Category: Politics Page 4 of 40

Presidential caucuses have been Connie’s specialty in Iowa as she followed the elections of 2004, 2008, 2012 and wrote the 2 books “Obama’s Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House.” She also continues to follow politics by avidly reading everything she can get her hands on, including “Rolling Stone,” “Mother Jones,” “Newsmax,” “Time,” etc.

The Presidency

By Connie Wilson

On June 10, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Local, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Television

Armed troops sent in by Mayor Daley during the Chicago riots of 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King.

In a March 29th, 1968 editorial entitled “The Presidency,” in LIFE magazine, Hugh Sidey wrote, “There remain people who are wistful over what is happening, who feel that the United States Presidency is a marble relic to be placed high on a pedestal above the daily political clamor, to be revered and protected, never buffeted or soiled. But the Presidency is refined only in the process that chooses the man for the office. The Presidency is only as strong as the men who contend for it. It is visionary and responsive to the country’s needs only when natural political forces collide freely.

In politics, as in life, struggle often breeds character—to invoke a Lyndon Johnson maxim which he got from his mother…A lot of silly things have been said about not making this fight a personal one. But it has to be. The Presidency is a personal matter. The arguments in the end come down to how that single person will think and act….What is the most important task of the President: to pass legislation, as Lyndon Johnson has done, or to lift the hearts of the people as he has not. Or to do both.”

RFK assassination (1968)

Robert F. Kennedy lies mortally wounded on the floor immediately after the shooting. Kneeling beside him is 17-year-old busboy Juan Romero, who was shaking Kennedy’s hand when Sirhan Sirhan fired the shots

Those Hugh Sidey words were written against the backdrop of a looming 1968 fight amongst the Democratic faithful, with Bobby Kennedy seeking to take the torch from the hands of the incumbent President. Johson would not announce that he would not seek nor would he accept his party’s nomination until March 31, 1968, two days after this editorial appeared.

Although Johnson confided to aides on several occasions that he might be forced to accept Kennedy in order to secure a victory over a moderate Republican ticket such as Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney,^[215] Kennedy supporters attempted to force the issue by running a draft movement during the New Hampshire primary.^[209] This movement gained momentum after Governor John W. King‘s endorsement and infuriated Johnson. Kennedy received 25,094 write in votes for vice president in New Hampshire, far surpassing Senator Hubert Humphrey, the eventual vice-presidential nominee.^[216] The potential need for a Johnson–Kennedy ticket was ultimately eliminated by the Republican nomination of conservative Barry Goldwater. With Goldwater as his opponent, Johnson’s choice of vice president was all but irrelevant; opinion polls had revealed that, while Kennedy was an overwhelming first choice among Democrats, any choice made less than a 2% difference in a general election that already promised to be a landslide.^[217

Surprisingly, one of Sidey’s observations in the “LIFE” piece was this: “There can be longer-range results of the upheaval. Some urban specialists predict that, because of the big political fight, the coming summer will be considerably cooler in the streets than it would have been without this legitimate outlet for dissent.” When I think back to the summer of ’68 and the condition of the streets that summer, I shake my head at the idea of “cooler in the streets.” It can be argued that the summer of ’68 was the worst summer in the streets that we have ever seen, illustrated by the Democratic convention in Chicago, which may have set the bar as low as any national event in history. Mayor Daley, too, used a heavy ham-handed approach to the protesters in Chicago’s streets. In Chicago itself, more than 48 hours of rioting left 11 Chicago citizens dead, 48 wounded by police gunfire, 90 policemen injured, and 2,150 people arrested.^[3] Three miles of East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park on West Madison Street were left in a state of rubble [Perhaps only the insurrection of January 6, 2021, ranks higher in terms of political gatherings that went horribly awry.]

March 29, 1968 “LIFE” magazine.

Civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST, not even a week after this Hugh Sidey opinion piece appeared. Robert F. Kennedy lived until June 6, 1968, just 39 more days after this “LIFE”editorial appeared. He was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan after a triumphant victory winning the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4th, 1968. He would be shot at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5th at 12:15 a.m. and pronounced dead 25 hours later at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.

