The cartoons are rather biting today. As usual, the cartoonists have their finger on the pulse of the Trump corruption. Get ready for some good editorial work…cartoons via Cagle:
Those of us Gen Xers who were seriously involved in ballet would make fun of the movie Flashdance… and the ridiculous scenes of her tapping her feet, which were obviously not dancer’s malformed toes to the cut where it was a dancer’s foot. All deformed and ugly.
Take it easy today, and be safe.
Here is a picture of our old pug Hugo:
Fat boy…
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Barney Frank, the brassy, lightning-quick former Massachusetts representative who for decades was the most prominent gay politician in the country and who was an author of the most significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression, died on Tuesday at his home in Ogunquit, Maine. He was 86.
His friend James Segel confirmed the death. Mr. Frank said last month that he had entered hospice care with congestive heart failure.
Mr. Frank, a liberal Democrat who represented a diverse suburban Boston district for 32 years, starting in 1981, was the first gay member of the House to come out voluntarily; others had been outed in scandals. His public declaration of his sexual orientation in 1987 — spurred by a fear of being outed, by the death of a closeted colleague and by his own determination to show that homosexuality was nothing to be ashamed of — helped normalize being openly gay in public life.
“Prejudice is based on ignorance,” Mr. Frank told The Boston Globe in 2011, as he prepared to retire. “And the best way to counterbalance it is with a living example, with reality.”
A Harvard-trained lawyer, Mr. Frank bristled with intellectual firepower, acidic turns of phrase and a zest for verbal combat.
Barney Frank
His shivs were often cloaked in wit. Referring to the Moral Majority, the conservative Christian organization that opposed abortion but also opposed child nutrition programs and day care, Mr. Frank said in 1981: “From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.” Of the flawed intelligence behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that led to nearly a decade of combat, he said the problem “is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.”
In Washingtonian magazine’s annual poll of Capitol Hill staffers, he was frequently voted the “brainiest,” “funniest” and “most eloquent” member of the House.
His most significant legislative achievement was in the realm of financial regulation. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which he sponsored with Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, tightened rules on the financial industry as part of the government’s response to the housing crisis of 2007 and the global financial meltdown the next year.
Signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, the measure sought to prevent the nation’s biggest banks from engaging in excessively risky behavior and to protect consumers from unfair practices by banks and lenders. Congress watered it down in 2018, chiefly by exempting smaller and midsize banks from stricter oversight, but it remained largely intact.
Mr. Frank was also known for championing gay rights, civil rights and women’s rights. He did so by force of personality and by example. He insisted that his male partner be invited to all events to which the spouses of other representatives were invited. In 2012, at age 72, he married Jim Ready and became the first sitting member of Congress to wed someone of the same sex.
He also worked quietly behind the scenes to advance his causes. In one of many examples, according to his memoir, “Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage” (2015), he helped persuade President Bill Clinton not to appoint Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia as secretary of state because of his track record of homophobia.
Barney Frank, the quick-witted Massachusetts congressman and liberal lion who helped overhaul Wall Street regulations after the 2008 financial crisis and made history as one of the first openly gay members of Congress, died Wednesday, his sister confirmed to NBC Boston.
He was 86. He had entered hospice care at his home in Maine last month.
“He was, above all else, a wonderful brother. I was lucky to be his sister,” Frank’s sister Doris Breay told NBC Boston.
Frank represented southern Massachusetts in the House for 32 years and established himself as a leading voice in debates over banking, affordable housing and LGBTQ rights. He chaired the Financial Services Committee amid the 2008 meltdown and co-authored the milestone Dodd-Frank Act, a sweeping law that sought to put Wall Street firms under tougher scrutiny.
He blazed a trail for other openly gay American elected officials, and in 2012, he became the first member of Congress to enter into a same-sex marriage, tying the knot with his longtime partner, Jim Ready.
“It was life-changing, lifesaving for me,” Frank told NBC News in a phone interview in last month.
“I think the key to our having made the enormous progress we made in defeating anti-gay prejudice had to do with us all coming out and people discovering the gap between our reality and the way we were painted,” he added.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, who served with Frank for more than 25 years, described him as progressive and an idealist in an interview with NBC News last month.
