There is big news on the Iran war front today, as the Senate joins the House in passing a war powers resolution. In other top stories, Pete Hegseth forced out another top general, and the flu epidemic in the military forced a return to required flu vaccinations. Several states held primaries or runoff elections yesterday, with some interesting results. Finally, there’s a disturbing story out of Texas about extreme sentences handed down to so-called Antifa protesters.
The Senate on Tuesday adopted a resolution instructing President Trump to end the war in Iran or seek congressional authorization to continue it, delivering the most significant bipartisan rebuke yet of the conflict.
The resolution does not have the force of law and is therefore unlikely to compel an immediate change in policy. But the 50-to-48 vote — in which four Republicans joined Democrats in favor — marked a striking break by the G.O.P.-led Congress with a president who has faced little resistance from his party on any topic, particularly matters of war and national security.
The four Republican senators, clockwise from top left Susan Collins (Maine), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Rand Paul (Kentucky). (J. Scott Applewhite, AP)
It came as Republicans in Congress have expressed skepticism and alarm about the cease-fire agreement Mr. Trump struck with the Iranians, as the conflict approaches its fifth month. The measure underscored G.O.P. impatience about continuing to defer to the president, who has never sought approval from Congress for the war, as further negotiations over its end appear precarious and Mr. Trump has threatened more military action.
The vote was also the latest evidence of tension over the war inside the Republican Party, which faces a punishing political environment ahead of midterm elections in which G.O.P. control of Congress is at stake. With polls showing the conflict deeply unpopular, some lawmakers in the party have voiced concerns about its economic toll, uncertain objectives and the risk of a broader regional escalation.
Tuesday’s vote marked the first time since the enactment of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that both chambers of Congress have approved a concurrent resolution directing a president to end a military conflict. The House passed the measure this month after Republican leaders who had tried to block it were unable to keep the party unified in opposition.
In the Senate on Tuesday, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the lone Democrat to vote against the resolution. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana broke with fellow Republicans and supported the measure. Their backing and the absence of two Republicans who have opposed such measures in the past, including Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who was recently hospitalized, allowed the resolution to prevail. The law was born out of a clash between Congress and President Richard Nixon over the Vietnam War, with lawmakers overriding his veto in an effort to reclaim authority over decisions of war.
President Donald Trump lashed out at the four Republican senators who voted to block him from resuming the war with Iran, in a resolution that marks one of the biggest schisms between the Republican-controlled Senate and the White House during Trump’s second term.
“These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday night, accusing the “four Republican Losers” of helping Iran when he had the country “on the ‘ropes,’ ready to go down for the fall.”
Another two Republicans, Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and Dave McCormick (Pennsylvania), missed the vote, which passed 50-48. Democrat Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against it.
The measure, which passed the House this month, is based on the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a law designed to ensure congressional oversight of U.S. involvement in military conflicts. The White House has argued that the law is unconstitutional and also is irrelevant now because the war has ended.
The Senate measure cannot be vetoed, but Democrats and Republicans disagree on whether it can be enforced.
I hate to think what would happen if this gets to the Supreme Court.
President Trump was eager on Tuesday morning to announce the latest concession that he says his negotiators extracted from Iran, writing on social media that the country had agreed to allow the “highest level Nuclear Inspections long into the future (Infinity!!!).”
But he omitted the fact that as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran is required to allow in international inspectors. And his statement came after the Iranians had insisted that there were no plans to allow inspectors into the three major nuclear sites the United States bombed a year ago — and where just about all the nation’s enriched uranium is stored.
America’s sad Iran negotiating team: Jared Kushner, his golfing buddy Steve Witkoff, and VP JD Vance.
The previous day, Vice President JD Vance, leaving the negotiating site at a Swiss resort, said Iran had agreed that if Iranian assets were unfrozen, the United States and Qatari officials would oversee the process and the money would be used to buy American farm products. The Iranians denied that, too, saying that the 14-point memorandum of understanding they had signed with the Americans did not require them to do so.
Negotiating with Iran has always been an extraordinary challenge. But until recently, one rule of diplomatic bargaining has usually held: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” That is how the United States and Iran traditionally have left themselves some trading space, and fine-tuned wording to satisfy the many critics at home who will have to be sold on any agreement. In 2015, when details of the inner-sanctum negotiations leaked, American officials complained bitterly, saying that the news reports were making it harder to get to a final deal.
But in this negotiation the leaks are replaced by official, if fragmentary, announcements — usually from the American side. Mr. Trump’s style is often to describe his preferred outcomes as fully negotiated side deals, in hopes of locking the Iranians into each element of any eventual agreement.
But in this negotiation the leaks are replaced by official, if fragmentary, announcements — usually from the American side. Mr. Trump’s style is often to describe his preferred outcomes as fully negotiated side deals, in hopes of locking the Iranians into each element of any eventual agreement.
The Iranians have Trump’s number, alright. A bit more from the article:
Suzanne Maloney, an expert on Iran and the vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, one of Washington’s leading think tanks, said that both “Washington and Tehran are engaged in a public battle to shape the narrative and advance their preferred outcome on specific elements of the negotiations.”
The public divergence, she added, “highlights how little has actually been agreed upon yet and what an enormous gap has to be addressed in a short period of time.”
In fact, there were elements of truth in both what Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance were arguing, and in the Iranian rebuttal. And dissecting the differences helps explain why this negotiation is likely to be painful — and long.
If only they had just bitten the bullet and released the Epstein files. But Trump was desperate to distract from them, and now we are up shit creek in a stupid war. You can use the gift link to read the rest if you wish.
More military news: Pete Hegseth has fired another distinguished general, and his decision to make the flu vaccine voluntary has backfired bigtime.
