June 28, 2026

A day barely passes without a new report on extraordinary Trump Family Corruption: ~~~

Paul Sonne & Eric Lipton of the New York Times: “When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan’s president at the St. Regis Hotel last September in New York..., [Donald] Trump jumped in by phone as the men sealed a deal on a top priority for Washington. During the call, Mr. Trump and his team won an agreement from the Kazakh leader to give a little-known American company access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other critical goods. Ahead of the deal, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.... 

Mr. Trump['s] and Mr. Lutnick['s] sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history. Within weeks of the St. Regis negotiations, investors with a firm called Dominari Securities, which is housed at Trump Tower in New York and partly owned by the president’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, joined with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in a corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project. Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.” The link appears to be a gift link. ~~~

Paul Krugman is horrified anew: "I don’t think many people even now understand just how much of a departure what’s happening now is from past US history. I still see people saying we might be, could be heading for another Gilded Age. But we have a level of concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people that is something like three times what it was at the peak of the Gilded Age. We’re in a super duper Gilded Age.... So how much has Trump enriched himself since returning to the White House about 500 days ago? The answer is ... maybe five billion dollars. Divide that by 500 and we basically have a Teapot Dome sized corruption scandal on an average day under Trump. So it’s basically day after day of scandals as big or bigger than Teapot Dome. Our corrupt grandfathers, great-grandfathers were pikers compared with this...." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: BUT, if by chance you happen upon some lonely soul attending the Great American State Fair, you can put a mike in his face, right under the bill of his frayed MAGA cap, and he will tell you, "Ah thank Presidint Trump is doin' a great job!"

