Main Stream media not holing the evil Trumpzi administration to the same standards as with President Joe Biden

 

Trump self-deals, lies and seems to fall asleep in meetings. The media treats it all as ‘priced in’ (IOW already reflects all known information and expected) published in The Guardian by Margaret Sullivan.

As for the corporate news media, they remain highly distractible and largely deferential.

Trump is a sleety sleepy criminal 🥱  

Trump's insane screeds on his ❗ social media posts are unhinged. He falls asleep in meetings. He proudly proclaims he’s not thinking “even a little bit” about Americans’ personal finances in talks with Iran. And he lies constantly about the supposed success of the war with Iran he started for no good reason.  (To quote Joseph Heller in Catch 22: "From now on I will think only about myself". 🤢) 

That’s just the start, of course, when it comes to Donald Trump’s disastrous second presidency. There’s the ruination of the Kennedy Center, the building of a ballroom (or bunker?) to replace the White House East Wing, and the wrecking ball that the Trump-aligned supreme court has taken to the voting rights of Black Americans. There’s the endless self-dealing and the abuse of the justice department’s intended purpose.

And yet, the mainstream media doesn’t make much of any of that, not in any sustained way.

The shocking excesses and corruption of Trump 2.0 are “priced in”.

These outrages, for the most part, are largely treated as, well, Trump being Trump.

It’s as if much of big media has decided that it’s too much trouble to focus, in any sustained way, on developments that would have resulted in weeks of headlines, if not impeachment and conviction, in the pre-Trump era. And certainly in the President Biden era.

“I simply cannot believe I live in a timeline where journalists helped force the last president out of his reelection campaign for being too old, so the country put an unstable 79-year-old who falls asleep constantly in office and none of the same journalists care at all,” one observer, Jamesetta Williams, put it succinctly on X/ (formerly Twitter).

Next month, Trump turns 80. He functions with no apparent restraints, and it seems doubtful that the situation will improve any time soon.

Some extreme outrages do rise to the surface, provoking a raised eyebrow or two.

The New York Times gave its lead news position in print the other day to his “anti-weaponization fund” of 💲1.8bn. It’s intended to use taxpayer money to compensate his allies – maybe including the January 6, convicted criminal rioters who attacked police officers – for being prosecuted by an earlier iteration of the US justice department.

Reporters quoted Donald K Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal watchdog organization, calling it “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history”. And a sub-headline made a carefully distanced reference to “critics” who call this a slush fund.

Ah, the critics. There they are again.

The mainstream media largely shrugged off the slush-fund story, depicting it as politics as usual – no cause for alarm or sustained coverage. The NBC evening newscast by Wednesday had moved on, focusing instead on Raúl Castro’s indictment, the California wildfires and a car explosion in lower Manhattan. And Fox News, home to the fervid Maga base, offered cursory coverage both on the air and online, giving an obligatory nod to Democratic lawmakers who voiced their objections, but mostly handing the network’s microphone to Trump allies such as JD Vance and the loyalist acting attorney general, Todd Blanche.

Granted, there have been a few recent pieces about Trump’s apparent physical and mental decline, including one by Jonathan Lemire in the Atlantic. He acknowledged that Trump hasn’t faced the same scrutiny for his age-related decline as Biden did, and pointed out “questions about his health and increasingly erratic behavior”.

But it didn’t get all that much attention. Nothing does.

One of the problems, of course, is that there’s just so much.

Journalists get geared up to cover one outrage – $1bn for ballroom security! – when another one comes along: $1.8bn for the slush fund!

And ever onward.

Now he’s dissing Americans’ worries about their family budgets, but that fades as he schmoozes the next authoritarian dictator, or threatens “a friendly takeover of Cuba”.

“Flood the zone with shit,” was the way former Trump aide Steve Bannon once described the media strategy. It’s turned out to be a highly effective technique.

One almost can’t blame overwhelmed citizens for wanting to hide their heads in the sand, despite the extraordinary dangers of doing so.

As for the corporate news media, they remain highly distractible and largely deferential. Also, not really unhappy since Trump provides constant outrage, which makes for news, and then he moves on

They do, too.

Often, it falls to independent voices – not associated with corporate media – to say the obvious, loud and clear.

Terry Moran, formerly of ABC News and now on Substack, called the slush fund “plunder” in a recent post, and urged mainstream media to stop using “weasel words”, like unusual or controversial, to report on it. Moran called an associated development, the shielding of the Trump family’s entire tax history from scrutiny, for all time, as “breathtakingly corrupt”.

You won’t hear THAT on the evening news or in the rest of mainstream media.
By the time you read this, they’ll already have moved on. 💢

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans support evil Stephen Miller and his wife Katie Miller cruel child separation from immigrant parents

Evil Stephen Miller delivers for Trump: 145,000 US kids separated from their parents:  A thinktank investigation shows how immigration detention has torn apart families, and experts point to trauma.  Published in The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi

More than 53,000 citizen children with a detained parent were estimated to be under the age of six. 😢

Evil Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s immigration czar and the architect of some of the government’s cruelest policies, doesn’t care what you think about him. He doesn’t care if you call him “Pee-wee German” or “Weird Stephen” or “Voldemort”, or any of the other nicknames he has inspired; his self-esteem is excellent. (Try Miller's doppelganger, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi public relations officer and chief architect of the regime's messaging.)