In Indianapolis, the day MLK (April 4, 1968) was shot, candidate RFK would give this impromptu speech:

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. … let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.“^[30]

I could not agree more with the sentiments in that RFK Indianapolis speech. Indianapolis did not have riots in its streets after this impromptu speech from RFK; many attribute that to Kennedy’s words.

Riots of ’68.

I would point out that intentionally inflaming conditions in the streets of Los Angeles—something that is happening now because the current President of the United States is, as Governor Gavin Newsom of California dubbed him in a CNN interview, “The King of Chaos,” is unbecoming to the office and the opposite of what a President has historically attempted to do in times of unrest. Rather than try to calm the crowd, DJT has attempted to rile it up, using chaos and threatened violence and fully armed active Marines and National Guard soldiers. To make matters even worse, he is shown grinning gleefully while trying on a championship belt of a violent fighting exhibition he attended the very night he was sending troops in that were not requested by the Governor of California and were not necessary. One hopes that we are not about to experience another Kent State incident, since the training of some of those who were sent in, fully armed, was questionable.

There is no insurrection in the streets of L.A., except the one that DJT is trying to create. As another said, it’s like an arsonist rushing in to quell the fire he started. While it is not in the nature of this particular malignant narcissist to read or to listen to what his elders and betters may say, since he tapped RFK, Jr., to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services, (despite RFK, Jr.’s complete lack of credentials for the job), I hope he re-reads Robert F. Kennedy Sr.’s words and takes heed, “Let us dedicated ourselves to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

DJT’s Budget: “Beautiful” or “An Abomination”?

By Connie Wilson

On June 4, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

The House passed the budget bill that Donald J. Trump chooses to call the “big beautiful tax bill.” They passed it on to the Senate, which now has to decide whether to pass an unconscionable bill that will throw about 11 million people off Medicaid in order to give tax cuts to the richest percentage of the population. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “We will “move it as quickly as our rules allow us,” setting up a possible floor vote next week for Congress to cut funding for (among others) NPR, PBS and USAID.

TRUMP’S LATEST TARGET

In the bitter war over the nation’s fiscal future, President Trump and his Republican allies have united around a new foe: the economists and budget experts who have warned about the costs of the party’s tax ambitions. Republican leaders have set about trying to discredit any hint of unfavorable accounting on their signature legislation as they race to enact it before the president’s self-imposed July 4th deadline.The estimate arrived on Wednesday projected that the sprawling bill endorsed by Mr. Trump could add about $2.4 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade.

The GOP faithful reserved their fiercest criticism for the Congressional Budget Office, a team of nonpartisan aides who helped to author the price check, which was issued on Wednesday. Mr. Trump and his advisers have tried to paint the budget office as historically inaccurate and overly political. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican economist who led the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005, characterized it this way: the GOP has opted to “shoot the messenger.”

Appearing on Fox News last week, Speaker Mike Johnson said the tax bill would deliver the “largest amount of savings in the history of government on planet Earth.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at one point likened the budget office and its methodology to the scandal-ridden, failed company Enron. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, said last month that it was a “fake budget office.”

All this in support of passing one of the most heartless budgets in recent memory, which even went after Big Bird in its pursuit of cuts, defunding such historically positive programs as “Sesame Street.” The USAID cuts not only undermined a program championed by former Republican President George W. Bush, it will directly contribute to the death of millions of children and adults in disadvantaged Third World countries which are losing programs like those aimed at curbing HIV and AIDS in African countries. The USAID program had been considered a positive success— one that did much good in the world. But doing good in the world does not seem to be a Republican priority for this administration. Quite the opposite.

BUDGET OFFICE REBUTTAL

Douglas W. Elmendorf, a Democratic economist who served as the director of the budget office from 2009 to 2015, said the nonpartisan experts were crucial for “bringing the best professional evidence to bear and laying out the consequences of policy choices to Congress as honestly as they can.”But the nature of its work — “predicting the future,” in the words of Mr. Elmendorf — also subjects the office and its peers to a fair amount of political risk.

