Donald Trum and maga Republicans like Senator Susan Collins support chaotic Iranian war and Americans pay the cost

Does anyone in America know what Donald Trump is doing in the Strait of Hormuz? Does Trump himself know❓

Reported in The Hill and Yahoo News by Max Burns

So Chief.....has Iran surrendered yet❓

On Sunday, he boldly announced “Project Freedom,” his scheme to escort commercial ships through the shuttered strait. He then swiftly reversed course just two days later, declaring that the strait would remain closed, even as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was selling Project Freedom to the press. 

While Hegseth touted a plan that no longer existed, Trump again changed his timeline for ending his increasingly unpopular war in Iran.

Trump’s impulsive and contradictory actions in Iran have confounded his generals, his Cabinet and the public since the war began 10 weeks ago. Trump is now so bogged down that he is confounding himself, too. It is time for Congress to exert some constitutional authority and wrap this debacle up before regular

Americans endure even more financial suffering.

Trump has clearly lost the plot of what has become a staggeringly expensive conflict without any clear strategic goal. In fact, the only measurable result of Trump’s Iran strikes has been a spike in the cost of gasoline by more than 50 percent since March. The cost of jet fuel rose so much so quickly that Spirit Airlines had no choice but to declare bankruptcy and liquidate 17,000 previously well-paying American jobs.

Great Depression bread lines😓😔😒😠😟

“For the first time in my life, I have no idea how to face what comes next,” former Spirit Airlines employee Jorge Luis Camacho lamented in a GoFundMe fundraiser, posted shortly after the company shuttered. “Bills have to be paid, and financially, I have nothing.”

Camacho and his former Spirit coworkers will have a hard time finding new work in an economy battered by the Iran war. A Goldman Sachs report published in March estimated that Trump’s war is costing the U.S. economy more than 10,000 jobs each month, with losses concentrated in the leisure and hospitality industries, retail and manufacturing. The economic uncertainty wrought by Trump’s war is now the most potent job-killer in the country.

Indeed, the Iran War may well be remembered for little else besides the rolling job losses and financial hardship it inflicted on working-class Americans who were already grappling with rising consumer prices. Bank of America reports that credit card spending has surged roughly 4.3 percent in March, the most in more than three years, as consumers pile on debt to pay for basic necessities like gasoline. Unsurprisingly, consumer confidence has collapsed to the lowest level ever recorded as most Americans prepare for the worst.

Then there’s the day-to-day expense of running a war without end. The conflict has drained more than $72 billion in taxpayer funds at a time when Republican leaders say there simply isn’t any cash available to extend healthcare subsidies for the 22 million Americans facing skyrocketing premiums. And that’s before Trump heads to Capitol Hill with hat in hand to ask for $80 billion to $100 billion more in war funding.

At some point, enough has to be enough, even for the spineless MAGA gophers currently clogging up the Congress.

It appears at least a few Republicans are beginning to realize how economically (and politically) disastrous Trump’s war is shaping up to be. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) recently pushed for a War Powers Act vote in the Senate; her moment of courage was dampened by Republican leader John Thune flatly ignoring the request. That hasn’t stopped Murkowski from building support for the vote from Republicans including Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Curtis (R-Utah) and Todd Young (R-Ind.).

If Murkowski and her colleagues are trying their best to steer their party away from an electoral disaster, they’ll still likely run headlong into House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) absolute resistance to anything that could be viewed as Trump criticism (But, wait❗ What happened to Johnson's pledge to govern according to the Bible❓) . Johnson has so far resisted calls to rein in Trump’s war powers, even as the most recent Ipsos poll found a growing majority of Americans souring on the war.

Republicans are currently caught in the trap of defending a war their own leader doesn’t seem to understand — and just like Hegseth this week, they increasingly finding themselves defending policies, only to discover that Trump has already abandoned them and reversed course.

Who is on first❓

MAGA Republican must put an end to the insane rantings and threats of death spewed by the unstable crazy Donald Trump

Echo reported in Yahoo News❗by Paige Skinner.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Mr. Dick Cheney praised him for doing “the right thing” by certifying the results of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021.

“When it came to Vice President Cheney, we were here for a funeral not long ago, and he leaned over next to me and just said to me in his usual terse manner, said: ‘You did the right thing,’” Pence told MS NOW on Thursday at Cheney’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. “And I said, ‘Dick, I will always cherish that.’”

• Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were specifically not invited to attend Mr. Cheney's funeral.

The anecdote about Cheney is especially noteworthy considering President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance weren’t invited to Cheney’s funeral. 

Mr. Cheney, who died earlier this month, endorsed Trump in the 2016 election, but after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Cheney became more outspoken against him. In 2024, he announced he would vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris in that year’s election, calling Trump a “threat to our republic.”

Mr. Pence called Mr. Cheney a “man of principle” and someone who championed “the conservative agenda.”

