretary Christine Choi called on universities there to welcome “outstanding students from all over the world,” and Australia, Europe, and Canada have also stepped up to welcome brain-drained scientists, too. America’s loss will be many other places’ gain. Foreign colleges in English-speaking countries can likely expect a boon of American students, too. For those that can afford that. […]

  363. says

    Followup to comment 362.

    Asked about his administration’s new student visa policy, the president seemed unsure what the reporter was talking about. This happens too often.

    Related video at the link.

    As the intersection of the Trump administration’s offensive against immigrants and higher education rests a misguided new policy. As NBC News reported, the president’s team this week “stopped scheduling new interviews for international students seeking visas to study in the United States,” as the State Department prepares a new effort to screen students’ social media accounts.

    Evidently, students found to have expressed the “wrong” ideas will be excluded from American colleges and universities.

    A day after his administration advanced this policy, Donald Trump was pressed for an explanation. It went badly — not because the president offered a weak defense, but because he didn’t seem to know what the reporter was talking about. [video at the link]

    Asked specifically when his administration might resume interviews for foreign student visas, Trump responded, “On what?” Reminded that she was asking about foreign student visas, Trump asked, “For the French?” possibly in reference to the reporter’s accent.

    When he eventually figured out what the question was about, he offered an evasive “we’re gonna see,” before changing the subject and whining anew about Harvard.

    Watching the exchange, it was hard not to get the impression that he simply didn’t know about his administration’s new policy on foreign student visas — which has proven to be a familiar problem in this White House.

    Earlier this month, for example, less than 24 hours after he nominated Dr. Casey Means to serve as the nation’s next surgeon general, the president conceded that he didn’t know who Casey Means is.

    A day earlier, amid reports that the administration was also planning to expand its deportations agenda to Libya, Trump was pressed on the policy. “I don’t know,” he responded. “You’ll have to ask the Department of Homeland Security.”

    [I snipped a lot of other examples.]

    Around the same time, a reporter reminded Trump that JD Vance said Russia was asking for too much to end the war in Ukraine. “When did he say that?” the president asked. Reminded that the vice president had made the comments hours earlier, Trump added, “Well, it’s possible that’s right. He may know some things.” […]

    In April, Time magazine asked Trump how much the U.S. government is paying El Salvador to imprison immigrants. “I don’t know,” the president responded. Asked if he approved the payments, the Republican added, “No, I didn’t.”

    […] When Trump was asked about the Signal group chat scandal and whether he believed classified information was shared, he replied, “I don’t know. I’m not sure, you have to ask the various people involved.”

    These weren’t trick questions. No one appeared to be trying to trip the president up with unexpected inquiries about obscure topics. In all of these instances, Trump should’ve been able to respond to the questions with substantive responses.

    But he didn’t. Instead, Trump effectively said, over and over again, “Don’t look at me, I just work here.”

    […] President Bystander has returned. Trump has taken a keen interest in countless trivialities, but on substantive issues, he’s offering the public a lot of shrugged shoulders and blank stares.

    […] Trump has personally invested considerable time and energy in accusing Biden of having been a doddering old “autopen” president who was unaware of events unfolding around him. […]

    Indeed, let’s not overlook that Trump has repeatedly seemed unaware of the executive orders that have been handed to him to sign. [True!] [Video at the link]

    Finally, let’s not overlook that Trump’s authoritarian-style tendencies are rooted, at least in part, in the idea that governmental power must be concentrated in the president’s hands, to be executed as he sees fit.

    It makes Trump’s apparent cluelessness that much more alarming.

  364. says

    Far-right hoaxster who targeted the left whines about being bullied

    Conservative activist James O’Keefe was unceremoniously removed in 2023 as the head of Project Veritas, the far-right activist group that he founded, and now he wants everyone to know that people in the organization were mean to him.

    The Bulwark’s Will Sommer reported on Tuesday that O’Keefe is selling a video called “The Truth Inside Veritas” purporting to tell the “chaotic power struggle that consumed Project Veritas from within.”

    After watching the video, Sommer notes that O’Keefe “devotes a surprisingly large amount of the video to demonstrating how rude his employees were to him.”

    This includes detailing the content of mean texts that were sent to him, along with a Photoshopped picture replacing O’Keefe’s face with a sex toy. In another instance, O’Keefe whines that an employee sent out “a text message of me eating a sandwich covered in semen.”

    O’Keefe’s apparent goal is to restore himself as the head of Project Veritas so he can once again produce absurd far-right propaganda.

    […] In 2023, the Project Veritas board pushed him out of his role as CEO, which came as allegations of financial misconduct and other odd behavior surfaced. For instance, O’Keefe reportedly used more than $20,000 of donor money to put on an outdoor production of the musical “Oklahoma!” in which he starred.

    Despite his strange behavior—or perhaps because of it—O’Keefe is not a fringe figure on the right, and he has connections to some of the most powerful people in Republican politics.

    In 2016, it was revealed that the nonprofit Trump Foundation paid O’Keefe $10,000. During that same campaign cycle, Project Veritas released videos attacking presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

    […] A hallmark of O’Keefe’s work is deceptively edited videos purporting to show people on the left in the worst light possible. [Readers of The Infinite Thread will remember this. For example, James O’Keefe, the conservative activist whose hidden-camera stings have been aimed at liberal targets, has agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former employee of the group ACORN] […] videos claiming to show malfeasance on the left, which frequently dissolves after the faintest hint of scrutiny.

    […] at other times, O’Keefe’s actions just led to national embarrassment and humiliation. The same year as his arrest, O’Keefe reportedly tried to lure CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat strewn with sex toys and pornography in an attempt to seduce her.

    O’Keefe is a clown who loves to play dress-up while dishonestly attacking the left. His antics led to his downfall and ouster, but he clearly wants to continue to be a player in conservative circles.

    But despite his cringe-inducing behavior, O’Keefe has always had a solid following, and the right chose to embrace his deceptions and mediocre work. […].

    He’s precisely the sort of whack job the conservative movement relies on again and again.

  366. John Morales says

    In the spirit of all Trump all the time, this amused me greatly:
    https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/28/economy/trump-wall-street-taco-trade-nastiest-question

    Wall Street has been riding a historic roller coaster the past few months due to President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff threats. Now, investors are learning to take his words with a grain of salt — and a bit of salsa, too.

    That’s because there’s a new type of trade taking hold: TACO, short for Trump Always Chickens Out. In other words, don’t fret too much about Trump’s latest tariff threat and go on a selling spree, because eventually he’ll back down and a relief rally will ensue.

    Trump said he first learned of the term, coined by Financial Times commentator Robert Armstrong, on Wednesday when a reporter sought his reaction to it.

    […]

    “You call that chickening out?” Trump responded to a reporter at an Oval Office event Wednesday, referring to his recent announcements on EU and Chinese tariff rates.

    “It’s called negotiation,” Trump added, saying that part of his tactic can include setting “a ridiculous high number” for tariff rates and going down if he gets other nations to give in to his demands.

    “Don’t ever say what you said,” Trump told the reporter, calling it “the nastiest question.”

  367. says

    Migrants, and a Pastor, Arrested Inside Manhattan Immigration Courthouse

    “Dozens of masked agents in plainclothes searched for targets exiting the elevators.”

    Federal agents inside of a Manhattan immigration court building on Wednesday made numerous arrests of migrants and observers including a pastor from Queens.

    A reporter for THE CITY witnessed around two dozen masked officers, dressed in plainclothes, staking out the lobby of 26 Federal Plaza, where immigrants go for check-ins with ICE as well as court dates with USCIS, on Wednesday afternoon.

    Some wielded pictures of their targets on their phones while others held print-outs of people’s faces, as they looked around for their targets. Over the course of several hours, THE CITY witnessed seven arrests: six men and one woman.

    […] Several of the agents in plainclothes also declined to comment but one male agent confirmed that they were with ICE, and directed THE CITY to contact the federal enforcement agency’s press office.

    […] “ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been,” Ferguson [ICE spokesperson Marie Ferguson] said. […]

  368. says

    Scoop: Stephen Miller, Noem tell ICE to supercharge immigrant arrests

    In a tense meeting last week, top Trump aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that immigration agents seek to arrest 3,000 people a day, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

    […] The new target is triple the number of daily arrests that agents were making in the early days of Trump’s term — and suggests the president’s top immigration officials are full-steam ahead in pushing for mass deportations.

    […] Miller, the White House’s deputy chief of staff and leading architect of President Trump’s immigration policy, laid into top immigration officials during the May 21 meeting at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in D.C., according to four people familiar with the meeting.

    Miller demanded that field office directors and special agents in charge get arrest and deportation numbers up as much as possible […]

    Noem took a milder approach in pushing for more arrests, soliciting feedback from ICE leaders. Special government employee Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign aide, also spoke.

    Miller’s directive and tone had people leaving the meeting feeling their jobs could be in jeopardy if the new targets aren’t reached […]

    Immigration officers have almost 49,000 people in ICE custody, according to the latest government data from early May. That’s significantly more people in detention than what Congress has appropriated funding to accommodate.

    But even as the Trump administration has carried out a series of controversial deportation flights to other nations, deportation totals are roughly the same as they were during President Biden’s last year in office.

    Border-area deportations are lower because fewer migrants are attempting to cross into the U.S., while ICE’s removals from the country’s interior have increased, according to an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), an independent organization.

    To help ramp up deportations, Capitol Hill Republicans are working on providing an extra $147 billion in immigration funds over the next 10 years — part of the Trump-backed “big beautiful bill” that passed the House last week. […]

    DHS and ICE have begun posting official requests for additional staffing, bed space and resources […]

  369. lumipuna says

    Re: Lynna at 353 and 359

    Certainly, the word “golden” is extremely on-brand for Trump.

    Personally, I get the sense that he was initially impressed by the “Iron Dome” concept while not understanding much anything about it. Then everyone pointed out (even to him personally) why it’s not practical or sensible for US defense purposes. Eventually, he decided to have some military planners modify the concept enough that it can be sold to the Congress, while perhaps fulfilling his initial grand vision better than Israel’s actual Iron Dome. The new name is part of rebranding the idea, to make clear that it’s been adapted (and supposedly made better and more workable) for US purposes.

  370. says

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to prohibit government scientists from publishing work in medical journals and instead publish work in new “in-house” publications.

    During a Tuesday episode of the podcast “The Ultimate Human,” Kennedy threatened to stop government scientists from publishing in journals like The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA because they are beholden to the pharmaceutical industry.

    All three of those journals have published original, peer-reviewed research for decades and contribute to the distribution of scientific information across the planet.

    Kennedy called the journals “corrupt,” adding that they only spread propaganda from pharmaceutical companies and are no longer scientifically credible.

    The forthcoming “in-house” journals will replace the trio as the pre-eminent scientific journals. […]

    Link

    More at the link.

  371. birgerjohansson says

    Banning The Lancet… this is a very Soviet or North Korean thing to do.

  373. birgerjohansson says

    The democratic senate challenger for Iowa 2026 has good poll numbers.

  374. John Morales says

    Birger @371, you misapprehend the claim; be aware that banning government employees from publishing in a publication is not banning that publication, and therefore is not a very Soviet or North Korean thing to do on that basis.

  375. whheydt says

    Re; Lynna, OM @ #370…
    I think we need to re-name RFKJr. Call him Robert F. Lysenko.

  377. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 370

    I expect these “in house” government science journals to publish new and amazing discoveries. Like how coffee enemas and Reiki cure cancer, about the wonders of Alex Jones brand supplements, definitive proof of the intellectual superiority of the white race, and how those on the autism spectrum are soulless homunculi unworthy of life.

  378. JM says

    Newsweek: Trump Admin Seeks To Dismiss Abrego Garcia Case Because He’s Not In The US

    In a court filing late Tuesday, the Trump administration said that a lawsuit seeking to repatriate Abrego Garcia should be dismissed because he’s not in the U.S.
    “The Court must dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims against Defendants because, taking all factual allegations in their Complaint as true, they fail to establish subject-matter jurisdiction,” the DHS said.

    This is an absurd position. The government can’t be allowed to avoid the law just by shuffling people around.
    I assume the this is just another stalling tactic by the DOJ. The Trump administration is determined not to bring Abrego Garcia back to the US. This seems to be driven by a refusal to admit any error, no matter how small.

  383. StevoR says

    ^ Dóh! Apologies. Just realised that second link is NOT to that speech where Riyad Mansour breaks down butanother one from months ago — back in Feb / March~ish. Mea culpa.

  384. StevoR says

    “Ëxcuse me Mr President, I have grandchildren. I know what they mean to their families & to see this situation over the Palestinians without us having hearts to do something, is beyond the ability of any normal human being to tolerate.”
    – Riyad Mansour, Palstinian UN Envoy.

    A better YT Short here

  386. JM says

    The Guardian: US federal court blocks Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs

    A federal trade court on Wednesday blocked Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law.
    The ruling from a three-judge panel at the New York-based court of international trade came after several lawsuits arguing Trump has exceeded his authority, left US trade policy dependent on his whims and unleashed economic chaos.
    “The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs,” the court wrote, referring to the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

    These are the “liberation day” tariffs that Trump is trying to impose. The court basically ruled that the current situation is not an extraordinary emergency. That the US is running a trade deficit does not qualify as an exceptional situation.

    “It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement to Reuters.

    That is true but the president doesn’t have unlimited power to decide either or decide what qualifies as an emergency. This is becoming a standard refrain of the Trump administration because the courts are the only thing limiting their power. The Republican congress is just cowering.

  387. John Morales says

    JM, hm.

    “That is true but the president doesn’t have unlimited power to decide either or decide what qualifies as an emergency.”

    To paraphrase Gump’s attributed adage from his mom: “Power is as power does”.

