[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

It’s desk clearing time at the Supreme Court with the end of its annual term looming ahead. SCOTUS will dump a bunch of decisions in a short time frame beginning today.

Decisions released today:

Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas
Justice Brett Kavanaugh has 6-3 decision. See: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1300_b97c.pdf
With this decision SCOTUS overturned the Fifth Circuit which had vacated a license granted to a private waste handler that wanted to build a nuclear waste facility in Texas, permitted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This decision is contrary to Texas state law but hinged on challenge by a nonparty.

Environmental Protection Agency v. Calumet Shreveport Refining
Justice Clarence Thomas has the decision. See: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1229_c0ne.pdf
summary to follow

Oklahoma v. Environmental Protection Agency
Justice Clarence Thomas has the decision. See: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1067_6j36.pdf
summary to follow

United States v. Skrmetti, Attorney General and Reporter for Tennessee, et al.
Chief Justice John Roberts has the decision. See: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf
This is revolting, allowing Tennessee to continue to undermine bodily autonomy of a small group of persons because they weren’t born into a false binary. The decision upholds the state of Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors because of wretched twistiness regarding “sex” versus “gender” identity.

Updates will follow as summaries are completed and additional information becomes available.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Journalists need to validate this information and ask Whiskey Pete Hegseth WTAF is going on that so many tanker aircraft were deployed flying due east of the U.S. on a Sunday night.

 

Note the timing of each post with newer at the top and older at the bottom; the top two were obtained via Threadreader (time not available but assumed to be later than 21:02 ET), the others via Xitter. There may have been newer posts on Xitter but the platform wouldn’t let me dig any deeper without logging in and that’s not an option for me.

The number of tankers dispatched in the same direction on a Sunday night is quite odd given 40,000 active duty personnel deployed at multiple bases in the Middle East and at least two naval destroyers in the vicinity. The vessels are part of an increasing naval presence in the region over the last several months.

Now note the tantrum Trump had this evening on Truth Social – or a tantrum-like statement mimicking Trump’s habits – in which Trump appears to order stepped up ICE raids in blue cities and states, using DHS as a political weapon. (Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller, is this your work?)

Note especially the timing of the tantrum.

What a coincidence that one hour after this tantrum on Trump’s blog there are more than 20 military tanker aircraft in the air. It’s almost as if somebody wants their opposition to be too preoccupied to notice there has been no Authorization for Use Military Force or Declaration of War approved by Congress let alone an attack on the US meriting such authorization/declaration.

You might want to contact your members of Congress about this and ask them WTF.

You might also ask them whether they would consider impeachment and conviction for abuse of office in the form of politicization of an entire cabinet-level function.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Marcy shared this observation yesterday via Bluesky about Ukraine’s attack on Russian air bases:

emptywheel @[email protected]

The Ukrainian attack used RU telecom networks rather than Starlink.

Hard to guess whether this will drive Putin or Elon nuts first.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/02/europe/inside-ukraine-drone-attack-russian-air-bases-latam-intl

Jun 02, 2025, 07:30 PM

The brazenness of using Russia’s telecom networks is noteworthy, especially after concerns that Ukraine’s military operations could be compromised by Russian access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications.

The avoidance of Starlink for this mission named Operation Spiderweb (Ukrainian: Operatsija Pavutyna) suggests Ukraine accepted this possibility as reality and deliberately worked around the compromised network.

The success of the mission may also suggest this was a solid assumption and avoiding Starlink an effective decision.

There are two points in reporting about Operation Spiderweb which haven’t been analyzed further:

— The specificity of the plan’s inception;

— The role of Ukraine’s security service, the Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrainy (SBU).

CNN and other outlets reported the number of drones Ukraine used to attack Russian military aircraft (117) and the amount of time the operation took from inception to the attack (one year, six months and nine days). The candor is rather shocking; perhaps cognitive dissonance explains why there haven’t been many analysts picking apart these openly shared details.

But these details may have messages within them considering how in-your-face they are. The number 117 seems peculiar because it’s an odd number though it’s not prime. Were all the drones that were smuggled in deployed? Was this another reason why the Trojan Horse wooden sheds were booby trapped — to eliminate any drones that did not deploy properly? Or perhaps the number simply is what it is on the face of it.

The exactness of the operation’s inception, though, seems deliberate, as if launch date meant something. Depending on how the one year, six months, and nine days are counted, the spiderweb began on November 22, 2023 or on December 23, 2023.

November 22 marked the beginning of the Orange Revolution in 2004.

December 23 marked the holiday observed by Ukraine’s Armed Forces — Operational Servicemen Day.

Just as importantly, June 1 on which the attack occurred was the anniversary of the day Ukraine transferred the last of its nuclear warheads to Russia in 1996 under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum to which the US was a party. In other words, this message might not have been intended just for Russia.

The Budapest Memorandum may also explain the role of SBU to effect this operation. While one source in CNN’s reporting attributed the successful mission to “Ukraine’s special services,” most reports credited the operation to the SBU.

SBU is Ukraine’s counterintelligence organization with paramilitary features. It does not have the same reporting structure as Ukraine’s Armed Forces. It’s also responsible for the security of Ukraine’s president and reports directly to him. The flat structure may have ensured the level of secrecy necessary to carry out Operation Spiderweb.

