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Today’s Difficult Budget Negotiations Will Be Far More Difficult as Shelves... Introduction To Yarvin’s Formalism 
Why is Steve Witkoff, real estate investor, the primary negotiator tasked with trying to bring an end to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as engaging with Iran on terminating its nuclear program? Where is li’l Marco who served on the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Select Committee on Intelligence?
He’s busy holding down 3 other jobs, with the seemingly most important SOS duties outsourced to Witkoff. Why ask why? It’s Trump – chaos for its own sake. They value the ability to upset and disrupt.
Witkoff is more useful to The Felon Guy than Li’l Marco.
Yes, Witkoff was a fellow NY RE developer, so they share the same “business experience” and have known each other outside the political arena. Li’l Marco is, after all, a former neocon and who knows, he could snap back to his former POV some day if he’s not completely ruined by his current sycophancy.
I think Trump’s point in making Rubio nominally head of yet another agency is that he’s not in charge of anything. (Doing any one of his four jobs would be more than a full-time job.) Rubio’s the first senior head on the chopping block when something goes wrong, but decisions are almost certainly made inside the White House, probably by Stephen Miller.
Li’l Marco, even with his four jobs , seems to make time to write asinine JD Vance-like comments such as publicly condemning Germany’s decision to classify the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an extremist organization.
“That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise,” writes Li’l Marco on the skipping dork’s social media platform, “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD – which took second in the recent election – but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course.”
Jewish organizations have labled the AfD as antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic.
re: Stephen Miller
The loathsome Trump Admin MAGAt and ghoul emerges as top contender for Trump’s next national security adviser.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ar-AA1E3Qs2
Witkoff is also a frequent golf partner for Trump.
That reminds me: WTF was Trump talking about with his “Putin is tapping me along”? Is that golf jargon?
No. It is not golf jargon.
A “tap in” in golf refers to a ball so close to the hole that there is no way the golfer could miss it. And many times, an opposing golfer will not require the golfer to do the putt. In major championships, golfers Wii not give the opposing golfer the benefit of the doubt. And there have been instances where a pro has missed the putt.
I’m pretty sure that he meant “stringing me along”. If Biden had tweeted something like that the news media would have taken it as a sign of cognitive decline.
I agree that’s probably what he meant but I’ve never heard that phrase. Maybe it’s one of the ways he cheats at golf: “I don’t like that lie so I’ll just tap it along.”
That’s just outright cheating. Perhaps if he kicked the ball at any time to a better lie on the course it might be called the application of a “foot wedge,” but that’s still cheating.
It may be Trump is repeating a kind of malapropism used by someone who doesn’t play golf (or speak English fluently), and it stuck with him because it’s very similar to a “tap in.”
Great, a back channel through a Trump golf resort to Russia.
Sure would like to know how many back channels run through Trump org properties along with money laundering and bribery routings.
OFFS. Stephen Miller’s minions want the judiciary to be run as part of the executive branch.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/2/2320228/-The-Weirdness-Grows-Stephen-Miller-Group-Sues-John-Roberts-To-Give-Trump-Power-Over-The-Judiciary
There’s a link to the complaint, which names Roberts himself as a defendant. (Link is in post, to a PDF on Google Drive.)
Yup. I plan on writing this up. I’m more worried than Kovensky, but I also think the lawsuit may make Roberts think twice about things mandated to be independent.
I don’t think that they’re that stupid that they want to throw out Articles I and II, but they may be trying to do just that.
I don’t want a Russian-style government.
From your link PJ:
“…The case, hysterically, complains that “the media and liberal lawmakers have sought to undermine the political independence of Article III courts…
…
[There is] a benefit to the Trump people increasingly turning their ham-fisted tactics directly against the Supreme Court itself. I think this is a typically strategic blunder by the Trump crew. For all of the Supreme Court’s recent outrageous decisions, for the most part they have aggrandized the Supreme Court’s power. A Republican Congress has decided to prostrate itself before Executive power, but this Republican Supreme Court has been interested mainly in increasing ITS power. ” (emphasis mine)
=========
Dems will have an opportunity to advocate to MANA (Make America Normal Again) in 2028.