    Three branches; every source tells me there’s a “conservative” majority in the judicial branch (because in the USA, judges are appointed by politicians), and every story tells me (remember the impeachements?) that Congress lets Trump get away with whatever.

    Ah well. It is not so obvious to some.

  388. John Morales says

    Another adage: “It is better to ask forgiveness than permission” (Grace Hopper).

    (Trump’s chutzpah has hitherto been rewarded)

    Remember, if only one in 100 court appeals works, it’s more than none.

    And all take time, all are paid for from the public purse.

    (Nice system you mob have, eh?)

  389. John Morales says

    In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/may/29/donald-trump-tariffs-court-elon-musk-us-politics-live-news-updates

    Trump administration appeals US trade court tariff ruling as aide labels it a ‘judicial coup’

    Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics and the second Trump administration.

    The main news this morning is that a Manhattan-based court has blocked the president’s sweeping tariffs on global imports from coming into effect – a huge blow to an integral pillar of his plan for economic growth.

    The Trump White House filed an appeal against the judgment minutes after it was handed down.

    […]

    “President Trump pledged to put America first, and the administration is committed to using every lever of executive power to address this crisis and restore American greatness,” Trump’s spokesperson Kush Desai said.

    Trump’s powerful deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, reacted to the federal court ruling by posting on X that “the judicial coup is out of control”.

    Has there ever been a more appealing administration? ;)

  390. Reginald Selkirk says

    9,000 Asus routers compromised by botnet attack and persistent SSH backdoor that even firmware updates can’t fix

    Thousands of Asus routers have been compromised due to a newly discovered botnet called ‘AyySSHush.’ The stealth attack was detected in March 2025 by cybersecurity firm GreyNoise, which reportedly exploits authentication and makes use of the router features to maintain long-term access. Notably, the backdoor does not make use of any malware, and the unauthorized access cannot be removed using firmware updates.

    The attack begins with threat actors targeting the routers through brute-force login attempts and exploiting authentication bypass techniques, some of which remain undocumented without assigned CVEs. Once inside, they target and exploit CVE-2023-39780, a known command injection vulnerability, to execute arbitrary system-level commands. This technique allows the attackers to manipulate the router’s configuration using legitimate functions within the firmware.

    The attackers use official Asus router features to gain persistent access. They also gain the ability to enable SSH on a non-standard port (TCP 53282) and install their own public SSH key, enabling remote administrative control. Since the backdoor is written to the router’s non-volatile memory (NVRAM), it can survive both firmware updates and device reboots. Additionally, by disabling system logging and the router’s AiProtection security features, the attackers ensure that they cannot be detected…

  391. Reginald Selkirk says

    Snopes: Clarifying claims surrounding Harvard’s free Constitution course

    What’s True

    Harvard University offers a free online course called “American Government: Constitutional Foundations” via its edX program. The course is free not just to U.S. citizens but to anyone in the world. A new session was due to start on May 27, 2025, though the course has been around since at least 2018, according to the course instructor.

    What’s False

    While the course covers the basics of how the U.S. government and the Constitution work, there is no evidence of a section within in covering “How to Recognize a Dictatorship Takeover 101.”
    …

  392. Reginald Selkirk says

    Glacier collapse buries most of Swiss village

    The Swiss village of Blatten has been partially destroyed after a huge chunk of glacier crashed down into the valley.

    Although the village had been evacuated some days ago because of fears the Birch glacier was disintegrating, one person has been reported missing, and many homes have been completely flattened…

  393. KG says

    every source tells me there’s a “conservative” majority in the judicial branch (because in the USA, judges are appointed by politicians) – John Morales@387

    Many are chosen by popular vote. Also, cases are not decided by a majority vote of the entire judiciary. And even though the Supreme Court has a 6:3 right-wing majority, it has not always found in favour of Trump.

  394. StevoR says

    @380. More on this little newfound ice dwarf type planet. It is apparently the brighest – although still extremely faint – object in our solar system that lacks a determined size. Currently located 90 Astronomical Units away – that’s 90 x the distance from Earth to Sun – it’s orbit ranges from as close as 45 AU and as distant as a whopping one thousand six hundred and thirty AU!
    Probably about the size of Ixion (710 km) and with an orbit comparable to Sedna.

    See :

    https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/a-new-world-emerges-at-the-edge-of-the-solar-system

    Plus :

    https://technews.tw/2025/05/23/2017-of201-trans-neptunian-object-dwarf-planet/

    As well as its wikipage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_OF201

  395. StevoR says

    @ ^ Also from the first lnk there. (Origionall in Chines ebut desktop translated for me)

    In a time when billion-dollar telescopes are the darlings of discovery, it’s almost poetic that 2017 OF201 was found using data that had been sitting in open archives for years. The object was identified in 19 separate images, spread across seven years, from two observatories: the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) in Hawaii.

    But recognizing the object among countless stars and noise required something beyond human eyes: computational ingenuity. Cheng developed a specialized, efficient algorithm to sift through astronomical images and track tiny moving spots that could represent TNOs. The algorithm examined all possible groupings of bright spots and searched for consistent movement patterns. In short: it hunted for ghosts in the digital deep.

    Source : https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/a-new-world-emerges-at-the-edge-of-the-solar-system

    Plus caveat :

    But 2017 OF201 is an outlier. It ignores the apparent clustering. Its orbital orientation diverges sharply, throwing a curveball into the Planet Nine narrative.

    “This doesn’t disprove Planet Nine,” says Li. “But it does complicate the picture. If more such outliers are found, we may need to rethink the evidence we’ve been relying on.”

    Ibid.

    Also :

    Cheng suggests a more dramatic arc: “It’s possible this object was ejected all the way to the Oort Cloud, the vast halo of icy debris that surrounds the solar system. Then something—perhaps a passing star or a galactic tide—nudged it back inward.”

    If true, that trajectory would mean this object has twice crossed the invisible boundary between the known and the speculative. First pushed to the edges of the solar system, then called back—like a celestial boomerang carrying secrets from the abyss.

    – ibid

  396. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all Chris Hayes

    Trump’s FEMA denies North Carolina’s request for Hurricane Helene aid
    Video is 2:42 minutes

    4-year-old could ‘die within days’ if deported under Trump order, doctors say
    Video is 6:00 minutes

    Trump pardons criminals with MAGA ties or deep pockets
    Video is 11:03 minutes

  397. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    I thought I’d seen this here: familiar phrases; déjà vu.

    TheGuardian – Trump has no plan for who will grow US food

    As the fate of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm workers remains in limbo amid Donald Trump’s mass deportation threats, and the administration’s H-2A policies are undecided, the future of these guest workers remains unclear. Their numbers grow each year—and they are increasingly central to an industry historically dominated by undocumented workers. The industry isn’t creating new jobs either.

    Farmers […] say they cannot attract other workers to their rural fields. The debate over guest workers is dividing Republican support. Jonathan Berry, who was nominated to be the solicitor at the Department of Labor, wrote the labor chapter for Project 2025, the rightwing proposal to overhaul the government from the Heritage Foundation thinktank. That section advocates for replacing H-2A workers with local workers and automation. While technology could replace some specific farm tasks, many crops still depend primarily on human labor, and small farmers say they can’t afford to invest in equipment that could take more than a decade to pay off. Other co-authors of the chapter, such as economist Oren Cass, do not think the jobs should be eliminated, but that farmers should improve working conditions to attract citizens to them instead.

    On the other hand, Trump’s power depends on a coalition that includes agricultural communities, who voted for him at almost 80% in 2024 […] Agribusiness also donated more than $24m to his re-election. Farm groups insist US citizens are unwilling to do the arduous labor and that eliminating H-2A workers could collapse the food system. They generally advocate for loosening regulations for H-2A workers, like reducing wage and housing requirements. Trump heeded their calls before. In 2019, his Department of Labor unsuccessfully proposed removing some regulations on the H-2A.
    […]
    The H-2A visa was created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, a huge measure that simultaneously cracked down on employers hiring immigrants without work authorization and provided “amnesty” to close to 3 million immigrants without legal status. The law says that farmers must demonstrate an attempt to hire locally first and pay H-2A workers above the minimum wage. Unlike local workers, H-2A workers must also be provided transportation to and from their homes, housing for the season and daily transportation.

    Labor leaders argue farmers prefer H-2A workers, despite their costs, because they are easily exploitable. Since the visa is connected to their employment, workers cannot find a job elsewhere, making their ability to be in the country completely dependent on an employer who can revoke it at any moment, and sometimes holds on to their passports, against DOL requirements. This reluctance to leave an abusive worksite can be compounded by the fact that many H-2A workers arrive with debt they have accrued from paying recruiters to get here. Employers are required to pay all recruitment costs, but recruiters’ practices go largely unregulated since they operate internationally.
    […]
    If mass deportations go forward as promised, growers and ranchers will be even more desperate for these workers. Undocumented workers compose about 40% of the agricultural workforce […] longtime farm workers say that the system is designed to replace them with this more vulnerable group, limiting their work opportunities and decreasing their union’s power by giving farmers an alternative labor pool. […] “It’s very clear to us that the deportation of undocumented workers is to clear the field for bringing in H-2A workers instead of having these farm worker families that are part of our community now for over 20 years and providing them [legal] status to continue being productive community members,” said Rosalinda Guillen, a farm union leader
    […]
    With housing and transportation factored in, Field says they spend more than $30 an hour on H-2A workers. It would be easier if they could just employ them as US citizens
    […]
    Flavio Vázquez has worked […] five years, earning more than double in an hour packing apples than what he could in a day in his home in the Mexican state of Morelos. […] more than half of Morelos’s population lives in poverty despite unemployment being below 2%. The fact that the visa allows him to escape poverty doesn’t mean that it is ideal for him, though.

    Vázquez must spend eight months a year living between a warehouse and a dorm 2,500 miles away from his loved ones […] While he enjoys his job in New York’s Hudson valley, he wishes he could bring his family and build a permanent life.

  398. says

    The White House’s failed Elon Musk experiment ends with a whimper, not a bang

    “Was Musk’s tenure in the Trump administration consequential? Yes. What is a success story? No.”

    Nearly nine months ago, then-candidate Donald Trump delivered a new campaign pledge: If elected to a second term, the Republican said, he’d appoint conspiratorial billionaire Elon Musk to lead some kind of government “efficiency” panel.

    To hear the then-candidate tell it, the endeavor would work miracles: The Musk-led commission, Trump boasted, would save taxpayers “trillions of dollars,” and implement “an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months.”

    For a variety of reasons, none of this made any sense. Indeed, Musk lacked any meaningful experience in auditing, federal budgeting, or even the basics of how the federal government worked. Trump nevertheless won a second term; his top campaign donor was rewarded with a White House office; and the Department of Government Efficiency got to work.

    In December, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman spoke to a senior Republican aide who predicted that the entire endeavor would likely end in “disaster.” As Musk officially exits, the prediction appears relevant anew. NBC News reported:

    Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO whom President Donald Trump enlisted to cut waste in the federal government, started offboarding from his role Wednesday, a White House official told NBC News, a day after he criticized a Republican bill to fund much of Trump’s agenda. Two sources later confirmed to NBC News that Musk’s more than 114-day long tenure as a special government employee officially concluded Wednesday evening.

    His departure came immediately on the heels of Musk expressing public disappointment with the Republican Party’s inaptly named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” […]

    It’s easy to make the case that Musk’s tenure was, among other things, enormously consequential. [He left] behind a legacy of shattered institutions, weakened public services, and fired civil servants who did nothing but serve their country well. The damage Musk did from his powerful position made people’s lives worse — both in the United States and abroad.

    But as important as those truths are, it’s equally easy to conclude that Musk represents a failed experiment in governing.

    […] Trump tasked Musk with leading an effort to cut spending and make the federal government more efficient.

    As Musk slinks away, the facts prove that government spending went up, not down, during his tenure, and his DOGE endeavor made the government less efficient, not more.

    Even the “savings” he claimed to have found proved illusory, misleading, or both.

    […] All the while, Musk managed to inflict incredible harm to his public reputation and his private businesses […]

    As for the future, the billionaire’s political influence will linger — I doubt very much that we’ve heard the last of Musk as a partisan operator — and there are lingering questions about the ton of personal data he was able to scoop up about the American public while he was a part of the administration. […]

  399. says

    The Trump administration’s ‘MAHA Report’ cites nonexistent scientific studies

    After Donald Trump and his White House team unveiled “The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again” last week, The New York Times noted, “The document echoes talking points Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed for decades.”

    That was among the obvious red flags surrounding the report. Kennedy is, after all, notorious for pushing unscientific conspiracy theories and claiming, among other things, that Wi-Fi causes “leaky brain.” […]

    The Washington Post reported, “Some of the report’s suggestions … stretched the limits of science, medical experts said. Several sections of the report offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.”

    That was last week. This week, NOTUS advanced these concerns, reporting that the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report “misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.”

    Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report harnesses “gold-standard” science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up its claims. Those citations, though, are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions. Seven of the cited sources don’t appear to exist at all. … NOTUS also found serious issues with how the report interpreted some of the existing studies it cites.

    […] “The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes [epidemiologist Katherine Keyes] told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”

    NOTUS’ report, […] added, “As the Trump administration cuts research funding for federal health agencies and academic institutions and rejects the scientific consensus on issues like vaccines and gender-affirming care, the issues with its much-heralded MAHA report could indicate lessening concern for scientific accuracy at the highest levels of the federal government.”

    Yes. Yes, it could.

    I would gladly make note of the defense of the MAHA document from Kennedy and the Department of Health and Human Services, but at least so far, neither the controversial secretary nor the Cabinet agency he ostensibly leads has commented on these new allegations. […]

    Of course, given Kennedy’s recent track record, there’s no reason to assume he’d be able to answer questions about the document anyway.