General Chris “C. D.” Donahue was the last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal. As the head of Army forces in Europe and Africa, he has helped bolster Ukraine in its fight to repel the Russian invasion. Now Donahue has become the latest casualty in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s purge of the military’s senior ranks.
Donahue’s abrupt departure, after just 18 months in his role, is another sign of the upheaval. He was widely seen as one of the Army’s rising stars—a legendary Delta Force leader who was considered a top candidate for Army chief of staff or even chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—having distinguished himself in wars of the past two decades. But Hegseth has sought to oust anyone who doesn’t fit his idea of a military leader, including those involved in the calamitous American exit from Kabul under President Biden—no matter how well they performed there. Donahue is expected to announce as soon as tomorrow that he will be relinquishing his post later this summer, two people familiar with the matter told us.
Gen. Christopher Donahue in 2025. Lucy North PA via Getty Images file
A career Ranger and Special Operations commander, Donahue served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, climbing through the ranks during two decades of counterterrorism wars. As the U.S. military shifted its focus from hunting terrorist networks to preparing for conflicts against technologically sophisticated adversaries, Donahue did as well. In recent years, he took on a top role in Europe as the Pentagon adapted lessons from Ukraine and other modern battlefields. His departure continues the exit of a generation of combat-tested leaders at a time when Hegseth is reshaping the military’s senior ranks under a banner of “less generals, more GIs.” Once Donahue leaves, the military is also expected to downgrade U.S. Army Europe and Africa from a four-star command to three, as part of the military’s effort to consolidate commands. Whether Donahue’s departure would coincide with the downgrading wasn’t immediately clear. President Trump and Hegseth are reviewing the military’s footprint in Europe, pressing governments there to take on a greater defense burden and amid friction over other NATO members’ reluctance to join the war in Iran. Hegseth’s spokesman referred questions to the Army, which declined to comment….
Donahue was positioned to help reshape the way that the Army wages war. He had been leading the service’s effort to take lessons from Ukraine and apply them to future conflicts. His departure follows that of General Randy George, the Army chief of staff whom Hegseth forced out this spring. George had been tasked with restocking key air-defense munitions, which have been seriously depleted by the Iran war.
Donahue would be at least the sixth three- or four-star Army general to depart unexpectedly, out of the roughly 60 generals in the service who hold those ranks. They include the well-regarded General James Mingus, a former Army vice chief of staff. “It’s interesting that the guy who says he wants to bring back the warrior culture is expunging the biggest warriors in the Army ranks,” one retired Army officer told us. “This is not a war on woke. This is a war on warriors.”
Donahue, who is 56, is a Pennsylvania native and a West Point graduate. He was on Capitol Hill on 9/11 with Richard Myers, then the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He went on to command the 82nd Airborne Division, among other senior posts.
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
The U.S. military has been forced into a humiliating climbdown over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s flu vaccine rules after an outbreak at a U.S. Air Force base spread to affect at least 222 recruits.
Hegseth, 45, made the annual flu shot optional for troops in April, tearing up a requirement that had stood since 1945 in a move that broke with decades of public health guidance. Only about 40 percent of new trainees at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas had been jabbed when the outbreak took hold in early June, down from a previous rate of nearly 100 percent.
Now the Army, Navy, and Air Force have all quietly performed a U-turn, once again requiring flu shots for basic trainees, officials told ABC News, which first reported the worsening crisis. The Pentagon has granted the services formal exceptions to Hegseth’s own policy.
The numbers are getting worse by the day. As of Tuesday, at least 222 recruits at Lackland Air Force Base had been diagnosed with flu, and four had been hospitalized, two sources familiar with the matter told the network. That is up from 159 cases and two hospitalizations a week earlier.
One recruit has died. Keon McDaniel was in his sixth week of basic training when he suffered a medical emergency on June 12 and was rushed to Brooke Army Medical Center, where he died on June 16, according to the Air Force. The cause remains under investigation. It is not yet clear whether the death is linked to the outbreak.
Recruits are at particular risk. They live in tightly packed bays, shower communally and spend their days within arm’s reach of one another through drills and inspections—exhausted, stressed and crammed together in exactly the conditions where a respiratory virus can thrive.
Some results from yesterday’s elections. The biggest news is from New York, where Mayor Mamdani had a powerful influence.
Democratic socialist candidates swept key primary races in New York Tuesday, accelerating their rise within the Democratic Party while more traditional center-left candidates and moderates backed by corporate interests prevailed in other contests.
Results of primaries across four states Tuesday cemented the growing influence of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s brand of progressive populism while demonstrating its potential limits outside of large East Coast cities.
New York City voters nominated three left-wing U.S. House candidates endorsed by Mamdani, boosting his clout as a political kingmaker and ousting two incumbents in the process. Comparatively moderate Democrats prevailed in other primaries, including in Maryland and Utah….
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrates with Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of three Democratic House candidates to win Tuesday primaries with his endorsement. Seth Wenig,AP
Less than six months into his term as mayor, Mamdani put his political capital on the line by endorsing three insurgent candidates over two sitting members of Congress and a retiring incumbent’s chosen successor. All three of his picks won, in a signal of strength for Mamdani’s political brand and the democratic socialist movement that powered his rise to City Hall….
The Democratic Socialists of America formally endorsed two of Mamdani’s choices: activist and PhD student Darializa Avila Chevalier, who beat Rep. Adriano Espaillat, and state Assembly member Claire Valdez, who was nominated to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez. Brad Lander, Mamdani’s third pick, was not officially backed by the group but received significant support from its members and allied organizations on his path to unseating Rep. Dan Goldman.
I think it’s a real shame that Goldman lost. I hope he’ll run again for something in the future.