Joseph Goebbels (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945)

“I have a very, very secure, intact ego,” Miller told Fox (Fake❗) News’s Jesse Watters this week after being asked how he felt about his wife, Katie Miller, potentially landing a big distribution deal with Paramount for her terrible Maga podcast. “I’ve never had a larger fan following,” Miller continued. “[A]ny man who works for Donald Trump is a man that is very, very strong and self-assured in his role.”

Well, yes, I suppose you’ve got to be a very, very strong man to separate babies from their parents – which is what Miller will forever be famous for. Back in Trump 1.0, Miller played a key role in implementing a “zero tolerance” border policy that systematically removed more than 5,000 immigrant children, some just a few months old, from their parents at the US-Mexico border. 

A Human Rights Watch report released in December 2024, found that as many as 1,360 children had never been reunited with their parents.😟😠😢

Trump is not the first president to detain or deport the parents of US citizen minors. Nevertheless, he’s doing it at a much faster rate, and in a much crueler way, than his predecessor. 

A data analysis by ProPublica published in March found “ICE arrests of parents doubled in the first seven months of Trump’s second term compared with the President Joseph Biden administration”. It also found mothers were being more aggressively targeted: “Trump is deporting about four times as many moms of US citizen children per day as Biden did.” A Guardian investigation from May uncovered similar statistics.

Another change from Biden administration norms are the guidelines on how immigration officers should exercise their discretion when it comes to families. “A document once known as the Parental Interests Directive has been given a new name under Trump – the Detained Parents Directive,” writes ProPublica. “And its preamble, which once instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was ‘humane,’ has been stripped of the word.”

Again:  Sadly, Trump is not the first president to separate US citizen children from their immigrant parents. But no other administration has been so callous about the welfare of the children affected. “The bottom line is that there is no systematic approach to protecting the children of those detained by ICE,” the Brookings report states. There is “no government entity … responsible for their wellbeing”. There also isn’t adequate record-keeping, meaning we have little idea what is happening to all these children.

What we do know, of course, is that many of these children are going to be immensely traumatized. Kelly Kribs, an attorney at the Young Center, told the Guardian in May that the separation crisis unfolding now is even more insidious than the family separation policy from Trump 1.0. “It’s leading to all the same forms of trauma that we saw unfold back in 2018,” said Kribs. “But the speed and the scale of the separations now is at a level we’ve never seen before.”

One suspects that the Millers, who have three kids of their own, are not particularly perturbed by these 145,000 traumatized children. Stephen met his wife, Katie, when they both worked for Trump during his first term, and she is just as hawkish on immigration as he is. “DHS sent me to the border to see the separations for myself – to try to make me more compassionate – but it didn’t work,” Katie boasted to Jacob Soboroff in 2018, according to his book, Separated. She added that colleagues told her she’d think about family separation differently when she had her own kids: “But I don’t think so.” Perhaps she’ll share some more of her charming views with us on The Katie Miller Podcast. (a weekly talk-show style series hosted by conservative communications strategist Katie Miller.)

Donald Trump and maga Republicans want Americans tax money to create a slush fund to support convicted criminals!

Trump’s 💲1.8 Billion Slush Fund Is Worse Than Stealing

Definition: an unofficial, loosely regulated pool of money set aside for unspecified, discretionary, or illicit purposes

Recasting the January 6 insurrection as the work of heroic patriots remains the president’s highest priority. Published in The Atlantic, by Jonathan Chait

Among the very first things Donald Trump did upon assuming the powers of the presidency for the second time was commute the sentences of, and grant pardons to, everybody involved in his attempt to overturn the 2020, election. 😡😠 Republican allies expressed moderate disappointment but vowed to move past this ugly blemish. Senator Susan Collins called it a “terrible day for our Justice Department.” Senator Tommy Tuberville admitted, “It’s a hard one, because we work with them up here,” referring to Capitol Police who were viciously beaten by Trump’s allies. Tuberville concluded, “At the end of the day, we’ve got to get January 6, behind us.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that Republicans were “not looking backwards; we’re looking forward.”

It was not, however, just one terrible day. Trump’s loyalty to his most violent and criminal supporters was a signal of his highest priority and has been a reliable guide to his decisions ever since. The impulse to rewrite the history of January 6, 2021, appears to be the inspiration even for the establishment of a 💲1.8 billion Treasury Department slush fund ❗for victims of so-called weaponization of government.

Last week, when the administration floated the notion of disbursing payments to alleged victims of government weaponization, cynics assumed that Trump meant to divert the money to himself. But this assessment may have turned out to be too naïve. Trump already has ample ways to profit from office, including from stock trading with the benefit of inside knowledge and by accepting gifts from client states. The Justice Department told reporters yesterday that Trump, his sons, and his family business would not receive payments from the fund. The recipients will almost surely be insurrectionists and other Trumpzi allies.