    […] in a normal and healthy political system, if officials released a much-hyped report on public health policy, and scrutiny found that the document relied on scientific sources that didn’t exist, those officials would be expected to resign — quickly.

  400. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Ah, I’d seen #397 in another Pharyngula thread.

  401. says

    On Russia and Putin, Trump returns to his laughable ‘two weeks’ timetable

    Related video at the link.

    When it comes to Donald Trump’s efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, the president has failed — repeatedly. Trump’s Plan A for the war in Ukraine was ending the conflict within 24 hours by way of a secret strategy he assured voters was real. When it became obvious that this strategy didn’t actually exist, Trump moved on to Plan B: He told Russia that if it failed to end the conflict quickly, the White House “would have no other choice” but to impose new economic sanctions.

    When Vladimir Putin ignored the threats, and Trump failed to follow through, the American president floated Plan C (international economic penalties designed to force a ceasefire), Plan D (Trump-backed bilateral talks between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy), Plan E (bilateral talks between Trump and Putin) and Plan F (White House passivity).

    As the Russian military’s assault intensifies, is Trump finally prepared to try a more effective approach? He’ll apparently let the world know — in a couple of weeks. NBC News reported:

    Trump suggested in comments in the Oval Office [on Wednesday afternoon] that he’ll decide in the next two weeks on how he will deal with Russia’s handling of peace talks with Ukraine. Asked whether he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to end the war in Ukraine, Trump told reporters: ‘I can’t tell you that, but I’ll let you know in about two weeks. Within two weeks, we’re going to find out very soon.”

    [LOL … and JFC]

    It’s hard not to wonder whether Trump realizes just how frequently he’s relied on the unintentionally amusing “two weeks” pitch.

    By now, most observers are probably familiar with how the game is played: Trump is asked for his position on an issue; he dodges the question by saying he’ll make an announcement “in two weeks”; and then he waits for everyone to forget about his self-imposed deadline.

    Where’s Trump’s health care plan? It’ll be ready in “two weeks.” What about a possible minimum-wage increase? That, too, will be unveiled in “two weeks.” On everything from tax policy to infrastructure, immigration to reproductive health, the president’s detailed solutions are always just “two weeks” away.

    […] As for developments in Moscow, Reuters, relying on multiple Russian sources, reported that Putin’s conditions for ending the war in Ukraine “include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards.”

    Of course, given that it’s Putin’s fault that NATO has added new members in the first place, his apparent condition appears to be a reminder of his own failed strategy.

  402. says

    NBC News:

    Hamas’ Gaza chief Mohammed Sinwar, the younger brother of the group’s deceased leader Yahya Sinwar, has been killed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told lawmakers Wednesday.

    Hamas will replace the leader. Israel will bomb more refugee camps, hospitals and schools in Gaza.

  403. says

    NBC News:

    A federal judge on Wednesday granted bail to Harvard scientist Kseniia Petrova, who has spent more than three months in custody after failing to declare frog embryos upon arriving in the United States. U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss in Vermont said Petrova’s continued detention by immigration authorities was unjustified and raised serious legal concerns about the government’s actions.

    Three months in detention!!??

  404. says

    Washington Post:

    Planned Parenthood officials say they have halted abortions in Missouri after the state Supreme Court ruled that a judge must reevaluate orders that had allowed the procedure to resume earlier this year.

    In the fall, a majority of Missouri voters approved a state constitutional amendment that guarantees the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom.”

  405. says

    Politico:

    The Labor Department on Wednesday yanked Biden-era guidance that strongly discouraged employers against offering cryptocurrency in workers’ 401(k) plan options.

  406. rorschach says

    Sarah Kendzior dishing out some truths. Again:

    “For four years, propagandists barked that the Biden camp was fixing problems “behind the scenes.” In reality, the Biden camp was countenancing sedition, abetting genocide, and assaulting the rights to free speech and assembly. Whether Biden was lucid during this time matters less than all the people who suffered and died.

    We should discuss state abuse: under Trump, under Biden, and under Trump again. It’s one intertwining tale: not a story of interchangeable parties, but of abusers and enablers working across the aisle, backed by the same monied crowd.

    If the American government is three killers in a trench coat, Biden is in the middle, between Trump and Ultra-Trump. The trench coat is made of bodies and Bitcoin, with pockets so deep they extend to the ends of the world.”

    https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/the-lost-vortex

  407. Reginald Selkirk says

    Two of the World’s Worst Termites Hooked Up in Florida—and Now We’re Screwed

    A termite horror story a decade in the making is unfolding in South Florida. Two of the most destructive invasive termites on the planet are not only coexisting—they’re mating. And now, scientists have confirmed that the populations are hybridized.

    In a new study published this month in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers from the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) report that the Formosan subterranean termite and the Asian subterranean termite are crossbreeding and producing viable offspring in South Florida neighborhoods. The result is a new hybrid termite population that could cause even more environmental and structural damage than its already-devastating parents…

  408. KG says

    “If you’re in Nazi Germany and there are Jewish people in your attic, and you’re trying to protect them, would you lie to the Nazis?” Parker asked.

    “I would have done everything I bloody well could so I wouldn’t be in that situation to begin with” Peterson responded – Lynna, OM@319 quoting wonkette

    Of course the most obvious way to avoid getting into that situation in Nazi Germany would have been not to try to protect Jews. So I think we can be fairly certain that Jordan Peterson, if he had been in Nazi Germany, would not have tried to protect any Jews.

  409. Reginald Selkirk says

    Stop Shoving Coins Into the Giant’s Causeway

    Almost 60 million years ago, a series of natural events—including volcanic eruptions, erosion, glacial movement, and sea level rise—created Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway: a coastal area made of over 40,000 hexagonal basalt stone pillars. Today it is a world-renowned tourist destination, and the hundreds of thousands of yearly visitors are leaving their mark—but not in a good way.

    In a recent statement, the conservation charity National Trust is appealing to visitors to stop wedging coins between the Giant’s Causeway’s basalt rock columns. The coins are corroding and physically damaging the World Heritage Site, and as such, accelerating natural erosion processes, according to a report by the British Geological Survey…

    “We know some may want to leave a token of their visit, but the coins are causing damage and we are urging people to stop the practice and to leave no trace so this natural wonder remains special for future generations,” Cliff Henry, National Trust Nature Engagement Officer at the Giant’s Causeway, said in the statement. “The coins are rusting, and expanding to three times their original thickness, which puts huge pressure on the surrounding rock causing it to crumble. Unsightly streaks of copper, nickel and iron oxides are also staining the stones where the coins are corroding.” …

  410. KG says

    JM@302,

    In saying Putin had displayed “crude gangsterism” ever since he came to power, I was thinking of the ballot-stuffing and other cheats in the 2000 presidential election that allowed him to avoid a run-off, the genocidal Second Chechen War, the 2004 poisoning of Victor Yushchenko in 2004 and Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, and the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, which were almost certainly a false flag operation organised by Putin (who was already prime minister).

  411. Reginald Selkirk says

    MLB steps into women’s sports with launch of pro softball league

    Major League Baseball is investing in a new women’s professional softball league, Commissioner Robert Manfred announced Thursday on “CBS Mornings.”

    The partnership with the Athletes Unlimited Softball League marks MLB’s first major investment in women’s professional sports…

    When asked why MLB chose softball over women’s baseball, Manfred cited infrastructure advantages.

    “There’s such a great softball infrastructure that exists. A pipeline of athletes,” he said. “We thought that we could get to the point of having a sustainable league much quicker with softball.” …

  412. says

    Trump demands bigger bribe from CBS as network’s news staff jumps ship

    […] Trump is reportedly demanding that Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, pay him even more in ongoing settlement negotiations over a lawsuit that legal experts have labeled frivolous.

    Paramount is attempting to arrange the payment to Trump while his administration has the power to approve a multibillion-dollar merger between Paramount and Skydance Media, which gives the entire arrangement the appearance of an overt bribe.

    The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Paramount offered to settle the suit for $15 million, but that Trump is demanding $25 million and an apology from CBS News. Trump has claimed that the network edited a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and that the act interfered in the election.

    Trump declined to sit down for an interview with CBS on the same program and stormed off the set during his “60 Minutes” interview in 2020 after he was asked a tough series of questions.

    Experts on media law have said the suit against CBS is without merit. Despite this, Paramount has pursued a settlement with Trump in the apparent belief that a payoff will clear a path to approval of their proposed merger.

    The decision to bend to Trump, which previous reports say has the approval of lead Paramount shareholder Shari Redstone—despite pushback from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders—has created chaos in CBS’ news division.

    Bill Owens, the former executive producer of “60 Minutes,” quit in April and said in a memo to staff that it had “become clear I would not be allowed to run the show” and was not allowed to make “independent decisions” on news content for the program.

    Then in May, Wendy McMahon left her role as the CEO/president of CBS News. […]

    The CBS/Paramount concessions to Trump are part of an ongoing theme of capitulation at the highest levels of the mainstream media since his 2024 election victory.

    In December, ABC News parent Disney decided to donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library and apologize for comments by host George Stephanopoulos. Previously, Trump had filed a lawsuit against the network that legal experts found dubious—similar to the CBS suit.

    Meanwhile, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos attended Trump’s inauguration, donated to his inaugural committee, and announced a new MAGA-friendly editorial line for the Washington Post, which he owns. Multiple staffers have since departed in protest of the moves, and Trump has praised Bezos and the Post for their support.

    Some media organizations are pushing back. NPR filed a lawsuit against Trump on Tuesday and accused him of trying to take away their First Amendment rights by pushing to defund them, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

    But that has been the exception to the norm. Mainstream press continues to knuckle under to Trump while he elevates the stature of conspiracy-minded pro-Trump media, seeking to replace honest journalism with sycophantic propaganda. It is working.

    Bernie Sanders was right.

  413. Reginald Selkirk says

    @386, 389

    Trump tariffs reinstated by appeals court for now

    A federal appeals court on Thursday granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily pause a lower-court ruling that struck down most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

    The Trump administration had earlier told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that it would seek “emergency relief” from the Supreme Court as soon as Friday if the tariff ruling was not quickly put on pause.

    The judgment issued Wednesday night by the U.S. Court of International Trade is “temporarily stayed until further notice while this court considers the motions papers,” the appeals court said in its order.

  414. says

    […] “The Court of International Trade just saved TACO Don’s political hide by sparing voters price hikes from Trump’s chaotic tariff fits,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wrote in a post on X, referring to Trump’s new nickname that stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out” because he kept lowering tariffs or backing off tariff threats.

    But given that Trump and the White House are not giving up on tariffs, experts say the economy—which experts said was teetering on the brink thanks to the insane import fees—is not out of the woods yet.

    “The ruling may provide temporary relief to consumers and businesses but injects long-term uncertainty into trade policy and negotiations,” Goldman Sachs wrote in a summary of the court ruling’s impacts on the economy.

    Link

  415. Reginald Selkirk says

    The Sacred Undergarment That Has Mormon Women Buzzing

    Some Mormon women are obsessed with something illicit. They’re phoning friends, calling in favors and paying for international shipping to get it: a sacred tank top.

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has redesigned its temple garments, which are worn by faithful members under their clothes. The garments are effectively underwear that until recently, looked like white short-sleeve shirts and knee-length shorts. Now, the church has removed the sleeve on some designs, turning them into tank tops.

    The church is releasing the tops to its more than 17 million members around the world in phases. Last October, it quietly announced that the new garments would first be available to members in “hot, humid” climates like those in Africa and Asia.

    They aren’t sanctioned for wear in the United States yet, but that hasn’t stopped American influencers from sourcing them — and showing them off in recent videos online…

  416. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump nicknames are flying. CNN panelist has a new one: ‘Whiny titty baby’

    Donald Trump — who sees himself as the master of branding and nicknames — has been branded deftly himself over the past few weeks.

    MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell called him “Donny Two Dolls” after Trump told American families that they likely will have to suck it up at Christmas and limit their children to two dolls and five pencils.

    Wall Street investors, bragging that they’ve made money during the Trump Tariff Turmoil revealed how they’ve brilliantly played the market — by relying on their rule of thumb: TACO…

    And now, CNN panelist Jennifer Welch has a new label for Trump: In a segment during Wednesday night’s broadcast of CNN NewsNight…

    “How do you guys constantly defend the biggest whining titty baby. He whines and cries non-stop. He’s the president of the United States … and you’re defending that?” …

    Wiktionary: whiny-ass titty baby:
    (slang, derogatory, vulgar) Someone who is childish and prone to taking offense.

  418. says

    Link

    A federal appeals court this afternoon temporarily paused rulings by a panel of judges that halted several of Trump’s tariffs on international trading partners.

    The “request for an immediate administrative stay is granted to the extent that the judgments and the permanent injunctions entered by the Court of International Trade in these cases are temporarily stayed until further notice while this court considers” whether the rulings should be paused for a longer period, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a brief ruling.

    The decision pauses the lower court’s decision until at least June 9, when both sides will have submitted legal arguments about whether the case should be paused while the appeals courts weighs the issues in the case.

    In their judgment yesterday, the U.S. Court of International Trade judges found that the decades-old International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a federal law that Trump cited in many of his executive orders, did not “delegate an unbounded tariff authority to the President.”

  419. says

    Trump points to $5.1 trillion in investments from the Middle East that aren’t exactly real

    “What’s worse than the president pointing to a made-up investment figure? His willingness to make plans to spend some of the money that doesn’t exist.”