“He has been about idealism and pragmatism to get the job done,” said Pelosi, who was speaker when Frank shepherded Dodd-Frank through Congress. Frank called Pelosi last month to inform her that he was receiving hospice care, she said.
“He was a real mentor to so many of us here,” Pelosi said. “I was with him” on the Banking Committee “in the beginning. I learned so much.”
What a contrast he was to the bunch of crooks we’re dealing with today.
A couple of days ago, the White House announced a “settlement” of Trump’s $10 million lawsuit against his own IRS. He created an “anti-weaponization fund” to pay out reparations to the thugs who attacked the Capital on January 6, as well as anyone who thinks they were wrongly prosecuted during Joe Biden’s presidency. Then yesterday we learned that, as part of the “settlement,” Trump and his entire family are forever exempt from past IRS investigations. This is obviously illegal, unconstitutional and most likely an impeachable offense, but so what? Trump does whatever he wants.
The president did so in a way to avoid any judicial oversight of his or the Justice Department’s actions. It is hard to imagine a situation more susceptible to fraud, grift, corruption and abuse. And the lawsuit itself was probably unconstitutional to begin with.
The lawsuit came after a report from The New York Times revealed that Trump had only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. The complaint against the IRS, filed by Trump, two of his adult sons and the Trump Organization, said the leak caused the plaintiffs “reputational and financial harm” and “public embarrassment.”
Judge Kathleen Williams
The judge assigned in the case, Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, issued an order last month pointing out the strange nature of the lawsuit and expressing fear that it did not exhibit the type of “adversity” that is typically an essential ingredient of any federal lawsuit, a requirement of the U.S. Constitution.
Citing relevant and consistent precedent on this point, she wrote that a “key characteristic of the case or controversy requirement” in the Constitution “is the existence of adverseness, or ‘a dispute between parties who face each other in an adversary proceeding.’” She noted that there must be an “‘an honest and actual antagonistic assertion of rights by one individual against another, which is neither feigned nor collusive.’” She added: “It is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other so as to satisfy Article III’s case or controversy requirement.” [….]
…Judge Williams asked the parties to submit their written arguments to the court by May 20, 2026, and indicated she would hold a hearing on this question on May 27, 2026.
Whether this means the settlement will not face legal challenge remains to be seen. For now, the administration appears poised to create a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund set up by the administration and capitalized with taxpayer dollars. It will be administered by individuals chosen only by the administration, outside any sort of review.
The Justice Department on Tuesday expanded the just-announced settlement of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the leaking of his tax returns to include a pledge that the IRS will no longer pursue any claims it may have against Trump, his family members and his companies over unpaid taxes.
The nine-page settlement agreement DOJ released Monday, setting up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of alleged weaponization of law enforcement, did not mention any resolution of disputes over Trump’s tax returns, which he has repeatedly claimed were under protracted audits by the IRS.
However, a one-page document posted on the DOJ website early Tuesday includes a sweeping release under which the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses.
The waiver specifically encompasses “tax returns filed before the effective date” of the settlement, which was Monday.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed the addendum, dated Tuesday. It does not bear the signature of any representative of the IRS or any current Trump lawyers. Metadata attached to the document indicates it was prepared or scanned at 7:50 a.m. Tuesday.
Blanche did not sign the original settlement agreement, which was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, IRS CEO Frank Bisignano and Trump attorney Daniel Epstein….
“This is only with respect to existing audits, not future,” the DOJ statement added.
John Koskinen, the former IRS commissioner from 2013 to 2017, said the expanded settlement set a “terrible precedent” that could effectively generate a windfall for Trump.“It makes you wonder what the President has to hide in those tax returns. He’s apparently been actively trading in the stock market and, since he knows a lot more about situations than the average investor, he’s probably generated significant taxable earnings,” he said in an emailed statement. “Not auditing his returns is the same as giving him an easy way to, in effect, receive money from the government.”
Danny Werfel, the former IRS commissioner from 2023 to 2025, said he was “unaware of a single precedent where the IRS has agreed in advance to permanently forgo examination of previously filed tax returns for a specific person or business.”
There is corruption. And then there is the second Trump administration.