How, exactly, can Trump hand out taxpayer dollars at his whim❓ The putative mechanism is a settlement with the Internal Revenue Service. In 2020, an IRS contractor leaked a few years of Trump’s tax records. (Before Trump, major presidential candidates had for decades voluntarily released their returns, an essential step in demonstrating that they had no conflicts of interest.)

The contractor was caught and sent to prison. Trump, nevertheless, sued for the offense of being subjected to a portion of the scrutiny his fellow candidates have voluntarily undergone. 

Because Trump runs the IRS, it is no longer in a position to place any limits on his demands. He has already exploited the loophole of suing his own government to pay a series of allies investigated for or convicted of committing crimes out of loyalty to him. The recipients include the family of Ashli Babbitt, an insurrectionist who was shot and killed on January 6, while smashing her way into a corridor behind which members of Congress had taken shelter from the mob.

Trump’s Justice Department describes the forthcoming payouts as a “systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.” The process is, in fact, the opposite of systemic. It is designed to be controlled personally by Trump and sheltered from any judicial scrutiny.

If the government were actually compensating victims of lawfare, it would direct payments to James Comey, Mark Kelly, Adam Schiff, and other targets of Trump’s vindictive prosecutions. 

Trump has described his actions as turnabout—“I was hunted by some very bad people. Now I’m the hunter.”—which, given that he has called his own prosecutions political targeting, is tantamount to confessing that he is targeting his enemies.

But, of course, nobody entertains for a moment the thought that the fund could conceivably reward an actual victim of weaponization. To ensure that it will never be used for a deserving victim, the fund is scheduled for termination on December 15, 2028.

Asked by a reporter yesterday whether people who committed violence against police officers should receive payments, Trump replied, “It’ll all be dependent on a committee. A committee’s being set up of very talented people, very highly respected people.” The committee is being selected entirely by Trump, who retains the power to replace any member who displeases him, and who in any case has argued in multiple contexts that he is entitled to exert full control over any decision by the executive branch.

The most dystopian explanation for this scheme comes from sources who sketched it out to ABC News last week. As ABC’s reporters characterized it, the sources described the fund as “a hybrid between a victim compensation fund—similar to the civil claims process that followed the 2010, Deepwater Horizon oil spill—and a truth-and-reconciliation-style commission.”

Trump’s commission is deviously inverting the original and most famous truth-and-reconciliation commission. South Africa established its commission to document the crimes committed under its apartheid regime. Rather than uncovering the truth to facilitate the state’s transformation from authoritarianism into democracy, Trump is doing the reverse, inscribing his lies into the historical record in an effort to undermine democracy.

It is common to describe Trump’s steps as vengeance, but he has more in mind than merely settling old scores. This obsession drove Trump to support a successful primary challenge to Senator Bill Cassidy, whose offense was casting a symbolic vote to impeach him after January 6. Cassidy had long since surrendered any independent impulses, to the point of violating his own pro-vaccine convictions to cast a humiliating, decisive vote to confirm (the idiot❗) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services. Yet Cassidy’s penitence did not satisfy Trump.

Trump considers it essential both to intimidate anybody who would stop him from carrying out illegal orders—hence his attempts to imprison Democrats who truthfully advised military members that they should not obey illegal orders—and to reward anybody who does follow them. He has reportedly promised mass pardons before he leaves office. Trump could have waited until after the 2028, elections to set up his slush fund, but he is doing it now in a high-profile way, presumably to communicate directly that loyal allies can expect lavish rewards.

The government’s operating ethos during Trump’s second term has followed the dictum that the president and his allies are immune from the law, while his enemies can expect to be hounded. As his party watches silently and cowers, his intentions grow only more naked.💢😡😱

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are wrong to promote expensive and unpopular Trumpian narcissists' policies

News Analysis published in The New York Times by Luke Broadwater

Defiant After Bad Week, Trump Pushes Ahead on Politically Unpopular Ideas. Donald Trump continues to act like he’s politically all-powerful, even in the face of indications that he is not.

By pretty much any estimation, Donald Trump has had a very bad week.

New poll numbers show his approval rating has hit a second-term low. He is weighing whether to restart a bombing campaign in an unpopular war against Iran. Gas prices are high and inching higher heading into Memorial Day weekend. And his grip over Republican lawmakers is beginning to slip after he proposed a pair of deeply unpopular spending items, prompting an unusual revolt from the Senate.

When faced with such a backlash ahead of midterm elections, many politicians would pivot, redirecting their focus to issues they are on stronger footing with.

But Trump has decided to double down, presenting himself as politically all-powerful even in the face of indications that he is not.

Over the years, Trump has often appeared to have an air of invincibility. He survived assassination attempts and won re-election despite being under multiple criminal indictments. He has successfully exacted retribution on many a perceived enemy. Now, with less than three years left in office, he seems comfortable burning whatever political capital he has in order to leave his legacy, even if it drags his party down in the process.

Rather than abandoning his plan for a 💲1.8 billion fund to reward allies who claim they were persecuted by Democrats, Trump has defended the proposal, suggesting he could have used the taxpayer money to enrich himself.

“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward. I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune,” the Trump wrote on his (fake❗) social media. “Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!”