    At an Oval Office event on Wednesday, a reporter asked Donald Trump why he never followed through on his threats to impose economic sanctions on Russia. The president never quite got around to answering the question, but he did seem eager to emphasize a completely unrelated point. [video at the link]

    “I went to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and [the United Arab Emirates], and we brought back $5.1 trillion,” Trump claimed. “So, I made that money in about two hours, the money that we’re talking about.” After briefly suggesting — without a shred of evidence — that Ukraine has misused U.S. security aid, the Republican went on say, “I’m more interested because I picked up $5.1 trillion and, by the way, got a beautiful big, magnificent free airplane for the United States Air Force, OK? Very proud of that, too.”

    For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that the plane from Qatar wasn’t free, and it’s proving to be far more controversial than the White House cares to admit. Let’s instead consider that statistic the president is apparently quite excited about.

    If the “$5.1 trillion” figure sounds at all familiar, that’s because Trump can’t seem to stop talking about it. He referenced it a week ago when unveiling the “Make America Healthy Again” report, which came two days after he pushed the same line during a visit to Capitol Hill, which came one day after he repeated the talking point at the White House.

    For reasons unknown, the president went on to say last week that the figure might even be “$7 trillion” at some undetermined point in the future.

    To be sure, the boast certainly sounds impressive. Americans are apparently supposed to believe that Trump went to the Middle East, met with some officials for “about two hours” and left with investments so enormous, they represent roughly a sixth of the United States’ GDP.

    But that’s not what happened.

    For one thing, as The Washington Post reported, Trump has started referring to Biden-era foreign investments as his own, pretending that they’re new and that he deserves credit for them. The Post’s report added:

    The math behind the White House’s claim that Trump secured ‘trillions’ on this trip is fuzzy even including the contracts that predate his presidency. The sum of the deals is under $1 trillion, but the White House is also counting announcements it made months before the trip, including a vague plan that the UAE said would result in $1.4 trillion in investment in the United States over the next decade. The UAE and White House previously announced that deal in March. The White House did not explain why its announcements included deals that predate Trump’s presidency.

    Around the same time, The New York Times took a closer look at the data and reported, “The list of some of the agreements published by the White House left many details vague. The value of the agreements appeared to total about $283 billion.”

    […] But they might not happen, and $283 billion is a small fraction of $5.1 trillion.

    What’s more, as MSNBC’s Paul Waldman wrote in a piece for Public Notice, […] the presidential claims amounted to little more than “smoke and mirrors.”

    The problem, however, is not just that Trump keeps talking up an investment figure that isn’t real. The problem is made worse by the way that the president appears to be making plans to spend some of the money that doesn’t exist.

    At an Oval Office event last week, Trump was asked whether his wildly unrealistic “Golden Dome” idea might be prohibitively expensive. He responded, “We can afford to do it. You know, we took in $5.1 trillion in the last four days in the Middle East, and when you think about it, this is a tiny fraction of that.”

    But therein lies the point: Trump didn’t take in $5.1 trillion, so making plans to devote those imaginary resources to a missile shield project that won’t work is an enormous problem.

  424. KG says

    Putin’s conditions for ending the war in Ukraine “include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards.” – Lynna, OM@401, quoting MSNBC

    Remarkable that Putin doesn’t seem to have realised that NATO is a dead alliance walking. Does anyone believe that Trump would honour Article 5 if Putin invaded the Baltic states or Poland?

  425. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    ProPublica – Newtok, Alaska, was supposed to be a model for climate relocation. Here’s how it went wrong.

    Late last year, the final residents of this sinking village near the Bering Sea left behind the waterlogged tundra of their former home, part of a fraught, federally funded effort to resettle communities threatened by climate change. [The original location was imposed on the seasonal nomads in the 1950s when the Bureau of Indian Affairs built a mandatory school where a construction barge happened to get stuck.]

    Nearly 300 people from Newtok have moved 9 miles across the Ninglick River to a new village known as Mertarvik. But much of the infrastructure there is already failing. Residents lack running water, use 5-gallon buckets as toilets and must contend with intermittent electricity and deteriorating homes that expose them to the region’s fierce weather.
    […]
    Dozens of grants from at least seven federal agencies have helped pay for the relocation […] But while the federal government supplied taxpayer dollars, it left most of the responsibility to the tiny Newtok Village Council. The federally recognized tribal government lacked the expertise to manage the project and has faced high turnover and internal political conflict
    […]
    Federal auditors have warned for years that climate relocation projects need a lead agency to coordinate assistance and reduce the burden on local communities. […] But the Trump administration has removed the [Biden task force] report from FEMA’s website and, as part of its withdrawal of climate funding, frozen millions in federal aid that was supposed to pay for housing construction in Mertarvik
    […]
    The foundations are not salvageable, and the buildings do not meet minimum code requirements, said the inspector […] “This is some of the worst new construction I’ve ever seen[“] […] The BIA committed more than $6 million for roads but failed to coordinate with other agencies to install water pipes underneath
    […]
    Greg Stuckey, administrator for HUD’s Office […] in Anchorage, said the agency is not required to inspect […] because the grant went directly to the tribal government. Federal law allows tribes to administer government programs themselves to recognize their independence and cultural needs. “So they can’t say it’s the federal government […] because they chose this.”

    [The tribe’s attorney] said the Newtok Village Council didn’t dispute that. The Government Accountability Office, however, has repeatedly recommended that federal agencies provide more technical assistance to small tribes […] “When you have 20 or 30 different programs that can all interact together and they all have different rules,” said […] the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment, “that […] can be nearly impossible for some villages.”
    […]
    Dozens of remote communities in Alaska face similar threats from climate change

  426. Reginald Selkirk says

    @401, 424

    Putin’s conditions for ending the war in Ukraine “include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards.”

    Ooh, in writing! How serious.

    Wasn’t the Budapest memorandum of 1994, in which Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, put in writing‽

  427. John Morales says

    Um, what Putin claims and what he thinks are not necessarily the same thing, KG.
    Might as well take Trump at his word, too.

    Nah.
    It’s just a rationale he’s using, a negotiating tactic; might as well find it remarkable that Putin thinks Kiev is run by Nazis, or that Ukraine started the war.

    As for your question, it depends.
    Big incursion into major cities? Poke in a small isolated border village? Nibbling vs devouring?

    Also, I think you are quite wrong about NATO’s alleged demise, because you give Trump too much credit — for example, the USA military-industrial complex makes a shitload of money out of NATO, and there are rumblings right now due to the big EU buildup and focus on its own industry. There are multiple dependencies and interlocking parts; take the F-35 for example, which is still kinda pricey, and was made possible at its current cost per unit only because it was amortised with its allies (https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2015/1/1/2015january-f35-industrial-base-relies-on-international-participation).

  428. John Morales says

    In the news: https://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/1071923/european-defence-stocks-climb-after-russia-s-largest-attack-on-ukraine-1071923.html

    Defence and aerospace stocks, including BAE Systems PLC (LSE:BA.), QinetiQ Group PLC (LSE:QQ.) and Melrose Industries PLC (LSE:MRO) rose in London on Tuesday after the ramping up of attacks on Ukraine by Russia, analysts at JPMorgan said.

    The US investment bank felt its share price expectations for most companies were probably too low.

    Upward moves in European defence sector share prices on Monday and Tuesday were, the analysts suggested, “due to two major pieces of news over the weekend: expectations for the upcoming NATO summit [and] Russia’s latest attacks on Ukraine”.

    Many of the European defence companies covered have share prices that are above JPMorgan’s share price targets, the analysts noted, so “we may need to revisit our forecasts in light of fast moving events”.

    But regardless of current price targets, “we would not be surprised to see the [European defence sector] continue to outperform the market in the coming month at least”.

    […]

    A major geopolitical shift began to rumble earlier this year, with Europe sparked into a potentially massive rearmament cycle by comments from Trump’s administration that Washington would no longer take responsibility for the continent’s security.

    This led to Germany’s new government, under conservative Friedrich Merz, agreeing major new defence spending plans as it prepared for security “independence” from the US; the EU Commission laid out plans for €800 billion of extra defence spending; and UK prime minister Keir Starmer to pledge that defence spending would be ramped up over the next two years from the 2.3% to 2.5% pof GDP.

    —

    More here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/defence-numbers/

    (This one is a bit dated, doesn’t include the giant increases in the last year)

  429. birgerjohansson says

    Foreign students pay a lot to study at Harvard.
    Trump had a 1 AM meltdown on Sunday claiming the foreign students ar Harvard (31% of the students) get FREE tuition.
    I think this Trump dude is not very careful about his facts.

  431. Reginald Selkirk says

    ‘Stealthy’ lipid nanoparticles give mRNA vaccines a makeover

    A new material developed at Cornell University could significantly improve the delivery and effectiveness of mRNA vaccines by replacing a commonly used ingredient that may trigger unwanted immune responses in some people…

    Shaoyi Jioang, professor of biomedical engineering, is working to replace the PEG component of lipid nanoparticles with a more adaptable and stealthy option. The research is published in the journal Nature Materials…

    Most people’s immune systems are already primed to fight PEG. Prior research shows that a majority of people have anti-PEG antibodies “from people being exposed to PEG in so many commercial products like shampoo and toothpaste,” said Jiang, adding that this widespread exposure may explain why the body is so quick to flag PEG as a threat.

    To solve this, Jiang has developed lipid nanoparticles that use a zwitterionic polymer, a crucial alternative to PEG, enhancing the performance and biocompatibility of the system.

    Due to the super-hydrophilic, or water-loving, nature of zwitterions, this material is able to blend into the body and deliver the mRNA more easily. This specific naturally derived material, called poly(carboxybetaine) (PCB), has a perfect balance of stealth and stability…

    Sounds promising, but PCB is a bad abbreviation to use.

  432. Reginald Selkirk says

    RFK Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Report Cites Fake Studies

    President Donald Trump held an event at the White House last week to announce the release of something called the MAHA Report, a product of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new commission that’s supposed to “Make America Healthy Again.” But if you weren’t already skeptical of the report’s findings, an article from the nonprofit news outlet NOTUS should give you pause. Several of the studies cited in the report don’t even exist.

    NOTUS reporters spent five days combing through the 522 citations in the report. They found dozens of broken links and studies with missing or incorrect authors. There were also issues with citations having the wrong issue numbers for the journals they appeared in, according to NOTUS.

    But the most damning instances were at least seven studies that simply didn’t exist. For instance, the MAHA Report claims that drug advertising has led to a rise in ADHD and depression prescriptions being written for children. But try to find the study that’s cited in the report for that claim: Findling, R. L., et al. (2009). Direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth: A growing concern. Journal of Child and Adolescent Pyschopharmacology, 19(5), 487-492.

    You can’t find that study because it doesn’t exist. Not in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, or anywhere else. The supposed author of that report, Robert L. Findling, is a real person and currently teaches at the Virginia Commonwealth University. But a spokesperson for that school told NOTUS he didn’t author any such study…

    Incorrect journal issues might sound like an unimportant detail, but it tells you that whoever wrote the report was not using first-hand information. They were getting lists from other people and incorporating it.

  433. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Reginald Selkirk @432: “They were getting lists from other people”

    Wouldn’t be the first time the admin had an LLM do their homework.

  434. birgerjohansson says

    Myself @ 422
    I want make it clear that unlike Noah, Eli and Heath I do NOT advocate giving the Republicans feline AIDS . Maybe feline ‘do zoomies during the night’ syndrome? Trump starts texting on Truth Social, then he pauses to run around the White House and climb up a bookcase.
    .
    Medicalxpress.com:
    “Combination of rapamycin and trametinib extends mouse lifespan by about 30%, study finds”
    .https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-05-combination-rapamycin-trametinib-mouse-lifespan.html
    Only mouse studies yet, but both substances are approved for human use. Gerontology studies are the next stop.

  435. birgerjohansson says

    Reginald Selkirk @ 431
    Yes. A major health hazard has dibs on that abbreviation. Maybe write ‘PC-betaine’? No, RFK Jr will think it is a substance that turns people into liberals.

  436. birgerjohansson says

    Addendum: Some MAGA eejits have form of believing ‘luciferase’ is literally a demonic substance. And it isn’t funny.

  437. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Anna Bower (Lawfare): “Stop writing that [Musk is] leaving DOGE without mentioning that just a few days ago the solicitor general told the United States Supreme Court that he is not part of DOGE.”

    Anna Bower:

    Aaron Rupar: [WH PressSec] Leavitt claims that with Elon Musk departing, “the DOGE leaders are each and every member of the president’s cabinet and the president himself”. [Video clip]

    First NO ONE was the administrator of DOGE, now EVERYONE is the administrator of DOGE. #WITAOD

    Pwnallthethings: “Poor Amy Gleason, can’t catch a break.”

    Dan Izzo (Attorney): “it’s WILD that no federal judge has done the simple thing of ordering the government to produce Gleason to testify under oath.”

  438. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    NBC – Immigration courts are dismissing cases of those sent to El Salvador, potentially cutting off their return

    At first, immigration judges were willing to extend the cases while more information emerged about the removals to El Salvador. But […] more immigration judges, including in California and Texas, have been granting the government’s requests to dismiss the cases in the last two to three weeks. […] at least 14 cases nationwide […] None of the attorneys representing Venezuelan men held [at CECOT] have been able to establish contact with their clients—even in cases in which federal judges have explicitly ordered the Trump administration to facilitate such contact.
    […]
    Attorneys in [makeup artist] Hernandez’s case and others stress that the dismissals do not signify the end of the road for the Venezuelans deported to CECOT. Many plan to appeal them to the Board of Immigration Appeals. The immigration judge who dismissed Hernandez’s asylum claim allowed for the possibility that the case be reopened if Hernandez returns to the U.S.

  439. Reginald Selkirk says

    @437

    First NO ONE was the administrator of DOGE, now EVERYONE is the administrator of DOGE.

    I am Spartacus.

