A few gifts from His Nibs (all part of our continuing series, "Everything Trump Does Is Wrong"):
(1) Lydia DePillis of the New York Times: “Consumer prices in the United States rose at the fastest rate since May 2023 last month, as sharp increases in energy costs caused by war in the Middle East made life more expensive for American consumers. The Consumer Price Index rose 3.8 percent in April from a year earlier, the Labor Department reported on Tuesday, up from a 2.4 percent annual increase before the conflict started in February and a 3.3 percent increase in March. The increase was driven largely by energy prices, up 3.8 percent just since the previous month and nearly 18 percent from a year earlier.”
(2) Peter Eavis of the New York Times: “Just over a year ago, Mr. Trump imposed high tariffs on steel to try to stifle imports of the metal and bolster domestic production. But imports of the kind of steel used to make [ordinary 'tin'] cans surged in 2025, and American can makers say they will remain heavily dependent on foreign supplies — now made more expensive by the tariffs — for a long time.... Unlike some of Mr. Trump’s other tariffs, which have been overturned by courts, the steel levies have strong legal standing, according to scholars, which means they are unlikely to go away anytime soon. They were imposed under a national security provision called Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act — and, at 50 percent, are higher than many of Mr. Trump’s other import taxes. A can makes up about a third of the wholesale price of canned fruits or vegetables. And as Mr. Trump’s tariffs pushed up the cost of tin plate, canned food prices have risen, burdening households that rely on [canned] staples....”
(3) New York Times: “Oil prices edged higher and global stock markets cooled on Tuesday after the Consumer Price Index showed that U.S. inflation in April rose at the fastest rate since May 2023, as sharp increases in energy costs caused by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran made life more expensive for consumers.”
Katie Mettler & Jeremy Roebuck of the Washington Post: “Federal prosecutors announced criminal charges Tuesday against a Singapore-based global shipping company and subsidiaries, accusing them of safety violations that led to the massive container ship crash that caused the 2024 collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. An indictment filed in federal court in Baltimore accused entities of Synergy Marine Group of failing to maintain proper systems aboard its ship, the Dali, and others in its fleet. Those lapses left the Dali unable to recover from a blackout of its systems and unable to veer away as it crashed into the bridge in the early hours of March 26, 2024. The disaster left six men dead, prompted the closure of one of the East Coast’s busiest ports for months and dealt more than $5 billion of economic loss to Baltimore and Maryland.
“The indictment, returned under seal last month, also alleges the company and the Dali’s technical supervisor, Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair, falsified safety inspection records and lied to investigators with the FBI and National Transportation Safety Board after the crash. The companies and Nair face charges including counts of conspiracy; misconduct or neglect of ship officers resulting in death; violations of the Clean Water Act and Ports and Waterways Safety Act; and obstruction of an agency proceeding.”
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From the pinned item on the New York Times liveblog for Monday of developments in the Iran war: Donald “Trump said on Monday that the cease-fire in Iran was on 'life support.'... The Iranian offer is a 'piece of garbage,' Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, adding that Tehran was in the grip of 'lunatics.'” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ One of the many discouraging aspects of the war is that you can't believe either side. In fact, it's best to consider everything Trump says to be a fabrication. For instance ~~~
~~~ Alexander Smith of NBC News: “Trump said [Monday] he thought a diplomatic solution was still very possible' because the Iranian leaders 'change their mind. They’re very dishonorable people.' He accused the Iranian leaders of agreeing to hand over their enriched uranium — a major sticking point between the two sides — before going back on this offer. 'Two days ago, they said, “You’re going to have to take it,’” he told reporters in the Oval Office, saying that the Iranians told him that only the U.S. and China had the capabilities to do so. 'But they changed their mind because they didn’t put it in the paper' document.” MB: This is pure fantasy. The Iranians did not change their minds or agree to give their enriched uranium to the U.S. or China. The party who has changed his mind is Trump. He's a complete nitwit. (Also linked yesterday.)\
~~~ Marie: I'm serious when I suggest that every respectable news outlet top every story in which there's a "Trump sez" element with a plainly-worded disclaimer that Trump usually lies so any remarks recorded should be regarded as unreliable.
Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times: Donald “Trump revealed a new plan on Monday to bring down gas prices that have soared since he chose to start a war with Iran: He wants to suspend federal gas taxes. 'I think it’s a great idea,' Mr. Trump said in a phone call with a reporter from CBS News on Monday morning. 'Yup, we’re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in.' A short while later, he mused more about the plan while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. He did not mention that such a move would require congressional approval.... Even if Mr. Trump succeeded in pausing federal gas taxes, prices might come down only a smidgen: federal taxes are a little over 18 cents a gallon for gasoline and about 24 cents a gallon for diesel. Prices are up about 50 percent since the war began.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: The lede in this story is sanewashing par excellence. Trump did not "reveal a plan." As usual, he's "governing" from the seat of his pants. I can't tell for sure, but it appears the reporter asked him if he favored a gas tax suspension, and he said it's a great idea. A plan, for McCreesh's information, is not "an off-the-cuff remark." In this case, a plan would be discussing the matter with appropriate Cabinet members & staff, calling in top Congressional leadership for more consultation, and proposing a bill. McCreesh's story makes it pretty obvious Trump's not-a-plan was news to the White House. McCreesh writes, "Asked when or even if the administration planned to approach lawmakers on Capitol Hill about suspending the tax, a representative for the White House said simply: 'We refer you to the president’s comments from earlier today.'" Politico's story here makes it obvious that Trump's not-a-plan also was news to Congress. ~~~
~~~ AND here's another rub to the not-a-plan: ~~~
~~~ Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post: “Suspending the gas tax for five months would cost the [Highway Trust F]und about $17 billion, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. Passing the savings on to drivers, rather than oil companies, would be difficult to enforce, according to the Congressional Research Service. The federal tax is collected at the terminal or refinery, not at the pump. The government would have to estimate what prices would have been without the tax suspension, but gas prices depend on many other factors. Savings would also vary dramatically by region, driving habits and vehicle type.” MB: IOW, oil & gas companies would not drop product prices but would take the money and run.
More Insane Dreams of Empire. Alex Woodward of the Independent: “... Donald Trump has once again suggested that his administration will try to annex Venezuela, telling Fox News that he is seriously considering a move to make the South American nation the 51st U.S. state. The president has repeatedly threatened to annex several sovereign nations and territories or use military force to control them, including Canada, Greenland, Panama and Cuba. But his latest comments follow a lethal military operation to arrest Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, while working alongside oil companies to seize oil infrastructure. Trump is now 'seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the 51st state,' according to John Roberts, co-anchor of America Reports on Fox News, who spoke to the president Monday.” ~~~
~~~ Molly Quell & Regina Cano of the AP: “Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez told journalists Monday that her country had no plans to become the 51st U.S. state after ... Donald Trump said he was 'seriously considering' the move. 'We will continue to defend our integrity, our sovereignty, our independence, our history,' said Rodríguez.... Venezuela is 'not a colony, but a free country,' she added.” MB: Uh, not exactly free.
Donald Trump continues to astound. He and his administration have spent billions of dollars terrorizing, rounding up, abusing, incarcerating and deporting tens of thousands of ordinary people. During the course of this massive anti-immigrant project, his goons have killed some people, including native-born Americans. All this is necessary because, he says, "they're criminals, they're rapists," "they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs," and so forth. But it turns out there are some foreign-born (alleged!) criminals Donald welcomes. ~~~
~~~ Here's One. Bartosz Brzeziński & Jordyn Dahl of Politico: “Fugitive former Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobrois now in the United States courtesy of a visa from ... Donald Trump after fleeing Hungary. Ziobro had been in Hungary since 2025 after former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán granted the disgraced minister asylum. New Hungarian leader Péter Magyar, however, promised to launch extradition proceedings against Ziobro upon taking office. Ziobro is wanted in Poland over the alleged misuse of public funds and the deployment of Pegasus spyware against political opponents. He has consistently denied the charges, calling the investigation a political vendetta from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.... According to Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, Trump personally approved the visa over the objections of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.S. ambassador in Warsaw, Tom Rose.” Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.)
He Really Doesn't Know What He's Doing. Thomas Frank of Politico: “... Donald Trump on Monday nominated Cameron Hamilton to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a year after he fired him as acting administrator of the agency. Hamilton would be the first permanent FEMA administrator in the current Trump administration if he’s confirmed by the Senate. The former Navy SEAL was fired after he clashed with then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who gave him a lie-detector test as she searched for people inside the agency who she believed had spoken with news reporters. The day before his dismissal on May 8, 2025, Hamilton seemed to contradict the president when he told a House subcommittee that FEMA should not be eliminated, as Trump had threatened to do. Hamilton will face Senate confirmation and potential questions about whether he has sufficient experience in emergency management to meet statutory qualifications.”
VOA's Win Is Jamaica's Loss. Minho Kim of the New York Times: Donald “Trump on Monday appointed Kari Lake, a fierce ally of the president who had led the administration’s efforts to shutter Voice of America and other federally funded news groups, as the next ambassador to Jamaica.... In March, a federal judge voided Ms. Lake’s actions as the global media agency chief, ruling that she was appointed illegally as the interim leader. That ruling effectively nullified nearly all of the actions the Trump administration took to dismantle V.O.A., the news group that was founded in 1942 to combat Nazi propaganda and broadcast to more than 360 million people every week in 49 languages until early 2025.”