“And I think this nation will remember him as an extraordinary public servant who contributed mightily to the life of the nation and to the principles I hold dear,” Pence told MS NOW.

The late Vice President Dick Cheney (b. Jan. 30,1941- d. Nov. 3, 2025) father of Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney

Mr. Pence’s comments about Cheney’s solidarity with him come the same day that Trump called for violence against Democratic lawmakers who urged military members to disobey unlawful orders given to them. On Truth Social, Trump reposted an evil message that reads, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” In another post, Trump wrote himself, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

He followed it up with another evil post, writing, “It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET. President DJT.”

Main Stream Media must report about the physicians lawsuit against incompetent RFKjr because of his stupid vaccine policies! DANGER!

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFKjr) is a lunatic incompetent who has appointed himself to be an uneducated authority about the public health value and the administration of disease preventive vaccines. 

Report published in Politico, Yahoo news and STAT: 

Vaccines save lives. Moreover, virus germs hate vaccines, because when humans and animals are immunized against viruses, this prevents the virus from mutating into an even more morbid form. 

If the American public, or humans and animals in general, stop getting influenza vaccines and COVID immunizations, this gap in immunity will quickly be preyed upon by mutant hungry viruses. Viruses will create a new DNA configuration to create another deadly pandemic, because that is what viruses do.

Glad to see legal push back from physicians groups❗ 

WASHINGTON — Six major medical groups, and a pregnant physician, are suing health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (JRKjr) over changes he made to Covid-19 vaccine recommendations that they say were unlawful and undermine the public trust in health care.

The suit argues that a May 19, 2025, directive signed by Kennedy, which said that the Covid-19 vaccine would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant people, violates decades of policy governing how vaccines are reviewed, approved, and recommended in the U.S.

Doctors’ groups are suing Kennedy over COVID shot changes for kids and pregnant women.

They say the decision “erodes trust” by pitting providers against federal recommendations that aren’t grounded in evidence.

A coalition of doctors’ groups led by the American Academy of Pediatrics filed a lawsuit against (the incompetent❗) Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that his May announcement that the government would no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for healthy pregnant people and children violated longstanding norms governing U.S. immunization policy.

(RFKjr is crazy and his policies about vaccines and other stupid stuff are dangerous to the public health.) ⚠️

The organizations filing suit say Kennedy’s May 19 “Secretarial Directive” documenting his move to pull the vaccine from the CDC’s immunization schedule constitutes a final agency action ripe for challenge, noting that he cited no emergency or specific circumstantial changes to support the move.

The Secretarial Directive is contrary to the wealth of data and peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines for children and pregnant women,” the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit.

Health and Human Services (HHS) didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Organizations on the challenge include the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

The directive, they wrote, has put doctors “in the untenable position of telling their patients that the country’s top-ranking government health official’s advice and recommendations are wrong and that we are right.”

“This erodes trust, which is the foundation of a healthy physician-patient relationship and vital to the success of AAP members’ medical practices,” they added.

Kennedy announced the change in a May 27, video posted to X, in which he was flanked by FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, both of whom gained notoriety during the Covid pandemic for their opposition to mask and vaccine mandates. (All of them grossly incompetent❗)

The three officials said there wasn’t sufficient data to show healthy children and healthy pregnant women benefited from Covid vaccination. “Most countries have stopped recommending it for children,” Makary said in the video.

The plaintiffs in the case said Kennedy had unlawfully sidelined the CDC and its independent vaccine panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which are the federal bodies responsible for the immunization schedule.

“The statutory scheme that regulates the vaccine infrtructure in this country demonstrates Congress’ repeated policy decision to require that ACIP recommendations, made by a fairly balanced ACIP membership, 51 be the basis for what is put on or taken off of the CDC immunization schedules — not the unilateral decision of a single individual,” the plaintiffs wrote.

Public and private insurers are largely obligated to cover ACIP-recommended vaccines with no cost-sharing under the Affordable Care Act, and states often tie their daycare and school vaccine requirements to the panel’s recommendations.

While the CDC ultimately didn’t pull the recommendation from the childhood schedule, it did downgrade it to one involving “shared decision making” — a differentiation the physician groups say has made it harder for providers to counsel patients and for practices to assess insurance coverage.

The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Massachusetts, where a landmark vaccine policy case set national precedent in the early 20th century. The Supreme Court’s 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts decision upheld states’ authority to mandate vaccinations.

Nominee Pete Hegseth for defense secretary is dangerous and evidence of his drinking problem is disqualifying

The Sound of Fear on Air:  It is an ominous sign that Morning Joe felt it had to apologize for something I said. By David Frum

David Frum Says MSNBC’s ‘Efforts to Appease’ Trump by Apologizing for His Joke About Pete Hegsesth’s Drinking Are ‘Very Ominous’

I had an unsettling experience with the hosts of Morning Joe.