  442. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    WaPo – CDC blindsided as RFK Jr. changes covid-19 vaccine recommendations

    Officials at the [CDC] are scrambling to understand Kennedy’s decision, announced in a 58-second video on X on Tuesday […] Five hours later, CDC officials received a one-page “secretarial directive,” dated May 19 and signed by Kennedy, that contradicts some of what he said in his video
    […]
    In his tweet and video, Kennedy said he had unilaterally decided to override the current recommendation that everyone 6 months and older receive an annual coronavirus vaccination—including healthy pregnant women. […] Kennedy also said federal health officials had removed the previous recommendations from the agency website. But top CDC officials did not know of the decision at the time […] and as of Wednesday that removal still had not happened […] The directive raises questions about who should be getting the vaccine because it refers to both healthy children and all children.

    [Kennedy] also said he was ending coronavirus shots for healthy pregnant women. But last week, top officials from the [FDA] outlined a new coronavirus vaccine policy […] approving shots only for those 65 and older and people with medical conditions that put them at high risk for severe illness. Pregnancy is listed as one of the conditions.
    […]
    HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the directive provides that the vaccine should not be recommended for healthy children under 18 and should not be recommended for pregnant women. He did not address questions about the apparent contradictions
    […]
    Current law requires insurance companies to cover the cost of CDC-recommended vaccines without charging out-of-pocket costs to consumers. “They’ve made it much less insurable, and therefore this could make it much less available for people,”
    […]
    The FDA is responsible for regulating vaccine use, including approving vaccines for safety and efficacy. […] The CDC’s vaccine advisory panel of medical and public health experts […] develops recommendations for the use of vaccines approved by the FDA. To determine the public health benefit, the panel weighs safety and vaccine effectiveness, the seriousness of the vaccine-preventable disease and the number of people who would contract the disease
    […]
    The CDC has no permanent director, raising questions about who is empowered to sign off on vaccine recommendations.

  444. John Morales says

    Birger, you do get that each and every single link to facebook is money in Zuck’s pocket (advertisers pay for your views), and also that no sensible person would try to click there just to work out what the fuck the topic may be, who wrote it, how sensible it is, what its relevance may be, and so forth.

    No context, no credibility, no point.

    (But sure, keep posting obscure links to the libristic visage)

  445. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The Handbasket – State Department set to launch ‘Office of Remigration’

    Rubio’s State Department published a reorganization chart […] including an “Office of Remigration,” […] which will “provide a policy platform for interagency coordination […] on removals/repatriations, and for intra-agency policy work to advance the President’s immigration agenda.”
    […]
    According to […] the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s website, “Remigration is rooted in the thoroughly de-bunked white supremacist ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory […] Remigration is a series of policy proposals, drafted by Austrian Identitarian and former neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, […] purging the continent of non-white people and eliminating all forms of multiculturalism. The goal is to make countries ‘European again.'”

    Phil Plait:

    Couple of fun facts about Marco Rubio:
    1) His parents were immigrants and were not US citizens when he was born.
    2) He’s a hypocritical amoral spineless piece of shit.

    Rando: “Rubio was confirmed 99-0.”

  446. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up on the gay Guatemalan sent to Mexico, whom the DoJ outed when caught lying about him not fearing persecution there.

    Kyle Cheney (Politico): “Trump administration says it is working to charter a flight back to the United States for O.C.G., who a judge ordered returned from Guatemala to receive due process.”

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):

    Sounds about right. This is a reminder that, yes, ICE can in fact bring people back that it has wrongfully deported. It is just choosing not to do that for Mr. Abrego Garcia, in violation of a court order. But in this case, it doesn’t have the figleaf of CECOT to hide behind.

  447. birgerjohansson says

    God Awful Movies 438 e motions 2-0
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=wD2LWvSJQBo

    Another heroic effort by the team sitting through a horrible “documentary” of woo.
    -At the 1 hour 15 minute mark we get a hilarious misunderstanding of how opioid receptors work. Apparently,  molecules of…negative emotions stream through your blood… and attaches to receptors???

  448. KG says

    Um, what Putin claims and what he thinks are not necessarily the same thing, KG. – John Morales@427

    Good point, John.

  449. KG says

    John Morales@427,

    As for your question [would Trump honour NATO’s Article 5 if Putin invaded Poland/Baltics?], it depends.
    Big incursion into major cities? Poke in a small isolated border village? Nibbling vs devouring?

    I think Putin could capture Warsaw, and Trump would express his puzzlement and annoyance at both Putin and Tusk, but nothing more.

    Also, I think you are quite wrong about NATO’s alleged demise, because you give Trump too much credit — for example, the USA military-industrial complex makes a shitload of money out of NATO, and there are rumblings right now due to the big EU buildup and focus on its own industry. There are multiple dependencies and interlocking parts; take the F-35 for example, which is still kinda pricey, and was made possible at its current cost per unit only because it was amortised with its allies

    Three points in response to that:
    1) Trust is easily lost, but far more difficult to regain. European (and Canadian) leaders have seen that the USA’s support cannot be relied on – and indeed, it poses a potential danger as an aggressor. Even if Trump is at some point replaced by a POTUS with a more conventional foreign policy, they know the US electorate was willing to elect a complete fruitcake who talks about annexing Greenland and Canada, and could do so again.
    2) Trump, and many of those behind him, are fascists. I’m not using that term as an insult, but as an ideological descriptor. Mussolini and Hitler both had the support of big business, but the latter (especially in the German case) had less and less freedom of action as the regime consolidated itself: they were treated as wholly subordinate to its political aims (on this I strongly recommend Adam Tooze The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy). Trump’s use of tariffs – which are contrary to the interests of many large corporations – show that he has the same predilection. If he and his backers succeed in turning the USA into an autocracy, the oligarchs, as in Putin’s Russia, will be able to keep their wealth and status if and only if they accept political subordination to the executive and its Glorious Leader.
    3) There are European arms manufacturers and associated interests that are even now investing in building up an independent European industry. They are not going to want to see those investments become “stranded assets”. The Ukraine War has demonstrated that the geopolitical and technological assumptions on which “western” military procurement has been based for the past three decades (weapons being designed primarily to fight states and substate actors with far lower technological capabilities, while relying on nuclear threats to deter Russia and China) are outdated; a new round of restocking and innovation will focus on drones, AI, satellite imaging, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, and vast quantities of artillery ammunition and mines. I predict that (unless the EU falls apart, which admittedly is quite possible given the strength of the fascist fifth column within it) Europe will undertake this independently.

  450. John Morales says

    KG, Perun’s channel has addressed all those issues, quite informatively, I think.
    In particular here, this presentation from last month:

    The Future of U.S. Forces in Europe: NATO, the pivot to Asia, & could Europe replace U.S. troops?

    For decades, the US has been a major part of NATO’s European security architecture…and for decades, US administrations have often wished they could divert more of those resources to other theatres. Some succeeded, but others found themselves pushing resources back to Europe in response to some new (often Russia related) crisis.

    Now the new US administration has made it clear that it wants the focus of US military capabilities to be on deterring the PRC, and for more of the European security role to pass to the European NATO allies.

    The question is, to what assets could the US potentially transfer, and how effectively could Europe replace them in the near term?

    Timestamps:
    00:00:00 — Opening Words
    00:01:39 — What Am I Talking About?
    00:03:51 — the U.S. Presence in Europe
    00:08:41 — the Push for a Pivot
    00:13:47 — What Can You Draw Down?
    00:18:26 — the European Footprint
    00:22:28 — Macro Measures
    00:26:22 — Air Force Assets
    00:37:22 — the Navy
    00:43:44 — Army Assets
    00:52:13 — Europe & U.S. – Policy & Strategy
    01:00:10 — Channel Update

    —

    Regarding “I think Putin could capture Warsaw, and Trump would express his puzzlement and annoyance at both Putin and Tusk, but nothing more.”, sure. But capturing Warsaw is not like, you know, a romp in the park.

    Another video presentation from someone whose opinion I respect, from February:

    Donald Trump and the risk of a NATO-Russia wa

    Trump’s behavior raises questions about the commitment of the U.S. to support its allies in case of war. In this video, I discuss how it weakens NATO’s military deterrence and increases the risk of war in Europe. I also touch on how the future security order in Europe will be determined by the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

    0:00 Intro
    1:00 A new world order
    2:04 Security void
    3:17 Deterrence is psychological
    4:40 Europe out of touch
    6:11 War between Russia and NATO
    8:43 Failure of escalation management
    9:14 Need for urgency
    10:11 Focus on Ukraine

  453. birgerjohansson says

    What has America and glioblastoma in common?
    Both are associated with people named Leif Eriksson.
    L. E. at the University of Gothenburg and his team has -in cooperation with French resesrchers- discovered a molecule called Z4P that can cross the blood-brain barrier and enter glioblastoma cells, where it targets a protein that is necessary for glioblastoma cells to survive. The molecule does not harm normal cells. This is an example of what international cooperation can accomplish.

  457. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump lashes out at Leonard Leo, legal activist who helped him pick Supreme Court justices: “Probably hates America”

    President Trump attacked the powerful conservative legal activist Leonard Leo late Thursday, calling the former Federalist Society leader who once advised the president on Supreme Court picks a “bad person” who “probably hates America.”

    Mr. Trump lashed out at Leo a day after a panel of judges — including a Trump appointee — called most of his tariffs illegal. The ruling, which was paused by an appellate court, put Mr. Trump at odds with some conservative lawyers: Two of the three judges who decided the case were appointed by Republicans, and the decision came in response to a lawsuit that cited right-leaning legal theories.

    The president attacked the three judges behind that ruling in a Truth Social post late Thursday, calling it a “horrible, Country threatening decision” and suggesting it was made because the judges hate him. He then turned his attention to Leo and the Federalist Society, two longstanding pillars of the conservative legal movement widely credited with helping Mr. Trump pick hundreds of federal judges — some of whom have ruled against his administration.

    “I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social late Thursday. “I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real “sleazebag” named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.”

    In a statement to Politico, Leo said: “I’m very grateful for President Trump transforming the Federal Courts, and it was a privilege being involved. … There’s more work to be done, for sure, but the Federal Judiciary is better than it’s ever been in modern history, and that will be President Trump’s most important legacy.”
    …
    In particular, tariffs could pit one of Mr. Trump’s signature economic policies against some of the legal theories championed by the conservative judicial movement. Lawsuits arguing Mr. Trump doesn’t have the power to levy sweeping global tariffs have cited the nondelegation doctrine and the major questions doctrine, two legal concepts that right-leaning members of the Supreme Court — including ones chosen by Mr. Trump — have embraced for years.

  458. Reginald Selkirk says

    @366, 414, 455

    “Why Trump Fears TACO Label Taking Hold”

    We should make a concerted effort to keep the label going. Say, once a week – on TACO Tuesday.

  459. Reginald Selkirk says

    How the West is helping Russia to fund its war on Ukraine

    Russia has continued to make billions from fossil fuel exports to the West, data shows, helping to finance its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – now in its fourth year.

    Since the start of that invasion in February 2022, Russia has made more than three times as much money by exporting hydrocarbons than Ukraine has received in aid allocated by its allies.

    Data analysed by the BBC show that Ukraine’s Western allies have paid Russia more for its hydrocarbons than they have given Ukraine in aid…

    Oil and gas account for almost a third of Russia’s state revenue and more than 60% of its exports…

  460. Reginald Selkirk says

    US hikers reported a death. But they imagined it while high on mushrooms

    A pair of hikers in New York called emergency services to report that a third member of their group had died, but when a park ranger responded to rescue them it turned out they were just high on hallucinogenic mushrooms, officials say.

    The third hiker was uninjured – and not dead – and the hikers were “in an altered mental state”, according to a report issued by parks officials…

  461. birgerjohansson says

    There are plenty of suggested abbreviations.
    TOFU= Trump Only Fucks Up
    DONUT= Donald Often Neglects Urgent Tasks (looks good, but there is a hole in the middle where the effort should be)
    DUM-DUM= Donald Undermines Missions, Doesn’t Understand Much.
    TURD= Trump Usually Reverses Direction.
    Stephen Miller would be the Taco Bell-end.

    And Trump’s birthday should henceforth be National Taco Day.

  462. Reginald Selkirk says

    Cicada invasion begins as Brood XIV swarms parts of U.S.

    This year’s cicada invasion has started as Brood XIV emerges from underground and swarms parts of the U.S.

    The insects are expected to be concentrated in Kentucky and Tennessee, and show up in parts of Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, as well as in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, central Pennsylvania and Long Island, New York.

    It is a one-in-17-year event for Brood XIV, which digs its way up from the soil as it warms and descends on neighborhoods in the billions. The brood, however, is the only group emerging this spring, meaning there likely won’t be as many cicadas as last year when multiple broods surfaced simultaneously…

  465. Reginald Selkirk says

    Report: Elon Musk’s drug use ramped up during the 2024 presidential campaign

    Elon Musk reportedly increased his drug use during the 2024 presidential campaign in which he donated around $270 million to help elect Donald Trump, according to sources who spoke to The New York Times.

    The Times reports that over the course of last year, his drug consumption went beyond recreational use. He reportedly carried a medication box with 20 pills, which included Adderall. Sources told the outlet that his use of ketamine was so rampant that it affected his bladder.

    Musk’s use of drugs like ketamine, psychedelic mushrooms, and ecstasy is well-documented and reportedly a source of concern for board members at the numerous companies he runs, like Tesla and SpaceX. The latter is a large government contractor and must maintain a drug-free workplace. The Times report claims Musk received advanced notice of drug tests.

    It’s not clear if his erratic behavior, like insulting cabinet members, doing the Nazi salute, and jumbled speech during earnings calls and other events were directly correlated to his reported drug-taking.