Impeach Doug Burgum. Gary Fields & Alex Brandon of the AP: “Workers began preliminary surveys and testing Monday of the proposed site of a Triumphal Arch sought by ... Donald Trump, the latest step in plans for the contentious project in the nation’s capital. Workers were seen inspecting the site of the proposed arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery with tools and equipment. Part of the site was fenced off and pink flags typically used as survey markings were planted in the grass. The work on the site was announced in a court filing Thursday in a federal lawsuit challenging the proposed arch. It consists of 'surveys and geotechnical testing which are being used to generate information that will assist Defendant National Park Service (NPS) in completing procedural prerequisites' that are part of the decision-making process.”
Impeach Doug Burgum, Ctd. David Fahrenthold & Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: Donald “Trump said that his handpicked contractor would charge only $1.8 million to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and paint it blue. The actual cost is now more than seven times that, after the Interior Department nearly doubled the size of the contract late last week, federal records show. On Friday, the Interior Department added $6.2 million to the contract’s previous cost, saying it now planned to pay $13.1 million to a Virginia firm called Atlantic Industrial Coatings. [Mr.] Trump said he chose that company to repair the landmark because the firm had worked on the swimming pools at his golf club in Sterling, Va. The government awarded that firm a no-bid contract last month, bypassing the requirement to seek competing offers by saying that the situation was so urgent that any delay would cause 'serious injury' to the government. The government has not publicly said what that injury would have been....
“On Monday, a nonprofit dedicated to landscape architecture filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington seeking to halt the paint job. The Cultural Landscape Foundation said that the Trump administration had ignored a law requiring advance scrutiny of projects that alter historic landmarks.” ~~~
~~~ David Gilmour of Mediaite: “... Donald Trump tore into The New York Times in a wild 400-word overnight rant after the newspaper reported the real cost of his Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool makeover was far higher than he first claimed.... [Trump insisted] The Times was 'trying to justify [Barack] Obama and [Joe] Biden’s expensively botched attempt at fixing the long broken, unsightly, and unsanitary' pool.... Trump continued to cast himself as the lone figure capable of rescuing the project from bureaucratic incompetence: 'Now, along comes “TRUMP,” who is asked by many patriots if I can fix it. The answer is a resounding, YES, and for a “tiny” fraction of the cost!'... Trump then rounded on one of the Times journalists who wrote the report, David Fahrenthold, branding him a 'lowlife' who, he said, 'so inaccurately and maliciously' characterized the work as a 'paint job.'”
~~~ Not only that, Ben Meiselas of Meidas Touch reports that Trump posted 50 times last night deriding President Obama, calling him a traitor, saying Obama spied on him & claiming Obama stole $100MM from ObamaCare. Trump is just nuts.
Evan Hurst of Wonkette reports on how Senator/Captain Mark Kelly (D-Az.) got the better of Drunk Pete Hegseth for a second time. Kelly's put-down & STFU tweet is kind of epic. Of course, it's not a fair fight. Kelly is an intelligent, experienced leader. Hegseth is a stupid loser.
Devlin Barrett of the New York Times: “The Wall Street Journal said on Monday that it had received subpoenas for the records of its reporters, an exceedingly rare move by federal prosecutors that prompted concerns the Trump administration is impinging on press freedom as it expands its efforts to investigate leaks of government secrets. The subpoenas, dated March 4, were issued in connection with a Feb. 23 article describing Pentagon officials’ warnings to the president about the risks of a military campaign against Iran, The Journal reported. The article appeared days before President Trump began his war against Iran. The subpoenas suggest the Trump administration’s pursuit of leaks and critical reporting could be entering a more aggressive phase, guided by the president’s fury over news coverage about internal deliberations regarding military strikes. While leak investigations into disclosures of classified information are common, subpoenas aimed at journalists are not, and First Amendment advocates say such demands represent dangerous attempts to chill and limit press freedom.”
Erica Orden of Politico: “A committee of New York state’s appellate court system found last month that John Sarcone, the embattled federal prosecutor leading the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York, committed professional misconduct, according to a Washington-based watchdog organization. The nature of the misconduct and of the sanctions were unclear.... Despite being disqualified as U.S. attorney, Sarcone has continued to lead the office from its second-in-command post as first assistant U.S. attorney.” Read the article for a hint at what the committee probably found to be misconduct.
Emmanuel Martinez, et al., of the Washington Post: “The Trump administration’s vast deportation effort has led to the removal of an unusually high number of undocumented men who have lived and worked in the United States for years..., upending the livelihoods and routines of scores of families. Men account for nine out of every 10 people who have been deported by federal immigration officers since ... Donald Trump began his second term last year. That ratio is not new: Women have historically represented a smaller share of those in detention.... But the characteristics of the men being taken into custody have changed, and the number of detainees has skyrocketed.... Most of those deported in the decade before Trump took office again had been convicted of a crime. Now ... nearly two-thirds of the men removed since the start of the second Trump administration do not have criminal convictions.... With the large number of men being removed, in many cases, women have been left to provide for their families on their own.” Read on. The link is a gift link.
