Merz Rubs Trump's Nose in It. Milena Wälde of Politico: “German Chancellor Friedrich Merz tore into Washington on Monday, warning the Trump administration is being played and “humiliated” by the regime in Tehran and lacks a clear strategy to end the conflict. Speaking during a school visit in his home region in western Germany, Merz said the U.S. had misjudged the Iranian regime and entered the war without a clear exit plan. 'The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,' Merz said, according to German Press Agency dpa. 'A whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership.'”
Florida. Patricia Mazzei & Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: “Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida proposed a redraw of the state’s congressional districts on Monday that could give Republicans as many as four new seats, an aggressive gambit that could also set the party up for some losses in the November midterms. The map appears to eliminate two Democratic-held districts in South Florida, a third in the Tampa area and a fourth in the Orlando area, leaving Democrats with perhaps only four of the state’s 28 congressional seats. There are currently seven Florida Democrats in Congress; an eighth, former Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, resigned last week after being charged with embezzlement. Florida, which does not hold primary elections until August, is the last state aiming to redraw congressional maps ahead of the midterms. A Supreme Court decision expected soon on a key provision of the Voting Rights Act could provide opportunities for other states to do so, but with many holding primaries in the next month or two, time is running out.” ~~~
~~~ Akhilleus heard yesterday that sub rosa people are saying that Sam Alito is writing the opinion on the Voting Rights Act case, which -- if true -- would mean that racist gerrymandering is just fine.
Virginia. Gary Robertson & David Lieb of the AP: “Virginia Supreme Court justices on Monday questioned whether the state’s Democratic-led legislature complied with constitutional requirements when it sent a congressional redistricting plan to voters, in a case that carries high stakes for the balance of power in the U.S. House. The new districts, which could net Democrats four additional seats, won narrow voter approval last week. But a Republican legal challenge contends the General Assembly violated procedural rules by placing the constitutional amendment before voters to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. If the court agrees that lawmakers broke the rules, it could invalidate the amendment and render last week’s statewide vote meaningless.”
W. A. Lawrence on Substack: "The last time Republican leadership earned its salary, Richard Nixon was president. The signatures on every law that keeps your family alive are Democratic." Lawrence has the receipts. Thanks to RAS for the link. MB: The explicit questions she asks support Democrats, but the implicit question behind all of these questions is "What have Republicans done for you?" Unfortunately, Republicans have answers to that. Their answers are false. but a lot of Republicans are good liars. So when they boast about how much Trump's 2017 Tax Cut & Jobs Act helped you out, many people will acknowledge the "reform." Some may vaguely remember their taxes went down a little bit one year. Or some may recall hearing how Reaganomics slashed taxes even more. Maybe a few will be grateful to Trump because he said -- falsely, of course -- “We now are paying the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs.” The Democrats' electoral problem remains a messaging problem. Democrats have to figure out not just how to highlight what they have done for ordinary Americans -- and Bernie Sanders will say "not enough" -- they have to find simple, memorable slogans to argue, as Lawrence does in places, that Republicans have fought the interests of the ordinary person all the way.
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The New York Times is liveblogging developments in the case of the (alleged) would-be assassin at the White House correspondents' Dinner. From the pinned item at 6:15 am ET: “A suspect detained in connection with gunfire at the hotel where ... [Donald] Trump was attending the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington over the weekend was expected to be arraigned in federal court on Monday.... The state visit by King Charles III of Britain will proceed as planned, according to a statement released by Buckingham Palace. Charles was expected to arrive in Washington on Monday.” ~~~
~~~ "Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Crown." Jack Blanchard of Politico in Politico Magazine: “It’s easy to see King Charles III, the longest-serving heir apparent in British history, as a tragic figure. The king waited 73 long years to ascend the royal throne. Now three-and-a-half years into the job he craved his whole life, Charles faces myriad challenges: poor health, advancing years, estrangement from his California-dwelling son, and the Epstein-sized scandal enveloping his younger brother. And now this. What should have been a pinnacle moment in his reign — a state visit to America with all the pomp and ceremony that Washington can muster — has morphed into something much more serious: a high-stakes diplomatic mission to save Britain’s most important alliance.”