I was invited onto MSNBC’s Morning Joe to talk from a studio in Washington, D.C., about an article I’d written on Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Before getting to the article, I was asked about the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense—specifically about an NBC News report that his heavy drinking worried colleagues at Fox News and at the veterans organizations he’d headed. (A spokesman for the Trump transition told NBC, “These disgusting allegations are completely unfounded and false, and anyone peddling these defamatory lies to score political cheap shots is sickening.”)

Political commentator David Frum joined MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday to discuss allegations of heavy drinking against Donald Trump’s defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth. Frum introduced the story with a joke about Fox News, which then prompted MSNBC to issue an apology. In a written response in the Atlantic, Frum warned such an act is “a very ominous thing” ahead of Trump’s return to the White House.

NBC published a report Tuesday that revealed former colleagues of Hegseth’s at Fox News were deeply concerned about his drinking habits. Two people interviewed said they smelled alcohol on Hegseth before he went on the air, with one person noting that they noticed the smell as recently as November.

The report was a follow-up to a New Yorker magazine piece published Sunday that revealed there were similar concerns about Hegseth when he was head of Concerned Veterans for America from 2013-2016.

When Frum began the segment Wednesday, he joked, “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.” During the commercial break that followed, he wrote in the Atlantic, a producer “objected to my comments about Fox and warned me not to repeat them.” The topic didn’t come back up and Frum departed the set.

“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski then read an apology for Frum’s comments. Brzezinski and her husband co-host Joe Scarborough came under fire in November after a visit the pair paid to Trump at Mar-a-Lago was made public.

“A little bit earlier in this block there was a comment made about Fox News, in our coverage about Pete Hegseth and the growing number of allegations about his behavior over the years and possible addiction to alcohol or issues with alcohol,” Brzezinski said on “Morning Joe.”

“The comment was a little too flippant for this moment that we’re in. We just want to make that comment as well. We want to make that clear. We have differences in coverage with Fox News, and that’s a good debate that we should have often, but right now I just want to say there’s a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth, and we will want to leave it at that.”

In his follow-up piece, Frum agreed “there are good people at Fox News” but added that if the report from NBC is to be believed, “many of those same good people have failed to report publicly that their former colleague, appointed to lead the armed forces of the United States, was notorious in their own building for his drinking.”

Frum also expressed empathy for the fact that the popularity of “Morning Joe” has in turn “exposed the hosts and producers to extraordinary pressures and threats in the Trump era,” especially due to the President-elect’s own claims that he will retaliate against those in the media he feels have spoken badly about him.

He took responsibility for the comment (“my face was on the screen, my name was on the chyron, and anyone who took offense knows whom to blame,” Frum writes) but added a chill warning: “It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.”

“I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all,” Frum continued. “The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too.”

Joe Scarborouogh and Mika have consistently expressed their strong reservations and perspectives regarding Pete Hegseth’s nomination from the very beginning, and that stance remains unchanged.

We would have responded in the same manner regardless of when these comments were made or what news…

— Richard Hudock (@richardhudock) December 4, 2024

Frum was invited back to “Morning Joe” Thursday morning by NBC’s VP of communications, Richard Hudock. He wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “We would have responded in the same manner regardless of when these comments were made or what news organization was referenced.”  (Hmmmmm❓.....Maine Writer is not convinced about Hudock's point of view....too defensive.)

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's incompetent pick for defense secretary, drank in ways that concerned his Fox News colleagues while he was a host at the network, according to an NBC News report.

Donald Trump experiencing cognitive decline. Check the reports about his May 31 2024 press conference

Echo opinion by Hafiz Rashid published by Yahoo❗ News

GUILTY❗

This could very well be another sign of cognitive decline from the Republican presidential nominee, exacerbated by possibly the worst news he’s ever received. Last week, at a Bronx rally, he bragged about being able to put on his pants, and two weeks ago, he seemed to freeze while speaking at the NRA’s annual convention. 

Trump's rant on Friday May 31, 2024, included an attack on immigrants who speak incomprehensible languages, a nod to similar bizarre remarks he made at the southern U.S. border in February.

If Trump hadn’t also explained why he didn’t testify at this trial, anyone watching his remarks would have realized why themselves.Trump Loses It Like Never Before in Wildly Incoherent Press Conference by Hafiz Rashid.

At a press conference on Friday May 31, 2024, Donald Trump ranted and raved about his displeasure at being found guilty of 34 felony charges in his hush-money trial.

Standing in front of a line of flags at Trump Tower in New York,  (thankfully, none of those Trumpzi made for TV flags was furled upside down❗) Trump took aim at Michael Cohen, Judge Juan Merchan, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Democrats, and just about anyone who he thinks wronged him, violating his gag order in the process. But his biggest target might have been the English language.