The group has seen major momentum recently with a win in the D.C. mayor’s race earlier this month. A congressional race in Denver next week will test DSA appeal outside an East Coast city as Melat Kiros challenges Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colorado).
In New York, DSA-backed challengers had also ousted at least three more moderate members of the state Assembly….
The Democratic Party’s old guard came out on top in New York’s 12th Congressional District. State Assembly member Micah Lasher, a longtime fixture of the city’s Democratic Party, defeated a star-studded cast to succeed retiringRep. Jerry Nadler….
Nadler, a 17-term incumbent, had endorsed Lasher to represent the rich and highly educated district that includes much of Midtown Manhattan and the Upper East and Upper West sides. Lasher also had the support of Gov. Kathy Hochul and former mayor Mike Bloomberg, who invested millions of dollars in a super PAC to support Lasher. Mamdani, who lives and votes in the district, stayed neutral in the race.
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
There’s one more interesting outcome in South Carolina.
Nancy Lacore, a former Navy admiral who was fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, won the Democratic nomination for the First Congressional District of South Carolina, according to The Associated Press.
Nancy Lacore, a 35-year veteran of the Navy, was an admiral when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired her last year. She said she was not given a reason.Credit…Nancy Lacore for Congress
Ms. Lacore defeated Mac Deford, a Coast Guard veteran who was previously the general counsel for the town of Hilton Head Island.
Now, Ms. Lacore faces a difficult task: flipping a seat currently held by a Republican, Representative Nancy Mace, who ran unsuccessfully for governor instead of seeking re-election. The coastal district was redrawn in 2021 to be more reliably Republican. Ms. Mace won re-election by double-digit percentages in each of her past two elections.
But Democrats, who view Ms. Lacore’s military biography as a potentially game-changing asset, are still eyeing the seat despite how difficult it may be to flip. House Majority PAC, the main House Democratic super PAC, has reserved $2.1 million in the district for the fall, according to AdImpact, a media tracking platform.
Ms. Lacore has a higher-than-average profile for a political newcomer. Last August, Mr. Hegseth fired her after 35 years in the Navy. She has said she was given no cause for the firing, which came at a time when Mr. Hegseth was removing military officials who had delivered intelligence assessments that angered President Trump.
There’s a concerning story out of Texas today. I hadn’t heard about it before. A group of so-called Antifa activists have been sentenced to startlingly long sentences in a case about demonstrations outside a customs enforcement detention center. The e was violence involved, but the sentences still seem troubling.
Federal judges in Fort Worth handed down maximum sentences to eight people charged in connection with a July 2025 demonstration outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center that devolved into vandalism and the shooting of a police officer.
Benjamin Song was sentenced to 100 years in prison and Maricela Rueda to 70. Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto, Meaghan Morris, Autumn Hill, and Zachary Evetts each received sentences of 50 years. Daniel Sanchez Estrada, who was not at the demonstration, was sentenced to 30 years on charges relating to concealing documents in the investigation. Judges in the Northern District of Texas ruled that each defendant will serve their sentence on each charge consecutively, dramatically lengthening their time in prison.
The case has been seen as a barometer for how far the Trump administration can go in its campaign to crack down on political opponents, in part by using broad conspiracy statutes to sweep people accused of very different conduct into one single alleged terrorism plot.
Officials at DOJ and DHS have held the case up as a prime example of their fight against the broad cohort of anti-administration activism that they deem “Antifa.” After the defendants were convicted in March, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the verdict would “not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”
The prosecution focused on events that took place at ICE’s Prairieland Detention Facility on July 4 of last year. There, demonstrators arrived dressed in black to hold a “noise demonstration” involving fireworks to show support for those detained in the facility. A group of demonstrators broke off from the group; they began to vandalize cars and surveillance infrastructure outside the facility. After a police officer arrived, Song picked up a rifle and shot the responding officer, wounding him.
Federal prosecutors initially charged the group with attempted murder of a federal officer and use of a firearm. But after the killing of Charlie Kirk, the White House issued sweeping directives to stage a crackdown on Trump’s political opponents, and federal prosecutors in Dallas-Fort Worth ramped up the charges. They framed the group as the “North Texas Antifa Cell,” and brought charges of material support of terrorism against the activists….
The Prairieland case was the first in what’s becoming a nationwide trend of broad conspiracy cases brought against protestors. In Alabama, prosecutors brought material support for terrorism charges against a pair of people who allegedly set a shopping cart on fire in a Walmart after a Black Lives Matter protest. In Minneapolis this month, prosecutors charged a group of ICE protestors in a conspiracy indictment that centered on their supposed involvement in “Antifa.”
In Prairieland, prosecutors folded defendants who were not alleged to have committed any act of violence into a case that centered on allegations around the attempted murder of a responding police officer. Savanna Batten and Elizabeth Soto, two area activists, were not alleged to have belonged to discussion groups where the demonstration was planned. In Batten’s case, prosecutors relied on her black garb as a means to tie her to the conspiracy; in Soto’s, prosecutors argued that her black clothing and her operation of a small printing press that produced anarchist “zines” tied her to the conspiracy. Both received sentences of 50 years on Tuesday.
Read more at the link.
That’s all I have for today. What’s on your mind?
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Well, seeing those dead ducklings was enough to send me into a padded room.
So…today I have only beautiful images and videos of animals showing compassion and kindness and love. One could even say…humanity. Which is something that orange muttherfukker in the White House has never done.
You may have seen these before, but who cares? Let’s have some emotional empathy for a bit.
Nurses at Sedgwick County zoo in Kansas captured this video showing the moment chimpanzee mother, Mahale, saw her baby, Kucheza, after two days. She gave birth via emergency C-section after natural labour stopped progressing.