The not-quite-military role of the SBU may also have been critical to lawfare. An operation conducted by SBU may be construed as a counterintelligence operation and not a military operation, fuzzing the ability of the target to respond under terms of its own doctrine or terms of treaties. If a trigger for Russia to launch an escalated military response is the use of conventional kinetic weapons on its soil by another country’s armed forces, Operation Spiderweb skirts this threshold having used non-traditional weapons deployed by a counterintelligence function.

By its subtle emphasis on the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine made a point of Russia’s failure to comply with the memorandum’s terms after repeated threats of nuclear attacks against Ukraine and the west. Targeting long-range aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons, Ukraine punctuated the Memorandum’s terms including nuclear non-proliferation.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had a number of top military personnel swapped out during the course of the Russo-Ukraine war (ex. the commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces in June 2024, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces in February 2024, all regional military recruitment chiefs in August 2023), which might have suggested to outsiders cohesiveness could have been compromised by poor performance, disagreements with the conduct of the war, and plain old corruption. The personnel changes may have given the appearance Ukraine was not fully aligned toward repelling Russian aggression.

But as Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, all warfare is based on deception.

The illusion these personnel changes created may have been relied upon as a head fake, allowing Vladimir Putin and the Russian military to feel excessively confident about the outcome of the war. That confidence was surely ruptured just as Russia and Ukraine entered a new round of negotiations to end the war this Monday in Istanbul. Russia opened by presenting a “memorandum” of terms but Ukraine has expressed its lack of faith in Russia’s compliance with co-signed memoranda.

Detonating explosives targeting the Kerch Strait bridge — a bridge one one likely use if driving from Turkey to Ukraine — added emphasis.

There is one more important facet to the timing of the operation’s inception. In February 2024, the Financial Times reported on leaked Russian military files:

When exactly were these documents leaked? To whom had they been leaked and how long was it before the Financial Times reported on them?

Is it possible the inception of Operation Spiderweb coincided with the leak of these documents which occurred after repeated attempts by Russia to blackmail Ukraine and the west using the threat of nuclear war?

Which brings up a third point not discussed in media coverage of Operation Spiderweb: by eliminating a sizeable portion of Russia’s capacity to deliver nuclear weapons, Ukraine has blunted Russia’s threat against the west and China.

This was worth all the military aid provided to Ukraine to date, and then some. Ukraine has more than earned a place in the European Community and NATO.

[NB: Check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Six years ago — what seems like forever ago — I published a post about the origin of Memorial Day.

Today’s All-American holiday didn’t come about in one fell swoop. Its origins have been a bone of contention — did it begin in the South? did it start in the North? Was it an African American celebration?

Depending on who you ask you may find yourself in a discussion not unlike those surrounding Confederate statuary — fraught with past and present politics.

And good old-fashioned racism.

The first large formal observation of this holiday was marked by African Americans of Charleston, South Carolina in 1865 when their Civil War dead were reburied.

Read more about it at Zinn Education Project.

Most Americans aren’t aware of this history, not even lifelong residents of Charleston. The reason is racism manifest through cultural erasure.

I live in the first state to declare Memorial Day a statewide holiday. In 1871 Michigan set aside what was then called Decoration Day to pay tribute to its war dead. We lost more than 14,000 of the 90,000 men sent to fight in the south — about 3.5% of the state’s population lost to the Civil War.

A Union soldier from Michigan wrote to his wife,

The more I learn of the cursed institution of slavery, the more I feel willing to endure, for its final destruction … After this war is over, this whole country will undergo a change for the better … Abolishing slavery will dignify labor; that fact of itself will revolutionize everything … Let Christians use all their influence to have justice done to the black man.

He was killed not long after by a Confederate sniper.

We sent this man and others, our flesh and blood, to fight for what is right, to defend a more perfect union, to defeat the denigration of fellow Americans then enslaved. We’ve allowed the lingering toxins of the Confederacy to obscure why it was this nation went to war — not because of states’ rights but because of an economic system dependent upon the reduction of humans to mere chattel.

We’ve sent our family members to defeat oppression in other wars, too many paying the ultimate sacrifice.

Now we’ve strayed from fighting for the ideals our country was founded upon. What was once defense against oppression has become offense for corporations, serving the US ill over the long run. It has become an excuse to create profits for the military industrial complex while ignoring the exercise of soft power through diplomacy. Our friends and loved ones who’ve died or have been injured or sickened for life are merely collateral damage along the way. …

Now more than ever before it is critically important we remember not only our war dead who defended our nation, but the Americans who commemorated their war dead in the face of oppression, thereby establishing this holiday.

Remembering all who served regardless of their sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religious creed, national origin, physical or mental disability is absolutely essential in the face of the current administration’s politicide, ethnocide, and cultural genocide by erasure.