    The report also details how Musk’s increasing embrace of right-wing politics coincided with family troubles, like his custody battle with the musician Grimes over their five-year-old son, known as X…

  466. Reginald Selkirk says

    This Cat Poop Parasite Can Decapitate Sperm—and It Might Be Fueling Infertility

    Male fertility rates have been plummeting over the past half-century. An analysis from 1992 noted a steady decrease in sperm counts and quality since the 1940s. A more recent study found that male infertility rates increased nearly 80% from 1990 to 2019. The reasons driving this trend remain a mystery, but frequently cited culprits include obesity, poor diet, and environmental toxins.

    Infectious diseases such as gonorrhea or chlamydia are often overlooked factors that affect fertility in men. Accumulating evidence suggests that a common single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii may also be a contributor: An April 2025 study showed for the first time that “human sperm lose their heads upon direct contact” with the parasite.

    I am a microbiologist, and my lab studies Toxoplasma. This new study bolsters emerging findings that underscore the importance of preventing this parasitic infection…

  467. says

    Republican bill would name the DC Metro the ‘Trump Train,’ as part of a ridiculous pattern

    One historian described the Republican effort to name a bunch of things after Trump as “pretty crazy.”

    After Donald Trump lost his re-election bid in 2020 and exited the White House, his Republican allies on Capitol Hill continued to look for ways to venerate him. Rep. Greg Steube of Florida, for example, introduced legislation that would’ve renamed the immediate waters surrounding the United States, labeling them the “Donald John Trump Exclusive Economic Zone.”

    Now that the president has returned to power, Steube is still thinking along similar lines, though as The Hill reported, the GOP congressman now has found something new he wants to rename.

    Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) introduced a bill Thursday to rename the Washington, D.C., subway system after President Trump and his MAGA slogan. The Make Autorail Great Again Act would withhold federal funding to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, known as WMATA, until it rebrands as the Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access, or WMAGA — a similar acronym to the Make America Great Again slogan — and renames the Metrorail the Trump Train.

    The legislation — which, incidentally, is quite real and not something I made up to make members of Congress appear foolish — has not yet picked up any co-sponsors, though if recent history is any guide, that will soon change.

    The proposal joins a growing list of related Republican measures that are currently pending on Capitol Hill:
    – There’s a bill that would create a $250 bill, and its Republican authors also want to feature Trump’s face. (Existing federal law prohibits any living person from being depicted on U.S. currency, but the bill would create a one-time exception to the prohibition.)
    – There’s a similar bill that would put Trump’s face on $100 bills, replacing Benjamin Franklin.
    – There’s a bill to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday.
    – There’s a bill to carve Trump’s face into Mount Rushmore.
    – There’s a bill to rename Dulles Airport after Trump.

    What’s more, this list doesn’t include kindred efforts from the incumbent president’s sycophantic allies, including measures to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize and to allow Trump to seek a third term.

    Rutgers University historian David Greenberg recently told Politico that there have been “huge cults of personality” around former presidents, “but even allowing for that on its own terms, [the spate of Trump-themed legislation is] pretty crazy.”

    The point isn’t that any of these proposals are likely to pass. They’re not. The point is that these measures are unlike anything in the American tradition, reinforcing a fundamentally unhealthy trend in Republican politics.

    As The New York Times recently summarized, “A competition of sorts has broken out for whom the Republican base will see as the most pro-Trump member.” From the article:

    The rush of flattering legislation, some of which even the lawmakers concede is unlikely to pass, stands apart from merely carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda. … ‘It shows the power that Donald Trump has within the Republican Party these days, and that Republican members want to stay on his good side,’ said Sean M. Theriault, government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. ‘A lot of these people are in really safe districts, but they’re also thinking about what their next step is. And so if they have designs on being in the Senate or running for governor or even a position in the administration, then there’s no better way to get on his good side than to do these over-the-top moves toward him.’

    That was published before most of the aforementioned bills were introduced.

    I’m reminded anew of something Filipe Campante, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said about these efforts: “The reason why this is bad is the very fact that it’s transparently ridiculous: It shows how this is becoming a Kim Jong-Un-style cult of personality, where the sycophants try to outdo one another in their groveling to get the attention of Dear Leader.”

    That competition, alas, is apparently intensifying.

  468. says

    Followup to comments 399 and 432

    To describe references to nonexistent scientific research as “some formatting issues” is like saying the Titanic confronted “some evening issues.”

    […] Soon after, The New York Times identified “additional faulty references” in the report. From the Times’ article:

    The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues. But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.

    While there’s been no official explanation for how, exactly, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team managed to release a much-hyped official document with fake citations, multiple reports noted the likely culprit. As The Washington Post reported, “Some of the citations … appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.”

    […] White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was pressed for some kind of explanation for the MAHA debacle. The president’s chief spokesperson responded by claiming there were “some formatting issues” with the document. [video at the link]

    In case this isn’t obvious, “formatting issues” tend to refer to things such as page margins, font size or perhaps misnumbered pages.

    To describe references to nonexistent scientific research, in an official federal document related to public health policy, as “some formatting issues” is like saying the Titanic confronted “some evening issues.”

    Leavitt nevertheless added that the White House has “complete confidence” in Kennedy. She didn’t elaborate as to why, exactly, Kennedy remains in the president’s good graces, though it appears to have something to do with Trump’s indifference to whether the conspiracy theorist leading the Department of Health and Human Services gets things right or wrong.

  469. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):

    Rubio issues State Dept. cable instructing enhanced social media vetting for ALL people (students, faculty, etc) seeking travel visas to Harvard under guise of “antisemitism.”

    All social media profiles must be public, otherwise seen “as an effort to evade or hide certain activity.”

    Rando:

    “Implementation of this vetting measure for applicants traveling to Harvard will also serve as a pilot for expanded screening and vetting of visa applicants … it may announce similar measures for other groups of visa applicants…”

    Don’t love the sound of that…

    Others:

    Signal chat crew really big on making sure people aren’t trying to evade or hide certain activity, apparently.

    Privacy is not about something to hide. And invasions of privacy are about power, not uncovering hidden things.

    Most folks who have ever taught have a private account for personal stuff. It’s an effort to hide from students—including, for example, the one who once figured out my friend’s home address and appeared on her front porch to plea for a better grade. Boundaries are healthy, not criminal.

    US tourism is going to die. As it should, under this horrendous regime.

    We’ve got the U.S. Open happening in a couple of months, the World Cup next year, and then of course the Olympics in 2028.

    State does not have enough personnel to get this done in time. Even for Harvard alone that’s still ~1-3000+ students that would need to be processed.

    Are you now, or were you ever a member of Facebook?

    Adam Bonin (Lawyer):

    As with the law firm EOs and the frivolous-but-burdensome FCC investigations, every step they’re taking which singles out Harvard for special scrutiny makes clear that the Trump administration is acting solely on animus, not any legitimate concerns, dooming them in the courts.

  470. says

    Trump lawyer: Pre-election ’60 Minutes’ segment caused president ‘mental anguish’

    “The latest legal filing from the president’s lawyers does fresh harm to the idea that Donald Trump is the embodiment of toughness.”

    Related video at the link.

    While Donald Trump and his allies have long tried to present him as tough and the epitome of classical masculinity, the president himself hasn’t done the myth any favors. On the contrary, Trump, far from demonstrating strength and vigor, has an unnerving habit of whining and throwing routine tantrums.

    What’s more, his lawyer’s latest legal filing does fresh harm to the idea that Trump is the embodiment of toughness. The Associated Press reported:

    President Donald Trump suffered “mental anguish” from CBS News’ editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Democratic opponent Kamala Harris last fall, his lawyers are arguing in court papers.

    Oh my.

    By now, the basic elements of this story are probably familiar, but to briefly recap, shortly before the 2024 presidential election, it’s customary for the major-party nominees to sit down for “60 Minutes” interviews. Last fall, Harris agreed, while Trump initially accepted the invitation before backing out soon after.

    Harris’ interview wasn’t especially memorable — it was, however, recently nominated for an Emmy — though Trump has whined incessantly about it for nearly seven months, claiming that the program deceptively edited the segment. Trump’s claims have already been thoroughly discredited, but his hysterics have only gotten worse: The president last month accused “60 Minutes” of, among other things, “unlawful and illegal behavior.”

    Trump added that CBS should lose its broadcast license and “pay a big price,” while calling on the Federal Communications Commission to “impose the maximum fines and punishment.”

    But in case that weren’t quite enough, Trump also has an ongoing civil suit against CBS, in which the Republican is asking for $20 billion in damages (that’s not a typo), based on the president’s conspiratorial beliefs about the news magazine’s election coverage.

    Paramount Global, CBS’s corporate parent, has asked a court to dismiss the civil case, prompting the president’s lawyers to defend the litigation on the merits. It was against this backdrop that Trump’s counsel claimed in a court filing that the “60 Minutes” segment in question “led to widespread confusion and mental anguish” among news consumers and Trump personally.

    The same filing claimed that Trump’s status as a “content creator” was damaged; the public steered clear of his social media platform; and the then-Republican candidate had to “redirect significant time, money and effort” after the episode aired.

    Given that there really wasn’t anything meaningfully wrong with the broadcast, it remains unclear why anyone would take any of Team Trump’s arguments seriously, or why anyone would believe that the president suffered “mental anguish” that warrants $20 billion in damages.

    That said, Paramount Global is reportedly trying to settle the case anyway, and critics have expressed fears that the company is prepared to give Trump millions of dollars, not because “60 Minutes” did anything untoward, but because Paramount wants the Trump administration to approve an unrelated merger deal.

    The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Paramount Global recently offered $15 million to settle the case, citing people familiar with the situation. The same report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that the president’s lawyers want more than $25 million and an apology from CBS News, which, again, didn’t actually do anything wrong outside of Trump’s overactive imagination.

    This ongoing debacle has already cost the network — in the last month, the head of CBS News and the executive producer of “60 Minutes” have both stepped down — and we’ll learn soon enough if the tally gets even worse. Watch this space.

  471. says

    Pressed on Medicaid cuts, Iowa’s Ernst tells constituents, ‘Well, we’re all going to die’

    “While everyone’s life will eventually come to an end, politicians rarely say, “We’re all going to die” when talking about their health care proposals.”

    There’s no shortage of controversial elements of the Republican Party’s far-right megabill — the inaptly named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — but the proposed Medicaid cuts aren’t just dangerous for low-income families. They’re also proving to be the most politically dangerous for GOP officials and candidates.

    Party strategists have advised Republicans on how best to talk about the legislation, but I have a hunch the party’s consultants and spin doctors didn’t recommend the phrasing that Sen. Joni Ernst used during a town hall meeting with her Iowa constituents on Friday morning. The New York Times reported:

    Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, had a gloomy message for constituents at a town hall in Butler County, Iowa, on Friday morning: ‘We all are going to die.’ Ms. Ernst was fielding questions about cuts to Medicaid that were included in the domestic policy bill working its way through Congress, when someone in the audience yelled out that the effect would be that ‘people are going to die.’ ‘Well, we all are going to die,’ Ms. Ernst responded, drawing jeers from the crowd.

    [video at the link]

    […] Told that people would die as a result of her party’s health care cuts, the Iowa Republican really did say, “Well, we all are going to die.” Ernst went on to tell the audience, however, “What you don’t want to do is listen to me when I say that we are going to focus on those that are most vulnerable. Those that meet the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, we will protect. We will protect them.”

    The problem with that, however, is that her assurances aren’t altogether true. According to the Congressional Budget Office, many struggling Americans who currently meet the eligibility requirements for Medicaid would likely lose their health security as a direct result of the Republican’s reconciliation package.

    “We’re not going to cut those benefits, what we are doing is making sure that those who are not Medicaid eligible are not receiving benefits,” Ernst said at her event. But as a HuffPost report explained, “Experts … consider tightening Medicaid eligibility and thereby reducing its expenditures to be the same as cutting the program.”

    What’s more, offered an opportunity to walk back the senator’s comments, Ernst’s office did largely the opposite. A spokesperson for Ernst said in a statement, “There’s only two certainties in life: death and taxes, and she’s working to ease the burden of both by fighting to keep more of Iowans’ hard-earned tax dollars in their own pockets and ensuring their benefits are protected from waste, fraud, and abuse.” […]

  472. says

    Trump wants to punish drug users—but Musk gets a pass

    On Friday, The New York Times published a bombshell report detailing co-President Elon Musk’s drug abuse, saying the malevolent billionaire used psychedelic mushrooms, ecstasy, Adderall, and so much ketamine that it was negatively impacting his bladder.

    But President Donald Trump has embraced and celebrated Musk, despite the drug abuse, allowing him to take a sledgehammer to the federal government’s functions while at the same time promoting Musk’s personal business ventures.

    Trump even plans to celebrate Musk on Friday afternoon, as Musk prepares to leave his role as an unelected bureaucrat to focus on his ailing business empire.

    “I am having a Press Conference tomorrow at 1:30 P.M. EST, with Elon Musk, at the Oval Office. This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific! See you tomorrow at the White House,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social—an event that will most likely be even more highly watched now that the Times’ report dropped and reporters will want to know about Musk’s drug use.

    While Trump has embraced the drug-using Musk—despite his erratic behavior and sloppy work that has endangered lives and livelihoods—he has at the same time tried to punish low-income drug users by trying to strip them of their Medicaid and unemployment insurance.

    [I snipped details related to Trump’s first term] in his second term, Trump is trying to slash funding for drug treatment and overdose prevention.

    […] Trump’s administration slashed hundreds of jobs from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration—which seeks to prevent substance abuse and provide treatment to help drug users recover—and folded the organization into the new Administration for a Healthy America.

    Trump has so decimated SAMHSA that Democratic senators say it will impact how many people can receive treatment.