Mind you, there are all kinds of corruption. In some cases, it is not a money-making proposition: ~~~ 

~~~  Jonah Bromwich, et al., of the New York Times: A March ruling by the Merit Systems Protection Board “whose purpose is to protect federal workers from unfair firings..., broke with decades of precedent, accepting the White House’s argument that Article II of the Constitution gives Mr. Trump the power to dismiss officials without due process. By that theory, he can essentially erase civil service protections, even for public servants — in this case, immigration judges — whose engagement with the law often puts them at odds with Mr. Trump’s political aims. The board’s decision ... defanged the most effective method for federal workers to challenge their dismissals.... And it came after the Trump administration leveled a concerted pressure campaign on the board in public and private, according to people with knowledge of the process. The private push — little different from calling a federal judge and telling him how to rule — was led by a White House aide [-- James Sherk --] who for years has been intently focused on making it easier to quickly fire federal workers.”  

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Trump Again Threatens to Annihilate Iran. Today's New York Times liveblog on the Iran War is here. From the pinned item at 5:20 am ET: “Iran’s military said it had launched strikes against U.S. targets in Bahrain and Kuwait early Sunday local time, the latest barrage in a flare-up of tit-for-tat hostilities that began on Thursday and has threatened to undermine negotiations to end the Iran war. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement carried by the country’s state media that it had targeted eight American targets, at a U.S. naval base in Bahrain and the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, in retaliation for American attacks. It announced the strikes shortly after the U.S. military said it had conducted airstrikes on multiple targets in Iran in “direct response” to an Iranian attack earlier in the day on an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. A British ship monitor reported the tanker had been hit by a projectile, but Iranian officials have not taken credit for the strike....

“The United States and Iran exchanged heated rhetoric following the latest round of strikes. President Trump posted a bellicose message on social media saying the barrage was intended to punish Iran for violating the current cease-fire. He said the U.S. military had hit missile and drone storage locations, as well as co[a]stal radar sites. 'There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,' he wrote. 'If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!'”

Jon Gambrell of the AP: “Iran launched drone and missile attacks Sunday targeting Bahrain and Kuwait in response to U.S. airstrikes that hit the Islamic Republic, and threatened a 'complete halt' in negotiations to end the war if Washington continues its attacks. Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz without Iran’s direct oversight sparked the crossfire now gripping the region and have imperiled negotiations for a lasting ceasefire. A multinational maritime body overseen by the U.S. Navy said Saturday that it would expand a route near Oman for both inbound and outbound traffic, setting up a new flashpoint with Tehran. The global community has long considered the strait an international passageway, despite its sitting in Iran and Oman’s territorial waters.”

Right there on its online front page, the New York Times lets on that our amateur negotiators don't know how to nail down a deal. And JayDee makes up stuff. ~~~

Yeganeh Torbati of the New York Times: “The ambiguities in the language that U.S. negotiators agreed to in their interim cease-fire agreement with Iran appear to be coming back to haunt them.... That much is clear from the surge in violence over the last 72 hours, which began on Thursday when Iranian forces struck a container ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz.... The memorandum that the two sides agreed to calls for Iran to 'make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels' through the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days. Crucially, it leaves 'arrangements' and 'best efforts' undefined. Iran appears to have interpreted that language to mean that it can determine which route ships must take.... [The ship Iran attacked had taken a] U.S.-backed route on the southern side of the strait that hugs the coastline of Oman.... The back-and-forth [violent attacks] ... also [raise] questions about claims made this week by Vice President JD Vance in an interview with UnHerd, in which he said a channel had been set up between the Iranian and U.S. militaries aimed at de-escalating the conflict. Multiple Iranian news outlets quoted a spokesman of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Hossein Mohebbi, as denying that any hotline had been established regarding the strait.” (Also linked yesterday.)

Obama Still Living Large in Trump's Empty Head. Zachary Leeman of Mediaite: “... Donald Trump posted side-by-side images of himself and former President Barack Obama in their respective youths, after Obama claimed he lives rent free in the current president’s head. The post came Saturday after Trump ... posted an AI image of himself literally holding up the Earth while carrying an American flag.... He followed up that post with an image from the recent UFC fight card outside the White House, as well as images of himself and Obama. In the side-by-side photos, Trump included himself from the New York York Military Academy and an image of Obama from his college years with a cigarette. While Trump captioned the photos, 'D. Trump, 20' and 'B.H. Obama, 18,' his niece and frequent critic Mary Trump was among those who pointed out that Trump attended the military academy when he was a teenager, graduating in 1964 when he was 17.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Mary Trump wrote, "This is a picture of Donald when he was a teenager in high school. You'd think he'd know that." Yeah, you would. He's a confused old man.

There Are Narcissists and There Are Super-Narcissists. This Is Incredible. Dan Diamond & Jake Spring of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump in recent months has ... [been] counting the number of trees in a public park across the street from the White House. Under Trump’s plans for Lafayette Square, which he has previously described as 'the entrance to the White House,' the public park would feature 47 trees, matching his status as the nation’s 47th president, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the administration’s plans for the park. The trees would all be maples, a favorite of the president’s.... Contractors have been renovating the park since January, and Trump has extolled their work to fix the park’s fountains and overhaul its grounds. 'If you walk across the street to Lafayette Park, you’ll see something that’s incredible,' Trump said in the Oval Office on June 3. 'We’ll have it open before July Fourth.' That’s not likely to happen — the park is not on target to open until at least August....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The only reason the rest of us exist, in Donald's mind, is to serve him, obey him, please him, honor him, adore him. No one who ever has or ever will exist on Earth is of any consequence. He should be locked in a padded room. Okay, the padding could be lined with unbreakable, gold-veined mirrors just to keep him occupied. 

~~~ This Is So Embarrassing/Infuriating. Victoria Craw of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump has unveiled an updated rendering of himself to appear inside a U.S. passport commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence. The image was shared by the White House, which labeled it a 'PATRIOT PASSPORT.' Trump also posted a picture of what he called 'The U.S.A.’s New Passport' on social media Friday, saying that it said: “‘Welcome, but be good!’” — words that don’t appear in the images Trump posted.... The State Department first said it would offer the limited edition passport in April, in another instance of Trump seeking to stamp his personal brand on the nation. But that earlier version included different artwork.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: “Welcome, but be good!’??? That makes no sense at all. Incredibly, Trump doesn't seem to understand that a U.S. passport is a document issued to Americans who may wish to leave the U.S. to visit other countries. A welcome message, however threatening (which Trump's fabricated message is), would seem to be at least somewhat appropriate to a U.S. visa, which is a document that is affixed to the foreign-nation passport of a person whom the U.S. has allowed to travel within the U.S. The old guy is so addled.