Steven Nelson & Chris Nesi of the New York Post: “Accused White House Correspondents’ Dinner gunman Cole Allen sent a sprawling, crazed manifesto to family members about 10 minutes before Saturday’s attack, sources told The Post. The 1,052-word missive obtained by The Post Sunday morning — signed Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen — outlined his 'rules of engagement' for the shooting and stated he believed it was his righteous duty to target administration officials.” The article includes Allen's full statement. It's longish (about a thousand words), but worth reading. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: The note is almost certainly the basis for Todd Blanche's remark Sunday that Allen was "believed to have been targeting members of the Trump administration." ~~~
~~~ Amy Qin & Chelsia Marcius of the New York Times: “Federal authorities are investigating a note they said was written by the man being held in connection with the attack at the White House correspondents’ dinner that suggests he was angered by the actions of the Trump administration.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Mark Burnett, the teevee producer who produced “The Apprentice,” making Trump a household name outside New York City (and likely the reason a Trump presidency became possible), could have made a bundle if he had come up with a game show called "Lie or Stupid?" In the game, contestants had to decide whether a remark Trump made was a lie or just a reflection of how stupid he is. Cole Allen said in his statement, “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior. It is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.” Trump interpreted that to mean, that Allen “hates Christians.” Of course Allen's excuse for mass murder is not anti-Christian at all. It's the opposite: he is posing a Christian theological basis for justifying a heinous crime. Normal people generally wouldn't buy it, but it's not without precedent. For instance, many people will argue that the German High Command plot to kill Hitler was a righteous endeavor consistent with Christian beliefs; others will condemn it. I find Allen's attempt to kill people unconscionable, but it certainly doesn't demonstrate that he “hates Christians.” So is Trump's reading a lie or stupid?
Marie: A few podcasters have made something of the fact that agents evacuated JayDee before they literally dragged Trump from the dais. However, I'm guessing that this was because JayDee's security detail just got there faster than did Trump's, and not because of some conspiracy to save the veep before saving the president*. More serious: it was difficult to remove Trump; the video below shows him falling and the agents unable to get him on his feet for several seconds. I saw another video in which it appeared to me that he fell twice: the time that you can clearly see in the video and a second time just as the agents were getting him behind the curtains: ~~~
~~~ Norah O'Donnell and others of CBS News publish a portion of the transcript of a conversation between O'Donnell & Donald Trump. The interview aired on "60 Minutes" last night. Video of the extended interview is here. Here's one exchange:
O'Donnell: You see the security moving quickly, within seconds, grabbing the vice president by his coat, lifting him up, bringing him out. Then the counter assault comes in. Took ten seconds for them to flank you, Mr. President, and then 20 seconds to get you out. It looked chaotic. At one point you were down. What was happening?
Trump: Well..., I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn't making it that easy for 'em.... And by that time we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem.... And-- I was surrounded by great people.... I said, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute. Lemme see. Wait a minute.'... I turned, I started walking, and they said, 'Please go down. Please go down on the floor.' So I went down and the first lady went down also. But we were asked to go down by the-- agents as I was walking. In other words, I was -- ...I was standing up-- pretty much. I was standing up and then turned around the opposite direction and started pretty much walking out pretty tall, a little bent over because they-- you know, I'm not lookin' to be standing too tall.... I was pretty-- about halfway there when they said, 'Please go down to the floor. Please go down to the floor.'... When ...they said ...'Drop down,' that meant trouble. And obviously I'm the president, and I listened to what they said...." ~~~
Marie: This, of course, is a face-saving lie -- a Trump specialty. Whether or not Secret Service urged him to "get down" or hunch down, he fell down while the agents were trying to rush him out of the ballroom. BTW, I deleted a lot of the repetitive parts of Trump's answer, and that makes him sound more coherent than he was.... Still, it's worth reading a little more of the transcript, at least to the part where O'Donnell asks Trump about Cole Allen's statement, and Trump calls O'Donnell "a disgrace" and CBS News personnel in general (I guess), "horrible people" for reading a line from Allen's statement. He goes on to deny being a rapist or a pedophile, as Allen had claimed. Eli Stokols of Politico writes about Trump's "lashing out" at O'Donnell.