    […] Meanwhile, in Trump’s 2026 budget request, he also proposed cutting $56 million in funding for a program that teaches first responders how to use Narcan—a lifesaving drug that can reverse drug overdose effects. And his administration is also eschewing other harm reduction efforts—like providing fentanyl test strips—in favor of 12-step programs to help drug users, which experts say will lead to more overdoses.

    […] Ultimately, the fact that Trump is fine with Musk’s drug use while at the same time trying to punish low-income drug users can likely be boiled down to one thing: Musk has been useful to Trump, bankrolling his campaign to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars that helped Trump win and take his lucrative grift to the White House. Meanwhile, low-income drug abusers are not useful for him.

  473. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Brandon Friedman (MSNBC):

    Trump is golfing. Musk quit. Patel is at NBA games. Now, Bongino is crying on TV about having to govern [Video clip]. These guys are fascists, but thankfully, they’re completely unserious about it.

    Like, if Hegseth was a serious fascist, he’d be planning the U.S. military occupation of cities and universities. Instead, he’s focused on banning books and doing pushups with the boys. It may save the Republic.

    Southpaw: “Miller is the most prominent member of the administration who takes it at all seriously, and he may be going through some things.”
    GottaLaff: “Which leaves… Vought.”
     
    Gwen Snyder – Rumor about Miller’s wife running off with Musk, an immigrant, after some sort of failed throuple or honeypot.
    ^ Gwen’s Bluesky visibility has been limited, but this Mastodon reply preserved a cached mirror of the thread. If I’d linked OP directly, it’d redirect to Bluesky. Click the OP to read.

    Randos:

    So what does it say that the Democratic Party (and the American people generally) are losing so completely to them?

    Nice to know that some of these fuckers are as miserable as the public is just *checks calendar* 1/16th the way through this administration. Good luck!

    There’s a non-zero chance this ends with S Miller getting Musk denaturalized and deported.

  474. says

    Yep, more cruelty:

    The Supreme Court on Friday again cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants, pushing the total number of people who could be newly exposed to deportation to nearly 1 million.

    The justices lifted a lower-court order that kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The court has also allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case.

    […] Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent that the effect of the court’s order is “to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent.

    […] The Supreme Court’s order is not a final ruling, but it means the protections will not be in place while the case proceeds. It now returns to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

    The Justice Department argues that the protections were always meant to be temporary, and the Department of Homeland Security has the power to revoke them without court interference. The administration says Biden granted the parole en masse, and the law doesn’t require ending it on an individual basis.

    […] Beneficiaries included the 532,000 people who have come to the United States with financial sponsors since late 2022, leaving home countries fraught with “instability, dangers and deprivations,” as attorneys for the migrants said. They had to fly to the U.S. at their own expense and have a financial sponsor to qualify for the designation, which lasts for two years.

    The Trump administration’s decision was the first-ever mass revocation of humanitarian parole, attorneys for the migrants said. They called the Trump administration’s moves “the largest mass illegalization event in modern American history.” […]

    Link

  475. says

    The Justice Department has turned into a raging dumpster fire under Trump

    The Department of Justice is a joke. And why wouldn’t it be? Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ no longer does the work of justice. Instead, it does the work of grievance, staffed by unqualified true believers.

    To be fair, it’s not just that the lawyers in President Donald Trump and Bondi’s orbit are unqualified. They’re also completely unhinged, driven by a toxic brew of bigotry and resentment. How else would we get the spectacle of the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, explaining to the Wall Street Journal that her method for finding civil rights complaints is to wake up at 6 AM to troll X for discrimination claims—many of them about universities?

    Does it even need to be said that this is not how the Civil Rights Division typically handles complaints?

    Complaints about schools were historically handled by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, but as the Trump administration chips away at that department, it seems to have shifted complaints—at least those involving colleges and universities—to Dhillon.

    If you’d like to see what a normal government report about civil rights complaints looks like, here’s the Education Department’s report from the Biden era. It covers the number of complaints received and resolved, compliance reviews undertaken by the division, types of complaints most commonly received, policies and fact sheets for each major category of discrimination complaints, illustrative cases, government staffing levels, and more.

    […] After compiling “a list of new horrors,” she [Harmeet Dhillon] “text[s] her deputies, and we assign cases, and we get cranking.”

    So the work of the Civil Rights Division is now governed by randos on X, and Dhillon picks and chooses which 280-character screed warrants the full might of a DOJ investigation, and then orders her deputies to … what? […]

    At least Dhillon has a lot of free time for this, given that the DOJ has killed police reform consent agreements, eliminated the right to bring disparate impact complaints—which are the bulk of civil rights complaints—and is generally not pursuing voting rights cases unless the end result would be fewer people voting.

    The true purpose of Dhillon’s job, in her own words, is that “we don’t just slow down the woke. We take up the cause to achieve the executive branch’s goals.”

    But the Trump administration isn’t content with stopping at the DOJ; it’s also going to stuff the judiciary with the hackiest of hacks, and it doesn’t want the pesky American Bar Association to point out their lack of qualifications, per Bondi’s letter to the ABA, which was provided in an exclusive preview to Fox News.

    Let’s stop there for a minute. This is not how the government works. Bondi’s letter to the ABA is an official piece of government communication, not something to be dangled in front of servile media outlets as an “exclusive.”

    As of Thursday afternoon, several hours after the breathless Fox News piece, there’s still no announcement on the DOJ website, nor an official copy of the letter. But you can find the letter in full over on X, posted by former Trump criminal defense attorney/current unqualified high-level DOJ appointee Todd Blanche.

    So the only way to learn about big changes at the DOJ is to wait for an announcement to pop up on the absolute worst social media platform. […]

    Trump’s anger at the ABA goes back to his first term, when the organization deemed 10 of his nominees unqualified. This made Trump so sad that he posted a National Review op-ed on an official government website about how his nominees were too qualified, so there.

    Now in his second term, Trump is gearing up to choose the most unqualified partisans as judges, so he can’t have the ABA hanging about saying bad things […]

    Trump simply isn’t interested in hearing why his criminal defense attorney and DOJ bully Emil Bove isn’t qualified to be a judge.

    This time around, the Trump administration also won’t be directing judicial nominees to provide waivers that would allow the ABA to access information about them. Terrific. The one thing Trump’s nomination process needs is less transparency. Wouldn’t want the public to know that Trump is transforming the judiciary into a handmaiden to power, only existing to help him achieve his terrible goals. […]

  476. Reginald Selkirk says

    Texas AG loses appeal to seize evidence for Elon Musk’s ad boycott fight

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has failed to reverse a preliminary injunction currently blocking him from probing Media Matters for America (MMFA) in defense of Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

    On Friday, a US appeals court upheld the injunction. In his opinion, senior Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote that there was “ample” evidence that Paxton “pursued a retaliatory campaign” against MMFA “because they published an unfavorable article about X.com.” And MMFA has standing to raise a First Amendment defense, because “the First Amendment generally ‘prohibits government officials from subjecting individuals to retaliatory actions after the fact for having engaged in protected speech,” Edwards wrote.

    Edwards noted that the day after X sued MMFA over reporting on antisemitic posts appearing next to big brands’ ads on X—alleging the report fraudulently spawned an ad boycott—Paxton announced a broad probe into MMFA that, he confirmed in a press release, was directly due to X’s lawsuit…

  477. says

    The State Department Published A Substack Manifesto On ‘Western Civilizational Heritage’

    […] since taking to Substack in late April, the agency tasked with articulating and representing America’s foreign policy interests on the world stage has published a manifesto of sorts touting the need for this country and Europe to “recommit to our Western heritage.”

    The piece in question was titled “The Need For Civilizational Allies In Europe.” It was published on Tuesday and authored by Samuel Samson, a senior adviser in the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Among other things, Samson argued there is “an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself” that includes “digital censorship, mass migration, [and] restrictions on religious freedom.”

    “On both sides of the Atlantic, we must preserve the goods of our common culture, ensuring that Western civilization remains a source of virtue, freedom, and human flourishing for generations to come,” Samson wrote.

    The Substack post made headlines because it came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new wave of visa restrictions on Chinese students and foreigners deemed to be “complicit in censoring Americans.” Yet the post was important not just because it was another salvo in President Trump and the right’s fight against content moderation and alleged censorship. Samson’s rhetoric arguing against “mass migration” and in favor of “Western heritage” sharply echoes the ideology of many extremist and even white nationalist groups.

    A “backgrounder” published by the Anti Defamation League in 2020 laid out how figures involved in “alt right” politics tend to “avoid explicit white supremacist references” and instead “use terms like ‘culture’ as substitutes for more divisive terms such as ‘race,’ and promote ‘Western Civilization’ as a code word for white culture or identity.” That rhetoric was used for the promotion of the 2017 Charlottesville rally, which included multiple neo-Nazi groups. Affiliated organizations like the explicitly pro-Trump antisemitic group National Justice Party, which has a podcast named for the Holocaust, have used the term. The Proud Boys, a militant group whose leadership has included four people charged with seditious conspiracy related to the January 6 attack before being pardoned by President Trump, also describe themselves as focused on “Western Chauvinism.”

    Samson’s piece also waded into European politics and similarly promoted ultranationalist perspectives. He defended a far-right party and candidate — Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party and French National Rally leader Marine Le Pen — and suggested they have faced undue censorship. German intelligence has labeled AfD as extremist for suggesting Muslim immigrants are not equal. Candidates promoted by Le Pen and her party have made racist comments and engaged in Holocaust denial. […]

    […] [I snipped details of earlier actions taken by the Trump administration]

    On Thursday, the State Department notified Congress about plans for a sweeping reorganization that would include cutting jobs, reworking the agency’s refugee bureau into a “Remigration” office aimed at returning immigrants to their home countries, and prioritizing “Western values” at its human rights bureau.

    […]Prior to joining the Trump administration, Samson spent over two years at “American Moment,” a nonprofit whose major funders include the Conservative Partnership Institute, an organization that was deeply involved in Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election loss. “American Moment,” which was founded in 2021, is designed to “identify, educate, and credential young Americans who will implement public policy.” The group’s priorities include restricting immigration and promoting traditional values in “the West.”

    […] Samson has locked his page on the site formerly known as Twitter. The Internet Archive shows that he maintained a presence on the site, including penning poems that criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s efforts to solicit international aid for his country’s war with Russia. […] working as a legislative staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). He also participated in a 2019 event with conservative commentator Steven Crowder where, according to the paper, Samson argued in front of other students that “there are only two genders.” […]

  478. says

    This morning, in one of the key cases in which the U.S. government has been ordered to “facilitate” the return of a deported individual, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher of Maryland set the stage for contempt proceedings against the administration after finding that it “utterly disregarded” her order to provide a status report on the pseudonymous plaintiff “Cristian” in a closely watched Alien Enemies Act case.

    Gallagher called the government’s late-filed status report on Tuesday “the functional equivalent of, ‘We haven’t done anything and don’t intend to.’” She thwacked the government for being late with the status report and ignoring the substance of what she had asked it to contain.

    Cristian, a Venezuelan national, was deported to El Salvador on March 15 under the Alien Enemies Act in violation of a 2024 settlement agreement barring the removal of asylum seekers like him. Following the lead of the Abrego Garcia case, Gallagher ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Cristian’s return. After the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals last week declined the government’s request to pause her order while it appealed, Gallagher quickly ordered the Trump administration to provide her with a status report within a week on Cristian’s status and the steps it had taken and planned to take to facilitate his return to the United States.

    […] the administration filed the status report after her deadline and did not substantively answer her questions. “Instead, Defendants simply reiterated their well-worn talking points on their reasons for removing Cristian and failed to provide any of the information the Court required,” Gallagher concluded in her latest order.

    Gallagher pulled no punches, writing that the administration’s status report:
    – “adds nothing to the underlying record”
    – “reflects a lack of any effort”
    – “shows zero effort to comply”
    – is “patently insufficient”
    – shows a “blatant lack of effort”

    What happens now?

    Gallagher all but urged Cristian’s counsel to initiate contempt of court proceedings against the Trump administration, inviting them to give her input on “a process to create an appropriate record on Defendants’ lack of compliance with this Court’s Orders.” In the meantime, she gave the administration until 5 p.m. ET Monday to cure its noncompliance with a more fulsome status report.

    In the slow-moving, drawn-out constitutional clash in the handful of “facilitate” cases, the Cristian case is quickly catching up to the others as a flash point in whether the judicial branch will hold or be able to hold the line against a defiant executive.

    Link

  479. says

    Musk says ‘this is not the end of DOGE,’ vows to remain adviser to Trump

    Yeah, that’s more or less what I expected. The media campaign to portray Musk as getting out of politics/governing, (and as putting his attention on being CEO of Tesla, etc.) has been way too organized and full of puff pieces. I don’t buy it.

    Tech billionaire Elon Musk vowed the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would carry on and he would remain an adviser to President Trump as he bid farewell to his official government role.

    Musk joined Trump in the Oval Office for a press conference on Friday for what was his final day as a special government employee. That title carries a time limit of 130 days, meaning Musk will no longer serve in an official capacity. [Was his capacity ever official? I thought it was always ill-defined and quasi-official, depending on whatever Trump decided to say from one day to the next.]

    His departure has fostered uncertainty about who would lead DOGE’s efforts to slash federal spending and the size of government, but Musk said Friday that lower level officials would remain in their roles.

    “This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk said.

    “The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. The DOGE influence will only go stronger,” Musk added. “It is permeating throughout the government, and I am confident that, over time, we will see a trillion dollars of savings and a reduction in — a trillion dollars of waste and fraud reduction.” [A blatant exaggeration, and not based on facts.]
    […]

  480. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Aaron Rupar:

    Linda McMahon [re Harvard]: “Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they’re abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish.” [Video clip]

    Rando 1: “[Goose meme]: What is the administration trying to accomplish?”