This year, instead of news stories about statues to prominent figures of the Confederacy being removed from public spaces, statues that represented crypto-celebrations of white supremacy, we are instead faced with widening gaps where Americans who served with honor and distinction once appeared, as these examples show:

Trump’s anti-diversity push comes for Arlington Cemetery’s rich, diverse history
To comply with the administration’s anti-“DEI” policies, the cemetery has scrubbed its webpages on minority veterans and Black history.
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/arlington-cemetery-black-veterans-women-history-website-dei-trump-rcna196586

1st all-female veterans Honor Flight from Chicago photo pulled from Pentagon website after DEI order
President Trump issued executive order to get rid of images, words related to diversity, equity, inclusion
https://abc7chicago.com/post/operation-herstory-1st-female-veterans-honor-flight-chicago-photo-removed-pentagon-website-trump-dei-order/16065051/

VA Dismisses Directors of Centers for Women, Minority Veterans
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/01/30/va-dismisses-directors-of-centers-women-minority-veterans.html

They’re celebrations of white supremacy but this time wholly overt. We should not be passive about these excisions because they cut out our own.

And when I say our own it’s personal for me; my father and sibling are AAPI and veterans, and they are proud of their service. It’s infuriating to watch white supremacy treat them as if they never existed.

Commemorate ALL the veterans who served this country today. Honor them further by defending their living compatriots who earned benefits that should not be arbitrarily stripped from them.

This day belongs to ALL of us as Americans and not just some hateful fortunate sons.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

While waiting for the worst of the supply shock to hit consumers thanks to Trump’s misbegotten tariffs, I have been working on the three Rs.

Not reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic but reduce, recycle, repair.

You may already have noticed the supply shock beginning wherever you live in your local stores. I had to hunt for flax seed last week; I knew flax was grown all over the world including the US, but for some reason I had it in my head this wouldn’t be a food product affected by the tariffs.

Nope, illusion shattered – the label on the packages I found show origin USA and Canada.

The price wasn’t out of line with expectations but I bet the next time I hunt for flax seed it will be more expensive even though some of it is likely grown in North Dakota and Minnesota.

Flax isn’t just a food product; the plant is also not just a source of fiber for fabric. It’s the source of linseed oil used in many applications including painting and wood finishing.

In other words, the ripple effect of tariffs on this one agricultural product could be widespread.

I haven’t gone looking for linen fabric but I imagine worse results because the US has very little if any linen fabric production even though the US grows flax seed.

The cost may not be as bad as imports from China since linen is grown and produced in northern Europe, but it’s still not going to be good if you rely on natural fiber fabrics.

Fortunately I anticipated the supply shock back in March. I bought an entire bolt of unbleached 100% cotton muslin while it was on sale, thinking I would use it for repairs and craft work over time.

That time is now. I am patching up a vintage muslin quilt, one too ratty for conservation techniques and too beloved to cut up for other purposes. It’s not a good weather project but it’s perfect for rainy days like we’ve had this week.

This week I’ve also patched up a hot mitt for my daughter and hot pads for my own use with scrap denim from old jeans; patched a spun poly shopping bag with a weakened bottom using a woven poly rice bag; stitched up some jeans with holes and fraying hems; repaired a couple well-worn aprons with canvas and denim patches; made some reusable gift bags using thrifted fabric table napkins; and worked on re-stuffing a couple of favorite buckwheat hull pillows.

The next project I should take up is making covers for some old outdoor furniture cushions. I’ve had fabric squirreled away for a year now to freshen up some ratty-looking pads I can’t bring myself to trash. They’re polyester foam and fiberfill with a polyester-nylon cover – in other words they’re nothing but refined oil on its way to becoming a tax burden taking up space in a municipal landfill.

Ugh — I refuse to do that when I can simply recover and reuse them, especially when I can’t be certain there will be more new chair pads at the store due to the impending supply shock.

It’s going to be inconvenient for many of us if not downright painful — many families will struggle as the worst of the supply shock hits store shelves. But one of the effects should be a greater awareness about our consumption habits and how they affect the rest of the world. The climate may actually benefit from our reduced consumption of so many items requiring fossil fuels as both a raw material and fuel for production.

Let’s home this expanded consciousness has a long-term positive effect, not the least of which is the need for smarter and less corrupt governmental leadership — the kind that doesn’t tell businesses to “EAT THE TARIFFS” in all caps via social media when the tariffs look more like a shakedown and less like a rational, targeted instrument of effective policy.

What about you? Are you seeing the effects of the Trump supply shock? What are you doing to reduce, repair, recycle? Who can you help with the three Rs and how will you do it?

This is an open thread.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. / ~Rayne]

Hold this image in your mind for a few moments; I thought of it after listening to some right-wing propaganda about the tariffs and shipping. Marcy’s post this morning about the emergency-not-emergency trade deficit brought to mind again:

Way back in my salad days I worked in import/export. With the exception of a rather messy breakbulk import of niger seed from Ethiopia, I handled exports of agricultural commodities and manufactured goods.

It wasn’t the kind of work one learned in B-school. I learned it all on the job: which products needed phytosanitary certificates; how to handle letters of credit; what to do if customer wanted to charter a plane for a load of 20-foot pipe lengths; what the difference was between terms like EXW, FOB, and CIF. Not the textbook definitions, but the reality-smacks-you-with-a-container-overboard definition.

