The first three chapters of my latest book are on the Amazon webpage. (Click on the ‘Look inside’ link.) The publisher’s webpage is here and you can also buy it from any major retailer. (Note: This will be the new top post for a while. Later posts are below.)
As with all things involving Trump, things are never stable or decided but keep changing on him whims. After touting the Memorandum of Understanding that the US reached with Iran as a major achievement in creating a ceasefire and starting the process of normalizing relations with that country, the US is now back at war with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz is once again closed, with both nations exchanging fire. So it appears that the MOU, wobbly from the beginning, is dead
Trump declared that ceasefire is over and that he has ordered hte resumption of bombing on the ‘Islamic Republic of Japan’. Yes, that is what he said at the NATO summit. He also referred to Ukraine’s president as Putin.
And then as often is the case when Trump is faced with an embarrassing setback, he creates a diversion, this time that old standby, the annexation of Greenland.
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One of the appealingly quirky features of UK politics is that pretty much anyone can stand for election to a parliamentary seat, provided that they can come up with 10 voter signatures in support and pay the required deposit of £500, which they lose if they do not get 5% of the total votes cast. This has resulted in novelty candidates, such those from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (founded by the rock musician David “Screaming Lord” Sutch) and, more recently, Count Binface, an extra-galactic being who wears a costume consisting of a trash can on his head. They serve as outlets for protest votes for people disgusted with the system. These candidates typically stand only in constituencies where there is a high-profile major party candidate which will draw media coverage because the UK system is one in which all the candidates for a parliamentary seat line up on stage to hear the vote totals at the end, so you can see them close to the major political figures. In the past, Binface has stood against Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.
They also sometimes get interviewed by major media looking for a light-hearted take on the election. Here is Binface interviewed by Sky News during the recent by-election in Makerfield that Andy Burnham won on his way potentially to the prime ministership.
Trump managed to make the US even more disliked around the world by pressuring FIFA to suspend the red card given to their star player Falorin Balogun in the previous game that would have required him to sit out yesterday’s game with Belgium. I have not followed the games, have little knowledge about soccer, have not seen the foul in question, and so cannot judge if the red card was warranted or not. But I do know that reversing a red card ruling in highly unusual. Making it worse for FIFA was that Trump publicly bragged about calling on FIFA president Gianni Infantino to drop the suspension. Infantino, who has been sucking up to Trump in a big way, going to the extent of giving him a fake peace prize after Trump sulked about not getting the real one, is believed to have acquiesced to Trump’s wishes to allow Balogun to play.
This move caused widespread anger in the soccer world, not just in Belgium but also with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).
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I recently wrote that the wins by more progressive candidates in Democratic primary races that ousted candidates favored by the party establishment would show us whether the party would embrace this new energy and help these candidates win the general election races or whether the establishment would instead seek to hold on to its grip on party power even if it meant losing in the general election. And it appears that at least some are opting for the latter course.
Jaime Harrison, the former chair of the Democratic national committee, directed a pointed message at candidates running under the party’s banner while openly criticizing its direction.
“I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination,” Harrison wrote on social media. “Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Focus on building the party you actually support.”
It is curious how Harrison frames the progressives as ‘hating’ the Democratic Party purely because they want to take it in a different direction. He seems to think that the neoliberals who have dominated the leadership for so long are the rightful owners of the party and should not be challenged. He is not alone.
Over the last few days, prominent party figures have moved away from unifying under a “blue no matter who” banner to push for a more formal break with their left flank, and said the moment may have arrived for Democrats to confront their more socialist wing.
“I actually do think it’s time for Democrats to talk the S-word: schism,” James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser, said on his podcast. He added that some DSA-aligned candidates “have no place in the Democratic party” and, of the broader coalition: “I’m not in that fucking political party.”
Today is American Independence Day, a milestone in it being the 250th or semiquincentennial one, which I read is Latin for half of five hundred, which, like half of anything like half-baked or half-assed, makes it sound less impressive. It is a day when people are urged to put aside their differences and come together in patriotic unity.
Well, forget that.
I am a critic of the concept of patriotism and it takes some nerve for Trump and his cult to call for bipartisan unity when Trump hijacked the original bipartisan plans (as Jenora Feuer pointed out) and created his own celebration committee to make it all about himself. So it had long stopped being a national celebration and had become a Trump vanity project so it is hardly surprising that there is a lot of schadenfreude about how things have fallen apart bigly.