Joe Ward & Daniel Wood of the New York Times on the condition of the East Potomac Golf Links in Washington, D.C., and Trump's plans to turn the oft-flooded, swampy public links into a champeen course. “The affinity that local players have for the place is clear. They play around the drainage issues and have little interest in watching the pros take over.” You know Trump will wreck the course for these players; he could not care less about their “affinity” for the Links.

Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post went to Trump's “Great American State Fair,” and he found that “it felt like a trade show for Christian groups, tourist boards and the military industrial complex.... The prevailing diagnosis of this failure of imagination is that it was another rush job.... I was reminded of the supposed Potemkin villages created for Russian Empress Catherine the Great by her minister: fake, portable visions of happy locals designed to convince the monarch that everything was for the best in her new, war-ravaged colonial territory of Crimea.” The link is a gift link. Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: It is tempting to portray this sad little failure as another metaphor -- like the Reflecting Pool -- for Everything Trump. (Here's Charlie Warzel arguing in the Atlantic that the Reflecting Pool fiasco is "the enduring metaphor for an incompetent administration that can’t stop providing enduring metaphors of its own incompetence." Thanks to akaWendy for the gift link.) But everything cannot be a metaphor. Instead, the fair is just another Trumpian slap-dash disaster. It is what it is. In a way, Trump can't help but fail. It's what he does. The truth is, he is not a very bright guy, and things get out of hand. For instance, in this case, Trump doesn't understand what this country is all about, and he certainly has never been to a state fair. (He might have gone to the World's Fair of 1964; it was held in his neighborhood, after all. Official plans for that fair began five years before the event, and even then, it was not as successful as anticipated. [Funnily enough, the theme was "Peace through Understanding," so hardly Trump's forte.]) Kennicott lays out several possibilities of what could have been for the 250th, but everything he suggests requires, you know, planning and preparation. It requires a great deal of input and participation from various people and groups with various sorts of expertise. If Trump had put together a commission of experts on Day 1 of his administration, it still would have been difficult to cobble together an events schedule worthy of a significant anniversary. Rather, the celebrations should have had Congressional backing, with a commission & funding initiated before Trump's second term. This is what happens not when one ignorant old man fails, but when our institutions -- the Congress, the business community, the arts community -- fail us. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I heard on the teevee that somebody was baptizing folks at one of the exhibits. Then there's this:

~~~ Maegan Vazquez of the Washington Post: “Organizers for the North Carolina booth at the Great American State Fair say they removed an image of a Confederate flag displayed in the state’s pavilion on the National Mall, saying it was not approved for the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday.... Social media posts on Friday showed a video in the North Carolina booth with an image of the Confederate flag overlaid on a part of the state flag.... North Carolina was one of at least eight states that declined to attend the fair, citing high costs for pavilions. Khatod, a consultant who previously served as chief of staff to Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina), volunteered to serve as the lead for the North Carolina exhibit and organize private funding for it. Onotse Omoyeni, a spokesperson for Gov. Josh Stein (D), said in a statement that the inclusion of the flag 'does not represent the North Carolina that we love.'... The fair is being organized by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership established by Trump via executive order.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Jennifer Bahney of Mediaite has an item about the confederate flag here. She embeds video of a CNN segment about the flag. The CNN report airs a clip of "multiple images" of the flag that appear to dominate the North Carolina booth. So it's not just a momentary flash on a single video screen of the confederate flag. It was a prominent feature of the state's presentation. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Here's a highly partisan but probably largely accurate account of how things went yesterday at the fair ~~~