That video always gets me going…she must have believed the baby was dead.
The rest are with instagram so you may need to reload the post to see them properly.
“Saboteurs be damned! The Situation Room is locked and loaded to eliminate the threat of the Green Newest Scam.” @repeat1968, John Buss
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Well, I have the perfect read and lede to reinforce my repetitive sub-headings for my post. Burgess Evertt of Semaphor quotes outgoing Senator John Cornyn in his latest. Either everyone reads me, or we all finally notice the trend. “‘The president seems to revel in chaos’: Cornyn goes his own way.” Ya think?
A few days after losing his Senate runoff, John Cornyn did something unusual for him: He used his leverage against his own party.
The Texas Republican was frustrated by a nearly year-long delay in getting his state reimbursed by the Trump administration for more than $10 billion in border security spending that Congress had already approved. Cornyn had something valuable to withhold as lawmakers prepared to take up President Donald Trump’s $70 billion immigration spending bill.
“Basically, I told Senator Barrasso and Senator [John] Thune: ‘There’s a price for my vote, and it is to get the administration to release the money,’” Cornyn told Semafor in a recent interview in his hideaway office on the Capitol’s third floor. “Next thing I got is a call from [White House budget director] Russ Vought, and Russ said, ‘we’ll put a notice of funding.’”
Cornyn added a reminder that, with more than six months left in office and a sophisticated understanding of the Senate, he’s positioned to play more hardball if he has to: “That’s one example I think of what you can do when you have some cards to play.”
The four-term incumbent is already setting some conditions on his critical undecided vote for Trump’s attorney general pick, Todd Blanche. Cornyn has returned to the candor he displayed for years in the Senate halls, offering withering assessments of Trump’s Iran deal and legislative strategy — a pattern he might continue on Wednesday, when the president visits GOP senators in person.
See? We basically have to vote them out of office to act in the interests of the country and the people they serve. To continue that train of thought, a reference to my soon-to-be-gone senator was also put into the analysis
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., also ousted by Trump in May, told Semafor that he and Cornyn are “like-minded in the sense that we’re both not returning, and that gives a certain focus. And he’s conveyed he’s got no illusions about the president.
“But you know,” Cassidy added, “it’s not like we sit around in a smoke-filled room, plotting the strategy.”
It just amazes me that Trump manages to get his way as long as they hold office and positions. Then, they suddenly rotate to the right thing.
What does it take to act like an actual American leader these days? This headline at VOX got me thinking, also. “The MAGA stars freaked out by their own movement. The right’s leading lights are looking for anyone to blame for the right’s growing extremism — except themselves.” This analysis is written by Zach Beauchamp.
It’s a real-life version of the famous sketch on Tim Robinson’s show I Think You Should Leave, where a hot-dog-shaped car crashes into a storefront and a man in a hot dog suit says, “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.”
The “hot dog men” — and yes, they’re almost all men — are easy to mock. But their growing ranks point to something serious: that right-wing political machine is spinning out of control in ways that even some of its most aggressive and radical voices recognize as dangerous. And as the right searches for new leadership before Trump himself fades into history, nobody on their side has shown any proven ability to contain or redirect its worst impulses.
In the absence of post-Trump leaders both willing and able to address the real problems, the future of the right — and, thus, in some sense, America — is dangerously unclear.
If that’s the metaphor, then the reality on the ground is even more bizarre.
Shapiro, Rufo, and Rogan are three of the most important figures of the modern right. That they’ve all started sounding like comedy “hot dog men” of late suggests the right has a genuine problem on its hands.
Indeed, there are plenty of other examples.
Mark Levin, the Fox News and talk radio provocateur with Trump’s ear, unironically complains about “podcasters” who are “not about informing or educating,” but rather profiting off being “crazier” than their competitors. Rod Dreher, a right-wing writer who has long promoted a famously racist anti-immigration novel, has been expressing deep concern about rising bigotry on the young right. And even Dinesh D’Souza — a commentator who has spent literally decades spreading increasingly toxic, racially tinged conspiracies — is now warning that right-wing racism may prompt “mass desertions of blacks, Latinos and other minorities from the GOP.”
All of these men openly helped build the right-wing political culture that got us here. Now they’re all trying, desperately, to find the guy who did this.
The examples provided make for a long read, but a good set of evidence for the hypothesis. This article comes with all the details on all the nasty stuff that fed the MAGA tourists and the Elephants at the Republican Zoo. You have to pay a bit to read this, but you will come away with a deeper understanding of the people we ignored for way too long. The conspiracy theorists and provocateurs are reaping what they sowed. I especially liked the story of Candice Owens, who always seemed like an over-the-top Con Artist and turn-coat.
You can also read more on the infighting via MSNOW’s Mychael Schnell.” ‘It’s awkward for everybody’: Inside the Trump-Thune relationship. The president and the majority leader are increasingly finding themselves in standoffs.” Trump is still doing a lot of damage, however, so I wonder if this is actually affecting any real change. Is minimal change doing anything?
On June 4, as Senate Republicans finally began debating their immigration enforcement bill, President Donald Trump called Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., with a demand: Attach the SAVE America Act to the legislation.
During the call — according to a source familiar with the conversation — Thune told Trump there wasn’t enough support for the hardline voting bill. But, as a concession to the president, he said Republicans would try again.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., drafted an amendment exactly as Trump requested. And Republicans put it on the floor for a vote.
It failed 48-50, with four Republicans joining Democrats in opposition.
Despite one of those stubborn realities in the Senate — math — Trump has continued pressing for the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship and photo identification to vote while sharply restricting mail-in voting.
Trump’s insistence on pursuing a bill that lacks enough support, and his tendency to fault Thune when it fails, has only deepened tensions between the president and the Senate majority leader.