Greg Rosalsky of Planet Money/NPR: Economist Chloe "East and a co-author, Elizabeth Cox, recently released a new working paper, 'Labor Market Impacts of ICE Activity in Trump 2.0,' which analyzes how Trump's beefed up immigration enforcement affected employment, both for immigrants and workers born in the United States. So, did the immigration crackdown help the job prospects of U.S.-born workers? East says no.... In fact, she and her co-author find evidence that, if anything, the clampdown has hurt the employment prospects of U.S.-born workers, particularly working-class men who work in industries that are heavily reliant on undocumented workers, like construction. It's more evidence that the labor market isn't really a zero-sum contest, where immigrants and native workers battle over a fixed number of jobs in a kind of labor market Hunger Games.... Actually, immigration helps grow core industries and the overall economy, which creates jobs and has other benefits for native workers."
Kyle Cheney of Politico: “An Ohio-based federal appeals court Monday became the latest to reject ICE’s effort to detain the vast majority of people it is seeking to deport without offering a chance for bond — even if they’ve lived in the U.S. for decades without incident. A divided panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s mass detention policy — the latest victory for immigrant advocates on a likely march to the Supreme Court. The ruling follows similar victories in the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit and the New York-based 2nd Circuit. Two appeals courts, the 5th Circuit and the 8th Circuit, have sided with the Trump administration. Another, the 7th Circuit, deadlocked on the issue.”
Your Tax Dollars Wasted on a Secret Crackpot RFKJ Project. Christian Jewett & Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said little publicly about vaccines in recent months, at the behest of a White House worried that his unpopular stance will hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections. But he has not abandoned his quest for evidence that they are unsafe. Working behind the scenes, Mr. Kennedy is spearheading an intense push, across health agencies under his purview, for government scientists and federal data contractors to examine his long-held theory that vaccines are helping to fuel an epidemic of chronic disease.... The ... wide-ranging inquiry ... resurrects research into a number of ideas Mr. Kennedy has espoused, including whether vaccines are linked to autism and whether thimerosal, a preservative that has largely been removed from vaccines in the United States but remains in some flu shots, is dangerous. The effort is being led by Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and vaccine safety expert who rose in prominence during the pandemic as a critic of Covid restrictions and vaccine mandates, and is now the health department’s chief science and data officer.” (Also linked yesterday.)
The Collaborators. Because of Course They Did. Carl Hulse of the New York Times: “Senate Republicans on Monday defended their plan to include $1 billion for security funding for ... [Donald] Trump’s ballroom project as they prepared to take up a politically charged budget bill that faces stiff opposition from Democrats. Returning to the Capitol for the first time since the components of the spending plan were made public, top Republicans said the security money was necessary given the threats to the president, and claimed that none of it would be used for the ballroom itself. The president has said private donations will pay for the ballroom, which he has estimated to cost $400 million, though some Republicans want tax dollars to go to it as well.”
Alabama. Because of Course They Did. Abbie VanSickle & Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: “The Supreme Court on Monday cleared a path for Alabama to use a new voting map for the midterm elections, a victory for Republicans and another sign of the significance of the court’s recent decision narrowing the Voting Rights Act. The justices appeared to splinter along ideological lines in the decision, with the court’s three liberals joined in dissent. The one-paragraph order involved a pending petition before the court by Alabama lawmakers who challenged the state’s current congressional map, which includes two majority-Black districts that both elected Democrats to Congress in 2024. The Supreme Court’s decision will send the case back to a lower court judge to reconsider the legality of the Alabama map in light of the court’s recent decision dealing a blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark civil rights-era law. It raised the bar for bringing legal challenges to voting maps, like one that previously resulted in the current Alabama map.” The AP report is here. ~~~
~~~ Jen Rice of Democracy Docket: "The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has allowed Alabama to select a different map for this year’s congressional elections in a stunning, last-minute move to interfere with another state primary election that has already begun. The order means that Alabama will discard its court-ordered congressional map for the 2026 primary elections and use a 2023 map that courts previously struck down as a violation under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act instead....[Following the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision to gut Section 2,] Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) responded by swiftly calling a special session in an attempt to change the maps for congressional and state senate districts — even though voters had already begun casting absentee ballots in the May 19 primary election."
Steve Vladeck critiques the Supremely-created redistricting chaos in a post titled, "We're all trying to find the guy who did this." As Vladeck writes, "the guy in the hot dog costume is Chief Justice Roberts." The post kinds of skips around from topic to topic, and I found I could skip around with it. (Also linked yesterday.)