Paul Waldman in Public Notice: “... given the age of chaos in which we live, it should be no surprise that violence has become a regular feature of our political life, some of it directed at the president. Donald Trump is not the sole creator of that chaos, but he is the axis around which much of it revolves.... And while Trump surely doesn’t want anyone to try to kill him, when the attempts occur, he capitalizes on them to exacerbate the feeling that the world is spinning out of control and violence is not only inevitable, but often just what we need.... [As commonly happens now,] an event starts out to be about a serious subject like the war in Iran, but before long, he starts rambling on about the ballroom.... Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche ... sent a letter Sunday to the lawyer representing the National Trust for Historic Preservation, demanding that the group drop its lawsuit challenging the way the ballroom steamrolled over the normal process for such projects. 'Your lawsuit puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk,' Blanche wrote.” Read on. ~~~
~~~ Heather Cox Richardson on Blanche's accusatory letter (which actually was sent over the signature of Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate): "This is an odd angle to take, since, as Bluesky user Tom Shafer pointed out, the Hilton ballroom seats 2,945 people and Trump says his proposed ballroom will seat only 999. And to be clear, a judge has permitted the construction of the secure facility under the ballroom to continue despite the lawsuit; it’s just the ballroom itself that’s currently at issue. Attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is not an official requirement; this is actually the first time Trump has chosen to go as president." ~~~
~~~ Marie: C'mon, Professor. What this means is that we need a ballroom three times the size of the one proposed. (And for proportionality, let's make it three times taller, too.) ~~~
~~~ Meg Kinnard of the AP reports on Shumate's letter: “... Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate gave the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has sued to block construction, until 9 a.m. Monday to dismiss its lawsuit. If it doesn’t do so, Shumate wrote, the government would ask a court to do so 'in light of last night’s extraordinary events,' calling the Washington Hilton — the site of Saturday’s gala — 'demonstrably unsafe' for events with the president 'because its size presents extraordinary security challenges for the Secret Service.'” Kinnard does not mention that the ballroom is apparently too small to host a sit-down event the size of the Correspondents' Dinner. P.S. Time's up, National Trust.
Garrett Graff discusses the security surrounding the "Hinkley Hilton" last night. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Devlin Barrett, et al., of the New York Times: “The gunman who sprinted through a security checkpoint on Saturday night at the Washington Hilton believed that the Secret Service was poorly prepared to guard top administration officials against him, according to writing he left behind. Agents, in turn, stopped him in a matter of seconds. The episode raised fresh questions about whether the Secret Service was sufficiently prepared to protect the president in an age of rising threats and spasms of political violence. But officials insisted that the security measures had worked as intended, pointing to the fact that the suspect never made it into the hotel ballroom where ... [Donald] Trump and hundreds of journalists were gathered.... Even as some politicians and pundits contended on Sunday that security should have been tighter and that the suspect should never have gotten that close, former law enforcement officials said in interviews that the appropriate safeguards appeared to have been in place.” ~~~
~~~ You think Trump is too old and decrepit to be president*? If (alleged!) would-be mass murderer had been successful, we could have had a 92-year-old president. ~~~
~~~ Emily Davies, et al., of the Washington Post: “The Trump administration provided a lower level of security for the White House correspondents’ dinner than it has for other gatherings of high-ranking officials, even though the president and many Cabinet members were in attendance.... The concentration of high-ranking leaders in one ballroom left the nation unusually vulnerable as the would-be assassin raced past Secret Service before he was apprehended. A worst-case scenario might have resulted in passing the power of the presidency to the senior-most senator of the majority party, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who was not at the event and is third in line to the presidency behind [Vice President] Vance and [Speaker of the House Mike] Johnson.” Update: the link has been changed to a gift link.
Stuart Thomspon, et al., of the New York Times look at some of the conspiracy theories that popped up on social media immediately after the attempt on administration officials' lives. MB: I'm a fan of the left-wing ones; I just need to see some fairly convincing evidence they are true. You know, investigators could show me a recent deposit in Allen's bank account of a big check signed "Donald J. Trump." ~~~
~~~ BTW, the writers submit, "In a now-common phenomenon after such incidents, prominent influencers fill the information vacuum with speculation in a bid for attention and followers." While they do acknowledge that Trump "fan[s] the flames of conspiratorial thinking" with conspiracies of his own invention, they don't account for the fact that Trump's incessant lies are a major reason for people coming up with ridiculous theories of what might have happened in a given situation. Since you cannot rely on anything Trump or his minions say, since there is no reliable "official" explanation, it seems reasonable to try to explain events in a way that fits into your own belief system.
Erika Solomon of the New York Times: “With plans for U.S.-Iran peace talks derailed, at least for now, Tehran
and Washington are sinking into an awkward limbo of neither peace, nor
war, each hoping to outlast the other in a standoff with drastic stakes for the global economy.... Neither side is willing to give ground that could allow talks to move forward. Mr. Trump on Saturday called off sending [negotiators to Pakistan] for a second round of truce talks. He
said the Iranians would waste the negotiators’ time. Iran’s
top officials maintain they will not meet for direct negotiations until
Mr. Trump lifts a U.S. naval blockade he imposed on Iranian ports after
agreeing to the cease-fire.... But Iran’s economy is already facing a severe crisis. Reports of layoffs
are spreading across the country, which is grappling with shortages in
production of petrochemicals and medicine as a result of the war.”