One GOP senator, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal dynamics, said Trump and Thune “have an awkward relationship.”
“It’s awkward for everybody,” the lawmaker said.
Sources stressed that Trump and Thune still maintain a functional working relationship. One person familiar with their interactions said they don’t speak every day, but “when they need to talk, they talk a lot.”
One of the clearest signs of that dynamic came last week, when Trump instructed his director of national intelligence nominee not to show up for a confirmation hearing, prolonging a lapse in U.S. spying authority. That morning, Thune said he hadn’t heard from Trump.
When Thune was asked last Wednesday why Trump had unexpectedly derailed his nominee’s hearing, the South Dakota Republican’s frustration was palpable.
“Good question,” he said.
Part of Trump’s discontent with Thune appears to be rooted in the contrast with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. While Johnson often advances Trump’s priorities through the simple-majority House, Thune must navigate a Senate where most major legislation requires 60 votes. As a result, Thune frequently finds himself delivering unwelcome news about what can and can’t pass.
“Thune and the speaker obviously have different ways of communicating with Trump, both in style and in substance,” the source familiar with the Trump-Thune dynamic said.
“When it comes to Thune, he doesn’t sugarcoat the truth,” this person added. “He tells the president exactly what he needs to know — the raw and unvarnished truth — even if it isn’t always the answer the president wants to hear.”
This Washington Post analysis (gifted) shows Orange Caligula’s troubles extend to the Supreme Court. “Why Trump has been attacking the Supreme Court, with 3 key rulings ahead. As the court prepares to rule on several of the president’s priorities, tensions are running high — even with his own appointees.
One recounted how Gorsuch became upset when Davis lashed out at Justice Amy Coney Barrett, calling her a “rattled law professor” for siding with the court’s liberals in a pair of rulings against Trump. The other said Davis was angered by Gorsuch’s vote to block Trump’s use of a wartime authority to deport Venezuelans.
The people differed on whether Gorsuch had asked Davis not to come to his clerks’ gathering or he chose not to. Either way, the rift highlighted the growing conflict between Trump, his MAGA allies and the justices, which has burst more fully into public view in recent months.
That turbulence makes for a tense backdrop in the waning days of the Supreme Court’s 2025-26 term, as the justices prepare to rule on three signature Trump initiatives: limiting birthright citizenship, firing the heads of independent agencies and reshaping the Federal Reserve.
Many legal experts believe that the justices have signaled they will rule against Trump on two out of the three, blocking his bid to deny citizenship to those who were born to parents here illegally or lacking permanent residency, as well as his effort to remove a governor of the Fed board.
“It seems like almost 100 years since you’ve had a clash approaching this level between the president and the court,” said Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford University. “You’d have to go back to the New Deal to have any kind of an analogue.”
During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the court by expanding it from nine justices to 15after the court struck down key parts of the New Deal. The plan ultimately failed, but not before the court began upholding some policies that Roosevelt championed, possibly in response to his threats to add justices.
Davis, who declined to comment on his relationship with Gorsuch, said in an interview that if the court rules against Trump on birthright citizenship,
“When the Supreme Court gives Chinese birth tourists birthright citizenship, it’s going to destroy its legitimacy with a broad swath of the American public,” Davis said, referring to people who ostensibly travel to the United States to have American children. “They are following politics and vanity projects instead of the law.”
Defenders of birthright citizenship note that the 14th Amendment says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
In another major case on Trump policies, the court will decide whether the president can remove without cause the heads of roughly two dozen independent agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, that Congress set up to be insulated from political influence.
In addition, the justices will rule on whether Trump can fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook while a lawsuit over her removal plays out in the courts. A ruling for Trump would give the president far greater control over the powerful central bank.
These rulings, and other major decisions, are likely to come in the next week or so as the justices sprint toward the end of the term in late June or early July.
The disaffection with the Supreme Court among Trump’s allies is notable because the president reshaped the court in his first term with three staunchly conservative appointees, who have delivered major victories for conservatives on abortion, affirmative action, religious rights and more.
This term, the justices have handed the administration a string of wins on the emergency docket, allowing Trump policies on limiting immigration, freezing foreign aid and dismantling the Education Department to move forward for now.
Trump appointed Gorsuch, who did not respond to a request for comment, along with Brett M. Kavanaugh and Barrett.
The wins have not satisfied Trump, who has attacked the court — including his own nominees — in increasingly caustic and personal terms that legal scholars say have little historical precedent; Trump has called the justices “bad,” “stupid,” “weak” and other epithets.
All three of these articles are long reads. I’m not sure if they give me a glimpse of hope, given all the idiots involved, but I do feel the more Trump feels he’s under attack by his own, the more he’ll turn his mind from other things, like the ridiculous crap he’s done at the White House. I don’t know, though. I am fully aware that I might be wrong on that. It may be just chaos without meaning or impact.
Here are some other things that truly depress me. This is via CNN this morning. “Exclusive: Trump administration plans to use homeland security funds to pressure states into election changes.
The Trump administration is threatening to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funds from states unless they adopt a sweeping set of election changes, according to multiple sources and internal documents obtained by CNN.
The move is part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to root out alleged voter fraud — despite studies showing it’s far rarer than he claims — and exert more federal influence over how elections are run. It comes as multiple states have passed laws that seek to prevent the federal government from interfering with elections.
Under new rules governing several homeland security grant programs, states must take a number of steps, including phasing out certain electronic voting systems and moving to hand-marked paper ballots. They must also run their voter rolls through a controversial Department of Homeland Security citizenship verification database.
If not, states would lose out on some funding from DHS. These grants, expected to total more than $1 billion in the current fiscal year, are one of Washington’s main vehicles for helping state and local governments prevent terrorism, protect infrastructure and prepare for major disasters.