Monday night I wrote to you about kleptocracy. This evening, we pick up the same thread. It has to do with the $1.776 billion slush fund we discussed last night (get it? so cute that number, 1776; such an homage to the Founding Fathers). That fund, the money that Trump is trying to “give” to his most vociferous, even violent, supporters, was created to settle the lawsuit he brought against the IRS. Today, there is more news about the terms of that settlement. Kleptocracy. Corruption.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General, testified before the Senate today. In one remarkable exchange, Delaware Senator Chris Coons asked Blanche:
“Has it ever happened that a sitting president sued his own government for $10 billion dollars and then directed the settlement of the case and the establishment of a payout fund?”
Blanche responded: “No, but there’s a lot of things that President Trump is the first of.”
Another one of those firsts happened today. Not a good one. Without fanfare, DOJ posted a settlement document on its website in the case. It was unexpected, because we’d already seen a settlement agreement in this case, the one we looked at last night. There was no reason to expect anything additional would be forthcoming. When it showed up, the addendum came without any title, just a date at the top….
It’s a pardon on steroids for Trump, Trump’s family, and Trump businesses. The government agrees in this document, signed by Blanche, that it will never prosecute or pursue any civil claims against any of the Trumps, “whether presently known or unknown” that could have been brought as of the date of the settlement agreement. That date is yesterday. The IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses. Any proceeding over “tax returns filed before the effective date” of the settlement is now off limits. Any crimes committed before Monday, whether prosecutors were aware of them or not, are off the table. It’s a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card, and also a get-out-of-debt one.
I’ve seen a lot of settlement agreements, but never one like this where the government is giving the store away and getting nothing in return. As we discussed last night, the underlying lawsuit was on life support, most likely about to be dismissed because of legal flaws. Now, it’s become a vehicle for protecting Trump from all problems, criminal and civil, and not just tax matters—the subject of the lawsuit—but all matters. Any sins he may have committed or debts he owed but didn’t pay before now are forgiven.
You can read the rest along with the previous post at Civil Discourse.
Antony Vo was at a friend’s house on Monday morning when a fellow pardoned Jan. 6 rioter sent a message: The Trump administration had just created a fund to benefit people who believed they had been wronged by the federal government — including those, like him, who had stormed the Capitol five years ago.
Mr. Vo, who briefly fled the country to avoid his prison sentence stemming from the riot, said he did not know at first that the fund had come about as part of a larger deal by President Trump to withdraw an extraordinary lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service. But the origins of the fund, he said, were less important than how it made him feel: surprised, relieved and grateful all at once.
“I’m glad it turned into something,” he explained, “that could help people who have been hurting for quite a while now.”
That reaction, it turns out, appeared typical among the so-called Jan. 6ers who have long joined Mr. Trump in claiming that the efforts to hold them accountable for disrupting the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election amounted to mistreatment by the criminal justice system.
Some felt that the fund validated their self-image as victims of the government. Others felt elated — albeit somewhat stunned — at the prospect of a payout. And not a few felt a bit confused at how the process of filing claims and receiving checks could play out.
The possibility that people who ransacked the Capitol, smashing windows and fighting with the police, could get money from the same federal government they attacked was the latest head-spinning twist in the effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6. At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, did not rule out violent rioters receiving payouts from the fund.
It has not been lost on many Jan. 6ers that by deeming them worthy of reparations, the most powerful officials in the country have effectively validated their claims of having been wronged by the federal government — claims that, in many instances, were roundly rejected by the judges of both parties who oversaw their cases.
“This is the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE acknowledging the possibility that Americans were targeted through political abuse of government power,” Tommy Tatum, a Mississippi man who was charged with civil disorder for interfering with the police on Jan. 6, wrote on Monday in a post on social media. “That is historic.”
It’s obvious at this point. Trump is going to pay these people to do it again. He has no intention of leaving in 2029. If the second insurrection doesn’t work, then he’ll barricade himself in the basement of his precious ballroom.
Senate Republicans are greeting the Justice Department’s announcement of a new “Anti-Weaponization Fund” with concern, confusion and questions — and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is offering up little clarity on how it will work.
At a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Tuesday morning, Blanche fielded queries from members of both parties about the logistics of the $1.8 billion account, who would have oversight and whether it could function as a “slush fund” for individuals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Democrats are, predictably, enraged by the terms of the settlement for President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the government for the leak of his tax information, which resulted in the creation of this account to benefit targets of “weaponization and lawfare.”