Trump's acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, also (unethically) attempted to defend the plan in a hostile meeting with Senate Republicans. 

Inside the room, Blanche came under withering questioning and criticism. Several Republicans spoke up to express worry that the fund would be used to provide money to people who had attacked police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and were later pardoned by Trump.

The meeting went so poorly for Blanche that party leaders scrapped planned votes on another of Trump’s top priorities: a 💲72 billion immigration crackdown measure lawmakers had planned to muscle through before Memorial Day.

“There’s a boiling point here,” said Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University. “Of course, the boiling over, it’s in part because Trump doubles down. He rarely admits that maybe he needs to backtrack a little.”

Trump was also undeterred when another unpopular policy position — using taxpayer money to help fund security for his 💲400 million luxury ballroom on White House grounds — was met with backlash on Capitol Hill.

He said that without the 💲1 billion, the “White House won’t be a very secure place.” He called for the firing of the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, a nonpartisan official who ruled that approving the money would violate Senate rules.

“The Republicans allow the Elizabeth MacDonoughs of the World to stay in power, and brutalize us,” Trump complained.

Another dynamic at play in the Trump White House is a lack of dissenting voices to some of Trump's most extreme ideas.

In Trump’s first term, some of the president’s most radical ideas were checked by aides like John F. Kelly, the Trump White House’s longest-serving chief of staff; Jim Mattis, who was. Trump’s first defense secretary; and Gary Cohn, an economic adviser.

But those men are long gone, and their positions have been filled mostly by people who are true Trumpzi cult believers.


Underscoring that point, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, this week defended the so-called weaponization fund, even as critics called it a “slush fund” that could give payouts to Jan. 6 rioters.

“So many lives destroyed, so many livelihoods ruined, so many people who were deprived of their fundamental rights and freedoms as American citizens,” Mr. Miller said of the need for the fund, adding: “This settlement is just a small measure of the justice that they are owed.”

Trump seemed unconcerned about whether these ideas are popular with voters, and has lamented openly that Democrats are likely to gain ground in the midterm elections. He has been most animated when discussing how he exacts vengeance on Republicans who criticize him.





At a political rally Friday in Rockland County, N.Y., Mr. Trump boasted about the recent victories in Republican primaries in which challengers he backed took out incumbent lawmakers who had crossed him.

“We knocked out a bad senator from Louisiana,” Trump said to cheers. “We knocked out everybody,” he added.

Left unsaid was that Trump needed the votes of the Republicans he opposed.

Ms. Binder said she took Trump at his word when he argued last year that he had little further use for Congress, a suggestion that he could enact most of his agenda by circumventing lawmakers. She said that the president was thinking in larger terms about continuing to control the G.O.P. after his presidency, and what kind of legacy, historically and physically, he could leave behind. She pointed to his push to build a triumphal arch in Washington.

“He’s focused on the arch. I think he’s focused on his own personal legacy. He’s focused on vengeance,” she said. “He doesn’t have a legislative agenda, so does he really need a Republican Senate?”


Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must obey the Constitution and support Equal Protection 14th Amendment

Attack on birthright citizenship highlights Trump’s white nationalist ambitions

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Carlos de Loera

In the summer of 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified, granting birthright citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States.”

Crafted in the aftermath of the Civil War, the landmark legislation was aimed at providing citizenship to formerly enslaved people. The amendment directly undid the ruling of the 1857, U.S. Supreme Court case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford, which stated that enslaved people were not U.S. citizens.

More than 150 years after the amendment’s ratification, Donald Trump signed an executive order in January 2025, that offered a redefined interpretation of who exactly is entitled to birthright citizenship.

The proposed presidential directive suggested that citizenship should not be extended to children born within the U.S. or its territories to parents who are undocumented or have temporary visas.

The order — which would affect all children born to parents without permanent legal status in the U.S. after Feb. 19, 2025 — argued that “the Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”

More than 150 years after the amendment’s ratification, Donald  Trump signed an executive order in January 2025, that offered a redefined interpretation of who exactly is entitled to birthright citizenship.

The proposed presidential directive suggested that citizenship should not be extended to children born within the U.S. or its territories to parents who are undocumented or have temporary visas.

The order — which would affect all children born to parents without permanent legal status in the U.S. after Feb. 19, 2025 — argued that “the Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”

This retconning of the 14th Amendment aligns with the Trump administration’s continued crusade to demonize nonwhite citizens, which kicked off when he first ran for president in 2015.

The administration has continually placed travel bans on Muslim-majority countries; scaled back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures at the federal level; tried to craft immigration and refugee services in a way that prioritizes white people; perpetuated the “anchor baby” myth; ramped up spending for Immigration and Customs Enforcement; attempted to expedite deportations; created an increased surveillance state on undocumented people as ICE raids have besieged immigrant communities over the last year; and housed detained migrants in poorly and dangerously run detention centers.

Stephen Miller, the front man for Trump’s deportation campaign, claimed that the U.S. would essentially be a utopia if there were no immigrants.

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has openly shown contempt for judges’ rulings on deportation processes when dealing with Latino immigrants.