I also learned how to use intermodal shipping to ports overseas, to what used to be among the largest ports in the world. Felixstowe, Rotterdam, and Kaohsiung were the ports to which I shipped most often.

Trump’s tariffs and the ensuing change in ocean shipping volume triggered a lot of flashbacks over the last couple of weeks, though much has changed since I worked in exports. The current list of largest containerized shipment terminal ports is an indicator of the magnitude of change. Rotterdam no longer cracks the top ten largest ports by shipping volume, while most of the ports in the current top ten are now in China and were definitely not on the list +30 years ago.

Tracking vessels on maps in real time is something I wished I could have had back then. When our freight was loaded on a vessel we didn’t really have anything more than an estimated arrival date by which to plan our load’s arrival. For my first job in exports we didn’t even have email let alone fax to communicate about a shipment’s status.

I used one of these beasts:

It’s just a boat anchor now.

But some things haven’t changed in that period of time. Heck, they haven’t changed much since international shipping looked like the image I shared at the top of this post.

When a port is active, there are ships at the dock. Freight is unloaded. There are vehicles moving that freight about.

Here are two examples of an active port:

Compare the above to this very inactive port:

 

The dates on the images of the inactive port may be more than a week apart, but the level of activity has been consistently low over that time period.

Ships moored, being loaded or unloaded, moving to or from docks are all signs of an active port. While cranes hover above, tugboats and other service vessels move about between ships.

Even in low- to no-wake zones, the water shows activity.

There are people and vehicles scuttling about, moving freight once offloaded. Only in an inactive port are there expanses of pavement with no freight, no trucks, trailers, or other vehicles, no people.

Not like the activity visible in the live stream of the container port terminal at Jakarta, Indonesia shown above as an example.

This hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. Not in millennia.

When propagandists declare the drop in ocean shipments to ports in the US is a hoax, they’ve lost touch with a reality based in human history. When they say this is just a temporary hiccup they’re just as out of it.

They are unmoored, one might say.

I’m not going to link to one video in particular that uses ship schedules as an argument freight from China is still inbound to US west coast ports and at volume. It’s an ignorant argument based on a lack of knowledge about container vessels. Container lines still schedule arrivals at port because they may have a partial vessel on a long-arranged route and they don’t want to lose access to the slot in case of a brief disruption in shipping volume. The booking shows as an incoming ship on the schedule even though the container line may be scrambling to consolidate partial loads onto one vessel to reduce fuel.

In some cases ships will approach a port and skip it if they have freight for a different port – let’s say a container vessel from a Chinese port normally scheduled to make sequential drops at Vancouver BC, Long Beach, and Manzanillo MX moors at Vancouver then skips Long Beach and heads for Manzanillo.

It’s clumsily explained as “blank sailing” as CNN’s Erin Burnett explained clumsily on April 25:

That’s why container ship volume crossing the Pacific may continue to look busy on short-term schedules, but containers may not arrive at US west coast ports. Eventually the container line reorganizes and consolidates freight so that it can altogether drop some sailings. Just as in trucking, container lines don’t want the equivalent of deadhead hauls.

And yes, there are some container ships in the screenshot of a vessel tracking site shared widely last week. There are few container ships in that snap of Port of Seattle.

Compare the activity in Port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which is no longer in the top ten largest ports based on shipping volume, smaller than Port of Long Beach. It’s crowded with container vessels:

Let me point out that Port of Long Beach-Los Angeles is the 9th busiest container port; Rotterdam is 13th and Kaohsiung is 17th. Jakarta doesn’t even crack the top 50 busiest container ports.

The freight is not coming. It’s not sailing between China and the US west coast, it’s not in the west coast ports. We can literally see this from space, by way of GPS tracking. There are no container vessels waiting off west coast ports for a berth. There will not suddenly be ships off the west coast before the end of the month.

Why the right-wing insists on lying about this rather than bracing themselves and preparing the country for the reality check to come in mere days is beyond me. They can’t spew enough believable denials to hide the shelves as they empty in the days and weeks ahead. They can’t cover up the damage already done to the US economy, the worst of which has yet to arrive.

Conditions won’t change much based on the so-called 90-day pause and temporary tariff reduction announced overnight. It’s still going to take time for factories in China to ramp back up, rejigger containerized shipping – and all of this is at risk of being changed again in 90 days. The loss of faith by consumers and business purchasers here in the states may not be restored as quickly.

The reduction of tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30% will not be enough to prevent some businesses from failing. Those operating on margins of less than 10% are at extreme risk during the next several months.

Or maybe less if Trump vacillates again.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Elon Musk has repeatedly said government functions should be privatized.

You already know how that works out for the U.S., because it’s one of the biggest single differences between the cost of living in other first world countries and the U.S.

It’s also one of the biggest differences in life expectancy between other first world countries and the U.S.

Healthcare in the EU, for example, costs much less than it does in the U.S., and outcomes measured in life expectancy are far better.

But healthcare in the EU is not fully privatized; though not identical across all EU members, it’s based on universal access and publicly subsidized.

Ditto for Canada and Greenland, the countries Trump wants to seize. Better that they seize us and bring their healthcare systems with them.

But this month has also demonstrated the risk of taking Elon Musk seriously when it comes to privatization.