In one high-profile example, the Joint Committee on Taxation discovered after Democrats adopted their signature legislation in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act, that it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more than anticipated. The discrepancy was largely due to greater demand for one of the bill’s components, a set of tax credits for electric vehicle purchases that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. offered on more generous terms than scorekeepers had anticipated. (Elon is said to be unhappy about the loss of this Biden-era incentive to buy electric vehicles.)

But Republicans seized on that mishap, seeing it as evidence of political bias in the budget office’s work. To wit: “If we as lawmakers have to make decisions based on C.B.O. and Joint Tax’s analysis, you betcha it better be right,” Mr. Smith charged at a hearing in February. “And it hasn’t been.”

ARGUMENTS: PRO/CON

Republicans also contend that congressional analysts fail to account for the ways that their new tax measure can unlock economic growth — and, in the process, generate higher tax revenues.By the White House’s estimation, the Republican tax proposal could raise output by as much as about 5 percent in the short term, compared with what might happen without the bill.

The White House analysis appeared to be premised in part on the bill extending a set of generous corporate tax deductions on a permanent basis, something that House Republicans did not actually propose. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Using a different metric, congressional tax analysts found that Republicans’ specific changes to the tax code would increase the average growth rate in U.S. output by only 0.03 percent annually. That mirrored findings from many outside economists, including at Penn Wharton, which projected that the output would be just 0.4 percent higher by 2034. Asked about the estimate, Mr. Miran said last month that Penn Wharton had a “track record of being wrong.”

GOP VOICES SPEAK UP

“By trying to sort-of game the referee on these questions, members of Congress are going to miss the fundamental issue of whether this bill is an appropriate response, given where we are with the deficit and debt,” said Jonathan W. Burks, the executive vice president for economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Burks previously served Republicans including former Speaker Paul Ryan.

The Budget Lab at Yale, for example, found the Republican proposal could add $2.4 trillion to the debt by 2034. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated it would raise deficits by $2.8 trillion over a 10-year period. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit public policy organization that supports deficit reduction, pegged the uncovered cost at $3.3 trillion over the next nine years.

All three organizations, which used different timelines, models and assumptions, found the bill would deliver meager gains in economic growth, which in turn would generate little in added revenues.Erica York, the vice president for federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, which generally favors lower taxes, found the Republican bill would increase the debt by more than $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

“And when all the models are in unison — yes, this will increase the deficit; no, it will not do much for growth — it really doesn’t make sense to triple down on the strategy to blame the scorekeeper,” Ms. York added. “The legislation is the problem.”

Marc Goldwein, a senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said revenues matched forecasts until the pandemic, later surging for reasons that included price inflation. Mr. Goldwein stressed that there was an urgent need for unbiased policy advice in Washington.“Without that,” he said, “you have chaos.”

MUSK SPEAKS ON “X”

There’s never much that I agree with Elon Musk about, but his assessment of DJT’s “big beautiful bill” is right on, for humanitarian reasons alone.

Said Musk in pronouncements on “X” (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, Musk said that the “outrageous, pork-filled” spending bill will “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America [sic] citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt”. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.” “Congress is making America bankrupt.” Musk’s subsequent posts laid out the reasoning for his opposition, suggesting that the spending and tax cuts proposed in the bill would balloon the US national debt.

“Even Elon Musk, who’s been part of the whole process, and is one of Trump’s buddies, said the bill is bad,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “We can imagine how bad this bill is.”

DJT Versus Presidents of Yester-Year

By Connie Wilson

On June 1, 2025

In Editorial, Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

By Charles Pierce

DJT in jail

“In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall overcome.”

I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over.

I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City.

I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job.

They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

“And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators.

Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

DJT & Putin

“The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides.

We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

“Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don’t have to be heroes to be good presidents.

They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.

Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn’t he a funny man? Isn’t what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.”

