Grifters all the way down

The Trump administration is rotten through and through.

The latest example is Julie Varvaro, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security, who frequented sites that allowed her to seek ‘sugar daddies’, wealthy men who would shower her with gifts. She was appointed to such a high level post in 2025 even though she was just 29 and had graduated from college just the year before.

Now one of the men who took her up on her offer and spent a huge amount of money on her said that her demands for money and gifts were insatiable, including that he provide her with a credit card in her name so that she did not have to keep asking him for money, and he reported her to the the government and she has been suspended from her post.

I cannot do justice to the sleaziness described in the report. You have to read it for yourself and while reading it, keep reminding yourself that the person behaving this way is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security, a very well-paying job that presumably requires some serious vetting, not some penniless intern.

If you have shameless profiteering right as the top with the Trump family, it is hardly surprising that rot will be found all the way down.

Remaking the image of socialism

I am a socialist.

I have no reservations about saying so. In Sri Lanka, that would be entirely uncontroversial since socialism was pretty much accepted as the mainstream political view. But in the US, it causes people to react with surprise because of the red-baiting rhetoric that has long been dominant at all levels of discourse. Socialists have been portrayed as, if not evil, at least as not part of the spectrum of acceptable political views. This is why whenever the opportunity presents itself in discussions about politics, I say that I am a socialist, just so that people realize that we are not scary weirdos. (At least, I do not think people see me as such.)

The neoliberal consensus that has dominated US politics has had as its central aim creating hatred for government in all its forms, as a means of privatizing its functions and abolishing any restraints on the ability of business and the oligarchs to rip off ordinary people. Since socialism believes that basic services such as health care and education and other aspects of daily life that impact the general population should be run by the people for the benefit of people and not private interests, the capitalist class has targeted socialists for vilification.

Although there have been socialist movements in the working classes and unions, and prominent socialists like Eugene Debs in the US, they did not achieve governmental power. Bernie Sanders was one of the few who broke through that barrier, first being elected as mayor of the town of Burlington in Vermont, then going on to Congress, first as a representative and then as a senator. He never shied away from the label of socialist, and his strong and consistent message of advocating for the interests of ordinary people and attacking the wealthy has made the face of socialism acceptable to a significant portion of the population.
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The Starmer-Mandelson puzzle

Over in the UK, Keir Starmer finds himself in very hot water, with his job as prime minister on the line over all manner of issues that have nothing to do with actual policy.

It was always clear from the beginning that Starmer was never going to be a progressive in the mold of Jeremy Corbyn. He was your typical neoliberal politician, tinkering at the margins of policies that might benefit ordinary people while keeping intact that stranglehold that the capitalist classes have on major issues. His election campaign did not make any bold proposals but he and his party won an overwhelming parliamentary majority when voters rejected the 14 years of Conservative Party rule that included the clown car of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, and because Rishi Sunak could do little to salvage anything from that debacle.

But at least one would be justified in having the impression that the calm Starmer would be competent in his job, appointing people who would enable him to run things smoothly. And yet he has proven himself to be really poor at it, especially in his judgment of people to appoint to high posts. This has resulted in a high number of people resigning. The biggest names have been Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff.
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Good riddance to yet another Trump cabinet member

Labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is ‘leaving’ Trump’s Cabinet (i.e., she was fired) after investigations into several abuse of power allegations.

At least four Labor Department officials have already been forced from their jobs as the investigation progressed, including Chavez-DeRemer’s former chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, as well as a member of her security detail, with whom she was accused of having the affair, The New York Times reported.

The New Yorker‘s E. Tammy Kim has this summary.

Chavez-DeRemer was facing a litany of allegations of professional misconduct. The Labor Department’s inspector general had been investigating her, her advisers, and her family for months. Her chief of staff, Jihun Han—who, I reported last year, threatened employees with criminal prosecution for talking to the press—was pushed out in March; so was a security guard with whom the Secretary was allegedly having an affair. Chavez-DeRemer has been accused of drinking on the job and billing taxpayers for extravagant pleasure trips. The Times reported that she commanded a staffer to bring ‘sauvi B’ to her hotel room. She also instructed female employees to ‘pay attention’ to her father and husband. The latter was banned from the department’s headquarters after at least three women accused him of sexual harassment and inappropriate touching. (He has denied wrongdoing, and a police investigation, per the Washington Post, was closed in February.)

Giving even her husband and father ‘access’ to female employees shows a high level of arrogance, not to mention giving new meaning to the term ‘family values’. It is just plain weird.

But while those abuses are bad enough, her policies were also terrible.