Last week Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Fernandez Rodriguez permanently blocked the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security from transferring or removing Venezuelans held under the Alien Enemies Act in the Southern District of Texas.
Last night his royal-heinASS raged: “Can it be so that Judges aren’t allowing the USA to Deport Criminals, including Murderers, out of our Country and back to where they came from? If this is so, our Country, as we know it, is finished! Americans will have to get used to a very different, crime filled, LIFE.”
=========
The 79-year old orange toddler is having a hissy-fit.
Trump regime backed down from Maine over transgender athletes. https://apnews.com/article/trump-maine-usda-transgender-sports-cf1754471bcc8a6418f3308a6aed8fc5
Scapegoating food-insecure kids IS a bad look – even for the reprehensible MAGAts.
BWAHAHAHA!
As Chris GEIDNER wrote on 4/26/25 [< HIGHLY recommended]:
The horrors are not aberrations. This is the Trump administration’s plan.
This is their plan. But the plan is just that — a plan. It can and must be stopped.
https://www.lawdork.com/p/the-plan-the-horrors-are-not-aberrations
Chris Geidner Apr 26, 2025
https://bsky.app/profile/dylantus.bsky.social/post/3lo7qfqb6uk2w
May 2, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Links to
Maine settles lawsuit against USDA over $3 million in school funds
The Department of Agriculture agreed it will not interfere with Maine school funding based on alleged Title IX violations without following the proper procedure, according to a settlement announced Friday.
The Portland Press Herald, May 2, 2025 2:07 PM
Oh, you just made my day with that news!
Will this fit on a T-shirt?
“Good, I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor, because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”
–World’s Most Masculine Man
“…–World’s Most Masculine Man…”
The terms masculine or butch don’t come to mind knowing that Trump spends hours in hair and make-up to look as he does. Effete and namby pamby do come to mind, however.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating two leading toothpaste makers over their use of fluoride, suggesting that they are “illegally marketing” the teeth cleaners to parents and kids “in ways that are misleading, deceptive, and dangerous.”
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/texas-goes-after-toothpaste-in-escalating-fight-over-fluoride/
Wishful thinking.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fluoride-drinking-water-dental-health
(Calgary stopped using fluoride. The results were what dentists expected: lots more tooth damage.)
“Look Ma, I Made a Bankruptcy Machine!”
I’ve been wondering about our fiscal deficit and how current trade policy mix will change behavior.
As a side note, to the extent one intended to induce “drill, baby, drill” wouldn’t tariffs on oil as OPEC flooded the global market seem wise? Or is the goal to allow the Saudis to buy oil shale projects in the US with Trump’s help (remember Kushner’s $2Bil). Remember that view.
https://on.ft.com/4jWZxuJ
The combination of tariffs (with exemptions for the well heeled but none for the buyer of cheap goods), tax cuts for the wealthy, a reduction in transfer payments to the less well off AND monetary easing (which is what Trump wants but hasn’t gotten) seems to me to be a bankruptcy creating and thus wealth transfer machine, not at all a change in relative prices to induce domestic capex machine.
On Fed revenues, I’ve been checking the daily Treasury statements initially to see how tariff payments are showing up but more recently, as it was just April, to see how that side of our balance sheet is doing.
Comparing fiscal year to date data from May 1, 2024 to May 1, 2025 I find:
Corporate income tax payments are $18.8B less than in 2024
SECA Payments are $48.6B higher than in 2024
Individual Withheld payments are $105.6B higher than in 2024
If trade policy becomes a bankruptcy creating machine (as I suspect it will) while corporate taxes get slashed further our primary deficit is going to spiral.
To use FY2009 as guide, total Fed tax revenues declined by $463B or about 21%. Half as large a decline in fiscal revenue this time, given our much higher debt to GDP ratio and the banana republic debt spiral spins up very quickly
Don’t forget about the regime’s staffing cuts to the IRS, that are projected to lower tax revenue by $500 billion this year (a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts).