With the help of other cronies like Kristi Noem, Gregory Bovino, Kash Patel, Brendan Carr, Marco Rubio and Karoline Leavitt, the Trump administration has virtually crafted the Avengers of white nationalism.

Immediately after the order’s signing, several federal judges from across the country blocked its implementation, ruling that it’s unconstitutional. However, in June the Supreme Court ruled that district courts couldn’t authorize nationwide injunctions of the executive order.

After that decision, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit — officially known as Trump vs. Barbara — to block Trump’s executive order last June in New Hampshire on behalf of all the children who would be affected by the directive. The district court judge presiding over the case granted a preliminary injunction, which prevented the order from being enforced. In December, it was announced that the Supreme Court would review the district court’s ruling.

On April 1, the Supreme Court was presented with oral arguments from both sides — though a decision on the case will not be reached until the end of the Supreme Court’s session in late June or early July.

Ahead of these presentations, the deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, Cody Wofsy, spoke with The Times about the case.

Wofsy explained that the only legally sound way for the executive order to be implemented would be through an official amendment to the Constitution, which would need to be approved by the states. He highly doubted something like that would even pass.

However, the attorney noted that a lack of legality wouldn’t necessarily stop the Trump administration from denying people citizenship.

“If there were no lawsuits, the government would be treating all these children as if they were not citizens,” Wofsy said. “What I’m saying is that’s illegal, but that the government does illegal things sometimes.”

Wofsy also further delved into the particularities of the court case, stating that the Trump administration wants to require that parents of babies born in the U.S. be “domiciled” in the country.

“That means somebody who resides here and has the intention to reside here indefinitely,” he said. “One problem for [the Trump administration] is that for most of the babies who are being targeted by the executive order, their parents are domiciled here.”

Additionally, he noted that there is currently no domicile requirement within the 14th Amendment and that there is already legal precedent for a constitutional interpretation that asserted that stance.

The 1898, Supreme Court case of United States vs. Wong Kim Ark affirmed the right to citizenship of a child born in California to two parents who were Chinese nationals. The landmark ruling set the legal groundwork for any child born within the U.S. to be considered a citizen, regardless of their parents’ residence status.

The Supreme Court brief put forth by the Trump administration mentioned that court case but argued that the ruling “does not cover children of aliens who are not ‘permitted by the United States to reside here.’”

Wofsy called out the legal move for its perversion of what political representation should be.

“Citizenship is not a policy tool to be wielded just because the people temporarily in office would rather the electorate looked different from the way it does,” he said. “[In] America, the people elect their representatives, the representatives do not pick who the people are going to be.”

A positive outcome for the Trump administration could create a permanent second‑class caste of people whose citizenship can be questioned.

“This would be the starting gun to a much broader attack on citizenship and belonging in this country more generally,” Wofsy said. “And we know who the targets of those attacks would be. It would be communities of color. It would be vulnerable populations in this country who already have their citizenship and their belonging in America questioned on a regular basis.”

In terms of enforcement, this new reality would make it so that the thousands of children born monthly since Feb. 19, 2025, would effectively be rendered undocumented immigrants, with virtually no avenue to get any type of legal status.

Wofsy said these kids would be “subject to immediate harms” and that they could be arrested, detained and deported from the U.S.

“They’re going to grow up living in fear of immigration enforcement and having their families torn apart,” he noted. “It also means they’d be denied passports, ordinary access, Social Security cards and various kinds of programs, including early life nutrition as they get older.”

The executive order’s implementation could also create a logistical nightmare for people who have nothing to do with those who are being targeted. For example, it could affect members of religious communities that may not have traditional documentation and people who’ve lost their documentation due to natural disasters.

“What if you need to prove the immigration status of your parents, maybe decades before questions are being raised about citizenship?” Wofsy said. “[It could] potentially strip citizenship from unknown numbers of people who not only should be citizens under the Constitution as it’s written, but even should be citizens under the executive order rules but maybe can’t prove it.”

Wofsy called the Trump administration the “most anti-immigrant administration that we’ve seen in at least 100 years” and pointed at the ultimate goal of all its restrictive policies.

“They want to turn the clock back to a time when the country was less free, less equal and more than anything more white,” he said. “Overall, it is a vision of America that says that nonwhite populations coming here, enjoying the fabric of America, is a bad thing. I don’t think that is what the American people believe. I don’t think that’s what they voted for and I do not think that this assault on birthright citizenship reflects American values.”

Donald Trump demands fealty from his evil cult but never reciprocates: Trumpism is Fascism

After crushing primary defeat in a primary, the Republican incumbent Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana used his concession speech to deliver a message about — and to — Donald Trump.

Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by Renée Graham

“When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to,” the two-term senator said. “But you don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim the election was stolen, ... you don’t manufacture some excuse. You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you’ve had that privilege. And that’s what I’m doing right now.”

What Cassidy also did was something he had failed to do since Trump returned to office — call him out publicly❗ Never mentioned Trump's name. But, only when his own political career was left in ashes was Cassidy willing to singe  Trump.

Cassidy has been a marked man since 2021, when he was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump after the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. At the time, Cassidy said, “Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.” In response to Cassidy’s vote, the Republican Party of Louisiana censured him.