“There is no level below which these folks will not go,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) said in an interview. “It is just disgusting, having come off Law Enforcement Week, to have set up a slush fund to pay off people who attack police officers.”
But Republicans are also signaling deep discomfort with the arrangement, as well as frustration that they weren’t given the answers they were looking for.
“I’ve got more questions than I’ve heard answers for, and … I didn’t hear anything that gave me certainty in terms of how this all comes together,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), after attending the hearing with Blanche. “Can the president just say $1.87 billion? … I don’t know enough about it to feel comfortable.”
Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jerry Moran of Kansas — the top Republicans on the full Appropriations committee and the panel that oversees DOJ funding, respectively — both pressed Blanche at the hearing to explain how payouts from the fund would be managed and who might receive them.
If Democrats can manage to win he House and Senate, the first order of business must be to impeach and remove Trump. We can’t allow him to remain in office for the rest of his term, or we’ll never get rid of him.
“A government of laws, not of men,” read the quotation from John Adams, the second president.
The quotation was shown over one of the large banners of President Donald Trump that were set up in February at the Justice Department headquarters, known as “Main Justice.”
Stacey Young, a former Justice Department employee who founded the group Justice Connection, which projected the phrase onto the building, told NBC News that the “$1.8 billion slush fund” was “appalling.”
“We are standing up for department’s integrity and the rule of law,” Young said outside the building. The Justice Department is operating “as an arm of the White House” and doing Trump’s bidding by protecting his allies and going after his enemies, she said.
“That is an extraordinary abuse of power, and it’s a sign that the rule of law is crumbling before our eyes,” Young said.
Police officers who came under attack by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to halt President Donald Trump’s plan to set up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of “weaponization” and “lawfare.”
In the new lawsuit, former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges contend that Trump intends to use the massive bankroll to pay people who organized and participated in the riot.
“Dunn and Hodges did not back down on January 6. Instead, they held the line to defend democracy and the rule of law. They bring this case to do so once again,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington, argues that the fund violates the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on use of federal money to “pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
The officers’ complaint also alleges that the Justice Department has no legal authority to create the fund, announced Monday as part of a settlement of a lawsuit Trump filed over the leak of his tax returns during his first term..
The Justice Department will likely argue that the officers don’t have standing to bring the suit. The complaint contends that Dunn and Hodges have faced ongoing harassment, including death threats, from participants in the riot. The officers allege that they have a personal stake in the dispute over the fund because it will be used to provide financial support that is likely to fuel that sort of harassment in the future.
That’s all I have for today. What’s on your mind?
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Hello, I will avoid covering much of what happened yesterday I. San Diego. If you want a quick update, please look here.
For this post I have some lovely coloring pages for you to enjoy. You can print them out and relax while you color them in…then hang them up on your refrigerators. It will give you something fun to do, and can take your mind off Trump for a bit.
Many will remember this picture of my mother and brother from the middle 70’s…it was taken at the Florida State Fairgrounds, during a Dr. Hook concert:
“Upon further reflection, the Rededicate 250 National Prayer thing now makes huge sense. He Is Risen!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The one thing you can depend on every time Orange Caligula gets the reins of government is that things will always get worse, except for democracy backsliding. It’s just a matter of how shocking the next thing is. How many of us are in a constant state of being stunned that we aren’t the least bit surprised by the news, even though we still find the actions stomach-churning? Well, hang on! It’s been a week of WTF moments.
Today’s Tit-for-Tat announcement shows just how brazen the entire administration has gotten. This is from Time Magazine. It’s reported by Rebecca Schneid. What kind of monster thinks these things up?
President Donald Trump has withdrawn his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) amid reports that he struck a deal with his own Justice Department to create a $1.7 billion fund to compensate political allies who claim they were wrongly targeted by the Biden Administration.
The alleged plan, first reported by the New York Times and ABC News, would be paid for with taxpayer funds and is being fast-tracked, but has yet to be officially approved. If approved, the fund would be used to pay damages to people who say they were harmed by the Biden Administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Court documents showed Trump withdrew his lawsuit against the IRS, a move that could herald a private deal between the president and the agency he controls, while skirting legal oversight of the deal.
In a lawsuit filed in a Miami federal court in January, Trump and other plaintiffs accused federal agencies of failing in their duty of stopping a former IRS contractor from illegally obtaining and disclosing tax returns to the New York Times, ProPublica, and “other left-wing media outlets,” between May 2019 and September 2020.