"Trump really needs a teleprompter. He's not coherent. I dare you to try to make sense of this", wrote Aaron Ruper on X/ (formerly Twitter)

At times, his word salad phrases were hard to follow, as the first convicted felon former president went off on tangents with sentences with no clear end.

In one bizarre sentence, he demonstrated a profound misunderstanding about the word “literally” by claiming witnesses “for our side” were “literally crucified by this man who looks like an angel, but he’s really a devil,” referring to Judge Juan Merchan.

This could very well be another sign of cognitive decline from the Republican presidential nominee, exacerbated by possibly the worst news he’s ever received. Last week, at a Bronx rally, he bragged about being able to put on his pants, and two weeks ago, he seemed to freeze while speaking at the NRA’s annual convention. 

In fact, Trump's rant on Friday included an attack on immigrants who speak incomprehensible languages, a nod to similar bizarre remarks he made at the southern U.S. border in February.

If Trump hadn’t also explained why he didn’t testify at this trial, anyone watching his remarks would have realized why (his attorney's advised against his testimony) we can see his bizarre behavior for ourselves.

Texas border trauma experienced by First Responders and US customs agents

US Customs and Border agents operating the airboat maneuvered back through the floating debris at approximately 11:34 a.m. and continued searching for additional people. At approximately 11:35 a.m., they discovered a female undocumented migrant, later identified as a citizen of Honduras, who was unresponsive and floating amongst the debris. Agents on the airboat recovered her from the river and began administering CPR. She was taken to the U.S. riverbank and, with the assistance of Texas National Guard personnel, was taken off the airboat and placed on land where agents continued CPR. Agents requested EMS for multiple unconscious people at approximately 11:35 a.m.

“It’s an unprecedented crisis,” said Eagle Pass Fire Chief Manuel Mello. “It’s nothing close to what I experienced while I was on the line. It’s a whole different monster.”

First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande reported by Morgan Chesky and Alicia Victoria Lozano in Yahoo News and NBC News.

EAGLE PASS, Texas — The crisis unfolding at the U.S.-Mexico border since last year has spilled over into the fire engines and ambulances of a small Texas town.

First responders in Eagle Pass say they are overwhelmed and increasingly traumatized by what they see: parents drowned or dying, their children barely holding onto life after attempting to cross the Rio Grande.

The emotional strain on firefighters and EMTs has grown so great that city officials have applied for a state grant that would bring in additional mental health resources for front-line workers.

“It’s an unprecedented crisis,” said Eagle Pass Fire Chief Manuel Mello. “It’s nothing close to what I experienced while I was on the line. It’s a whole different monster.”

Firefighters say the first calls for help usually blare through the three stations in Eagle Pass while crews are still sipping their morning coffee, bracing themselves for what the day will bring.

Parents with young children might be near drowning or trapped on islands somewhere between the United States and Mexico, surrounded by the fierce currents of the Rio Grande.

On some shifts, firefighters with the Eagle Pass Fire Department can spend three to five hours in the water, helping rescue migrants crossing the river or recovering their drowned bodies.

“It’s something we’ve never gone through,” said Eagle Pass native Marcos Kypuros, who has been a firefighter and EMT for two decades. “It’s been hard having to keep up with that on top of everything else we take care of.”

Eagle Pass has become ground zero in recent months for an unrelenting border crisis that is equal parts political and humanitarian.

With hundreds of thousands of people attempting to cross the border illegally each year near Eagle Pass, city emergency personnel have increasingly been called upon to perform difficult and often dangerous rescues or to retrieve dead bodies, they said. They do this while juggling other emergencies in the city of 28,000 and throughout sparsely populated Maverick County.

“They see decomposing bodies, they see children that have drowned. Babies 2-months-old, with their eyes half-open, their mouths full of mud,” Mello said. “I know that when I signed up, they told me that I would see all of that, but not in the number that these guys are seeing now.”

Call volumes to the fire department surged last summer after Title 42, which set limits on asylum-seekers hoping to enter the United States, was lifted. On a typical day, the department might receive 30 calls, but the number has doubled in recent months, Mello said.

The added strain prompted one of his firefighters, who was still working through the required probationary period, to turn in his gear and switch careers entirely, he added.

After a record-breaking number of illegal crossings in December, federal authorities say the figure dropped by half in January. The most significant decrease was in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass.

But the steady rise in crossings last year has taken a toll on first responders who did not sign up for this kind of work, Kypuros said.

“Those times where we recover four or five, six, up to seven bodies a day — it was just rough,” he said.

As the number of calls for emergencies on the border grew last fall, so did the number of sick days firefighters requested, according to the fire chief.

“I try and leave all this at work, not take it home with me, but it’s so hard,” Kypuros said. “Sometimes it’s hard to cope.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. It was not immediately clear when the funds the city applied for would be awarded.

After the record-breaking number of attempted border crossings last year, Abbott ramped up the state’s immigration enforcement efforts. Last week, he announced the deployment of 1,800 members of the Texas National Guard to Eagle Pass in an effort to curb illegal crossings.