But Trump, who turned the power of the presidency into a revenge fest, made no secret of his desire to get Cassidy, whom he called “disloyal,” out of Congress. 

In the Senate primary, he endorsed House Representative Julia Letlow, who received 45 percent of the vote and will face John Fleming, a Louisiana state treasurer, in a runoff on June 27.

As soon as Trump returned to office, Cassidy tried to get back into his good graces — only to discover that Trump doesn’t have any. But to appease him, Cassidy voted to confirm every member of Trump’s Cabinet.

That included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As a doctor, Cassidy knew that Kennedy was not only unqualified to be the health and human services secretary but, also, that he was an anti-vaxxer and a peddler of the junkiest junk science.

But with his vote, Cassidy, a staunch vaccine advocate, appeased Trump and gave Kennedy undeserved trust. That didn’t stop Kennedy from blaming Cassidy for the derailed confirmation of Casey Means, a so-called “wellness influencer” as surgeon general.

In a social media post, Kennedy said that Cassidy “once again did the dirty work for entrenched interests seeking to stall the [Make America Healthy Again] movement and protect the very status quo that has made America the sickest nation on earth.”

Whatever legacy Cassidy hoped to cement during his Senate tenure, his decision to help Kennedy become The Worst Health and Human Services Secretary™ in American history will overshadow all of it.

Cassidy learned what other Republicans, despite their stalwart sycophancy, have found when they thwarted Trump’s fragile ego — he will stop at nothing to destroy them politically.

A year after Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Georgia congresswoman, heckled former president Joe Biden during his final State of the Union address in 2024, Trump excoriated her as a “lunatic” when she pushed for the release of the Justice Department’s files on convicted sex offender and former Trump buddy Jeffrey Epstein.

(House Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky also demanded the Epstein files release, which landed him in Trump’s crosshairs. He faced a tough primary challenge on Tuesday against a Trump-endorsed candidate.)

Without Trump’s support, Greene declined to seek reelection. But she has continued to joust with Trump, and she has said that “MAGA has become a cult.”

MAGA has always been a cult. But not until Trump turned on Greene did she bother to notice. That’s typical of Republicans who only tend to buck Trump on their way out of the door — like Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is not running for reelection. His scathing cross-examination of Kristi Noem in March probably helped get her fired as Homeland Security director.

Having lost his shot at another Senate term, Cassidy should also behave like a man with nothing to lose. Perhaps his concession speech was a preview.

“Let me just set the record straight: Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans and it is about our Constitution,” Cassidy told his supporters. “And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”

Instead of a potential three-term senator, Cassidy is a cautionary tale for Republicans. He traded his conscience for capitulation to a man he knew was not qualified to be a leader. 

In search of his own self-preservation, Cassidy toadied up to a tyrant, placed Trump above country and the Constitution, and still ended up as a loser.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans going to use America's tax money to support convicted criminals!

$1.8 billion slush fund is all the evidence you need that Trump is corrupt.

Echo opinion letter published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, written by Sharon Carlberg, in Cheyenne, Wy.

The recent unethical awarding by the Trump Justice Department of 💲1.8 billion to Donald Trump is all anyone needs to know to understand that the United States of America has been so badly compromised by this administration it might never recover.

Please use your own intelligence to put that in perspective. This is something that happens in lawless, corrupt governments.

It encapsulates everything that is wrong with this corrupt Trump administration and exposes the con man you elected twice.

Please- America and the Congress wake up❗⏰⚠️ lease be honest.  This grifting of tax payers bodes well for no one outside the billionaire class.

Donald Trump has no "win-win" options strategy to exit his disastrous and illegal Iran war of choice.

Has Iran surrendered yet❓ Trump has no one to blame but himself.

Has Donald Trump (maybe) thought abut getting Batman involved❓

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Daniel R. DePetris.

Nearly three months after the United States and Israel launched their large-scale bombing campaign against Iran and about six weeks since the April 8 ceasefire took effect, Donald Trump faces an inflection point. Does he return to war❓ Maintain the ceasefire and U.S. blockade on Iranian ports in the hope of cutting a deal on American terms? Or drop his maximalist negotiating stance❓

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an informal foreign policy advisor for the White House, continues to press for more aggressive U.S. military action. Trump’s political advisors would prefer that the war end as soon as possible to minimize political repercussions against the Republican Party in a midterm election year.

Trump seems conflicted. 🙄😕

Despite weeks of U.S. bombardment and an ongoing naval blockade, Tehran is as protective of its nuclear program today as it was before the war began. “For Iran, the Clock⏲️  is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social over the weekend. A day later, Trump took to the social media platform again to announce he suspended planned U.S. attacks on Iran to give talks more time.

Unfortunately for Trump, he’s proved to be his own worst enemy on this subject. Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and Tehran’s effective control of the Strait of Hormuz, the regime’s two biggest cards, are a byproduct of Trump’s own policy decisions.

The first is a clear indictment of Trump’s first-term order to withdraw the United States from the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a highly technical accord that put Iran’s nuclear work in a box by restricting the number and quality of centrifuges it could use, capped the amount of enriched uranium it could produce and compelled Tehran to ship 97% of its stockpile out of the country. When the Trump administration scrapped that hard-won deal, Iran responded by enriching more nuclear material at a faster pace and accumulating the very stockpile the Trump administration is now seeking to neutralize.

The Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s second card, would not even be an issue today if the Trump administration had refrained from going to war in the first place. On Feb. 27, the day before the conflict began, more than 150 tankers and vessels traveled through the strait. The international waterway was open for business.

Not so today. On Thursday, a grand total of three crossings were registered in the waterway. This collapse of commerce is a consequence of Iran’s ability to harass civilian tankers so much that shipping companies no longer view the journey as worth the cost. 

As Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday: “The Iranian capability to stop commerce has been dramatically depleted through the strait, but their voice is very loud. And those threats are clearly heard by the merchant industry and insurance industry.”

By virtue of his own actions, Trump is now left with a series of policy options that range from least bad to terrible. None of them are ideal, and all of them carry some risk.

For starters, Trump could resume the war. Any renewed U.S. bombing campaign would probably expand the U.S. military’s original set of targets to include a portion of Iran’s energy infrastructure, which Trump has threatened repeatedly to hit.

A U.S. invasion of Kharg Island, where 90% of Iran’s oil processing takes place, might also be up for discussion. The aim would be to destroy Iran’s remaining military capabilities and further squeeze its oil revenue until Tehran’s strategic calculus on the war shifts to Washington’s liking.

Yet there are no guarantees that doubling down on military force will work. Trump’s entire strategy has relied on a baseline assumption: The more punitive the United States is, the more likely Tehran will be to cave. Yet that simply hasn’t occurred.

If anything, Iran is more dug in now than it was in the opening days of the conflict. For the regime, capitulating to Trump is as dangerous as losing the war. Why would more bombing succeed where previous bombing failed?

The risks of additional U.S. military action are considerable as well. Before the ceasefire, Iran was launching ballistic missiles and attack drones across multiple gulf Arab states, hitting Qatar’s largest natural gas processing facility, Saudi Arabia’s east-west oil pipeline and Dubai’s luxurious high-rises. As the Iranians have stated, such attacks will not only resume if Trump orders a resumption of the war but will expand to new targets, including desalination facilities and nuclear power plants. Such strikes would raise global oil and gas prices to even more absurd levels, adding to the extra $40 billion the American people are already paying for fuel since the war began.

What about continuing the status quo❓ While this contingency would be less costly than another round of bombing or a U.S. ground invasion, it’s unclear whether it would help or hurt negotiations toward a settlement. There’s a possibility that extending the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports could merely reaffirm the regime’s earlier decision to preserve its own shutdown of the strait. Iran is now urging Washington to end its blockade before talks on the nuclear file can be held. And it’s a mystery whether Trump’s blockade is working anyway; the U.S. intelligence community assesses that Iran could withstand this pressure point for three to four more months, which may be too long for Trump to sustain given the oil disruptions that are bound to get worse.

Striking an agreement to end the war, return the strait to open traffic and restrict Iran’s nuclear program would be the most beneficial policy for the United States with the least amount of cost attached — not quite undoing the harm from Trump’s first-term decision to scrap the nuclear deal and his second-term decision to start a war. U.S. and Iranian negotiators are passing proposals back and forth as we speak. But as of now, Trump can’t stomach agreeing to a deal that covers some of Iran’s terms, including but not limited to a shorter suspension of enriched uranium and some kind of Iranian role in the management of the strait. Even if Trump did reassess his position, he would be forced to confront the hawks in his political coalition who would consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.

In short, Trump is in an unenviable position. He’s got nobody to blame but himself.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist.

Donald Trump is "Typhoid Mary" of the Republican party. MAGA cult must break with his toxic brand

Echo opinion letter published in the Sun Sentinel, a Florida newspaper.

Despite the contagion of mid-decade gerrymandering (i.e., cheating) infecting our politics, spread by Donald Trump, the Typhoid Mary of our times, I have a hopeful thought.

Is it possible that discerning citizens, accustomed to voting for Republicans, might break the fever and realize that the cure to higher-priced gas, food and health care is to inoculate themselves and the rest of the country by refraining from re-electing GOP members of the House and Senate who rubber-stamped Trump’s toxic, ill-conceived policies that are so ruinous for the country?

I’m referring to those who allowed Trump to spread DOGE like a virus and gut essential services; who enabled him to pile on vindictive tariffs that disrupted supply chains and burdened or devastated businesses and farms; who excused Trump as he unleashed the unfettered brutality of ICE on our cities, ripping apart families and resulting in the detention, deportation, and death of U.S. citizens and others here legally, while claiming he was going after “the worst of the worst.”

Then there’s blocking the release of the Epstein files and unilaterally spending hundreds of millions on monuments to himself and billions on his personal war with Iran, while calling the issue of affordability a hoax. And the embrace of Putin, who plays Trump like a fiddle, and the betrayal of ally Ukraine. Could Republican voters be finally sick and tired enough of all of this “winning” to vote out those who allowed this to fester and metastasize❓ Stranger things have happened.