~~~ Clyde McGrady & Jennifer Schuessler of the New York Times report their own takes on the fair. They're more generous, of course, than is Harry Sisson (above), but they certainly don't give the Trumpity show rave reviews: “The National Mall [where the fair is being held] is ringed by museums of the Smithsonian Institution, all hung with banners advertising their own 250th anniversary offerings. Since last year, the Smithsonian has been locked in a standoff with the Trump administration, which has accused it of having come under the influence of 'divisive, racial-centered ideology' and promoting a disparaging vision of American history.” ~~~

~~~ AND here is Heather Cox Richardson inadvertently making the point I raised earlier when she argues that the real metaphorical representation of Trump's remarkable mismanagement of, well, everything, was his replacement of the flagstones in the White House's West Colonnade. (Richardson's post is worth reading in its entirety, as she provides some examples of how "This president and administration are turning the extraordinary resources of the American people — the things we the people have created over decades with our effort and our tax dollars — to their own ends. We are paying for their theft with a significantly diminished country, and even with our lives.") ~~~

     ~~~ Michael Scherer of the Atlantic: “The pathway that connects the White House residence to the Oval Office has long been paved in Tennessee flagstone.... [But for] Donald Trump, the dun rock would not do. Instead, Trump wanted polished African granite, carved in Italy, with a flamed-finish stripe — slightly raised, to prevent slips — running down the middle. As workers tore up the flagstone in March, a reporter asked Trump who was paying for the enhancements. 'Paid for by me,' he replied. But that wasn’t true. Budget documents from the National Park Service ... show that the walkway replacement cost taxpayers $689,232, and is part of a $1.3 million project that included repairing adjacent stone and masonry and providing new hardware for nearby doors.... In order to pay for the president’s projects, the parks have had to cancel needed repairs, slash their budgets, and operate with fewer employees.... Trump’s 2027 budget calls for $10 billion to continue to beautify the Washington area — a request that was nearly eight times as large as all National Park Service project spending in 2025.” Emphasis added. Thank you to akaWendy for this gift link.

Maegan Vazquez of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump said on Saturday that he plans to nominate Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to be the next director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency at the center of the administration’s mass deportation effort. 'I am very pleased to announce that I have nominated Lance Schroyer to be our next ICE Director,' Trump wrote on Truth Social. 'Lance has firsthand experience getting Illegal Aliens OFF our streets and, just like ME and our Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, he LOVES the men and women of ICE.'” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: This is a very short, breaking news item, with no information about Schroyer other than his previous service as a state trooper. I will acknowledge that any law enforcement job is an important one, and its quite possible that Schroyer was very good at fulfilling his duties. But I'll also say that policing bad drivers does not lend to the skill set required to run an off-the-rails federal agency that is in fact full of scofflaws & bad actors. This seems to be Trump once again sabotaging a federal agency by placing at the head of the agency a person with no qualifications whatsoever. ~~~

     ~~~ Update. The story has been expanded to include this information on Schroyer: “DHS said Schroyer is currently Mullin’s senior adviser, overseeing immigration enforcement and serving as the liaison with state and local law enforcement agencies, which are increasingly helping ICE detain undocumented immigrants.” So it seems Mullin may have brought him into ICE from Oklahoma, where he “spearheaded efforts to expand ICE’s 287(g) program, which deputizes state and local law enforcement nationwide to arrest undocumented immigrants.” An AP report is here.

Lauren Gurley, et al., of the Washington Post: “The Trump administration opened a new legal pathway for migrant farm workers, yielding to an aggressive lobbying campaign by the dairy industry and upsetting immigration enforcement hard-liners. The administration announced in an agency memo that it would allow dairy farms to bring in migrant labor, after shelving plans for a more public announcement by ... Donald Trump during a trip to Wisconsin earlier this month....The widening of the H-2A guest-worker program to include the dairy industry followed a years-long push on both the Biden and Trump administrations by trade groups that represent the country’s biggest dairy cooperatives, including Dairy Farmers of America, Land O’Lakes and Tillamook, according to interviews with six business groups.”

Let's not forget the Supreme Court. In this scene, an unnamed court functionary owns the court's perpetual villain Sam Alito: ~~~

~~~ Nina Totenberg of NPR: "As the Supreme Court heads into the announcement of its final and hugely important opinions next week, there are reverberations from this week's announcements, and Justice Samuel Alito's public rebuke of his colleague Justice Sonia Sotomayor. On Thursday, Justice Alito summarized from the bench three very big opinions he authored for the court's six justice conservative majority.... After Alito finished his summary of [one] opinion, he paused, at which point Justice Sotomayor read a summary of her contrary views in dissent. When she finished..., Justice Alito ... did something that nobody in the press corps ever remembers happening before. Looking much as if he had just bitten into a lemon, Alito said, 'There is much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read.' And he then went on to a short extemporaneous rebuttal.... In response Friday to an inquiry from NPR came this terse statement from the court's public information office. 'Justice Alito was notified in advance by Justice Sotomayor's chambers that she would be reading a dissent from the bench. It was a misunderstanding on Justice Alito's part.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: That is, Alito is such a dick, he can't be bothered to read a note from the girl judge. His superiority complex causes him to screw up, and his first instinct is to blame the girl judge, which is yet another screw-up. If you think that Alito ran into Sotomayor's chambers to apologize profusely for his "misunderstanding," raise your hand. What? What? Are your arms broken? 