Make the Department of Health & Human Services Healthy Again: RFK, Jr. Report Fails

By Connie Wilson

On May 31, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Health/Medicine, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Science and Medicine

RFK, Jr.

By Joseph Gedeon/Airmail News

Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s flagship health commission report contains citations to studies that do not exist, according to an investigation by the US publication NOTUS.

The report exposes glaring scientific failures from a health secretary who earlier this week threatened to ban government scientists from publishing in leading medical journals.

The 73-page “Make America Healthy Again” report – which was commissioned by the Trump administration to examine the causes of chronic illness, and which Kennedy promoted as “gold-standard” science backed by more than 500 citations – includes references to seven studies that appear to be entirely invented, and others that the researchers say have been mischaracterized.

Two supposed studies on ADHD medication advertising simply do not exist in the journals where they are claimed to be published. Virginia Commonwealth University confirmed to NOTUS that researcher Robert L. Findling, listed as an author of one paper, never wrote such an article, while another citation leads only to the Kennedy report itself when searched online.

Harold J. Farber, a pediatric specialist supposedly behind research on asthma overprescribing, told NOTUS he never wrote the cited paper and had never worked with the other listed authors.

The US Department of Health and Human Services has not immediately responded to a Guardian request for comment.

The citation failures come as Kennedy, a noted skeptic of vaccines, criticized medical publishing this week, branding top journals The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA as “corrupt” and alleging they were controlled by pharmaceutical companies. He outlined plans for creating government-run journals instead.

Beyond the phantom studies in Kennedy’s report, NOTUS found it systematically misrepresented existing research.

For example, one paper was claimed to show that talking therapy was as effective as psychiatric medication, but the statistician Joanne McKenzie said this was impossible, as “we did not include psychotherapy” in the review.

The sleep researcher Mariana G. Figueiro also said her study was mischaracterized, with the report incorrectly stating it involved children rather than college students, and citing the wrong journal entirely.

The Trump administration asked Kennedy for the report in order to look at chronic illness causes, from pesticides to mobile phone radiation. Kennedy called it a “milestone” that provides an “evidence-based foundation” for sweeping policy changes.

A follow-up “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report is due in August, raising concerns about the scientific credibility underpinning the administration’s health agenda.

We Are Living in the Time of Nero

By Connie Wilson

On May 30, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Donald J. Trump

Written by the the highly respected Canadian journalist, Andrew Coyne:

“Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.

The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, corrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.

There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.

The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.

At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric.

At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.

The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.

Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fuelled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.

Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.

We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?”

Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.

All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.

All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.”

Tariff or Not-to-Tariff: That Is the Question

By Connie Wilson

On May 29, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Interviews, Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

ships in LA harbor (Photo by Maggie Shannon)

From the New York Times reporters Tony Romm and Ana Swanson on 5/29/2025, comes this introduction to a day that has seen its share of pronouncements that could significantly impact the U.S. economy, with a Maggie Shannon photo of ships in harbor waiting to unload: “A head-spinning series of court rulings over President Trump’s signature tariffs left Washington, Wall Street and much of the world trying to discern the future of U.S. trade policy on Thursday, including whether import taxes would fall meaningfully or if the administration would get the legal green light to upend the global trading system.

Less than 24 hours after the U.S. Court of International Trade blocked steep tariffs that Mr. Trump had imposed on trading partners using emergency powers, a separate court temporarily paused that decision, sowing even more chaos on a day filled with economic uncertainty.”

The CNN headline on my afternoon “breaking news” chyron was federal appeals court restores Trump’s ability to levy tariffs with “emergency powers.” Administrative stay by the Federal Appeals Court. (Apparently the original ruling was in response to suits brought by the Attorney Generals of various states and possibly the Democratic Governors, whom Illinois Governor Pritzker has been attempting to rally as a cohesive whole.)