Abbott, a Republican, installed razor wire near the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass as part of the enforcement operation, and previously placed buoys in the river to prevent crossings.

Firefighters have treated lacerations and open wounds from people trying to crawl through the concertina wire, Kypuros said. At times, local hospitals get so overwhelmed with patients from the border that wait times for a bed can stretch to two hours, Garcia added.

As thousands of people without pathways to U.S. citizenship wait in squalid, makeshift camps on the Mexico side of the border, others attempt dangerous river crossings across the Rio Grande, endangering their own lives and those of their loved ones.

Harish Garcia, who has worked as a firefighter EMT in Eagle Pass for three years, still cannot shake the memory of a drowning mother and her young daughter. Garcia’s crew, including a firefighter with a daughter around the same age as the little girl, loaded the two into an ambulance, he said, but it was too late.

When crews returned to the station, some called their families. Others went quiet, Garcia said.

“Unfortunately, calls are going to keep coming in after that, so we can’t hang on to that for too long,” he said months later. “We have to just let it go and move on to the next call.”

Garcia and Kypuros say they’ve lost count of how many bodies they’ve recovered in recent months. The majority are found after failed attempts to cross the river, but other calls have led fire crews into the rough brush of South Texas, where dehydration and exposure can prove just as deadly.

David Black, a psychologist who has worked with the California law enforcement community for more than 20 years, said witnessing the death of a child is often the most traumatizing event a first responder can experience. Without a strong support system both in and out of the workplace, that stress can eat away at them.

“We outsource our worst-case scenarios to first responders,” he said. “If you have your own children, that can really impact how you look at your own family.”

As Eagle Pass waits for the state grant to be approved, agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other federal workers already have access to mental health resources internally.

The services, which include on-site clinicians and field psychologists, are part of a larger effort to “improve resiliency and encourage our colleagues to seek help when they need it,” said Troy Miller, acting CBP commissioner.

Mello said that despite the uncertain nature of the border crisis and the political tensions between the White House and the governor’s office, he is optimistic that help will come.

Until then, he knows the calls for help will keep coming.

Morgan Chesky reported from Eagle Pass, Texas, and Alicia Victoria Lozano from Los Angeles.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Indicted Donald Trump a.k.a the former guy "No One Is Above the Law"

Echo opinion letter YAHOONews.com:  Two separate groups of everyday Americans, fulfilling their civic duty by serving on a grand jury, have now issued two separate indictments of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the will of voters, even after he knew he’d lost the 2020 election. These are the most serious indictments thus far because they deal with a conspiracy to overturn the foundation of our democracy: the vote of the American people.

There can be no more serious crime than a conspiracy to overturn the foundation of our democracy itself. It’s shameful how many MAGA Republicans are now rushing to defend Trump instead of standing up for our democracy and our freedom to vote. Many of them are trying to rewrite history, so it’s important to understand what Trump is accused of and why it matters.

According to both indictments, Trump deliberately lied about voter fraud and pressured local officials, like the Georgia secretary of state, to illegally overturn election results and manufacture fake slates of electors. When Vice President Mike Pence refused to toss out the legitimate results and count fake electoral votes, Trump incited an attack on our Capitol in a last ditch attempt to stop the certification of the election and cling to power.

These are serious charges. Our elected leaders of all parties must allow the trial to unfold without political interference and let a jury of everyday Americans do their job. No one is above the law, and Trump should be treated like everyone else and held accountable for his crimes against our country.

Peggy Gordon, Mansfield, Ohio

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Donald Trump is not above the law

Courage and the Fulton County Georgia District Attorney

Fani Willis Strong!

Up to 50 Subpoenas Expected as Grand Jury Begins Trump Inquiry: New York Times

Courageous in the pursuit of truth and jurisprudence!

Ms. Fani Willis, a Democrat, has said in the past that Mr. Trump created a threatening atmosphere with his open criticism of the investigation. At a rally in January, he described the Georgia investigation and others focusing on him as “prosecutorial misconduct at the highest level” that was being conducted by “vicious, horrible people.” Ms. Willis has had staffers on the case outfitted with bulletproof vests.

ATLANTA, Georgia (YahooNews) echo report by Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is stepping up the pace of her investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, questioning a wide array of witnesses and preparing a rash of subpoenas to top Georgia state officials, state lawmakers and a prominent local journalist for testimony that will start next week.

The district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is weighing racketeering charges connected to G.O.P. attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who won a surprise victory against a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Republican primary, is slated to be one of Willis’s lead witnesses when he appears before the grand jury next Wednesday, sources confirmed to Yahoo News.

“Based on her pugnacity, it looks like it’s full steam ahead,” said one lawyer representing a client who has been contacted by Willis’s team of investigators and prosecutors. “She’s much more aggressive and determined than I expected.”