Barak Ravid of Axios: "Iran gave the U.S. a new proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war, with nuclear negotiations postponed for a later stage, according to a U.S. official and two sources with knowledge. The diplomacy is in a stalemate, and the Iranian leadership is divided about what nuclear concessions should be on the table. The Iranian proposal would bypass that issue en route to a faster deal. But lifting the blockade and ending the war would remove President Trump's leverage in any future talks to remove Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium and convince Tehran to suspend enrichment — two primary war objectives for Trump."
Patricia Cohen & Ben Casselman of the New York Times: “The fallout from two months of war in Iran is shuttering textile mills in India and Bangladesh, grounding airplanes in Ireland, Poland and Germany, and prompting energy rationing in Vietnam, South Korea and Thailand. The only country, it seems, that has been relatively spared from the economic chaos is the one that started the war: the United States. While warning signs of a recession are flashing across countries in Asia and Europe, the United States is likely to outperform most of the world’s advanced economies. Growth is steady and unemployment low.... The worst economic pain will be felt in poor countries, where consumers cannot afford higher energy prices, and governments cannot afford to provide aid to offset the costs.... Already, many countries in Asia are grappling with fuel shortages, which will grow only worse as the war drags on, said Raghuram Rajan, an economist at the University of Chicago and a former governor of the Bank of India.”
There's a New Leader of the Free World, and His Name Is Volodymyr. David French of the New York Times: “I don’t think Americans fully appreciate the extraordinary cost of Trump’s bluster and blunders.... One of Trump’s most likely heirs, JD Vance, is arguably even more hostile to the western alliance and Ukraine than Trump is. After all, Vance recently said that one of the things he’s 'proudest' of is the administration’s decision to stop buying weapons for Ukraine.... You cannot threaten the free world and lead it at the same time. No nation can match American might, but for the first time in my adult life, the moral and strategic heart of the defense of liberal democracy doesn’t beat in Washington.... It’s in Kyiv, where a courageous leader and a courageous people have picked up the torch America has dropped.”
More Murder on the High Seas. Jin Yu Young of the New York Times: “The U.S. military said it attacked another boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Sunday, killing three people and raising the death toll to at least 185 in the campaign against people the Trump administration accuses of smuggling drugs at sea. The strike was ordered by Gen. Francis L. Donovan of the Marine Corps, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, the command said on social media. An accompanying video showed a boat bursting into flames as it moved through open water. The command said that three male 'narco-terrorists' were killed and that the vessel had been traveling along “known narco-trafficking routes.” The command did not provide evidence for those claims.... t was the 54th U.S. military strike on a boat in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific since September.... A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called the killings illegal, saying the military is not allowed to deliberately target civilians who pose no imminent threat of violence.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: IMO, Trump's excuse for mass murder is thinner than Cole Allen's (and both lack any merit at all). Trump's “White House has said the killings are lawful, arguing that [Mr.] Trump has 'determined' that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels and that crews of drug-running boats are 'combatants.'”
Marie: If you are wondering how companies that employ Trump's son just happen to win big Pentagon contracts, this Washington Post article by Elizabeth Dwoskin & Ian Duncan outlines the formal structure and top civilian appointees -- a "cohort of private-sector leaders" -- who are overseeing the direction and process of procurement.