AZ Attorney General Kristin Mayes

The Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kristin Mayes said the first court “invalidated all of the tariffs, which are really taxes on our families. They have the capacity to crush small businesses.” Kristin was a Republican who won by only 280 votes as a Democrat. She is only the third “out” lesbian office-holder as Attorney General and changed parties from Republican to Democratic in 2019, because of Donald J. Trump. Her office indicted 18 people in connection with the attempt to install an illegal slate of presidential electors and, therefore, overturn the election of Joseph Biden in 2020.

The White House is saying “they have a work-around,” a remark delivered by Peter Navarro, whom Elon Musk denounced as “as dumb as a box of rocks.” (* Be sure to catch Elon’s Farewell Press Conference on TV tomorrow, 5/30/2025.) Said Ms. Mayes: “For the first time ever, the attorney generals of America agree with Rand Paul, who says the power rests with Congress.”

Arizona’s Attorney General said: “I believe the United States Supreme Court agrees with the rule of law and that they’re gonna’ say, ‘Look. Wait a second. This is a vast expansion of presidential powers that goes far beyond what Congress delegated to the executive branch. I think we’re going to win at the end of the day. We’re hearing, especially from our small businesses that they are having trouble ordering things like coffee from Mexico for a coffee shop. We have small businesses who don’t know how extensive the costs are going to be once the imports make it through L.A. ports. I think we’re very worried about people in Arizona and other states to gain access. This is not good for our economy; it has the potential to wreck our small businesses.”

I was hopeful that the few Republicans who seem to retain a brain and a heart would seize upon the first ruling to say (to DJT), “Well, the court says you don’t have the power to arbitrarily set tariffs, so we have to stand by that.”

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana

Right now, Senator John Kennedy of the Republican Judiciary Committee is speaking and is saying, “The only good tariff is a dead tariff.” Speaking from Madisonville, Louisiana: “If these tariffs lead to higher prices that’s gonna’ create a political problem for us in the mid-terms.” He is saying Trump represented hope versus Harris’s hurt but has just noted that the White House goes from zero to “screw everyone” in short order.

Kennedy, who was first elected in 2017, is considering the backlash from the voting public. He is saying, “We gave that authority (to enact tariffs) to the President, for better or worse.” He says he doesn’t feel that Trump has exceeded his authority. He is being asked about the “big beautiful bill” to which he said, It’s not as beautiful as it can be.” He is now endorsing tax cuts. $4.3 trillion increase in the national debt is being mentioned as bad, a very negative effect of DJT’s budget.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.

“I want to cut spending until we run out of votes. I want to renew the tax cuts.” (John Kennedy on Trump’s tax bill.)

Trump posted a screed attacking the courts, which, of course, is detrimental. Timothy M. Reif and Leonard Leo are now in Trump’s sights and he is requesting that the Supreme Court weigh in.

Peter Navarro: “The tariffs remain in place. The courts have told us, ‘Go do it another way.’ Even if we lose, we will do it another way.” Ironically, Trump’s trade advisor commented on the lack of trust in “rogue judges,” despite the fact that Trump appointed the judge in question.

Brandon Gill (R, Texas) is the youngest Republican member of Congress at age 30.

Congressman Brandon Gill (R, Texas) immediately began talking about usurping the President’s authority, calling it “a huge problem. I don’t agree with the ruling. I agree with the President. The American public can see that we have a large problem with large trade deficits and Trump is taking action to alleviate that problem. Just a few months ago the Senate took up the question of whether the President had the authority to institute tariffs and they said he did.” (This was alluded to by Louisiana Senator John Kennedy in previous statements on CNN .) Congressman Gill also endorsed codifying the DOGE cuts that Elon Musk made, including eliminating NPR.

“It’s chaos now in the courts,” said the CNN commentator on Anderson Cooper’s 5 p.m. (CDT) program.

Nancy Gertner, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Law School, said Trump cannot keep his mouth shut. “It’s quite clear what is going on here. He wants to control Harvard and the institutions that could be the source of opposition to him. It’s an over-reach for what he is trying to do.” 149 suits have been launched against DJT in his time in office for his overreach, versus 6 for “W” and 8 for Obama in 8 years of their presidencies. John E. Jones III, President of Dickinson College, said “Trump is a lawyer’s nightmare because he can’t stop talking. His own words will give the lie to his stated objections. They turn out to be pretext for what he wants to do.”