The funds would also be used to settle his request for $230 million in legal claims from the Justice Department for the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and investigation into alleged ties between his campaign and Russia
As part of the settlement, Trump would also reportedly ask the IRS to public1pologize for the disclosure of his personal financial records and to waive an IRS audit
According to the Times, the Justice Department would model the program after the historic $760 million settlement fund stemming from the Keepseagle v. Vilsack class-action lawsuit, settled in 2011, which alleged that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) systematically discriminated against Native American farmers and ranchers in its farm loan and loan servicing program.
We know someone who can sum this up nicely. This is how Hillary put it this morning.
Trump didn’t just pardon his followers who stormed the U.S. Capitol. He’s now set them up for payments through a slush fund he created to reward his allies—out of your tax dollars. You could not make this up.
Robert Reich had some additional thoughts and analysis. He elucidated them on his SubStackthis morning. “Has Trump’s Republican Party Become a Criminal Enterprise? Trump’s purge of all political opponents, including Senator Bill Cassidy, leaves it with no purpose other than helping Trump achieve his lawless goals.” Trump puts us in a Mafia State every time he’s elected. Grifting is his only talent, and he’s been rich and influential enough to find ambitious and greedy toadies to carry out his wishes. We’ve known this forever here.
On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other Republican senators who have stood up to Trump — such as North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Utah’s Mitt Romney — saw the writing on the wall and didn’t seek reelection.)
Trump’s purge of Cassidy comes in the wake of Trump’s purges of House Republicans who stood up to him, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney.
Trump’s next Republican target in the House is Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, who had the guts to oppose U.S. military involvement in Iran, demand release of the Epstein files, and criticize Trump’s spending bills for adding to the national debt. Massie appears likely to be defeated by a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary.
Trump has also purged state legislators who have refused to do his bidding, such as the seven Indiana Republicans who refused to redistrict the state as Trump demanded they do, and who Trump insured were defeated in their recent primaries.
The message is clear to every current or aspiring Republican politician: Be a toady to Trump, or you’re out.
In his concession speech Friday night, Cassidy stated the obvious reference to Trump:
“Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution. And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”
Nicely put but sadly irrelevant because Trump — who’s clearly serving himself rather than the American public — now possesses all levers of power in the official Republican Party.
As Republican senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday on Meet the Press,“There’s no room in this party to destroy [Trump’s] agenda.”
There’s more at the link. My question is, what the hell can the rest of us who don’t support him do? I voted Saturday morning, wondering which candidate I had voted for would even have a chance under the new gerrymandering. That doesn’t even consider that we couldn’t even vote for our Congressional representatives, given the Supreme Court decision and the quick fix redraw of our map to ensure maybe one black person will retain their seat. The only good news to come out of the election was that all five constitutional amendments proposed by Governor Klandry were voted down.
Will these latest bits of news set up another J-6 self-coup? There will certainly be a rabid MAGA candidate sitting in Cassidy’s seat come next January. This is from NPR. “Louisiana senator who voted to convict Trump loses Republican primary.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of seven Republican senators who voted to remove President Trump from office after the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, lost his bid for reelection.
Louisiana’s Senate primary on Saturday was the latest test of Trump’s hold on his party. The president recruited a challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow, and urged supporters to defeat Cassidy over his vote.
“His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now part of legend,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post about Cassidy. “And it’s nice to see his political career is OVER.”
Cassidy finished third in a three-way race, according to the Associated Press. Letlow and another candidate, state Treasurer John Fleming, will advance to a June 27 runoff.
In conceding the race, Cassidy hinted that he would not finish his second term quietly. But in an apparent dig at Trump, he also said he wouldn’t contest his loss.
“You don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim that the election was stolen,” Cassidy told supporters on Saturday night. “You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you’ve had that privilege. And that’s what I’m doing right now.”
Cassidy told voters they should cast their ballot based on the present and the future, not the past, a subtle discouragement from re-litigating the 2020 election six years on. But for many primary voters, Cassidy’s move to convict felt like a betrayal, and Trump’s endorsement was paramount.
“I’m the type of person, if you cross me, I probably won’t trust you anymore,” retired sheriff deputy Kevin Dupree said earlier this month. “I think his political career in Louisiana is finished.”