Michael Birnbaum & Steve Hendrix of the Washington Post: “... King Charles III was set Monday to embark on a rare state visit that promised to pit the president’s admiration for British royalty against his fury at the British government. The long-planned encounter had been intended to showcase close Anglo-American relations 250 years after the Declaration of Independence. Instead, it comes in the middle of one of the sharpest fights between Washington and London in generations, as Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer tussle over the president’s war on Iran and whether either side still wants to hold on to the close cooperation of the past.... British officials hope their monarch can paper over the tensions between Washington and London with some pomp, using his royal mystique to remind Trump of the advantages of holding close to the kingdom, his mother’s birthplace.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: If only we had some sort of garish ballroom to host a dinner like those hosted by British royalty in St. George's Hall at Windsor Castle. ~~~
~~~ Here's another example of how the Trump administration is purposely employing incompetent MAGA judges to deprive residents of their rights. ~~~
~~~ Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post: “A divorce lawyer who has vowed to 'fight exclusively for the rights of men.' A Minnesota attorney who championed Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration’s raids in Minneapolis. And a judge who was once lambasted by an appeals court for denying humanitarian protection to a Serbian man because he didn’t look 'overtly gay.' All three are among the 'deportation judges' recently hired as part of ... Donald Trump’s quest to clear a massive case backlog and fulfill his goal of deporting 1 million immigrants each year. The hiring spree follows the Justice Department’s firings of more than 100 immigration judges since Trump took office, an unprecedented purge, and a similar number have retired or resigned. More than 140 new judges have been appointed so far to replace them, many of whom have no stated experience practicing immigration law and, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges, are receiving less training than previously offered. Former judges who were fired say they fear Trump is forcing out judges who rule against the government and replacing them with loyalists and others being pressured to help carry out a single goal: Deport immigrants.” MB: No kidding.
DHS Does Whatever It Wants. Pooja Salhotra of the New York Times: “An Egyptian family that was released from an immigration detention center in Texas last week was again taken into custody in Denver on Saturday morning — before being released later that day — in what the family’s lawyer argued was an extraordinary violation of judicial orders. Hayam El Gamal and her five children were detained in June after Ms. El Gamal’s husband was charged in a firebombing attack in Boulder, Colo. The family, who had first come to the United States from Egypt on tourist visas in 2022, fought for their release, arguing that they knew nothing about the husband’s plans and were being held in violation of their constitutional rights. On Thursday, a federal judge ordered that Ms. El Gamal and her five children be released from the Dilley Immigration Processing Center ... as they await a decision on their asylum case. Two days later, when they appeared for a check-in on Saturday morning, Ms. El Gamal and her five children were taken into custody in Denver and flown to Detroit.... Hours later, the family flew back to Denver, but their fate in the country was uncertain.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Mrs. El Gamal also was divorced from her husband, the alleged criminal. Nevertheless, DHS has detained the family since last June, and a DHS spokesperson made up an excuse for defying the judge's order: “Despite receiving full due process, this activist judge appointed by Bill Clinton is releasing this terrorist’s family onto American streets again.” What the spokesperson Lauren Bis is implying is that obeying orders by judges appointed by Democrats is optional. I wonder if that logic applies to Supreme Court justices, too. So if a ruling comes down 5-4 against Trump, can Trump ignore it by eliminating the votes of justices appointed by Obama & Biden, flipping the opinion to favor Trump 4-2? Yeah, sure.
Andrew Ackerman of the Washington Post: “Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) said Sunday he was satisfied that the Justice Department ended its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, clearing the way for Republicans to advance ... Donald Trump’s pick to lead the central bank, Kevin Warsh. 'I am prepared to move on with the confirmation of Mr. Warsh,' Tillis said on NBC’s 'Meet the Press.' Tillis had previously criticized the probe as an effort to pressure Powell to resign early and to erode the Fed’s ability to set interest rates free from White House interference. On Sunday, Tillis said he had assurances from officials that the case would be reopened only if the Fed’s internal watchdog found evidence of criminal wrongdoing.” An NBC News report is here. (Also linked yesterday.) The New York Times story is here. MB: I guess we'll see if Trump “officials” are as good as their word.
Julie Weil of the Washington Post: “Utility companies shut off Americans’ power 13.4 million times and gas 1.7 million times in 2024, a federal report said last week — a newly collected number that consumer advocates say signals a surprisingly high rate of extreme financial distress among U.S. households.... Until Congress passed a 2023 measure to collect the data, there was no way of knowing how often power companies were disconnecting customers, leaving households without heat, light or refrigeration.... The new data comes [come!] just after the Trump administration proposed, for a sixth time, eliminating the $4 billion LIHEAP program that helps low-income Americans pay for electricity and natural gas.... Congress has previously refused to cut the popular program. The report found that disconnections were most frequent in the South. Oklahoma had the highest rate....”
Marie: Republicans, especially those of the White Christian nationalist persuasion, want native-born White Americans to have more babies. Yet Republicans' pro-billionaire, anti-consumer policies are making that impractical, irresponsible or impossible for many young people. ~~~
~~~ The Cost of Living Is Too Damned High. Kailyn Rhone of the New York Times: “Across the country, many households are struggling to pay for health care, education and housing. Child care costs in most states have risen more than twice as fast as overall prices, according to the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank. Home prices, adjusted for inflation, have surged about 60 percent over the past decade. Grocery prices have climbed more than 25 percent in the past five years. In turn, many couples who once imagined larger families are scaling back or deciding to remain child free. About three in five Gen Zers and millennials said financial concerns influenced their choice not to have any or more children at this time, or caused them to be unsure about it, according to new data from Credit Karma and the Harris Poll.... While many people in their teens and 20s still reported wanting two children, falling short of that goal suggested that external factors were making parenthood more difficult to attain.... [Birthrate] has been in a slump and is at a record low....”