Brandi Buchman of the Huffington Post: “Secret Handshake, the group responsible for erecting statues around Washington, D.C., memorializing the friendship between ... Donald Trump and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has struck again, and this time its focus is the administration’s war with Iran. Three 'fully functional' arcade games were installed Monday at the District of Columbia War Memorial. According to the group, the game features 'furious tweet battles against Iranian schoolgirls, low-flow shower heads, and other threats to American freedom like DEI and The Pope, and an opportunity to collect several Trump style peace trophies.'... The group also made the game available online.” Here's a screenshot from one of the games:
Paul Krugman: “Elon Musk is no Andrew Carnegie. America used to be a middle-class society. But income and wealth disparities began rising rapidly during the Reagan years, and by the late 80s many observers began drawing parallels between the new era of inequality and the Gilded Age. At this point, however, it’s clear that we are not experiencing a mere replay of the reign of the robber barons. We are living through something much worse. The tech bros make the 'malefactors of great wealth' called out by Theodore Roosevelt look benign by comparison.... The concentration of wealth at the top is continuing to soar.... The big political question going forward is whether there will be a significant backlash against the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small number of mean-spirited men. I believe that there will be such a backlash, indeed that it is already starting, and that there is a political opening for some genuine populism if politicians have the courage to take a stand.” (Also linked yesterday.)
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California. Pooja Salhotra of the New York Times: “Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, Calif., resigned on Monday after federal prosecutors announced they had charged her with acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government. She will plead guilty to the charge, according to a plea deal unsealed the same day.... The court document outlined Ms. Wang’s efforts, beginning in late 2020 and continuing until at least the end of 2022, to operate a purported news website called U.S. News Center that circulated pro-China content at the direction of Chinese government officials. Ms. Wang covertly worked with a man in Southern California named Mike Sun, a Chinese national, to disseminate the information. Mr. Sun, who is also known as Yaoning Sun, was sentenced in February to four years in prison for his role in the operation. He was previously engaged to Ms. Wang and had worked on her election campaign as the treasurer, according to public records.” An ABC News story is here.
Texas. Edgar Sandoval of the New York Times: Crosswalks painted the colors of “rainbows began disappearing this year [in San Antonio] after Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Transportation to remove the colorful crosswalks and similar markings. In a statement last year, he cited safety issues and opposition to political messaging as reasons. After initial resistance from city officials, San Antonio decided that the risk of losing an estimated $80 million in funding from the state was not worth retaining the markings.... It was Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, a gay City Council member, who helped devise a workaround: paint rainbows on sidewalks instead, in the Pride Cultural Heritage District that attracts many L.G.B.T.Q. people. Sidewalks are not under the jurisdiction of the state. In March, those newly colorful sidewalks replaced the crosswalks that had been fixtures of the neighborhood since 2018.”
Virginia. This Is a Mistake. Abbie VanSickle & Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: “Democratic leaders in Virginia asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to use a congressional map drawn by Democrats and approved by voters in a referendum in April. In an emergency application, the state’s attorney general and other officials urged the justices to overturn a decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the redistricting process had violated the state’s Constitution, a major setback for Democrats in a fierce battle over which party will control the U.S. House. In their filing on Monday, Virginia state officials claimed that the ruling by the state’s Supreme Court had amounted to 'judicial defiance' of the will of the voters to create a new district map. The officials asserted that the state court was 'deeply mistaken' on 'critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the nation.'” ~~~
~~~ Although Donald Trump posted a fake racist photo of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a Mexican sombrero, it turns out he's Black! ~~~
~~~ Andrew Solender of Axios: "Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) is facing calls to resign from Democratic colleagues who say she expressed agreement with a radio host's remark that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) should get his 'cotton-picking hands off of Virginia.'... Kiggans, who denied agreeing with or condoning the language, is facing one of the most hotly contested reelection battles in the country. 'First they gutted the Voting Rights Act. Now they are using brazenly racist language to attack Black leaders,' House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said in a post on X, calling for Kiggans to 'immediately apologize and resign.'"
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Russia/Ukraine, et al. Constant Méheut of the New York Times: A Russian multi-drone attack in mid-April on a large Cargill grain terminal in southern Ukraine “was one of the latest in a series of Russian strikes on major American companies since last summer, including facilities tied to Coca-Cola, Boeing, the snacks maker Mondelez and the tobacco giant Philip Morris.... The companies have quietly raised concerns with U.S. officials about what they see as a deliberate and escalating campaign against American business interests in Ukraine. The White House, despite its pledge to defend U.S. commercial interests abroad, has been muted in its response. The Trump administration has not condemned any of the attacks that Ukraine has made public this year. After U.S. diplomats in Kyiv and Ukrainian business figures and officials warned about the attacks, the administration offered a response that amounted to little more than an acknowledgment of the concerns....” MB: So Trump either told staff to faggedaboudit or White House personnel are so afraid of angering Trump by criticizing Russia that no one will tell him about the attacks.
18 comments:
This is a rerun of a comment I made late yesterday.