Imagine this is our social security system:

 

Who’s not going to get their checks if the bottom drops out even further? Why should Americans who’ve paid into Social Security over a lifetime of work have to worry about additional risk to their futures because unelected and unconstitutionally appointed Musk believes exposure to the market is what Americans need?

It’s bad enough that Americans’ cost of daily living expenses is further exposed to market risks because of Trump’s misbegotten, ill-considered tariffs. Musk believes Americans’ retirement years should be even more deeply risky.

It makes zero sense to listen to a man who has no empathy for others’ concerns, who has no experience dealing with a limited income and trying to make ends meet. He doesn’t have adequate background let alone personal history to make such judgments about what will work best for the American people; he doesn’t even view his children’s health as personal obligations (ex. recent public pleas by two of his children’s mothers for assistance with healthcare matters).

~ ~ ~

What really takes the cake is the silence of the business world.

Of course the financial industry is silently slavering over the chance to get their grubby mitts on our Social Security, and they’re staying quiet about it because they know they dare not set off the American public.

But Jeff Bezos’ Amazon-derived fortune was made in no small part off the subsidy that the U.S. Postal Service has been to American business.

USPS is the fallback for shipping nearly anything nearly anywhere in the U.S.; Bezos didn’t have to worry about whether his books would sell in North Utter Remote, Outer Territory USA. There was a post office nearby where purchasers could pick up their orders if they couldn’t be delivered to their door by USPS carriers on foot.

Bezos didn’t have to negotiate that. Didn’t have to buy sorter equipment, trucks, hire and train personnel, build sorting facilities, so on. All of that was on our dime when it wasn’t paid for by postage, until Amazon was successful enough to consider reducing shipping and handling costs further with their own trucks.

Furthermore, Bezos knew what the competitive rate for shipping a majority of Amazon’s products would be based on USPS rates – rates set by USPS bidding out trucking and equipment purchases. When Amazon started buying its own trucks, Amazon knew its costs had to be no more than USPS’ costs to deliver.

In short, our tax dollars and our volume of postage helped underwrite Jeff Bezos’ billions.

And he’s just going to sit there smug and mum, enjoying his irrational wealth while Musk shoots off his mouth about privatizing government.

Because Bezos will probably ensure the next billions he makes off our backs is from Amazon Postal Service.

Can’t begin to imagine how much our health care will cost once Amazon has the contract both for postal delivery of medications and health care insurance.

You can only imagine when Musk takes his chainsaw to Amtrak what will happen next: he’ll claim only his vaporware Hyperloop is the alternative, and American people should pay him billions to implement it instead of a long-proven passenger rail system.

Privatization will not yield better outcomes for the American people and you already know that. Don’t wait until Musk uses DOGE to shut off funds to the USPS; he’s already targeted USPS personnel. Contact your representative and senators and insist that government should NOT be privatized.

Not our Social Security, not our mail delivery, not a single government service which could end up becoming a pricey-to-us privatized profit center for billionaires.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

** 8:30 PM ET — UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST. **

While the market and Americans’ college funds, 401Ks, and retirement accounts whipsawed today after their multi-day plummet, somebody had other priorities.

I don’t know at what time this was published by the White House, but this has Trump’s tiny grip all over it.

He’s obsessed with water pressure, confusing it with showerhead function; he’s been obsessed for years with this.

December 27, 2019 – Trump Vs. Toilets (And Showers, Dishwashers And Lightbulbs)

July 23, 2020 – With 137,000 U.S. Deaths, Trump Stays Focused on Shower Heads

August 13, 2020 – ‘My hair has to be perfect’: Trump prompts change in showerhead rule – video

August 21, 2020 – Trump talks shower heads, sharks, and more on DNC’s last day

December 17, 2020 – Trump Bemoaned Water Pressure. Now His Administration Has Eased Standards

August 6, 2023 – ‘I Want Water To Pour Down On Me’: Trump Has Cold Words For Showers At GOP Dinner

January 7, 2025 – Making Sense of Trump’s January 2025 Remarks About Showerheads and Rain Falling from Heaven

I’m sure if I dig harder I can find more instances where Trump whined about water pressure in the shower but you get the gist.

And like 2020 when Americans were dying by the thousands each week from COVID and Trump complained about showerheads, Trump once again leaned into his personal bête noire while Americans became increasingly panicked about their financial well being and the state of the nation’s economy under Trump’s tariff-tax.

It’s ridiculous that our country has allowed one exceedingly vain man spend so much of our tax dollars on something which will not result in the blast of water he wants for his “perfect” hair.

Musk and his Muskrats are taking a chainsaw to our entire government, creating enormous risks in the misbegotten effort to increase efficiency and cut government spending — and Trump pisses away any efficiencies with his obsessive, unnecessary change to water and energy saving regulations affecting showerheads.

When the next Articles of Impeachment are drafted, there should be an article for abuse of power for personal use with Trump’s fucking obsession with showerheads as an example. Especially since it’s a form of lawmaking by the executive branch to the detriment of the American public.