Manohla Dargis & Jason Zinoman of the New York Times: wish Mel Brooks a happy 100th birthday and list “100 reasons to love the comedy writer, director and star.”

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Alaska Senate Race. A Tale of Two Dans, Ctd. Praveena Somasundaram of the Washington Post: “There can be two Dan Sullivans on Alaska’s ballot for a key Senate seat, a judge ruled Friday. The judge decided Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher, can appear on the state’s primary ballot alongside the incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, reversing a state decision last month that knocked him out of the contest. Both Sullivans are running as Republicans.... Republicans accuse[d] Dan J. of entering the election to confuse voters and boost the odds for Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman also running for the Senate seat.... Republicans have pointed out that Dan. J’s campaign materials were eerily similar to the current senator’s, that he had not been a member of the GOP until his campaign and that he was working with a consultant who had previously supported Peltola. Last month, Alaska’s Division of Elections sided with Republicans, who argued that Dan J. ... was not operating in 'good faith.' But Judge Thomas A. Matthews, a superior court judge in Anchorage..., wrote in his Friday ruling that a 'good faith' standard is not outlined in the Constitution or other law and therefore was not an appropriate basis for denying a candidacy. He said Dan J. had met all of the constitutional requirements to run for Senate — he lives in Alaska, has been a U.S. citizen for nine years and is at least 30 years old.”

Georgia Senate Race. A few of you pointed out a while back that Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) was killing with his barnburner speeches. I wasn't convinced he was there yet. Well, now I'm thinking "yet." Digby cites a few exemplary riffs, like this one: 

The president was so humiliated in Hormuz he threw his toys out the stroller and refused to sign the affordable housing bill. That’s after he gave some felon donor a no bid contract for the reflecting pool and it filled up with algae, which for some reason required the deployment of the National Guard. And then because of his war and tariffs, inflation rose to over 4%. He promised to bring down prices on day one, do you remember that? 

Kentucky. Mark Walker & Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times: “At least four people were killed in flooding in Kentucky on Saturday as heavy rains prompted evacuations and the governor declared a state of emergency.... Much of the state was under a flood watch, with seven inches of rain expected in some areas, and rainfall expected to continue through 11 p.m. [Saturday].” 

Louisiana Election Results. Tim Balk & Emily Davies of the New York Times: “Representative Julia Letlow rode ... [Donald] Trump’s endorsement to victory in a Republican primary runoff election in Louisiana on Saturday, according to The Associated Press, taking a major step toward replacing Senator Bill Cassidy. Ms. Letlow’s win over State Treasurer John Fleming, a hard-right former congressman, came a month after the two contenders advanced past Mr. Cassidy, a second-term Republican who was targeted by Mr. Trump for defeat. She enters the general election race as a heavy favorite in deep-red Louisiana, which has not been represented by a Democrat in the Senate in more than a decade.... Jamie Davis, a Louisiana farmer who tends to some of the same land his grandfather worked as a sharecropper, won the Democratic runoff, according to The A.P., and will be his party’s nominee.” The AP's report is here.

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Hungary. Justin Spike of the AP: “Tens of thousands of people gathered in soaring temperatures in Hungary’s capital on Saturday to celebrate the 31st annual Budapest Pride, the first such LGBTQ+ march since former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who had sought to ban the event, was ousted in an April election. The march began Saturday afternoon as temperatures reached at least 38 C (100 F) amid a record-breaking heat wave that has gripped most of Europe. Organizers distributed water bottles to marchers, and the city’s public water utility opened fountains along the route. Participants set off from Budapest’s iconic Opera house and wound through the city center before crossing the Erzsébet Bridge over the Danube River. Members of Hungary’s LGBTQ+ community and masses of supporters danced to music and waved rainbow flags.” MB: It is heartening to see that somewhere there is very good news.