For years, the DHS grants, which states apply for, have required that at least 3% of the funds be spent broadly on election security. But the new guidelines, which CNN obtained and are expected to go out to states later this month, impose a set of mandatory reforms and steep penalties for noncompliance. States that refuse would lose 20% of the grant money — potentially millions of dollars in security funds.
This is more bad news via NPR. It’s more garbage from SCOTUS. “Supreme Court allows a ruling that ends a tool to protect minority voters in 7 states.” Hansi Lo Wang has the lede.
By declining to take up a lower court ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt another blow to the Voting Rights Act.
The court announced Monday that it will not review an Arkansas-based lawsuit, leaving in place a 2025 appeals panel ruling that ends a long-used tool for protecting minority voters from discrimination under the landmark law in seven mainly Midwestern states.
That ruling found that in the states covered by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota — private individuals and groups do not have the right to sue to enforce what’s known as Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which generally allows voters with a disability or inability to read or write to get help with voting from a person of their choice.
The Supreme Court’s move comes almost two months after its conservative supermajority issued a major ruling that further weakened the Voting Rights Act, setting off a groundswell in redistricting across the country.
When will the press stop calling these people “conservative”? This has nothing to do with conserving anything traditionally Constitutional in this country. Okay, this is all I can handle on Monday. May the week ahead give us more hope. I’m going to go watch more soccer games and hope for the best.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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I have to do another video on the reflective pool debacle. They are trying to say it was sabotaged by the left. They are unable to see a flaw in their God king. The Trump administration dumped hydrogen peroxide to kill the algae and it stripped the paint.
“.. I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn said. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”@washingtonpost.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/…
Hahahahahahahahaha SAD! The COMPLETELY INSANE made up 250 foot “gash” he claims a fictional vandal made might be one of the craziest lies he has ever told in his life which is saying something. And the rest of this is just objectively hilarious and pathetic. His brain is just a pile of mush.
In the past few months, Trump has managed to turn the White House, its grounds, and nearby areas into a giant mess. Is it possible for the damage the South lawn caused by the cage matches to be repaired by July 4–the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? And what about the reflecting pool? What a boondoggle that turned out to be! And it looks like the East Wing mess is going to be there for a long time, as Trump battles in court to build his imitation-Versailles ballroom.
Trump is obsessed with remaking Washington DC to resemble the Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower aesthetic, with gold plating and marble everywhere. And of course, every project will involve heavy duty corruption as Trump hands all the jobs to old cronies and political donors.
Of all the memes circulated about the American President, the toddler in diapers or giant baby playing with toy bombers in the Iranian LEGO videos probably comes closest to the spectacle inside the gilded bunker. But Trump thinks of himself as a Builder not a warrior. He has spent his life trying to live up to the unmet expectations of Fred Trump, a man who knew foundations and concrete and actually had put hammer to nail. Donald grew up at that man’s side, costumed in hard hat but with hands destined to remain forever soft. He learned the profane patois of New York and New Jersey contractors but farmed out the rest of it.
Trump’s second term is remarkable for more aberrances than we can track. But chief among them are the mysterious, unnecessary projects to demolish East Wing, re-coat the Reflecting Pool, affix gold decorations to the Oval Office with super glue and until stopped, tear down and re-do the Kennedy Center. An arc-de-Trump waits on the drawing board.
The only reasonable explanation for this orgy of wasteful brick and mortar is that the handlers need toys and games to keep the old man from disrupting the serious business of making war, destroying the sciences, defunding humanitarians, filling concentration camps, and wrecking alliances – matters attended to with great devotion by Vought, Miller, Kegseth, Kennedy and Wiles – and nameless administration elves whose allegiances are most definitely not to the American people.
One sure sign that the Bob the Builder projects exist to placate and distract the Old Man is the near total lack of transparency around the contracting processes. Normally, federal agencies like the National Park Service would oversee the reflecting pool, and the National Capital Planning Commission would sign off on the East Wing project. Contracts normally overseen by the federal General Services Administration (GSA) were presented directly by the Executive Residence of the White House. There is no known evidence of GSA oversight.
These baffling, expensive boondoggles seem to serve two purposes. They keep the old man occupied and open the spigot on taxpayer funds for the claque in New York, Jersey and Florida who have either done business with the old man over the years or ponied up for a Mar a Lago membership.
Susie and the Cats,, by Angela Thomson
The peeling algae-choked disaster of the $14 million Reflecting Pool improvement made news this weekend. The White House gave a no-bid $6.9 million contract to a company, Atlantic Industrial Coating….
Atlantic then brought on a subcontractor from Oklahoma, Mid-America Industrial Coatings whose truck was seen at the pool. Reporter Gabe Sanchez tweeted in May that he called Atlantic to inquire about the subcontract. The owner “became evasive and shut down the conversation,” Sanchez reported, stating “That’s none of your business.” And it wouldn’t be the Epstein class-infested administration if a former chief operating officer of the Mid-America didn’t also have multiple felony convictions for child sex abuse.
There there’s the man hired to keep the reflecting pool clear and free of algae: John J. Cafaro, a Taftian cigar chomping dandy with a Hitler haircut and ‘stache, another in a long line of individuals and events that suggest America passed through a wormhole into a Marvel Comic alternative universe around 2016.
Cafaro owns the aptly named Green Water Solutions. He bagged the no-bid $1.6 million contract despite – or because of? – a record of pleading guilty to bribing public officials. There is now more algae on the pool than there was before the project.
President Donald Trump’s makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations is not going according to plan.