With the Labor landslide in Oz, maybe it’s time for the Five Eyes to become the Four Eyes.
That’s a nice listening post you have there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
Or maybe make that Three Eyes: in the UK,
“… the Tories are at risk of terminal collapse … They’ve lost control of heartland counties like Kent and Lincolnshire before, during the Major years, but this time they were almost entirely obliterated, and by another right-wing party, not a coalition of angry Labour and Lib Dem voters. …
Reform, who significantly outperformed their national polling, have given themselves a real shot of becoming the main right-wing party, as National Rally and Brothers of Italy have done in their countries. …”
https://samf.substack.com/p/terminal-decline
Nicole, thanks for pointing out that photo of Waltz with his cellphone showing him using Signal during another meeting. And Marcy, thanks for pointing out that app in the purple area under the list of participants in that Signal chat list. You said it was an Israeli app that gave them access, too, if I understood correctly. That makes the following information more interesting. But something tells me there is more to this story than meets the eye:
“Inside Waltz’s ouster: Before Signalgate, talks with Israel angered Trump” – 5/3/25
“The fired national security adviser engaged in intense coordination with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about military options against Iran ahead of an Oval Office meeting between the Israeli leader and Trump, two people said.”
…..
“The view by some in the administration was that Waltz was trying to tip the scales in favor of military action and was operating hand in glove with the Israelis.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/03/waltz-trump-israel/
Ah, so he was Boltoned maybe, rather than subject to a weirdly delayed Signalgate response…https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ap-top-news-john-bolton-afghanistan-politics-788d664afbfd4565805dc1c0de8d4ffb
My sense is that Trump doesn’t want to be seen as an instigator of a war, although he’s happy to mollify and extol active war criminals of other nations. He’s made a schtick out of blaming others for wars, as if he’s the prince of peace, lol. Waltz’ firing makes more sense in that light than a Signal penalty, although making sense has little to do with anything in the WH/GOP-hive-mind these days.
Also regarding Iran and Israel and terminating folks in national security positions, there is reason to believe that Hegseth fired officials in the Pentagon because they advocated not going to war with Iran. And that leaks investigations was a cover story for the terminations.
Here is the coverage by the Young Turks arguing that point:
4/22/25: https://youtu.be/SnupyhG-SDg
4/23/25: https://youtu.be/203Hr1iB_x0
Then there’s also Loomer’s involvement in the firing of national security officials at around the same time, which is curious to the timing.
4/2/24: Loomer ridiculous White House access
4/3/24: NSC fires officials, allegedly solely because they weren’t Trumpy enough
4/3/24: the call from a Politico reporter to Pentagon official about an investigation, which causes a chain of events that ends up with Carroll and Kasper being terminated from a leak investigation
4/3/24: Axios’s Barak David breaks the scoop that Loomer had ridiculous access to the White House and a day later NSC officials are fired. [Barak Ravid had gained a reputation during the Biden admin as receiving leaks regarding Israel foreign policy that were designed to positively spin the administration.]
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/03/trump-laura-loomer-fire-national-security-council
Paying attention to anything emanating from Young Turks is a mind-fuck. Uygur is where he belongs, in a political no-man’s land of his own making, and Ana Kasparian, a first-gen Armenian whose parents fled the genocide committed by the *historical* Young Turks, is a transphobic, anti-immigrant gasbag who thanks Greg Abbot for opening her eyes on immigration (again, as the daughter of asylum-seeking refugees, no less). The fact that that segment has the two of them fawning over Tucker Carlson’s interview with the fired Caldwell is simply more evidence of that show’s garbage-status.
As to Caldwell’s commentary in that interview, his history as a longtime, tight friend and accomplice of Hegseth tells me anything I need to know about his innate veracity, which is nil, like Carlson himself. The most logical explanation about how those firings went down and the reasons for them is that they are all liars, top to bottom, front to back, such that nothing is believable coming from any or all of them, in every direction. It’s just a full-bore shit show, IOW.