    Rando 2: “It’s not possible to abide by the law AND be in sync with what the administration is trying to accomplish.”
     
    Jan-Werner Müller (Historian): “Elegance of the English language: ‘In sync’ is so much crisper than ‘Gleichschaltung‘.”

    Leah Litman (Law prof): “Just going on the teevee and admitting it’s all first amendment violations.”

    Mike Gonzalez (Historian):

    Government lawyer: contracts are being rescinded because of title VIII violations.
    Harvard lawyers: Let’s roll the tape!
    GL: God. Damnit.

  482. birgerjohansson says

    The Swedish “likriktning” is a literal translation of gleichschaltung.

    It is not really “synchronization”, it has a more sinister flavor.
    .
    Trump can pardon those convicted of federal crimes, so while you might initiate contempt investigations it would be nice to slow-walk them until Trump is gone, letting the threat of a contempt conviction hang over those who collaborate in disappearing prisoners abroad.

  483. Reginald Selkirk says

    CDC updates COVID vaccine recommendations, but not how RFK Jr. wanted

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday updated its immunization schedules for children and adults to partially reflect the abrupt changes announced by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this week.

    In a 58-second video posted on social media on Tuesday, May 27, Kennedy said he was unilaterally revoking the CDC’s recommendations that healthy children and pregnant people get COVID-19 vaccines.

    “I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that, as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” Kennedy said in the video.

    The health agency’s immunization schedules were not, in fact, updated at the time of the announcement, though. The Washington Post subsequently reported that the CDC was blindsided by the announcement. Five hours went by after the video was posted before CDC officials said they received a one-page “secretarial directive” about the changes, which was signed by Kennedy and puzzlingly dated May 19, according to the Post.

    Late Thursday, the CDC updated the immunization schedules. Contradicting what Kennedy said in the video, the CDC did not remove its recommendation for COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children in the child and adolescent immunization schedule. Instead, it added a stipulation that if a child’s doctor agrees with the vaccination and parents “desire for their child to be vaccinated,” healthy children can get vaccinated…

  484. Reginald Selkirk says

    Kristi Noem said an immigrant threatened to kill Trump. The story quickly fell apart

    A claim by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that an immigrant threatened the life of President Donald Trump has begun to unravel.

    Noem announced an arrest of a 54-year-old man who was living in the U.S. illegally, saying he had written a letter threatening to kill Trump and would then return to Mexico. The story received a flood of media attention and was highlighted by the White House and Trump’s allies.

    But investigators actually believe the man may have been framed so that he would get arrested and be deported from the U.S. before he got a chance to testify in a trial as a victim of assault, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

    Law enforcement officials believe the man, Ramon Morales Reyes, never wrote a letter that Noem and her department shared with a message written in light blue ink expressing anger over Trump’s deportations and threatening to shoot him in the head with a rifle at a rally. Noem also shared the letter on X along with a photo of Morales Reyes, and the White House also shared it on its social media accounts. The letter was mailed to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office along with the FBI and other agencies, the person said.

    As part of the investigation, officials had contacted Morales Reyes and asked for a handwriting sample and concluded his handwriting and the threatening letter didn’t match and that the threat was not credible, the person said. It’s not clear why Homeland Security officials still decided to send a release making that claim…

  485. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    In India, where labor laws are practically non-existent, a disabled trans YouTuber who very dilligently critiques bigotries and her human rights lawyer partner (who went from UN to working a call center after the Indian gov collapsed that field) have been struggling in poverty at ~$400/month for years. After InnuendoStudios announced looming bankruptcy, that was the last straw to finally stop putting off asking for Patreon support keep the channel going. They have no other options for income. Sharing helps too.

    Update: “we have reached our $500 goal! […] the support and kindness you have shown us today […] I am on the verge of tears right now (good tears) […] It feels like I have a future again. I really cannot put to words just how meaningful this is to me. So, again, thank you.”

  487. Reginald Selkirk says

    French scientist behind abortion pill dies aged 98

    The French scientist who created the abortion pill has died at the age of 98.

    Étienne-Émile Baulieu helped develop the oral drug RU-486, also known as mifepristone, which has provided millions of women across the world with a safe and inexpensive alternative to a surgical abortion.

    Dr Baulieu died at his home in Paris on Friday, his widow confirmed in a statement.

    Simone Harari Baulieu said: “His research was guided by his commitment to progress through science, his dedication to women’s freedom and his desire to enable everyone to live better and longer lives.” …

  488. says

    Washington Post:

    President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has fired the director of the National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet. … It is unclear if the president has authority to dismiss Sajet. The Smithsonian’s programming is not under the purview of the executive branch.

    What the Orange Doofus posted:

    “Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am herby terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. “She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly.”

    More from The Washington Post:

    Trump’s unprecedented order was foreshadowed by a Nov. 25 Wall Street Journal opinion piece co-written by the Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, one of the contributors to Project 2025, which called for the president to “retake control” of the Smithsonian’s museums. The institution, Gonzalez wrote, had “forsaken their mission of spreading knowledge and instead are trying to ‘decolonize’ society.”

    Sajet, who formerly served as president and chief executive of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, was selected to lead the Portrait Gallery in 2013 — becoming the first woman to serve in the role.

    As director, Sajet has focused on diversifying the gallery’s collection and programming by acquiring works that reflected a broader range of artists and subjects and integrating Spanish into the museum’s communications strategy.
    In 2017, she was the first Smithsonian director to name a choreographer-in-residence to create dance performances based on the museum’s exhibitions.

    Born in Nigeria, Sajet is a citizen of the Netherlands who has worked in the United States for 30 years.

    “A big part of my job [at the Historical Society] was being able to talk about American identity and what this amazing country has done,” Sajet told The Washington Post in 2013. “Americans sometimes forget how much they are observed by other people around the world. I’m looking forward to reminding people of the larger global context. It’s something the Smithsonian values.” […]

  489. Reginald Selkirk says

    US government employee charged with trying to give classified information to a foreign government

    An information technology specialist for the Defense Intelligence Agency was charged Thursday with attempting to transmit classified information to a representative of a foreign government, the Justice Department said.

    Prosecutors say Nathan Vilas Laatsch, 28, of Alexandria, Virginia, was arrested at a location where he had arranged to deposit sensitive records to a person he thought was an official of a foreign government, but who was actually an undercover FBI agent. The identity of the country Laatsch thought he was in communication with was not disclosed, but the Justice Department described it as a friendly, or allied, nation…

  490. says

    This is in addition to NPR’s lawsuit:

    PBS sued President Trump on Friday to block an executive order that would cut federal funding for public television and radio, arguing that it was unconstitutional.

    As reported by The New York Times.

  491. says

    WTF?

    Associated Press:

    President Donald Trump said Friday that he will no longer be ‘Mr. NICE GUY’ with China on trade, declaring in a social media post that the country had broken an agreement with the United States.

    Link

  492. says

    Associated Press:

    The United States and 10 allies on Thursday said the military cooperation between Russia and North Korea flagrantly violates U.N. sanctions and has helped Moscow increase its missile strikes on Ukrainian cities.

  493. says

    Zelenskyy: Russians have still not presented their “memorandum” to partners – another deception

    President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated on 29 May that the Russian side has not handed over its so-called “memorandum” to the United States, Ukraine or Türkiye, despite earlier promises to do so.

    Quote: “Words do not work with Moscow. Even the so-called ‘memorandum’ they promised and supposedly spent over a week preparing – no one has seen it yet. It has not been shared with Ukraine. It has not been shared with our partners.

    They haven’t even shared the new agenda with Türkiye – the country that hosted the first meeting. Although they promised the exact opposite, and above all, they promised it to the United States and President Trump. Another Russian deception.”

    Details: The president added that the Russians are doing everything they can to make the meetings meaningless, which is another reason to strengthen sanctions pressure against them […]

    More at the link.

  494. says

    Russia received at least 100 ballistic missiles from North Korea last year, monitors find

    Russia and North Korea have engaged in “unlawful military cooperation,” including arms transfers of up to 9 million shells and “at least 100 ballistic missiles” in 2024, according to a report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) published May 29.

    The MSMT is made up of 11 United Nations member states and was formed in October 2024 to monitor and report on the implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea in light of deepening military ties between Moscow and Pyongyang.

    The watchdog’s first report presents evidence that North Korea and Russia violated United Nations Security Council resolutions (UNSCRs) and engaged in illegal activities throughout 2024.

    Violations include deliveries of weapons and military equipment, Russian training of North Korean troops for deployment in direct combat against Ukrainian forces, supply of refined petroleum products to North Korea above UN-mandated caps, and correspondent banking between the two countries.

    In 2024 alone, North Korea sent Russia at least 100 ballistic missiles, an MSMT participating state found. These missiles “were subsequently launched into Ukraine to destroy civilian infrastructure and terrorize populated areas such as Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia,” the report said.

    Russian-flagged vessels delivered “as many as 9 million rounds of mixed artillery and multiple rocket launcher ammunition” from North Korea to Russia in 49 shipments from January to December 2024, an MSMT participating state found. The cargo was sent from Russia’s far-eastern ports to ammunition depots in southwestern Russia for use in the full-scale war against Ukraine.

    Open-source data reviewed by the Open Source Centre (OSC) indicates that Russian vessels delivered between 4.2 and 5.8 million rounds of 122 mm and 152 mm ammunition between August 2023 and March 2025.

    The report also confirmed that North Korea deployed over 11,000 soldiers to Russia’s Kursk Oblast for training and combat operations against Ukrainian troops.

    […]The MSMT also documented transfers of arms from Russia to North Korea. Moscow is believed to have sent Pyongyong short-range air defense systems, advanced electronic warfare systems, and at least one Pantsir-class combat vehicle, the report said. […]

  495. Reginald Selkirk says

    A statue of Stalin is unveiled in the Moscow subway as Russia tries to revive the dictator’s legacy

    A monument to Josef Stalin has been unveiled at one of Moscow’s busiest subway stations, the latest attempt by Russian authorities to revive the legacy of the brutal Soviet dictator.

    The sculpture shows Stalin surrounded by beaming workers and children with flowers. It was installed at the Taganskaya station to mark the 90th anniversary of the Moscow Metro, the sprawling subway known for its mosaics, chandeliers and other ornate decorations that was built under Stalin.

    It replaces an earlier tribute that was removed in the decade following Stalin’s 1953 death in a drive to root out his “cult of personality” and reckon with decades of repression marked by show trials, nighttime arrests and millions killed or thrown into prison camps as “enemies of the people.” …

  496. says

    NBC: “Trump raises steel tariff to 50%, arguing it’s ‘saved’ U.S. Steel”

    Trump announced during remarks at a U.S. Steel plant near Pittsburgh that he will double the tariffs placed on steel imports from 25% to 50%. He told the crowd that the increase will “further secure the steel industry in the United States.”

    The American Iron and Steel Institute reported last week that total steel imports have fallen marginally over the last 12 months, but have more rapidly declined in recent months, including a 17% drop from March to April.

    Trump raises steel tariff to 50%, arguing it’s ‘saved’ U.S. Steel , continued
    Trump said his decision to place tariffs on global steel imports “saved” U.S. Steel, arguing it protected the domestic production company from “outside, horrible influence.”

    Trump first made the remark while recounting a conversation he had with U.S. Steel President David Burritt, who he claimed first brought the idea of placing tariffs on steel imports to his attention.

    “They were dumping steel all over the United States, and we saved it. It was a great honor. And Dave was really the first one that brought it to my attention, and I appreciate it, Dave, you did a good job,” Trump said, crediting Burritt for getting “this whole thing started.”

  497. says

    Politico:

    Moscow is happy that the U.S. understands why it hates NATO expanding east, the Kremlin said Friday.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has “consistently communicated Russia’s stance on the unacceptability of NATO’s eastward expansion,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, adding that Washington seems to have taken this position into account.

    Peskov’s statement follows remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, who said that Putin was right to be concerned about NATO expansion.

    “It’s a fair concern. We’ve said that repeatedly. We’ve said that, to us, Ukraine coming into NATO is not on the table,” Kellogg told ABC News on Thursday. […]

    Kremlin grins as Trump’s envoy signals no eastward NATO expansion

  498. Reginald Selkirk says

    ‘We cannot have cats thinking that biting people is acceptable’: Cat ‘arrested’ in Thailand for biting police during rescue

    Earlier this month, a police officer in Bangkok, Da Parinda Pakeesuk, shared that an American Shorthair had been brought to the station by a local. However, the cat went on to scratch and bite a number of officers and was duly ‘arrested’ as a result.

    “This cat has been charged with assaulting police officers and is about to be detained. Please share this post so her owner can come and bail her out,” he wrote on social media, before taking the kitty home and posting a photo of her in his car…

  499. Reginald Selkirk says

    @497

    Moscow is happy that the U.S. understands why it hates NATO expanding east, the Kremlin said Friday.

    I read in one internet comment: “If you don’t want your neighbors to join NATO, don’t be the reason your neighbors want to join NATO.”

  500. Reginald Selkirk says

    Nearly 3,000-year-old Mayan complex discovered, featuring pyramids and canals

    Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a nearly 3,000-year-old Mayan complex in Guatemala, revealing sanctuaries, pyramids and a unique canal system that could shed further light on the ancient civilization, the country’s culture minister said Thursday.

    The complex was discovered across three sites — Los Abuelos, Petnal and Cambrayal — near the significant Mayan site of Uaxactún in the Petén region of northern Guatemala, the ministry said in a statement.

    The Mayan civilization arose around 2,000 BC and reached its height between 400 and 900 AD, predominantly in modern-day Mexico and Guatemala…