HKS: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/why-electoral-integrity-matters (Harvard Kennedy School)

Willis’s investigation appears to now represent the biggest single legal threat to Trump, given that there have been no clear signs that prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice or the New York district attorney’s office are actively preparing to bring criminal charges against the former president. 

Willis has assembled a team of about 10 prosecutors and agents for the Trump probe. Earlier this month a group of them flew to Washington to meet with investigators from the Jan. 6th, committee, who shared details from confidential witness testimony and other material relevant to Trump’s efforts to flip Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, said a source familiar with the probe.

Initially Willis was expected to focus on Trump’s Jan. 3, 2021, hourlong phone call to Raffensperger in which the then president repeatedly implored him to “find” just enough votes to change the election results and suggested he could face criminal penalties if he did not.

But, sources familiar with the investigation say Willis’s agents and prosecutors are casting a much wider net in an apparent effort to establish that Trump’s phone call was only one piece in a broader conspiracy — potentially prosecutable under an expansive state racketeering law — to pressure or intimidate state officials and lawmakers to change the results of the 2020 election by promoting bogus claims of voter fraud.

“The process of hearing from witnesses is starting June 1,” said Jeff DiSantis, a spokesman for Willis. He declined further comment.

In recent weeks Willis’s team, including an outside special counsel and at least four prosecutors and investigators, has interviewed witnesses about efforts by Georgia Republican lawmakers to appoint an alternate slate of electors who would certify Trump as the winner of the state’s electoral votes. The team has also questioned legislators who sat for a controversial series of hearings in which Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani made demonstrably false statements about a video he claimed showed evidence of voter fraud. That assertion had already been debunked by state officials and the FBI.

Elena Parent, a Democratic state senator who attended the hearings, told Yahoo News that she was questioned by Willis’s team a couple of weeks ago and then received a subpoena to testify before the grand jury on June 22. (Parent shared a copy of the subpoena with Yahoo News.)

Parent said the Willis team — led by Nathan Wade, a private lawyer and friend of Willis’s who has been hired as a special counsel by her office — questioned her about the circumstances of how Giuliani came to appear before two legislative committees on Dec. 3, 2020, the remarks he made before the lawmakers and his questioning of witnesses he brought with him that day. They wanted to know about “everything that happened with the hearings,” Parent said. But she said they also “zeroed in” on vile death threats she received after her comments at the hearing and a mocking tweet about Giuliani’s appearance she posted later that day.

Parent had noted in a Dec. 3, 2020, tweet that Raffensperger’s office had already explained how Joe Biden had legitimately won the state’s electoral votes. “Now we are being forced to listen to bonkers conspiracy theories out of Rudy Giuliani’s team,” she wrote. “What a disservice to the public.”

Willis had publicly promised to hold off on subpoenaing witnesses before Georgia’s primary so as not to be accused of seeking to interfere in the election. But the state’s primary voting ended on Tuesday and Raffensperger himself defeated a Trump-backed opponent, Rep. Jody Hice, garnering 52 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff. 

Bradford Jay Raffensperger is an American politician, businessman, and civil engineer, serving as the Secretary of State of Georgia since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served in the Georgia House of Representatives.

As a result, Raffensperger will now be among the lead witnesses next week while multiple Georgia state officials — including Gov. Brian Kemp, Attorney General Chris Carr and others in Raffensperger’s office — are bracing for what they have been told will be a wave of subpoenas.

“There’s likely to be a flurry of people being brought in [before the grand jury] in the next few weeks,” said one witness who has been contacted by Willis’s team and told to expect a subpoena.

But there are already signs that Willis will face considerable legal challenges. Republican lawmakers have refused requests to sit for voluntary interviews and have hired an outside counsel who is expected to raise challenges to any subpoenas on the grounds that the lawmakers had legislative immunity barring them from being questioned about their official actions.

In another move that could produce a legal skirmish, Willis’s office has also contacted Greg Bluestein, the lead political reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and told him to expect a subpoena. Bluestein was a witness to events surrounding the Dec. 14, 2020, effort led by Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer to appoint an alternate slate of electors pledged to Trump despite Biden’s victory in the state. Bluestein has written that after being tipped off to a gathering of the rogue Trump electors in the state Capitol, he tried to attend but was blocked from doing so after being told it was an “education” meeting, a scenario that could be used by Willis’s prosecutors to show that the Trump electors were being secretive about what they were doing. (Bluestein declined comment, but legal experts expect lawyers for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to challenge the subpoena.)

But Raffensperger remains the star witness, with his phone call from Trump most likely the core of the case. Although he sought during his reelection campaign to court conservative Trump voters by pledging to fight for a constitutional amendment that would bar noncitizens from voting, he has never wavered from his position that there was no evidence of fraud that would change the results of the 2020 election. And he reaffirmed that with strong and pointed words about the improper pressure he came under from Trump in remarks he made in a brief victory speech to a group of supporters.