The Trump 2.0 administration is a reflection of his own severe dysfunctions. Might we be staring down the barrel of a hot war with Iran at Israel’s behest? Sure, but Caldwell claiming that he was fired for being anti-war is more likely an appeal to Trump’s anti-neocon proclivities in search of salvaging his “career,” than it is evidence that he’s being actually *cough* honest. Dishonesty is their milieu, after all.
I’ll reiterate what I wrote in the post above yours: that “making sense” of anything generated from the mental sewer that is the MAGA GOP is a fool’s errand. Uygur and Kasparian opining that Carlson and Caldwell are “allies to the Left” in any respect whatsoever shows how that description applies to the Young Turks as well. I can’t believe I actually allowed myself to watch the whole fucking segment.
The real meaning of the “Young Turks:”
https://www.armenian-genocide.org/young_turks.html
Guaranteed Mutual Grease
Justin Sun: Will the deal go south?
Stay tune to Bondi in the east,
Well step right up
see the plunder of the ages,
It’s a guaranteed mutual grease.
When the starkness falls all around,
And the lodestar’s still on the rise,
Oh, you can’t imagine
the gallimaufry there
created by wisegals and wiseguys.
Well, anybody wonderin’
‘bout discovery
has to watch for cover-ups
and holler at the bigots.
Anybody wonderin’ what’s goin’ on
is gonna find out
they’ll flood the zone with their spigots.
When the starkness falls all around,
And the lodestar’s still on the rise,
Oh, you can’t imagine
the gallimaufry there
created by wisegals and wiseguys.
Justin Sun: Will the deal go south?
Watch the proceeds on incline,
Well, step right up
and see the “dues owed” quandary,
They’ll doo wah ditty as a sideline.
When the starkness falls all around,
And the lodestar’s still on the rise,
Oh, you can’t imagine
the gallimaufry there
created by wisegals and wiseguys.
Justin Sun: Will the deal go south?
(Justin Sun: Will the deal go south)
Stay tune to Bondi in the east,
(Stay tune to Bondi in the east)
Well step right up,
see the plunder of the ages,
(Step right up)
It’s a guaranteed mutual grease.
When the starkness falls all around,
And the lodestar’s still on the rise,
Oh, you can’t imagine
the gallimaufry there
created by wisegals and wiseguys.
Anybody wonderin’ ‘bout discovery
has to watch for cover-ups
and holler at the bigots.
Anybody wonderin’ what’s goin’ on
is gonna find out they’ll flood the zone
with their spigots.
Justin Sun: Will the deal go south?
While the lodestar’s still on the rise,
Oh, you can’t imagine
the gallimaufry there
created by wisegals and wiseguys.
Justin Sun: Will the deal go south?
(Look out to see who muddies waters)
Stay tune to Bondi in the east,
(Their trickeries, knee-deep: they’ve lied)
Well step right up,
see the plunder of the ages,
It’s a guaranteed mutual grease.
(We need much more
than Donald Trump’s showplace)
Justin Sun: Will the deal go south?
While the lodestar’s still on the rise,
(And we need organized crime
solidly cracked, and tried.)
Oh, you can’t imagine
the gallimaufry there
created by wisegals and wiseguys.
(And we need organized crime
solidly cracked, and tried.)
You can’t imagine
the gallimaufry there
created by wisegals and wiseguys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxzvkyVmUZQ
“When The Sun Goes Down In The South (1985 Original Broadway Cast)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc7jhYMLXJY
“Sun Goes Down I.T.S”
Trump not sure if he has to uphold the Constitution.
“The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment says “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”; it does not say that person must be a U.S. citizen, and the Supreme Court has long recognized that noncitizens have certain basic rights. Trump has also said that while “we always have to obey the laws,” he would like to see some “homegrown criminals” sent to El Salvador as well, a proposal that was widely panned by legal experts.
When Welker tried to point out what the Fifth Amendment said, Trump suggested that such a process would slow him down too much.
“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are — some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.””
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/rcna204580
During the same interview, Trump complained that NBC host Kristen Welker was conducting a “dishonest interview” after she informed him prices were going up in the wake of his tariffs.