Then, the new Trump-branded “American flag blue” color was short-lived as algae turned the pool green, causing the administration to send crews to dump hydrogen peroxide into the expansive pool to deal with the problem.
In recent days, NBC News spotted some blue paint chipping off the surface, with strips of it peeling away and floating atop the pool for visitors and passers-by to see as the busy summer tourist season in the nation’s capital gets underway.
On the west side of the pool Thursday, a small section of the blue painted surface appeared to be lifting away, exposing the darker unpainted layer underneath. A strip of detached paint could be seen floating beneath the water’s surface.
Algae still remain visible along the edges of the pool despite ongoing cleaning efforts. The developing deterioration drew the attention of onlookers who stopped to take a closer look.
The Trump administration is hardly the first to struggle to clean up the Reflecting Pool. But the algae-infused green color has drawn significant attention in recent days after the president slammed the pool earlier this year as “filthy” and “dirty,” promising to make it “beautiful” and blue at minimal expense.
For days, workers have been trying to rid the Reflecting Pool of algae after a more than $14 million renovation that President Donald Trump said was “done properly” and “could last for 100 years.”
But now workers have another problem to contend with: peeling paint. On Thursday, a sheet of the pool’s surface — painted in “American Flag Blue,” a color selected by the president — was seen floating in the water on the north side of the pool. It undulated in the water as curious tourists gathered, some of whom had come to see the green algae.
Pause, by Rosie Phillips
At 5:35 p.m. on Thursday, a worker came to remove the sheet of pool surface, telling a Washington Post photographer not to photograph it, despite being on public land.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to questions about the paint and why the pool surface is separating. The agency said in a statement on Wednesday that it is treating the pool with hydrogen peroxide and “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” to effectively cut off the algae’s food supply.
Steve Goodale, a swimming pool expert who viewed footage of the peeled sheet of paint, believes the pool’s surface may have been improperly prepared for the treatment.
“If there are any deficiencies with the surface prep, the surface can fail just like you see here,” he said, via email, “sheets and chunks peeling off.” Another culprit, he added, could be groundwater or pool water seeping underneath the lining.
Hydrogen peroxide can affect a pool’s surface, too, but not in the same way: “Less of a sheet peeling off and more like fading, hazing or breakdown of the material,” he said.
A bit more from the article:
On Thursday, the Interior Department press office posted on X that “the Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool — just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”
Indeed, some areas of the Reflecting Pool were looking cleaner compared with earlier in the week. Workers in chest-high waders stood in the middle of the pool and vacuumed the algae. The neon green-tinted water could be seen pouring out of tubes into nearby drainage grates. The center of the pool, though, was still neon green, and residual algae remained in the cleaned portions of the pool.
$14.6 million for this mess, and now the taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the efforts fix it. Trump has handed out another no-bid contract to another crony for the clean-up.
The federal government awarded a company owned by a Trump donor a $1.7 million contract to install a new water cleaning system for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, federal records show, as President Trump pushes to overhaul the pool — and struggles with a bout of algae and a peeling paint job.
The no-bid contract to install a “Nano Bubble” filtration system went to Green Water Solutions, an Ohio-based company whose owner is listed on federal contracting documents as “JJ Cafaro Investment Trust.” The president and CEO of that trust is identified as John J. Cafaro on Federal Election Commission filings.
Prisac Nicholai, Self portrait with my cat
Cafaro has donated to several GOP candidates and conservative causes in recent years. He has donated extensively to Mr. Trump’s campaign and to Trump-linked groups, giving $250,000 to the Trump Victory fundraising committee at one point in 2020. FEC records show he also made donations to Democrats at various points.
A businessman and real estate developer, Cafaro pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in 2010 over donations to his daughter’s congressional campaign. Nearly a decade earlier, he pleaded guiltyto conspiring to bribe Democratic Rep. James Traficant, and cooperated with prosecutors.
Cafaro and his wife own a home in Palm Beach, Florida, less than a mile from the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Green Water Solutions is also known as Greenwater Services. Inquiries to Cafaro did not yield a response, and the company referred CBS News to the National Park Service, a division of the Department of the Interior. The New York Times was first to report on Cafaro’s involvement in the Reflecting Pool project.
On its website, Green Water Solutions describes its specialty as purifying water to remove algae, bacteria and other contaminants using a system that injects ozone-infused “nano bubbles” into the water.
Lets hope it works.
Last night, Trump decided to blame his reflecting pool on “vandals.”
“It’s called ‘New Pond Syndrome,'” says Steve Goodale, a Canadian swimming pool specialist known online as “Swimming Pool Steve.” “It’s a known thing that happens when you take a natural, clear body of water like this that sits in an open air environment and you try to start it up, very often you end up with green water almost immediately.”
Goodale says the process took longer — a matter of days — to unfold in this case likely due to the sheer size of the pool, which measures 2,030 feet long and has a surface area of approximately 338,000 square feet….
Rosalina Stancheva Christova, a professor of aquatic ecology at George Mason University in Virginia, took water samples from the pool on Tuesday. She confirmed the algae belongs to the genus Desmodesmus, which she said is “growing in excessive amounts” but is not toxic or harmful.
Christova says this kind of common green algae is found all over the region, especially this time of year. The reflecting pool in particular provides “excellent conditions” for algae growth, she said: shallow, stagnant water, strong sunlight and no shade.
“It could happen every single summer,” she added. “But it seems that the disturbance of the pond during the renovations [is] accelerating this process.”
Christova said last month’s renovations may have affected the balance of nutrients in the pool, potentially accelerating the algae blooms. Goodale similarly views the resurfacing as one of several contributing factors.
“The new, darker interior surface is going to absorb more sunlight,” Goodale says. “It is going to result in water that’s warmer, and that ultimately is going to lead to more prolific algae growth.”