~ ~ ~

While Trump was dicking around with his bête noire, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing. Many of you have already read or heard about Rep. Steven Horsford’s (D, NV-02) questions to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer about the dramatic change in the Trump administration’s approach to tariffs — a change which was announced over social media by Trump while Greer was in front of the committee, without apparent advance notice to Greer.

As Horsford noted, the Republicans on the committee weren’t in attendance. It’d be nice to know if those weasels left because they didn’t want to be on the spot on camera during the hearing, or if they were daytrading to capitalize on the announcement.

What isn’t being discussed is that the Senate had a similar hearing the day before during which Greer also testified about the tariffs. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) didn’t sound too happy with the Trump tariff-tax strategy, asking, “Whose throat do I get to choke if this proves to be wrong?”

Greer does a weaselly tap dance in response.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto also grilled Greer more pointedly about the Trump tariff-tax upending the trade agreements including the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) the Trump administration spent two years working on during Trump’s first term.

She asked, “Why would any country want to do business with us, much less negotiate a trade deal if we don’t even honor our ongoing our ongoing agreements?”

Greer did his weaselly tap dance again and she called him out on this because she and Greer had had a one-on-one discussion in her office about trade matters and the USMCA including a blanket tariff strategy.

It’s hard not to watch these video segments from two days of hearings and not come away thinking Greer’s job has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with providing a punching bag between the Trump tariff-tax and our elected representatives.

He does little in these excerpts to make one feel any better about the Trump tariff-tax, mostly because Trump himself appears to ignore Greer, doing anything he wants on a whim to screw with trade and the entire global market without accountability.

Not to mention dicking around with showerheads.

One might wonder when the GOP members of Congress will organize and get a collective spine and consider impeaching and convicting a president who thinks government is just his personal chew toy, treating Congress like they’re irrelevant.

How many angry constituents will it take before they catch a clue? Are they really more afraid of a guy obsessed with showerheads than their own voters?

~ ~ ~

Speaking of angry constituents, please recruit others to help combat H.R. 22, the voter suppression bill Republicans call the SAVE Act. Contact every person you know and ask them to contact their representatives and ask them to vote down this bill.

See: https://indivisible.org/campaign/trumps-new-executive-order-eo-silence-americans-what-you-need-know

As our team member Peterr wrote in comments yesterday,

While it is critical to call your GOP representatives to let them know how much you are opposed to this un-American bill, it is at least as important to call your Democratic reps to tell them to stand up to this, and thank them for doing so.

As a pastor, I am quite familiar with getting phone calls from folks who dislike something I believe needs to be done. Getting the “thank you” calls makes it a lot easier to do what I believe needs to be done. This is how you help Dems grow a stronger spine.

Call your representative no matter their party affiliation. This is too important, leave no stone unturned. When you’re done, call your senators and ask them not to support the SAVE Act just as you did your representative.

If you’re a member of a women’s group, recruit them all because women are the largest single bloc likely to be disenfranchised by this bill.

Don’t wait, make this a priority because a vote could happen as early as today.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE – 8:30 PM ET —

H.R. 22 passed the House nearly along party lines, 220-208.

Four Democrats voted along with the GOP to disenfranchise a substantive portion of their own constituents let alone their own voters. Apparently they don’t care if they ever win election again.

Indivisible emailed an update; if you’re on their mailing list you may also have been told how your representative voted. Of course those of you who are represented by these four Democrats have been betrayed:

Ed Case (HI-01)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03)
Jared Golden (ME-02)

Our next step is to contact your senators and ask them to vote down the SAVE Act.

The Senate only is in session tomorrow (H.R. 22 was one of the last pieces of business on which the House GOP scheduled a vote before fleeing Washington DC). Congress will be on holiday break and in a state work session from April 12 through April 27.

Contact your senators’ closest local office and find out if they are having town halls or will be at other events where you can ask them in person to vote against the SAVE Act.

VoteVets has also sent out an email about the damage this bill poses to the rights of military personnel:

Trump and Elon’s agenda is overwhelmingly unpopular. We’ve got the GOP on their heels.

And now — like clockwork — Republicans are desperate to make it harder for people to vote.

Republicans in the House passed the SAVE Act today, under the guise of election security. It’s a blatant effort to make it harder for people to register to vote and cast their ballot. And if it becomes law, it’s going to impact Veterans, Military Families, and Active Duty.

SAVE would require all voters, including Military voters, to present very specific proof of US citizenship — either a passport or a birth certificate — in person at a government office in the United States to register or update their voter registration. Military IDs and service records are not enough proof to register. It would ban automatic, online, and mail in registration.

How might all of that impact Troops deployed overseas, their spouses, or disabled Veterans who can’t get to an office? It could effectively ban them from registering.

This bill is terrible. It’s an effort to suppress Military votes. If it passes the Senate, it’s going to undermine our elections. And today, we need you to speak out against it.

I hope VoteVets has a chat with veteran Jared Golden over his betrayal of veterans, military families, and active duty service members.

There’s one more important reason this bill needs to be defeated, besides the fact it will disenfranchise a massive number of American voters.

We voters can’t save Republicans from themselves and their leader if we can’t vote. Some of the GOP senators *know* everything is going to hell in a handbasket. They own it if there isn’t a brake applied. This is one of those brakes — they can vote to preserve their constituents’ right to vote by voting against the SAVE Act.