“This is such a dishonest interview already,” Trump said. “Prices are down on groceries. Prices are down for oil. Prices are down for all energy. Prices are down at tremendous numbers for gasoline.”
“I mean, these are actual examples,” Welker replied. “So you’re saying the prices that are going down, some prices are going up, tires, strollers, some clothing, in the wake of your tariffs.”
Trump called increasing prices “peanuts.”
About when does it become the Trump economy, he said the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy.
Also supposedly NBC didn’t show the portion on the 2020 election.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vsFmzBL9cd4
There are real questions being raised about whether he even knows what’s going on in his maladministration. Decisions seem to happen without him being involved.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/6/2320823/-Apparently-Hegseth-paused-weapons-to-Ukraine-behind-Trump-s-back
https://www.justia.com/criminal/procedure/miranda-rights/right-to-public-defender/
Huge opportunity for DOGE: Get rid of free public defenders. Cut costs AND streamline cases!
/s
Mehdi Hasan vs a Trump nutjob, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYuRVsu5ocI
Half the people in the country are in need some kind of unearthly intervention.
“I’m enjoying the 101st day of the golden age of America. BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT,…”
All smiles by the nutjob.
Moderator: Let’s be polite on the 101st day.
She: The press covers Trump 96% negative. It’s a miracle he has any positive rating in the polls.
Funny, a lot of the press sanewashes his word salads.
Some guy has a very homoerotic image of Trump in their wee MAGAt brain. I can guarantee that women do not think Trump even closely resembles this image that the WH put out today celebrating Star Wars Day on the skipping dork’s social media site.
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1919053040734072844
It would not surprise me AT ALL if the very MAGAt artist Jon McNaughton created this image. Jon has some very homoerotic male imagery of Trump, cops, and military men on his website. Jon seems to enjoy creating muscular male form “daddy-types” oozing testosterone energy.
https://jonmcnaughton.com/hold-the-blue-line/
The Felon Guy seems to believe that he’s built like that. Or at least, it makes him feel like he is.
He also wants to re-open Alcatraz, which has been closed for more than 60 years, and is now a tourist site made of rotting concrete and rebar. (Salt air is not good for that stuff.) The Felon Guy doesn’t seem to know that we have two max-security prisons already IN THE US.
I’ve been on that Alcatraz tour. I attended college in S.F.
I’m sure when Melania sees depictions of her old man like that, she has a good chortle. (Stormy probably does too!) Even in Trump’s best youthful prime days, he never came close to ever resembling any of those depictions.
My interest is the person who draws Trump like that, or even fictional men in that form. I guarantee its not a woman doing these drawings.
If you look at the cop that I linked, the cop is even wearing a wedding band. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the cop depicted by Jon McNaughton is not gay married.
Why would a heterosexual man depict another heterosexual man is such a hyper-masculine manner that it borders on erotic? That drawing is certainly NOT of an average man. The man in the drawing is handsome, somewhat rugged, and very masculine.
We know that Michelangelo depicted men in such detail. We also know that Michelangelo was gay.
As a gay man myself, I laugh at “straight” men who don’t have the courage to be who they are. They are easy to spot, at least for me. They are usually the ones who drive those big trucks hiked-up in the air with the Trump flags in the back, or depict men in hyper-masculine male form. There is a reason that National Coming Out Day exists. It’s 11 October this year, Jon. Just saying: It’s ok to be gay. (Or, at least it used to be.)
It’s the expression of some weird pathology, a deep insecurity about sexual identity inherent in autocratic and fascist regimes.
Remember the parade of shirtless police in Egypt back in 2020? https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/video-of-graduates-arriving-shirtless-at-egyptian-police-academy-leaves-netizens-confused-1.1603206183336
That.
@ Rayne May 5, 2025 at 4:45 am
I’ve never seen that link before or was aware that event in Egypt happened.