@RAS asks, "Also how is it that we keep finding out all the details of the right-wing plaintiffs only after the Swines rule in their favor?"
I have a couple of answers to that. As far as I know, the first media outlet that revealed much about Bert Callais' background was Democracy Docket, which exposed him on May 5 -- that is, after the Supremes ruled in his favor -- as a Jan. 6 attendee and a voting conspiracy theorist. The NYT ran a story about the plaintiffs in the case in October 2025 titled, "Who Are the Louisiana Voters Behind a Major Supreme Court Challenge?" but they did not look into Callais' background. At all. In fact, when you read what Abbie VanSickle did write about him, he sounds like kind of a reasonable man.
(This is a two-parter.)
Part II
(1) I linked the Democracy Docket story on May 6. You could be forgiven for missing it because I also linked stories that day (1) about Jeffrey Epstein's suicide note; (2) about Jack Smith's saying the Trump DOJ was "corrupted"; (3) about Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon; (4) about Howard Lutnick's testifying during a House Oversight Committee hearing about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein; (5) & (6) about Kash Patel's launching an investigation into the leaks that produced the Atlantic story about his excessive drinking; (7) about Kash's branded whisley; (8) about Kash's investigation into a top Virginia state senator behind the state's redistricting effort; (9) about Stephen Colbert's interview of Barack Obama; (10) Paul Waldman's essay on fall of the cult of Trump; (11) Ted Turner's obituary; (12) about three more supposed drug-runners we blew out of the water; (13) about an FAA employee who threatened to kill Donald Trump; (14) about an investigation into the ICE thugs who shot a man dead in Chicago; (15) (16) (17) & (18) about stuff Trump said about the Iran war; (19) about the amount of damage Iran's attacks had done to U.S. military installations and how Drunk Pete was hiding the damage; (20) about how the U.S. military escorted a couple of ships thru the Strait of Hormuz; (21) about how the price of gas had gone up 50%; (22) (23) & (24) about the Senate's plan to spend $1BB on Trump's ballroom; (25) about the indictment of the Correspondents' Dinner gunman; (26) (27) & (28) about naming the Palm Beach Airport after Fat Hitler; (29) about Trump criticizing Pope Leo again; (30) Thomas Edsall on how Trump could overturn the 2026 elections; (31) Barbara McQuade on how Todd Blanche was outdoing Pam Bondi in bringing frivolous lawsuits to appease Trump; (32) about how the Trump administration is suing Denver over its assault weapons ban; (33) about a federal judge possibly bringing a Trump prosecutor up on misconduct charges for lying to her; (34) on the EEOC suing the NYT; (35) about the Education Department investigating Smith College because Smith has trans students; (36) about the Ed Department investigating Los Angeles Schools because of their leave policy for personnel suspected of sexual misconduct; (37) & (38) about HHS's blocking the release of studies showing the efficacy of vaccines; (39) above HHS approving fruit-flavored vapes; (40) & (41) about the Supremes speeding up release of the Callais decision so Louisiana could gerrymander this year, after voting had already begun; (42) & (43) about the Indiana state primary elections; (44) about a consequential Michigan state election; (45) about the Ohio U.S. Senate race; (46) about an Ohio House race; and (47) about the Ohio governor's race.
So that's (1): there's too damned much news. And so much of it is shocking.
(2) By contrast, there aren't enough reporters. As everyone knows, newspapers and other print journalism has been in decline every year this century. Baton Rouge, where Callais lives, still does have a daily print newspaper, but if anyone at the Baton Rouge advocate looked into Callais' background, it didn't get any national attention. The Times, the Post, the WSJ and other national outfits -- as far as I know -- did not look into Callais' history, either. It was not till a voting rights organization -- Democracy Docket -- was able to research Callais history that we learned what a winger he is. That said, if Bert Callais were as pure as the driven snow, it would have made no difference to the outcome of his case.
Cathy Young, for The Bulwark, on Putin’s Pathetic Parade
"The prelude to the parade was bad enough. Vladimir Putin, obviously spooked by the prospect of Ukrainian drones raining on his parade, had to ask Donald Trump to negotiate a Victory Day ceasefire. Volodymyr Zelensky, who wasn’t a famous comedian for nothing, responded with a brilliant move: an executive order officially permitting the May 9 parade to be held “in the city of Moscow (Russian Federation),” for “humanitarian purposes outlined during negotiations with the American side.” For next-level trolling, Zelensky added the precise coordinates of the spot exempted from Ukrainian strikes."
Anne Applebaum, for The Atlantic, writes that Putin can no longer hide the consequences from the Russian public.
"Last week, the whining noise of unmanned flying objects could be heard in the city of Moscow once again. On the morning of May 7, the mayor of Moscow announced that the Russian air force had shot down hundreds of Ukrainian drones aimed at the city. Two days later, Moscow was due to host Russia’s annual May 9 military parade, a celebration linked very intimately with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who had revived this Soviet-era celebration of Stalin’s victory over Nazi Germany and his conquest of Europe.