“We investigated everything and it wouldn’t have overturned the results of the race,” he said. “My thinking was the vast majority of Georgians are looking for honest people for elected office. Standing for the truth, and not buckling under pressure, is what people want.”

Russian war crimes: Ukrainians mourn the victims in local cemeteries

 Ukrainians brave Russian-mined cemetery to mourn the dead

By Joseph Campbell and Zohra Bensemra echo report published in Reuters and Yahoo.com news.

TROSTYANETS, Ukraine (Reuters) - A handmade sign on the gate warns: "The cemetery is mined. Danger." But, residents of the formerly occupied town of Trostyanets in northern Ukraine still come to visit the fresh graves of family killed in the war.

The graveyard in this town in Sumy region has only been partly made safe since Russian forces planted mines there as they pulled back in early April, cemetery manager Olena Matvienko said.

"De-mining teams came later and de-mined it partially. Then they didn't go further inside," Matvienko said on Saturday, standing in the cemetery where a number of gravestones were shattered or riddled with bullet holes.

Some areas were still dangerous for people, she said.

Even so mourners gathered around different graves, some clutching bunches of spring flowers.

One of those disregarding the warnings was Natalia Evdokimova, 46. She and her husband were visiting the grave of their son Dmytro, a Ukrainian soldier who was killed on the northeastern frontline on March 29 and buried back home soon after Russian forces left the area.

She said her son, who was fighting near the town of Izyum in Kharkiv region, had been most worried about what might happen to his parents under Russian occupation.

"'Mom, leave, it will be too dangerous in Trostyanets,’" Evdokimova recalled him saying, tears spilling down her cheeks. "And he went to hell himself, near Izyum. And died there."

Her husband stood silently at the flower-heaped grave. Before they left, Evdokimova reached both her hands towards a framed photo of her son that was attached to the grave marker, as if trying to hug him.

Russia denies its troops kill or target civilians or have carried out war crimes in occupied areas of Ukraine since the Feb. 24 invasion. Reuters could not independently verify casualty estimates or accounts of deaths in Trostyanets.

The cemetery manager said a further 20 people had recently been buried in the cemetery, who had died while Trostyanets was occupied.

Mayor Yuri Bova told Reuters that at least 50 people are estimated to have died or been killed while Russian forces controlled the town, which had a pre-war population of around 20,000.

"Some of them were just shot on the street, some were found with tied hands, eyes taped. We found people in villages shot in the head," he said.

(Writing by Alessandra Prentice, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Republicans are politically impotent

Republican leaders slam Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Holocaust comments, but don't call for punishment

"fear...the painted devil"...Lady MacBeth, Shakespeare

Maine Writer:

Kevin McCarthy- The dummy lives!  He's alive, he's alive!

Charlie McCarthy

Opinion echo published in The Washington Post by Karen Tumulty

Dr. Victor Frankenstein would understand what House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is feeling as he watches his party’s own creation careen across the political landscape, leaving wreckage and mayhem at every turn.

When a trove of lunatic social media postings that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) made before she was elected to Congress came to light in January, McCarthy invited her to his office for what his spokesman described as “a conversation.”

As a supporter of the QAnon movement, Greene had spread conspiracy theories that included claims that the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas and the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, were hoaxes and that Hillary Clinton mutilated and murdered a child during a satanic ritual. She also endorsed calls for the murders of federal agents and her Democratic colleagues, including giving a “like” when a commenter on her Facebook feed suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) might be removed with “a bullet to the head.”

In a closed Republican caucus held shortly after her talking-to by McCarthy, Greene apologized, claimed she no longer believed in conspiracy theories and got an ovation from her colleagues.

The minority leader expressed confidence that she had learned her lesson and predicted that Greene would hold herself to a “higher standard” now that she was a lawmaker and not a private citizen. Nonetheless, the full House, which has a narrow Democratic majority, voted to strip her of her committee assignments.

Greene, however, continues her bottom-feeding ways, apparently feeling even less constrained now that she has no actual policymaking responsibilities.

In April, it came to light that she had made tentative efforts to set up an “America First Caucus,” which was to be focused on promoting what a draft platform described as “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”

The most recent controversy she has generated came during an interview on a conservative cable network. She claimed that Pelosi’s requirement that masks be worn in the Capitol, where many House Republicans refuse to say whether they have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, echoes the treatment of Jews under the Nazis.

“You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens — so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany,” Greene said. “And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

For those latter comments, McCarthy denounced Greene more sternly than he had before, saying “her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling.” His statement was echoed by other top Republicans in the House.

Greene defiantly turned on McCarthy, and retweeted a post by a fan who called the minority leader “a moron,” as well as another word that won’t be repeated here. Though Greene later deleted her tweet, she had made her point that she was not chastened.