My friend Robert Mann, a former Journalism Professor at LSU, has something poignant to say about the loss. This is from his SubStack. “Enjoy your tarnished legacy, Bill Cassidy. You earned it.” It’s a good lesson: while all politics is local, it can be influenced by a cult of personality.
Although he pandered shamelessly to Trump and MAGA to the bitter end, Sen. Bill Cassidy could have written a different ending to his political career.
He could have left office with his head held high, proud and satisfied that he’d remained true to his principles and the Hippocratic Oath.
He could have protected our families by blocking Trump’s efforts to destroy our public health system.
He could have legislated (and campaigned) as the moderate he told me and others he truly was.
He could have put the state of Louisiana — and the nation — ahead of his desire for another U.S. Senate term.
He could have been our senator, not Donald Trump’s.
He could have done all this and more, but Cassidy lacked the courage, the imagination, and the decency to put you and me ahead of his political ambition.
What Cassidy received in return for his soul is eternal shame and a well-earned legacy of cravenness.
I hope Cassidy enjoys his earnings.
I hope he also feels the harsh judgment of history that will be reserved for a Trump critic turned shameless toady who sold out to the worst, most corrupt president in American history—and still lost.
Bill Cassidy could have written a different story for himself and his state, but he just didn’t have it in him.
Speaking of Mafia-like behavior, here’s a little something on the Don’s Greenland Grab. This is from the New York Times. “In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland. Greenlandic officials worry about the direction of the negotiations aimed at defusing President Trump’s threats to seize their island. But they have little leverage.” The story has a number of contributing reporters.
With the conflict in Iran still smoldering, President Trump’s obsession with Greenland seems like a forgotten sideshow.
But for the past four months, negotiators from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, have been holding confidential talks in Washington about Greenland’s future.
The talks were meant to give Mr. Trump an offramp to his threats of a military takeover of Greenland and to scale back a crisis that risked breaking apart the NATO alliance. But Greenlandic leaders are worried about what is being proposed, which is a much larger U.S. role on the Arctic island. And they fear that if the conflict with Iran winds down, the president will swing his aggression back on them.
Some Greenlandic politicians say they have even circled a date on their calendars to be wary: June 14, Mr. Trump’s birthday.
An investigation by The New York Times, based on interviews with officials in Washington, Copenhagen and Greenland, has discovered:
The United States is trying to modify a longstanding military arrangement to ensure American troops can stay in Greenland indefinitely, even if Greenland becomes independent. The notion is basically a forever clause, and Greenlanders do not like it.
The United States has pushed the talks beyond military matters and wants effective veto power over any major investment deals in Greenland to box out competitors like Russia and China. Greenlanders and Danes strongly object to this.
The United States is discussing cooperation with Greenland on natural resources. The island is loaded with oil, uranium, rare earths and other critical minerals, though much of it is buried deep beneath Greenland’s ice.
The Pentagon is rapidly moving ahead on plans for a military expansion and recently sent a Marine Corps officer to Narsarsuaq, a town in southern Greenland, to inspect the World War II-era airport, the harbor and places where American troops could be housed.
The American demands are so steep, Greenlandic officials fear, that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty. Despite all of the talk from Danish and American officials that Greenland’s future is up to the island’s 57,000 people, Greenlandic officials said the American demands would tie their hands for generations.
If the Americans get everything they want, said Justus Hansen, a member of Greenland’s Parliament, there will never be any “real independence.”
“We might as well raise our own flag halfway,” he said.
There’s a lot more at that gifted link. Jeer Heeter has this description of our Grifter-in-Chief in his article in The Nation. “Trump Gloats About “Making a Fortune” While Americans Suffer. As his war in Iran wreaks havoc, Trump is fixated on personal glory and enrichment.”
Donald Trump is annoyed that he can’t celebrate the massive profits oil companies are making due to the war he launched in the Middle East. Left to his own druthers, Trump would be exulting in the hundreds of billions of dollars produced by skyrocketing oil prices—if it weren’t for the pesky fact that it comes at the expense of ordinary Americans, who are now paying roughly 40 percent more every time they fill up the gas tank than they were before Trump started bombing Iran nearly three months ago.