If you can’t find your senators’ local office numbers, you can always contact them through the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or use Resist.bot to contact them.

Don’t sit this one out, it’s far too big, far too important. It’s especially important to contact these Democratic senators if you live in their states because their track record isn’t good based on their previous votes related to immigration:

Catherine Cortez Masto (NV)
John Fetterman (PA)
Ruben Gallego (AZ)
Maggie Hassan (NH)
Mark Kelly (AZ)
John Ossoff (GA)
Gary Peters (MI)
Jacky Rosen (NV)
Jeanne Shaheen (NH)
Elissa Slotkin (MI)
Mark Warner (VA)
Raphael Warnock (GA)

I’m embarrassed to say two of them are my senators. I will be contacting them, though. I can’t afford not to. And I will recruit others to do so, too.

Get them on the record as soon as you can, too. Where do they stand? Let’s keep track.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Where to begin:

“Damn! You over here like, damn, Kamala, come back to me!” Akademiks joked, speculating that Ross may regret his enthusiastic endorsement of Trump on the campaign trail, now that the president’s economic policy has cost him at least $10 million.

In August 2024, Trump appeared on Ross’s livestream, where the young influencer gifted Trump a $100,000+ custom Cybertruck, Rolex, and his endorsement. While he was visibly morose over the financial hit, he didn’t have anything negative to say about Trump.

Source: Latin Times

Nothing bad to say about the man who cost him eight figures — so far.

This influencer is among many who are why Harris-Walz made no inroads with white and Latino men. They feel a need to belong to a tribe and it’s one which pulls up the tree house ladder to prevent women especially those of color from joining.

Harris warned them and they still can’t fully acknowledge she warned them and they were wrong, let alone admit that really is a leopard sitting on their chests gnawing on their cheekbones.

I’d like to laugh but my investment portfolio is down by a lot and unlike 2008 there was no safe haven I could trust thanks to DOGE Muskrats mucking about in Treasury.

At some point we’ll have to rescue these guys like Bluebeard’s last wife because we’ll be rescuing ourselves at the same time.

~ ~ ~

And now for something critically important — an urgent call to action.

Go to Indivisible.org and read the explanation about H.R. 22, a bill which will disenfranchise a massive number of voters. This is one of the methods by which Trump will attempt to hang onto the White House as well as a stranglehold over executive functions. If voters are deprived of their right to vote, they won’t be able to remove bad representation at mid-terms let alone the general election.

https://indivisible.org/campaign/trumps-new-executive-order-eo-silence-americans-what-you-need-know

While all eligible voters will be affected, those most likely to be disenfranchised are married and divorced women because they will be assessed a poll tax in the form of additional identity documentation in the form of a marriage license. Trans persons and adoptees will also be affected negatively.

The bill also has a hole in it, and I’ll tell you right now it affects me, my father, and my sibling as an example. The word “territory” never appears in this bill, and my father is an American citizen born in what was then a territory, now a state.

Bill text at: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr22/text

This legislation needs to die and the 107 Republican House members who co-sponsored it need to hear from their constituents that they are failing their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution.

Don’t let this slip by you, take action. We can’t trust the Supreme Court to do the right thing and protect Americans’ right to vote.

Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121

 

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

In her post about Saturday’s “Hands Off” protest rallies, Marcy noted the “increasingly constrained media” — coverage by U.S. news media which doesn’t reflect facts on the ground of importance to the public.

This has been a problem since at least the buildup to the Iraq War, when massive anti-war protests took place and little coverage emerged in mainstream media, or Occupy Wall Street’s prolonged resistance with little reporting documenting its activities.

Much of this can be blamed on the corporate-owned nature of most U.S. news media, combined with the rolling change in business model over the last 30 years since the internet became a common household feature.

But some of the blame also lies with the movements and organizations that continue to act as if this is the 1970s instead of 2025.

Let’s look at how the largest print news media outlets covered the protests.

First, the largest print outlets by circulation as listed by Press Gazette as of March 6, 2025:

I’ve taken screenshots of the print edition first page where available from these ten newspapers, via Newseum.org.

~ 1 ~

The Wall Street Journal — doesn’t have a Sunday edition. Tomorrow’s edition will likely be the most read of the week, and many leaders of U.S. industry will do so tomorrow. Will it cover the “Hands Off” protest rallies at all? Or will it try to keep the business class in the dark while serving up tariff news.

~ 2 ~

The New York Times:

The rally did make the front page though it’s below the fold and confined to a photo and blurb, the story itself on A18. This is an utter embarrassment — a massive gathering in its own backyard and this is all the attention it gets.

At least the story was syndicated and featured elsewhere in US newspapers, just not in the paper of record where one of the largest rallies took place.

~ 3 ~

Next, the New York Post.

It’s as if nothing happened in New York City at all. What a useless POS. This is the Late City Final edition, too, making it even more obvious the Murdochs don’t want to acknowledge the rally.