As National Park Service workers poured gallons of hydrogen peroxide into Donald Trump’s newly overhauled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, observers worried about the families of nonvoters that actually use the water: ducks and their ducklings.
It’s a “bad day to be a duck,” remarked a NOTUS reporter on X this week while watching the desperate bid to control blooming algae with chemicals. Some people on social media claim to have seen dead ducks in the pool….
A little girl in peasant dress, playing with a cat by Danish-Norwegian artist Peder Severin Krøyer.
A 3 percent concentration is generally considered safe. Containers of hydrogen peroxide being poured into the Reflecting Pool were marked as a “12 percent” solution, Common Dreams reported. A 12 percent solution is strong enough to “cause problems if inhaled and burns if the chemical touches the skin,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has detailed warnings and suggestions for “medical management” of the chemical.
Hydrogen peroxide is “not absorbed by the skin, but can cause systemic toxicity when inhaled or ingested,” notes the CDC. It’s also a “powerful” oxidizing agent; when it comes in contact with organic material, spontaneous combustion can occur,” the agency warns.
It’s not known how much of the bleaching chemical is being dumped into the Reflecting Pool that many ducks use as a pond. In addition, at this time of year several tiny ducklings are trailing their moms in the water. Their size could make them more vulnerable to toxins.
President Donald Trump on Friday claimed the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was intentionally vandalized and said law enforcement is actively investigating, as the administration has scrambled to fix the pool’s recent deterioration just days after Trump’s nearly $15 million renovation.
“We’ve had some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump said in a late night post on Truth Social without providing evidence. “The algae is 75% gone, and the condition will soon be completely remedied, and the area that was vandalized, fortunately, is just a small area of damage, and will be fixed early next week.”
The post comes one day after blue material at the bottom of the pool began peeling off. The Reflecting Pool was painted blue and refilled in recent weeks as part of the pricey renovation ordered by Trump.
The president linked the alleged vandalism at the Reflecting Pool to the mysterious etching of “8647” into the grass on the National Mall days prior.
Johannes Albert Neuhuys, A girl playing with the cat 1877
“Just like three days ago, they destroyed the grass outside of the Pool, they’ve also done everything possible to hurt the inside surface that was just installed. No different than the chemicals that were used on the National Mall, they used something similar in the Reflecting Pool to try to destroy and demean our beautiful work,” Trump claimed.
When used as slang, the number 86 can refer to getting rid of or tossing something out. Trump is currently the 47th president. The phrase has recently been used to signal opposition to Trump.
A new image shows the numbers appearing even bolder than when they were originally discovered etched in the grass on the National Mall in Washington, DC more than a week ago.
Keep telling yourself that, you demented old geezer. Don the Builder has created this tremendous mess with a relatively small project. Can you imagine how bad it could get when when he really gets going with the ballroom and his idiotic arch?
Yesterday Trump held an event to display another renovation project: his new Airforce One plane, which he somehow grifted from the government of Qatar.
President Donald Trump on Friday officially unveiled his new Air Force One jet that was contentiously given to him by the Qatari government, declaring it would be used during a ceremonial flyover in Washington on July 4 to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States.
Trump welcomed the delivery of the luxurious Boeing 747 in an appearance at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington that began with him exiting the aircraft and walking down the steps.
Decked out in a red, white and dark-blue blue color scheme — a departure from the lighter blue on the previous model — the jet is set to be used by Trump during events marking the nation’s landmark anniversary.
“Nobody tops this one, and that’s the way we have to have it for our country. Nobody even comes close,” Trump said.
The jet will lead a flyover — “the likes of which we’ve never seen before,” Trump said — involving various other military planes on July 4.
He repeatedly praised the plane, calling it “the largest and the greatest in every aspect.” It will be a “flying White House at a level of luxury no one has ever seen before,” he added.
The plane is estimated to be worth $400 million, but the U.S. government has likely spent substantially more to make it ready for use.
Meanwhile, Americans are struggling to pay for gas, groceries and health care.
And what is going on with the Kennedy Center? Trump was ordered by a judge to remove his name from the building and cancel his plans to shut it down for 2 years. Workmen came and did something, but no one can tell if the Trump name has really been removed, because he is hiding the front of the building with huge tarps.
In the early hours of June 13, in an action that turned out to be news around the world, workers hung massive tarps from scaffolding across the front of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and under court order removed President Trump’s name from the marble facade.
Or did they?
Natalie and Persik, by Daniel Pagán
True, the center’s operations chief, Matt Floca, filed a sworn declaration with a federal court later that day saying that Mr. Trump’s name had been removed. And true, a New York Times photographer captured evidence through an opening in the tarp that the letter “A” came off. Another photographer recorded evidence of the demise of a “D.”
But in a downer denouement for Mr. Trump’s critics, a week later the tarps are still there, prompting some to wonder whether at least some of the letters are, too. As of Friday evening, there was no visual evidence that the letters splashed across the building had been restored to “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Peering behind the tarps is impossible because they now lie tight against the building’s front.
“I don’t know if they took down the sign, because I can’t see it,” said Luna Woo, a violinist visiting from Portland, Ore., as part of the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute. She and other young musicians in the program have been trying to see behind the tarps from a practice room overlooking them. No luck.
So when will the tarps come down?
A Kennedy Center spokeswoman, Roma Daravi, emailed a terse response:
“The scaffolding and tarp will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels. Best, Public Relations.”
I know this seems like a lightweight post, but these are the issues that our “president” is focused on. I’m not sure if the country can survive 2-1/2 more years of this chaos–not to mention the grifting and outright corruption.
Anyway, I hope you are all enjoying the weekend, despite the insanity in Washington DC.
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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.
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