Suddenly, and very publicly, Russian officials appeared nervous, afraid that their parade would be spoiled. The Russian foreign minister issued a threat, promising “no mercy,” whatever that means, if Ukrainians struck the parade."
Jared Yates Sexton, in Dispatches From A Collapsing State, covers the Times interview with Tucker Carlson (so you dont have to listen to it), and writes about "one of the main purposes for corporate media: manufacturing of consent." We've been experiencing corporations legitimizing fascists for so long now
"The political paradigm that we currently reside in is a gilded cage that has been painstakingly constructed, often through unconscious and unaware actions by the many people who work for these institutions, and is meant to keep us from questioning and escaping from this capitalist hell of intentional precarity and scarcity."
@Marie: Yes, that is way too much news. Just reading through the list takes too long. And that is day after day. My mom for most of term one and for a while this time kept a journal of what had happened that day with this administration. Flipping back through there were so many incidents that were completely forgotten because of the fire hose of awful coming out of every corner of the administration.
Planning for the Future
"The US Navy said it plans to buy at least 15 new battleships endorsed by President Donald Trump over the next 30 years, according to its new shipbuilding plan, marking a deeper commitment than previously revealed to what could be the costliest warship ever produced.
The new Trump battleships — unveiled and personally approved by the president — could cost at least $14.5 billion apiece given a five-year Navy budget plan requests $43.5 billion for the first three vessels. That would make them even costlier than the $13 billion USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, the most expensive US warship."
Southern California Sees 373 Earthquakes In Two Days
One in Five
"More than one in five people who enrolled in health insurance through HealthCare.gov during open enrollment and in the weeks immediately following were dropped from coverage for failing to pay their first month’s premium, according to internal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, documents obtained by NOTUS that haven’t been made public.
The roughly 21% decline in enrollment in the 30 states using the federal marketplace is significantly higher than the rate of last year, when 12% of enrollees dropped off over the same time frame."
I want to address Marie's commentary about her work. She mentions that she had already linked a story about the distinctly noisome and repellent character of "Bert" Callais, known in Swine Court parlance as a "non-African American voter", perhaps the strangest (and sneakily racist) appellation of a lead plaintiff in the previous Supreme Court's history (the court now being controlled by swine, ergo it's more accurate present epithet) and correctly assumes that this link was missed (by me, for one) due to the firehose of feculence gushing from various and sundry stinking MAGA orifices.
Aside from the wonder of how she does this every day--she recalls 47(!) stories posted that day alone--is the (I hesitate to use the word wonder again, let's call it...) phenomenal pileup of careening storylines crashing into one another on the media highway (started to call it a freeway, but it ain't very free no more), a stretch of roadway littered with bodies and burning wreckage as far as the eye can see.
The shit piles up like a stopped up toilet at a sleazy truck stop. It's amazing how much damage continues to be caused, almost hourly, by such a fat, lazy piece of shit. But he has surrounded himself with MAGA schemers, liars, looters, self-promoters, and loose-brained lunkheads who have been handed control of the ship of state. Add to that a supine and easily manipulated media which sandblasts the crazy, sanewashes the lunacy, and sanitizes the sickness to the extent that we find ourselves more and more in Hannah Arendt's land of lies where one is lucky to trip over a true statement in the dark.
Even Fat Hitler's pablum puking musings are treated as words of wisdom and "plans" (see today's link about Fatty's incoherent inklings about gas taxes where the Times describes what amounts to REM wanking as a possible working policy decision). WTAF!
After reading through Marie's litany (ONE DAY'S WORTH!) I realized that we are close to Ursula K. LeGuin's "Lathe of Heaven".
LeGuin, one of the most thoughtful voices in science fiction, once took a Taoist epigraph and divined a world in which dreams and thoughts become reality, and very often a pretty fucked up reality. So here we have a character whose dreams change the actual nature and physicality of the universe (Ken, correct me if I'm misremember some of this story). But he is the only one who remembers what the previous timelines were like. The story gets crazier when this guy goes to a psychiatrist to see if he can reverse or control this power. The psychiatrist tries to get a hold of this ability for himself to change the world to suit his own needs. The idea is that the thoughts of one man trigger the lathe of heaven which then goes to work carving up a new reality, but with unforeseen twists (for instance, dreaming of a world without racism turns everyone the same color--gray).
continued....
Part the second...