Apocalypse Now. Lauren Jackson of the New York Times: “About 40 percent of American adults said in a 2022 poll that we are living in the 'end times.'... It’s an idea that’s now bouncing around, too, at the highest levels of the U.S. government. The Trump administration has framed its campaign in Iran as a biblically-prophesied holy war. Paula White-Cain, the head of the White House Faith Office, asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whether the conflict was a sign of the 'End of Days.'” Jackson interviews journalist Chris Jennings, who wrote a book that “seeks to explain the emergence of apocalyptic rhetoric in the United States, and how it has shaped modern conspiracies like QAnon.”
Nicole Sperling of the New York Times: “If you needed more proof that video podcasts are the new talk show, here it is: Oprah Winfrey is coming to Amazon. The tech giant said on Monday that it had reached a multiyear licensing deal with Ms. Winfrey. The former doyenne of daytime talk will produce twice-a-week video podcasts beginning this summer, create specials focused on her Favorite Things and Book Club labels, and repurpose the 25-season library from The Oprah Winfrey Show. The deal is similar in scope to the $100 million agreement Amazon reached in 2024 for Jason and Travis Kelce’s podcast 'New Heights,' and signifies the company’s growing ambitions in video podcasts.”
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California. Laurel Rosenhall of the New York Times: “The labor union backing a proposal to place a new tax on California billionaires says it has collected enough signatures to place the measure on the state’s November ballot.... If approved to go on the ballot, the proposal will kick off an expensive election fight that will tap into voter anxieties about economic inequality as well as concerns from business leaders that California could lose its luster as a cradle of technological innovation. Gov. Gavin Newsom and numerous Silicon Valley executives, have vowed to fight the proposal, while Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent of Vermont, has endorsed it. The measure calls for placing a one-time 5 percent tax on the assets of California residents with at least $1.1 billion, and would dedicate most of the revenue to health care. The union leading the campaign, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, argues that the tax is necessary to make up for cuts to Medicaid and other federal health insurance programs by the Trump administration last year.”
 |
| The beekeeper & a deputy wrestle over a hive. A short time later, "two sheriff’s deputies tackled her, forcing her to the ground to arrest her, as bees swarmed the front yard." ~~~ |
~~~ Massachusetts. Assault & Battery with Intent to Cause Bee Stings. Adeel Hassan of the New York Times: A jury found a Massachusetts woman guilty of four misdemeanors for releasing hives-full of bees when sheriff's deputies came to serve an eviction notice on a friend of hers. The bees stung the deputies, and the woman -- a beekeeper -- received a six-month jail sentence, most of which her court-appointed lawyer says she has already served.
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Israel. Anyone But Bibi. Isabel Kershner of the New York Times: “The centrist leader of Israel’s opposition, Yair Lapid, and a right-wing former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, announced on Sunday that they would combine forces in elections later this year. The merger is an apparent bid to reconstitute a partnership that temporarily unseated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu five years ago. Mr. Bennett and Mr. Lapid said their two parties, Bennett 2026 and Yesh Atid, would unite into a party to be called Yachad, Hebrew for 'together,' under Mr. Bennett’s leadership. They described the move as 'the first step in the process of uniting and repairing the state of Israel.'”
Everywhere But Here. Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: “Ministers from nearly 60 countries are gathering this week in the Colombian city of Santa Marta for what is being called the first global conference on phasing out fossil fuels. The United States was not invited. The summit is taking place against the backdrop of the United States and Israel’s war with Iran, which has set off a global energy crisis. Shortages and price spikes have led governments to ration fuel, shorten workweeks and limit travel. For some countries, the volatility of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas is transported, has prompted a reconsideration of their reliance on imported fossil fuels. But while for some that could mean more investment in renewable energy, for others it could result in a rush for more domestic energy reserves, like coal. 'The convergence obviously comes at a complicated time because the world is the in middle of the biggest energy crisis in history,' said Carlos Pascual, senior vice president and head of international affairs at S&P Global, a research firm.”