The big news is how an event that should have had massive crowds seems to have attracted tinier audiences than small local county fairs, with one band playing to audiences that were smaller than the band size. In fact, there seemed to be fewer people on the Mall than there usually are on any summer day.
“The Mall in the summer is a big tourist destination,” Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois wrote on X, resharing video of the performance. “Tourists, locals on their lunch break, people tossing frisbees, etc. A strong case can be made that there are FEWER people here than there would be but for Trump’s Tacky Craptacular.”
I scan a lot of news sites and in the process come across items that are not newsworthy in the sense of being important but are amusing and quirky. But there are some items that keep appearing in the headlines so frequently and so prominently that they signify something important but that I never click on.
One of these is the dispute involving Harry and Megan Windsor and his family. Such intrafamily conflicts can be very unpleasant and I do not wish them on anyone but I do not really need breathless commentary on that particular soap opera. The other is the impending wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. While I am pleased for any happy couple taking such a decisive step, the details of this event have zero interest for me.
But given how these things constantly appear on the newsfeeds, clearly a lot of people must be interested in them. And it testifies to the skill of news headline writers that even though I don’t follow up on the links, I still know something about these two things just from the headlines.
Did you know that at this moment the Trump administration is running what it calls the The Great American State Fair on the National Mall in Washington DC from June 25th to July 19th to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? Me neither. And so it seems did most of the country since the attendance was to, to put it mildly, sparse, consisting of a handful of people wandering around a largely empty mall. There were supposed to be 56 booths each representing a state or territory but even that was was pathetic, with some states making merely a token effort and not even manning the booths, leaving just empty rooms.
The opening event was to be a big concert featuring musical acts, but they could only line up mostly B and C listers and even they pulled out for various reasons, so Trump decided to hold a rally with himself as the speaker. But that too proved to be largely a bust.
Malcolm Ferguson describes what he saw.
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Republican speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson thought he would scare people by reading out loud what the Democratic Socialists of America stand for and it sounded great!
“I don’t know if you’ve seen this,” said Johnson.
“This is their platform, this is actually quotes from their platform that they published about a day or two ago.… They put this on paper! They’re saying the quiet things out loud.”
Johnson continued: “Abolish the Electoral College, replace the two-party system with a multi-party ‘democracy,’ expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked-choice voting in all elections,” Johnson said.
He continued, describing how the DSA would establish public ownership of large corporations, abolish ICE, and end sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.
“End all military and economic aid to Israel, prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza,” Johnson continued.
It should be noted that while the DSA does support most of these points in its official platform, there is a debate about others, like ranked-choice voting and the merits of abolishing the Senate. But all in all, Johnson appears to be trying to fearmonger by threatening the American people with a good time.
In fact it sounded so good that supporters of the DSA have turned that clip into a TikTok video.
Currently going mad viral on TikTok pic.twitter.com/1Wu1X81eqZ
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) June 30, 2026
More Republicans should go out and spread the word about the DSA policies. It would be great if Trump did so too.
Yesterday saw primary races in Colorado and there was an upset when democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeated 15-term incumbent congresswoman Diana Diana DeGette for the congressional seat. Since this is a deep-blue seat centered around Denver, this means that Kiros will almost certainly be elected in November.
There were several interesting features about this race. One is that it was more of a generational than a political switch since the long-time congresswoman DeGette is by no means a reactionary.
Kiros sought to mount a generational challenge to the 68-year-old DeGette, a member of the Congressional Progressive caucus, who supported key progressive policies like Medicare for all and abolishing ICE. But since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Democratic voters have increasingly turned to younger, more aggressive candidates willing to take on their party’s ageing establishment.
In a long awaited ruling, the court affirmed by a 6-3 margin the constitutional right of birthright citizenship, that anyone born in the US is a citizen irrespective of the status of the parents. (There are small exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats.)
The US supreme court has upheld birthright citizenship, which provides nearly all people born in the country with citizenship, ruling against a central piece of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.
“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” the ruling says.
…The supreme court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857 had ruled Black people were not US citizens, but “a separate class of persons”. But the 14th amendment which reversed the Dred Scott decision, was adopted in 1868 during the reconstruction era after the US civil war, to codify the rights of Black Americans – and confer citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”.
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