We know this thanks to Trump’s endless dedication to saying the quiet part out loud. Speaking with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Thursday, Trump chortled that because far less oil was coming out of the Middle East, “people are finding other places to buy oil, like Texas.” Trump added, “So I don’t want to say we’re making a fortune, you understand that? Because if I say that, they’re going to say ‘oh, he forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.’”
The juxtaposition between “making a fortune” and the “little man” suffering at the gas station underscores just how obtuse Trump and his allies have become in their economic message. Their response to the harm caused by Trump’s policies is not to reverse those policies, or even to appear sympathetic about their effects. It’s to express their total indifference to the suffering of the American people. At the same time, Trump is obsessively focused on his real priorities: enriching himself and his family, and creating gaudy monuments to himself such as a new White House ballroom and a Triumphal Arch that will squat in the middle of Washington, DC. In response to a reporter’s query as to whom the arch would celebrate, Trump pointed to himself and said “me.”
Trump twice won the White House on a message of economic populism, promising in his 2025 inauguration that he would “bring prices down.” Today, he sings a very different tune, with a message that amounts to the apocryphal words misattributed to the French Queen Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake.”
Speaking to reporters last Monday, Trump said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.” He also said that concern for the financial suffering of Americans would not be a factor in making a deal with Iran “not even a little bit.”
Under normal political circumstances, the Republican Party would be wise to separate itself from Trump’s callousness. But the GOP has become a hollowed-out operation mainly concerned with tending to Trump’s cult of personality. On Saturday, Trump won a major victory against critics in the party when Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy came in third in his party’s Senate primary race, losing to a candidate Trump had supported. Cassidy’s loss underscores a lesson Trump has taught the GOP again and again over the last decade: There is no future in the party for anyone who defies his will.
So, rather than distancing themselves from Trump’s “let them eat cake” message, Republicans are embracing the president’s self-defeating rhetoric. On Thursday, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan told CNN that oil prices were “were coming down until we had to deal with this situation, but, you know, that’s life, that’s dealing with…the world we live in.”
It’s going to take hard work and a lot of voting to get rid of this monster and all the dregs of humanity he’s put in charge of the country. It appears they have all been profiting from insider news on the Iran War.
1. What I found in Trump's new 113-page financial disclosure report. It doesn't look good.
This is from Jude Legum’s SubStack. “The smoking guns in Trump’s new financial disclosure, Trump publicly praised companies the same day he bought their stock.”
On March 11, President Trump took a tour of a manufacturing facility in Reading, Ohio, owned by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a medical supply company. During the tour, Trump lavished praise on Thermo Fisher which uses the facility to manufacture prescription drugs on a contract basis. “It’s a great honor being here. It’s a great company,” Trump said, appearing alongside CEO Marc Casper. “You have done a fantastic job and I’d like to congratulate you.”
Later, Trump asked another Thermo Fisher executive to share “some great information about this incredible company.” The executive talked about how Thermo Fisher is producing drugs for Merck and others at the facility. Trump then explicitly encouraged other pharmaceutical companies to contract with Thermo Fisher to “on-shore” more jobs. He claimed that some pharmaceutical companies were building their own U.S. manufacturing facilities but said “they can get here a lot faster by using this great company.”
Trump did not mention that, the same day of the tour, March 11, he purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 of Thermo Fisher stock. (Federal disclosure rules only require filers to list their transactions in broad ranges.) Trump did not publicly disclose the purchase until May 14. It was listed on page 38 of a 113-page document cataloging Trump’s stock purchases in 2026.
Trump also purchased between $51,000 and $115,000 worth of Thermo Fisher stock about one month before his visit on February 12. He made another purchase of Thermo Fisher valued between $15,000 and $50,000 on March 2. So at the time of Trump’s effusive remarks about Thermo Fisher, he had purchased as much as $215,000 worth of the company’s stock over the previous month.
The fact that Trump visited a Thermo Fisher facility on the same day he purchased the company’s stock — and bought Thermo Fisher stock repeatedly in the weeks before his visit — has not previously been reported.
The disclosures reveal that Trump has been a highly active trader in 2026, executing thousands of transactions — many in individual stocks impacted by his administration’s policies. In response to criticism, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization claimed that the trades were completely separate from Trump’s official duties and managed by an independent outside financial advisor. “President Trump’s investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions,” the spokesperson said. “Trades are executed and portfolios are balanced through automated investment processes and systems administered by those institutions.”