I feel like this is where we are now. The dreams and mewlings of a moron change the world overnight. Of course, a lot of this is done for his own benefit (almost all of it). He wants a few million more in the pocket, he announces an end to his war against Iran. Oil futures do a jig. He and his buddies grab a bundle and the next day, the war is back on. Rinse, repeat. We have a Swine Court that insists its hyper partisan view of justice is the only true one (more lies) and a Justice Department that traffics in criminality and injustice. We have a brainwormed bullshitter in charge of destroying health, a wrestling lady has taken a machine gun to education, a tattooed former part-time TV idiot who thinks he's on a crusade to save the Holy Land running Defense, and a waddling, demented old fart who shits in his pants (literally) even while falling asleep, dreaming of ballrooms, pools, golf courses, and new corrupt schemes, atop this quagmire of quotidian chaos.
But he is aided immensely in this carving up of reality by the dangerous fucks surrounding him AND especially by a media that channels his most stupid and precarious thought balloons into something made to seem like they should make sense, all of which adds to the lathe effect.
The character in LeGuin's novel survives, but in a much altered reality. We're getting the much altered part, but whether we survive is an open question.
Nonetheless, thanks, Marie. Keep on keepin' on. Don't know how you do it, but we are all indebted to you.
RE: this psycho idea of Trump Class battleship building plan. If the initial price tag is $15 billion a piece, triple that. Fatty's bean counters lie as often as he does. And, please god, make this be a situation where the people who know better are just humoring the corpulent, collicky baby in the high chair, and all of these stoopid, stoopid, stoopid plans go into the shredder the second he waddles out of the White House (taking all his gold pasty things with him).
These idiots learn nothing. Ukraine disabled the cream of the Russian navy in the Black Sea, billions of dollars worth of floating hardware, with a bunch of $1,000 drones. Iranians are bottling up a huge percentage of the world's energy supply with drones. Let's do the numbers!
So here we have a Trump Class (why do I instantly have an image of these things being launched and immediately sinking?) Battleship, bristling with neat-o looking gigantamundo gun thingies and all sorts of gold gewgaws plastered all over the place, Fatty's mug painted on the side and sailors in their MAGA togs, out at sea in their $20 billion monstrosity. Along comes $20,000 worth of (say) Iranian drones. Fatty's big ol' battleship makes like the Titanic. So what's the percentage of investment here? (Iessee...plus five, carry the one...) Okay....the Iranians' have sunk Fatty's battleship for 0.0001% of what our Navy spent on this overpriced Trump Class row boat.
As I'm sure we've pointed out here previously, battleships have not been a factor in naval warfare since the 1940s. The US Navy realized this pretty quickly, ergo the expenditure not on battleships but on aircraft carriers. Hopefully, the Navy still has plenty of smart people around who know that battleships are NOT THE FUCKING WAY TO GO!
Jesus Effing Christ!
Little Donnie Trumpy: ADMIRAL OF HIS OWN FANTASY NAVY!
I forgot to mention that Fatty's interest in having his own class of battleship comes from having watched the NBC documentary series "Victory at Sea" years ago. I remember watching it myself as a kid. It's a rousing bit of naval propaganda and plenty of U-S-A! It's got a rip-roaring score by Richard Rodgers who channels his inner Wagner, but the best parts were the film clips shot by military cameramen, some truly amazing footage (just imagine keeping focus and nerves steady while shooting sailors jumping off a burning bridge a few yards from where you're standing with your camera!).
Yeah, rousing stuff, indeed. But it's ALL IN THE PAST! We're talking about dedicating tens, maybe hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars because this fat fuck is remembering how cool it was to see battlewagons all lined up in a row in a documentary he watched in the FIFTIES!
We might as well be developing national policy based on stories about Jack Armstrong (the All American Boy!). Here's Jack foiling the plot of some foreign assassins! Go Jack! I guess it's not all just fantasies from the past. After all, the Swine Court is basing the nation's laws on their remembrance of Amos N Andy, and maybe Rochester, Jack Benny's valet ('Should I brings the car around, Mistah Benny?").
The difference of course between Fatty's memories of Jack Armstrong, the American equivalent of those British Boy's Own stories about rugged chaps coming off the playing fields of Eton to save the western world in two world wars, were that those stories often portrayed fairness, decency, and courage as noble and valued virtues, qualities Trump has never known, he being the avatar of cheating, cowardice, and ignorance.
One more thought about Ursula K. LeGuin's "Lathe of Heaven". LeGuin's parents were notable academics in the pre-war Berkeley scene. Among the many visitors to her home, when she was a girl, was Robert J. Oppenheimer. Talk about waking up to a new reality.
Mutilating America's Greatest Assets: MAGA
"Transportation Secretary Duffy filmed a reality show, funded by firms he regulates"
MAHA
"The processed food industry, facing its most hostile political environment in decades, has found an unlikely ally in the very movement threatening it — and is now using the "Make America Healthy Again" wave to pursue federal standards that would undercut tougher state-level rules."
Another eminently qualified appointee. Has all the conflicts of interest a Pretender appointee requires.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/05/13/dhs-picks-detention-industry-veteran-david-venturella-lead-ice/?
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