What she doesn’t deny is the agenda she pushed in her brief time as Secretary: the repeal of minimum-wage guarantees for home-care workers, the rollback of mine-safety rules, the defunding of training programs for women in construction, the elimination of grants to end child and slave labor.

These people have no shame.

The dangerous allure of self-medication

Before a new drug is approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in the US, say for cancer treatment, it has to go through quite a stringent process of at least three phases of clinical trials, with each phase having a different purpose.

  • Phase I trials test if a new treatment is safe and look for the best way to give the treatment. Doctors also look for signs that cancer responds to the new treatment.
  • Phase II trials test if one type of cancer responds to the new treatment.
  • Phase III trials test if a new treatment is better than a standard treatment.
  • Phase IV trials find more information about long-term benefits and side effects.

The Phase I trial stage is where a new treatment can get shut down quickly if it shows signs of causing harm. Phase II is meant to show that the treatment does work in the way advertised. Phase III can be a difficult bar to reach because you need to show that the new treatment is better than what is already available.

Nowadays most people think of these measures as reasonable precautions to prevent people from being harmed by untested drugs and other treatments. But as Dhruv Khullar writes, the idea that the government should be able to decide what people can put into their bodies has been, at least in the US, a controversial issue, and at one time there was nothing to stop people from doing whatever they liked.
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Vance gets smacked down by Catholic bishops

Whatever one’s views are about the Catholic Church, there is no question that it takes its doctrines seriously, devoting enormous amounts of time to research and develop its theology, even if the final product sometimes has the aim of justifying its often horrendous history of violence and abuse and misogyny.

The question of when it is justifiable to use force and violence is one that transcends religion and is problematic for everyone. This is one of those areas that the church has studied quite deeply and it has arrived at the so-called ‘just war theory’, of under what circumstances going to war is defensible. The originator of this theory was St. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century, and it was developed further by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Pope Leo is a member of the Augustinian order, the first person from that order to become a pope and is currently visiting the site of Hippo, where Augustine was bishop for 34 years in order to pay homage to founder of his order.
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The shadowy world of gambling on world events

In most gambling, as in the casinos or in betting on the outcome of sporting events where there is no doubt as to what the result is, there is usually a clear way of deciding whether you won or lost the bet. But the new betting markets like Kalshi and Polymarket allow you to bet on events where the outcome may not be that clear-cut. Hence there has to be some standard associated with the bet that tells you how the outcome is to be judged.

So, for example, take the bet that the US and Iran will agree to a permanent peace deal by a specific date, where the options for dates are April 22, April 30, May 31, and June 30. How would one judge that? The rules state it as follows.
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Well, that didn’t take long

When I posted about pope Leo criticizing warmongering leaders, I added that that it was only a matter of time before Trump attacked him, calling him a ‘low IQ person’ and the like. Trump’s repeated use of this description that he clearly sees as an insult, and his boasting of passing easy cognitive tests, is a sign of how insecure he is about his own intelligence, since no one who thinks of themselves as having even ordinary intelligence ever talks about it.

But the retaliation came quicker and even harsher than I expected.

Trump delivered an extraordinary broadside against Leo on Sunday night, saying he didn’t think the U.S.-born global leader of the Catholic Church is “doing a very good job” and that “he’s a very liberal person,” while also suggesting the pontiff should “stop catering to the Radical Left.”
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“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” the president wrote in his post, adding, “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”
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The president wrote, “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States.” That was a reference to the Trump administration having ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.

“I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do,” Trump added, referencing his 2024 election victory.

He then went on to suggest that the entire conclave that elects the pope was engaged in a conspiracy against him.
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At last some good news – Orbán loses in Hungary

Despite using all the levers of power to tilt the election in his favor, MAGA favorite Victor Orbán has been kicked out as prime minister after being in power for 16 years, with his Fidesz party getting roundly defeated.

With 98.74% of the vote counted, [Péter] Magyar’s Tisza party was projected to have won 138 of the 199 seats in the country’s parliament, giving them a super-majority capable of amending the constitution and key laws, suggesting they would be able to reverse some of the changes made by Orbán and Fidesz, and potentially unlock EU funds.

Fidesz won 55 seats, while the extreme-right Mi Hazánk party won six.
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The election was being closely watched around the world as a test of the resilience of the Maga movement and the global far right, many of whom have long looked to Orbán as an inspiration and sought to follow his playbook.

Days before the election, JD Vance had travelled to Budapest, with the US vice-president saying that he had come to “help” Orbán. Donald Trump had also repeatedly endorsed Orbán, most recently on Friday when he vowed to bring US “economic might” to the country if Orbán was re-elected.
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In recent months, Orbán, 62, had also been endorsed by rightwing and far-right leaders ranging from France’s Marine Le Pen to Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

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