Democratic House insider Aaron Fritschner pointed to Trump’s recent comments, as well as the latest photos of Trump portrayed as the pope and as a muscle-bound Jedi (or Sith), writing that another POTUS postings these same kind of images of themselves would have their cognitive ability questioned.
https://x.com/Fritschner/status/1919182259313094851
“…It’s the expression of some weird pathology, a deep insecurity about sexual identity inherent in autocratic and fascist regimes…”
-Rayne
Absolutely it has to do with insecurity and to post images that lie about who people like Trump truly is, is certainly a pathology. That groupies of Trump buy into this pathology as well, says something about the groupie as well.
Jon McNaughton creates pictures of Jesus as handsome with masculine mid-western looks.
https://jonmcnaughton.com/come-unto-me-11×14-oe/
In another image, McNaughton depicts Jesus with over-sized hands.
https://jonmcnaughton.com/i-would-have-gathered-thee11x14-oe/
I get that its ok and acceptable for Christian men to say they love Jesus Christ – another man. Given that no one has ever seen Jesus, it gives folks like McNaughton license to depict Jesus as a handsome, masculine, midwestern and to say that he loves Jesus, yet remain a heterosexual guy.
There is definitely something to this “deep insecurity about sexual identity inherent in autocratic and fascist regimes.”
Having grown up in U.S Christian circles, I was to “give myself over completely” to Jesus, and allow him to guide my life.
How homoerotic it is for someone like McNaughton to give himself over completely to a handsome, masculine, midwestern man – yet remain heterosexual.
No doubt, it would be cheaper to raze Alcatraz and start over, rather than resuscitate a complex as old and unrepaired as Alcatraz. But money is no object when Trump is spending someone else’s, like the taxpayers. Like most things, Trump only wants the mythology of Alcatraz, not its reality.
This proposal is as well thought out as his proposal to put a 100% tariff on films, notwithstanding that the law currently prohibits putting tariffs on them. 50 USC 702(b)(3). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1702
Naomi Klein, as usual nails it.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
We have two maximum-security prisons in the US. We don’t need to use Alcatraz, which is part of the National Park System. Someone put him up to that, and it’s someone who shouldn’t be near the WH.
Correction: 50 USC 1702(b)(3).
He seems to think that laws don’t apply to anything he wants.
re-earlofhuntingdon May 5, 2025 11:25 am
“notwithstanding that the law currently prohibits”
Haha, he fooled you too…
Jan 20: “We all saw it: President-Elect Donald Trump raised his right hand to take the oath of office for the second time, while Melania Trump slowly approached him, holding two Bibles. Yet, as Trump recited the Oath of Office, HE NEVER LIFTED HIS LEFT HAND TO PLACE IT UPON THE BIBLES.”
Yesterday: Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker asked the president if he needed to uphold the Constitution and he said, “I don’t know.”
Bible isn’t required (IMO, it shouldn’t be used at all). And he didn’t intend to fulfill that oath, any more than he did the first time.
I’m pretty sure there was a comment inside there somewhere, I just can’t find it.
“…the White House posted on its official X account a computer-generated picture of a muscled-to-the-point-of-overcompensation version of Trump clutching a lightsaber in front of US flags and a pair of bald eagles.
…
As even the most casual of Star Wars fans can attest, red is the chosen colour of the villainous Sith Lords. Star Wars creator George Lucas once said regarding lightsaber colours: “Good guys are green and blue, bad guys are red.
—
…one X user pointed out: “The lack of self awareness and hypocrisy by calling the left ‘the empire’ while showing trump with a Sith lightsaber.”
…
The blunder is hardly surprising, considering Trump’s cultural illiteracy is documented, as he proved with his frequent Hannibal Lecter references and lack of knowledge regarding the literary and cinematic references he was making during the campaign trail. Once again, and much like his Hannibal references, this botched Star Wars image is a ridiculous attempt to co-opt a popular cinematic touchstone, resulting in confused fearmongering tactics that reveal Trump and his team’s genuine lack of cultural savvy.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-an-ai-star-wars-image-has-backfired-on-trump-and-the-white-house/ar-AA1EbmXF?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=4a1cdc61dfbc44c5a8873add837c4455&ei=34
=========
“…reveal Trump and his team’s genuine lack of cultural savvy…” OUCH!!