The fact that Trump purchased stock in Thermo Fisher the same day that he toured its facility undercuts this claim. Further, the March 11 purchase of Thermo Fisher stock was marked “UNSOLICITED” in the document. An “unsolicited” trade is one that is not recommended by a broker, but initiated by the customer.
At least three immigrant children were taken into custody and restrained with zip ties at the San Antonio Immigration Court. The children were between the ages of 9 and 12.www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/a…
Brookings reminds us that there are still thousands of families with children experiencing horrible detentions and deportations because of the MAGA obsession with keeping America as white as possible. “The administration has detained 400,000 immigrants: What do we know about their children?” Is this really the kind of country you want to live in and that you thought you grew up in?
The Trump administration has made detention and deportation the centerpieces of its immigration policy. Around 60,000 people are being held in detention currently, and around 400,000 people have been booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention from an interior arrest since the administration began. Detention capacity is likely to expand, with $45 billion allocated to expanding detention facilities in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Though it is mostly adults who are detained and deported, many children are impacted by separation from their parents. However, there are no reliable data on how many detainees or deportees have children in the U.S., nor on what happens to them once their parent is taken into custody. Here we focus on detainees, about whom we have better information than deportees. Even a short separation from a parent is likely traumatic for a child, but a majority of detentions are not short-lived separations. A ProPublica study following ICE arrests of mothers of U.S. citizen children over the first seven months of the administration found that 60% had been removed and 17% remained in custody at the study’s conclusion.
To estimate the number of children affected by parental detention, we rely on demographic characteristics of detainees matched with likely unauthorized immigrants in the American Community Survey. Our analysis (detailed below) suggests that more than 145,000 U.S. citizen children have likely experienced a parent booked into detention since the administration began, with more than 22,000 of those experiencing detention of all their co-resident parents. In the accompanying interactive, we allow users to explore how the estimates change when the underlying assumptions are varied. Regardless of the assumptions used, it is clear that tens of thousands of children have faced parental detention since January 2025.
Please use the link to read the details. The time and research it took to find out all this was amazing and hard to believe.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
I can’t even explain what kind of crush I had on Cat Stevens in ninth grade. I could basically play his entire songbook. He’s an amazing songwriter and musician.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
I’ll get to the depressing news from Trump world, but first, we’ve lost one of the good guys.
He blazed a trail for other openly gay American elected officials, and in 2012, he became the first member of Congress to enter into a same-sex marriage, tying the knot with his longtime partner, Jim Ready.
That reaction, it turns out, appeared typical among the so-called Jan. 6ers who have long joined Mr. Trump in claiming that the efforts to hold them accountable for disrupting the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election amounted to mistreatment by the criminal justice system.
Democrats are, predictably, enraged by the terms of the settlement for President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the government for the leak of his tax information, which resulted in the creation of this account to benefit targets of “weaponization and lawfare.”
The quotation was shown over one of the large banners of President Donald Trump that were set up in February at the Justice Department headquarters, known as “Main Justice.”
There’s more at the link. My question is, what the hell can the rest of us who don’t support him do? I voted Saturday morning, wondering which candidate I had voted for would even have a chance under the new gerrymandering. That doesn’t even consider that we couldn’t even vote for our Congressional representatives, given the Supreme Court decision and the quick fix redraw of our map to ensure maybe one black person will retain their seat. The only good news to come out of the election was that all five constitutional amendments proposed by Governor Klandry were voted down.
My friend Robert Mann, a former Journalism Professor at LSU, has something poignant to say about the loss. This is from his SubStack. “Enjoy your tarnished legacy, Bill Cassidy. You earned it.” It’s a good lesson: while all politics is local, it can be influenced by a cult of personality.
Speaking of Mafia-like behavior, here’s a little something on the Don’s Greenland Grab. This is from the New York Times. “In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland. Greenlandic officials worry about the direction of the negotiations aimed at defusing President Trump’s threats to seize their island. But they have little leverage.” The story has a number of contributing reporters.
There’s a lot more at that gifted link. Jeer Heeter has this description of our Grifter-in-Chief in his article in The Nation. “Trump Gloats About “Making a Fortune” While Americans Suffer. As his war in Iran wreaks havoc, Trump is fixated on personal glory and enrichment.”
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