This predictable response merely underscored how impotent GOP leaders are in dealing with a figure who thrives on being outrageous and offensive. And along the way, she has raised millions — $3.2 million, to be precise, in the first quarter of the year — in contributions from tens of thousands of people who apparently share her views.

There was a time when Republicans might have stopped this creation of theirs, but it was back when she was still in the lab — or, in this case, running for her party’s 2020, nomination in a reliably red congressional district. Then-#FormerGuy Donald Trump singled her out as a “future Republican Star” and “a real WINNER.”

Though McCarthy denounced the pattern of racist and antisemitic comments that Greene was known even then to have made, he remained neutral in the primary runoff that all but guaranteed she would be joining the House Republican Conference in January. The minority leader’s fear of alienating the Trumpian voters who inhabit the more fetid corners of the Republican base was greater than his sense of duty to the institution that Greene now dishonors.

What all of this has shown is that Republicans must do more than simply denounce Greene. It is time for them to, at a minimum, rally behind censuring her. A resolution to do so is being drafted by Rep. Bradley Schneider (D-Ill.). Republicans should also kick her out of their caucus, as Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) has proposed.

Anything less makes hollow Republican leaders’ efforts to portray Greene as merely a fringe player among their ranks. They created her, and they continue to elevate her.

This is the consequence of seeking power without regard to what else it may bring. To borrow the subtitle from Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Marjorie Taylor Greene is the fruit of Republicans’ own efforts to become the Modern Prometheus*.

*Prometheus is one of the Titans, the supreme trickster, and a god of fire. In common belief, he developed into a master craftsman, and in this connection, he was associated with fire and the creation of mortals.

Body Language Expert on Nancy Pelosi at SOTU: "This Is No Ordinary Clap"

Nancy Pelosi's State Of The Union Body Language Was Actually Genius, According To An Expert

Echo reported on Yahoo.com by Natalie Gontcharova

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has outdone us all when it comes to the art of polite shade. (Brilliant!)

Sitting to the top right of President Trump during the State of the Union address on Tuesday Feb 4, she walked a fine line between decorum and disapproval all night, making power moves without saying a single word. 

Her faces said it all. Even her claps (each gesture!) made a statement for the way they seemed to say, "My pinkie finger commands more respect than you."

One of her most talked-about body language choices was to read her way through most of Trump's meandering address. 

She was in all likelihood reading a transcript of his speech to see if he was staying on-script (another power move). 

Body language expert Patti Wood, author of Snap: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma, called it "an obvious, clear, and sustained nonverbal message of disbelief and disregard for the president."

Wood added that this was a smart and deliberate move on the part of Pelosi. "Reading notes is a tactic that I actually have coached speakers to do to hold in their nervousness and show their disinterest during debates, because it's one of the only oddly politically correct ways of showing disrespect and disagreement," she told Refinery29.

Without saying a word, Pelosi also asserted herself as the den mother of the freshman class of Democratic women in Congress. She wore a white suit along with them, in solidarity with women's rights. And then, when Trump brought up the fact that there are more women serving in Congress than ever before, she stood up and appreciatively clapped in her colleagues' direction — signaling that despite their opposition to Trump, it was now okay for them to stand up, too, because they were celebrating themselves. "Pelosi standing and palms-up gesturing for the women to rise again and take in the applause" was a gesture Wood said caught her eye. 

But just as fast, Pelosi was back to displaying disapproving looks as Trump brought up the "catastrophe known as NAFTA." At this point, "She dramatically brought her head down in disbelief and displeasure," noted Wood.

Donald Trump and international espionage: Curiouser and Curiouser

This must have been what Donald Trump felt like when he heard from US intelligence about the salacious Russian information compiled on him and leaked in a dossier by British M16 former agent:

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”
Although Donald Trump can make up fake news anytime he has the inkling to do so, he sure gets paranoid when the intelligence about himself is now included in international espionage.

International espionage leaks about Donald Trump get "curiouser and curiouser", as Alice would say.

In fact, the "unsubstantiated" and salacious intelligence reports about Donald Trump can't be squelched or "deep-6-ed" because the source is from the British M16, analogous to our US Central Intelligence Agency. Donald Trump has zero control over international espionage. 

Former M16 agent believed to have compiled scandalous Trump report- reported on Yahoo News.

This espionage scandal gets "curiouser and curiouser". 

It's been revealed the man behind the scandalous Donald Trump dossier is a former M16 agent who helped uncover story. 

Moreover, the Former British MI6 spy Chris Steele is missing. He's the man who compiled the dossier of Donald Trump's dealings in Russia and alleged sordid behaviour. Ashlee Mullany reports.

Maybe Alice in Wonderland can sort this curiouser sordid intel out. But, probably not. She's safer to remain in her rabbit hole; otherwise, perhaps, she'll find herself alongside missing Chris Steele. Dangerous stuff.