I did not notice the flag or eagle in the image of psuedo-jacked Trump. I was so repulsed, I had to look away.
I do’t have a link to provide, but note this blurb from a report.
Tapping a team of ex-BigLaw associates, some of whom publicly quit their firms in response to deals struck to avoid scrutiny from the Trump administration, prominent defense lawyer and former Winston & Strawn LLP partner Abbe David Lowell launched a new boutique Friday aimed at helping clients facing what it called “politicized investigations” by the government.
One client appears to be a Puerto Rico bank that the Fed is going after for some reason.
So, if people spend lots of $$ fighting Trump, does that help the economy?
Looks to be a sufficiently unbiased link
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/top-washington-lawyer-creates-new-firm-defend-officials-targeted-by-trump-2025-05-02/
Netanyahu vows to relocate Gaza’s population after security cabinet approves plan to ‘conquer’ the enclave
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/05/middleeast/israel-gaza-expansion-hnk-intl
Israel plans to occupy and flatten all of Gaza if no deal by Trump’s trip
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/05/israel-gaza-destroy-trump-deal
=========
A Trump deal with Steve Witkoff the primary negotiator ?
The Oligarchs need safe resorts. Europe isn’t safe enough.
I noticed this techdirt article, which is about a 102-page order by Judge Beryl Howell in Perkins Coie’s case against the DoJ. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds like Judge Howell did not think much of the DoJ’s case.
Here’s a courtlistener page for that case.
Ecf 184 is the brief order from Judge Howell granting summary judgement and a permanent injunction to Perkins Coie, and Ecf 185 is the 102-page Memo Opinion explaining why.
Sorry, I somehow put the wrong techdirt article link in parent comment.
It was meant to be this one:
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/05/05/judge-to-trump-no-you-cant-just-kill-all-the-lawyers-you-dont-like/
(I noticed just after the edit period ended, but my comment went into auto-moderation, so I couldn’t reply right away to mention the correct link, until a mod had a chance to approve the comment. Not complaining! Just explaining.)
I’m halfway through Judge Howell’s memo opinion. IANAL and can’t evaluate its legal merits, but it seems very readable and clear.
A few bits (the footnote on page 27 about amicus briefs for example) seem meant to point out, both for higher courts and for posterity, that the plaintiffs had a pretty solid case, and the gov’t not so much.
…the next question is whether the gov’t will comply with her order & permanent injunction, or try to fight it in the media like Abrego Garcia v. Noem.
Spy Agencies Do Not Think Venezuela Directs Gang, Declassified Memo Shows The release of the memo further undercuts the Trump administration’s rationale for using the Alien Enemies Act to deport scores of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador.
NYT Savage/Barnes May 5, 2025 [Includes link to memo]
GIFT link here:
https://bsky.app/profile/rgoodlaw.bsky.social/post/3lohsxsxzsk2v
May 5, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Trump’s 48-hour scramble to fly migrants to a Salvadoran prison
The administration rounded up some of the Venezuelans two days before the flights took off, pressing forward even as Venezuela agreed to accept deportees
WaPo Blaskey/Schmidt/Foster-Frau/Herrero/Hernández/Paúl/DeYoung May 4, 2025
GIFT link here:
https://bsky.app/profile/wordswithsteph.bsky.social/post/3lodvznfjzk26
May 4, 2025 at 9:02 AM
New post from Marcy about the declassified doc, here:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/05/06/the-ic-with-an-assist-from-journalism-liberates-the-ics-debunking-of-trumps-alien-enemies-act/
Thom Tillis has spoken against the confirmation of Ed Martin as USA for the DC district. It’s his Jan 6 stuff, for Tillis, who said he’d otherwise [ignore all the rest of the bad stuff] vote for him.
And SCCOTUS has allowed the ban on trans people in the military to proceed.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/supreme-court-allows-trump-ban-on-transgender-20313296.php