~ 4 ~

The Washington Post is smaller in terms of print circulation than the Murdochs’ NYPOS. Who would have thought that would ever happen? But this is probably a key reason why:

That pathetic little photo and blurb is all a nationwide protest rally garnered lest Bezos and his weak sauce managing editor piss off his orange overlord. No freaking wonder the number of people willing to buy a print edition has dropped below a NYC tabloid.

Relatedly, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson resigned from WaPo — one less reason to read.

~ 5 ~

On to USA Today, a paper built to be a national outlet: there is no print edition on either Saturday or Sunday.

I will note that the outlet’s digital edition allows readers to tweak the content they see; while Saturday’s rallies didn’t appear in the top segment, there are two choices related to the rallies from which readers can choose.

One might wonder if the selections help shape editors’ future coverage choices.

~ 6 ~

The sixth largest print newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, is even worse than the Washington Post as far as coverage of the rallies is concerned.

You almost need a microscope to find a reference to coverage on the first page; Nazi-friendly Kanye West garners at least eight times the page space. No wonder LAT continues to bleed subscribers.

~ 7 ~

Minnesota is home to a bright star among the nation’s top print outlets: the Star-Tribune gave the rallies the top spot.

Finally, the seventh largest print paper deep in the heartland recognized a nationwide protest by millions of Americans against an 11-week-old administration.

~ 8 ~

The eighth largest paper, Newsday, is a local tabloid covering Long Island, NY, and nearby NYC. Apparently nothing of note happened in NYC on Saturday as far as Newsday is concerned, though editors managed to choke out two words, “nationwide rallies” in the lower left column. I didn’t highlight them — see how long it takes for you to find them.

~ 9 ~

Honolulu Star Advertiser is the ninth largest print edition, a paper with more challenging physical distribution than the rest above as it is the largest in Hawaiian islands. Unfortunately I couldn’t locate a copy of the print edition for Sunday. Here’s its digital entry covering the protests which began five hours earlier in Eastern Time Zone:

Not great considering the lead time it had to cover the events. However the right-hand column identifying subscribers’ favorites tells us protest coverage was important to readers in spite of the less-than-stellar placement on the digital front page.

~ 10 ~

The Seattle Times is no stranger to covering protest rallies:

Above the fold, large amount of text on the front page, and a great photo conveying both the crowd’s energy and a localizing landmark in the background. Thumbs up.

~ Other ~

I should note the two major wire services’ coverage, beginning with the nonprofit Associated Press:

No story on digital front page but a good slice assigned to a collection of rally photos. An article on the rallies is the second most read article as I type this.

Reuters’ articles about the protests weren’t high on its digital page but they did occupy the slot for news about the United States and included a story about the related protests in Europe.

Online news media may have done a better job than print media did; the “Hands Off” protests occupied the top slot in Google News on Sunday based on this screenshot taken about 2:00 pm ET:

One interesting detail: note the time of each story’s publication. NYTimes’ piece was roughly 10 hours later than the others featured here. Why?

~ ~ ~

All of the above is a very lengthy way of saying the US media is still disappearing millions of Americans by editorial fiat. These same outlets which failed to dedicated adequate space to national and international protests against the Trump administration less than three months after inauguration day are missing a critically important story.

Worse, they may also be missing the stories that drove protesters to the streets. The signs tell observers Americans are pissed off about an unelected oligarch rifling through their Social Security; they feel betrayed by a president undermining the rule of law and national security, so intent on enacting authoritarian rule.

And they haven’t yet begun to feel the economic pain from tariffs though they are angry already about the deep damage to their retirement portfolios. When tariffs begin to eat at their household expenses, these kinds of protests are only going to swell.

Americans can’t count on corporate-owned media to do the right thing when they are already failing. A different approach to communication will be necessary to convey solidarity with other Americans while telling the Trump administration and state governments aligned with Trump that Trumpism isn’t working and the public demands better.

I can think of a specific example here in Michigan that feels like a bellwether, an indicator the national media isn’t getting this moment right by a long chalk.

Benzonia, a tiny town in Benzie County, located in northwestern lower Michigan, had a “Hands Off” protest rally. There were an estimated 350 participants. What’s unusual is that Benzie County is very red; it’s only voted for Democratic presidential candidates three out of the last ten presidential elections, and only four times since 1884. The county has only ~15,000 residents. Benzonia is also located 33 miles from Traverse City, where an estimated 4,000 people participated in a rally. Benzonia rally participants chose to protest in very small municipality in a lightly populated red county; their numbers represented roughly 3% of persons who cast a vote in that county in 2024. The number of participants may have been more since media typically underrepresent participants; another local observer estimated 500 attendees.

This isn’t the only such example; there are many more like it given over 1000 protest rallies across the country. At least a local media outlet from a small blue city covered Benzonia’s rally; how many frustrated red towns weren’t afforded that?

More local organizing is necessary to help Americans exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and free association, to express their frustration with the Trump administration’s repeated failures to ensure laws are faithfully executed.

But that organizing needs to address the repeated failures of a corporate-owned media environment as well, finding ways to make it difficult for media to avoid coverage, and developing alternatives to corporate-owned media to ensure coverage happens anyhow.

Share in comments below how your local media covered the “Hands Off” rallies.

_______
Image used with this story is from the 2017 Women’s March.