May 12, 2026

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.  

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. y Bartosz Brzeziński & Jordyn Dahl of Politico: “Fugitive former Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro is 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.)

 

Impeach Doug Burgum. 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.”

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.) 

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.) 

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.)