Then there’s blocking the release of the Epstein files and unilaterally spending hundreds of millions on monuments to himself and billions on his personal war with Iran, while calling the issue of affordability a hoax. And the embrace of Putin, who plays Trump like a fiddle, and the betrayal of ally Ukraine. Could Republican voters be finally sick and tired enough of all of this “winning” to vote out those who allowed this to fester and metastasize❓Stranger things have happened.

From — Scott Benarde, in West Palm Beach, Florida

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are stealing taxpayer money to build ugly Trumpian "brand down" relics

A failed president and his edifice complex | Editorial

Published in the Sun Sentinel in Florida

In September 1941, the death of a family member prompted President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to say how he should be remembered.

Dump tRump #ImpeachNOW ❗

One of America’s greatest presidents wanted only a plain block of stone, about the size of his desk, to be placed on the front lawn of the National Archives Building, with the words “In memory of … ”

Friends — not the government — installed it, 20 years after he died. It’s still there, although a more elaborate memorial to one of our greatest presidents now stands beside the Tidal Basin.

An elegant simplicity

Another great president, Thomas Jefferson, also insisted on simplicity. The epitaph on his gravestone would state only that he had written the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom and had founded the University of Virginia — not that he was elected president twice.

The accidental president, Gerald Ford, pocket-vetoed a bill to name a Michigan post office for him, writing that it would be “improper for me as an incumbent president to approve legislation which places my name on a federal building. This is a precedent I do not wish to establish.”

Such modesty is lost on Donald Trump, who constantly memorializes himself with monuments to bad taste, from Washington to West Palm Beach.

He slapped his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; intends to build a vastly oversized ballroom in place of the White House East Wing he razed without Congress’ consent; proposes a triumphal arch larger than any that the ancient emperors built for themselves, which would crudely overshadow Arlington National Cemetery; and plans an enormous “Garden of Heroes” with 250 statutes of notable Americans among whom, one suspects, there will be yet another gilt image of Donald John Trump, fist raised.

When asked by a CBS News reporter whom the arch would honor, Trump replied ‘Me’.”

Trump's ugly and unpopular name is on a State Department building. His image is on gold commemorative coins, passports and national park passes. His signature is going on paper currency. He wants a new class of white elephant battleships to be named for him.

And the airport, of course

The licensing deal for Palm Beach International Airport to be named for him, as demanded by a law the state Legislature passed without local consent, requires a logo resembling the White House seal, in — you guessed it — gold with gold stars.

The renaming and branding will cost taxpayers $5.5 million and Trump will control who will be allowed to operate concessions there.

Trump’s personal edifice complex is unmoored to any qualifying achievements or to any corresponding esteem from any sector of the public, other than MAGA diehards.

In a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll, Trump’s approval rating has sunk to 37% and his disapproval has climbed to 62%. His approval among Republicans was 85%, but among independents it’s 25%.

Across the entire electorate, the public disapproves of how he’s handling every major issue, especially inflation, the cost of living, the overall economy and his illegal war.

He argues heedlessly that he needs the colossal ballroom to protect him from potential assassins, with the recent attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as the pretext.

But that thought conflicts with his personality, because it presumes that he would hunker down in the White House, never leaving for MAGA rallies or rounds of golf. It would not be an acceptable venue for independent associations that need to keep a respectful distance from whoever is president. The East Room was adequate for John F. Kennedy’s state dinners and for the one to which Trump welcomed King Charles III last week.

A poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias,” taught to generations of Florida high school students, is still listed in the state language arts curriculum. It behooves Trump to read it. It’s short enough that he could do so, without having someone read it to him:

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert … Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant.

Question to Donald Trump and maga cult Republicans? Has Iran surrendered yet?

In response to the letter “Trump ridding the world of Iranian nuclear threat” (May 7, TribLive), I object to the letter writer because I have a thought or two.

First, didn’t Donald Trump announce last June that military strikes had “obliterated” any Iranian nuclear threat❓ If true, why strike again, this time after their leaders and civilians❓ Obliterate defined is to “destroy completely.” I can’t imagine that Trump would ever lie to the American people, can you❓🤥😒I recall him promising no more foreign wars on the campaign trail.

Secondly, it would appear that Iran has handed Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth (aka "Whiskey Pete") more problems than their genius strategy expected. Military experts warned them both of the response an attack would create. But, they ignored it and are now scrambling to win something that looks on the surface as an unlikely outcome. If the war is “won,” as Trump claims, then why is the Strait of Hormuz still closed, negotiation necessary and deals needed to be made? Thirteen service members have been killed and hundreds more wounded, and Iran is no closer to bowing to those two than the day of the first strikes. So much for a four- to six-week “military excursion.” Empty threats and boasts of victory are hollow words of weakness.

Finally, should Trump decide to “make Iran glow” - a major war crime, as he threatened, he will not only continue his path as being the worst president in modern history, he will be tried as a war criminal too. Is this entire mess what the letter writer is thanking God for❓ (Maine Writer- "War does not solve problems; on the contrary, it amplifies them and inflicts deep wounds on the history of peoples, which take generations to heal."- Pope Leo XIV)

Has Iran surrendered yet❓

From Howard Cade in Franklin, Pennsylvania