It looks, to those of us without legal degrees (on the outside, looking in), as though the MAGA administration is shopping for courts that DJT may have stacked. If he doesn’t like the decision by one court, he moves to another and counts on delay. (Trump has a lengthy history of launching lawsuits and has recently been suing CBS over a “Sixty Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris and has been involved in a dispute with ABC—which ponied up—over a remark on George Stephanopoulus’ Sunday morning talk show.)

Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

One of the judges Trump blasted, Leonard Leo, has a long history of trying to shift the court to the right in his many years on the bench. The declaration of an emergency is the problem with the way the tariffs were enacted, says Justin Wolfers, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. “The right thing for any country to do now is to sit on their hands,” rather than negotiate, said Wolfers, noting that the bottom line is that being publicly humiliated the way Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of Britain was during his recent visit, is not a very appealing prospect for the leader of any country.

Putting a malignant narcissist who has a well-known reputation for dishonesty and corruption in office is turning out to be a not-very-good decision for the welfare of the United States economy, which seems to be in limbo at the moment.

Trump Implicated in Laundering Russian Mafia Money

By Connie Wilson

On May 29, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Courtesy of Anti-MAGA Americans

Sean McDonald

Trump & Putin

On May 10, 2010, former employees at Donald Trump’s real estate development company blew the whistle on the entire operation. The company, they said, was owned and operated by the Russian mafia and bankrolled by Russian oligarchs – billionaires with influence in the Kremlin (the Russian government).

The employees alleged that the company’s primary service was international money laundering and tax evasion, not property development. To be clear, this company developed Trump properties, but this was NOT Donald Trump’s company.

In 2002, Donald Trump stopped building his own properties – if he ever had before. (Some of Trump’s earliest developments were actually the work of his father, Fred.)

For many years after, every new Trump property was the work of investment firm Bayrock Group, the alleged Russian money laundering operation. That year, Trump sold the use of his name to Bayrock in exchange for around 20% of the new “Trump” properties’ profits.

The deal couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. Trump was $4 billion in debt from the financial disasters surrounding his Atlantic City casinos, which had been charged with hundreds of violations of anti-money laundering laws. The banks had turned against him, but Bayrock came to his rescue. According to the company whistleblowers, that was the whole point.

They alleged that Bayrock was in operation *for* the deal with Trump.

Bayrock co-owners Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif would develop expensive properties under the Trump brand, lie to investors, buyers, and lenders to steal their money, and use the profits to form more companies to further conceal the flow of Russian money into the United States. If you don’t remember Sater from the attack on another with a broken wine glass that netted him 15 months in prison, check out his Wikipedia.org entry. He’s a real prize and close to Trump for years.

So, how likely is it that these allegations were true? VERY.

Felix Sater was born in Russia in 1966 but moved to Israel with his family in 1973, where they acquired dual citizenship and visas before quickly relocating to New York – a common practice for the era’s Russian mob.

Sater’s father was an underboss in the Semion Mogilevich criminal enterprise, which spread through many countries in western Asia and Europe but held the most influence in Russia, Hungary, and likely Israel.

Mogilevich’s transnational crime syndicate was once considered the top threat to U.S. national security – until former FBI heads and political families went to work for him.

In the late ‘90s, Sater was charged with running a fraudulent stock brokerage for the purpose of MONEY LAUNDERING and defrauding investors. He evaded charges by fleeing to Russia and only returned after agreeing to work as a secret informant for the FBI.

In 2006, Sater took Ivanka and Don Jr. on a trip to Moscow, where they received a special tour of the Kremlin. Ivanka even sat in Vladimir Putin’s chair.

BEE GONE cover with DJT as bumblebee

In 2020, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reported that Sater was working with a large network of contacts in Russian military, intelligence, and government positions in the years that he would see Trump on an almost-daily basis.

Knowing all that we know, it’s hard to believe that Donald Trump will ever be stopped by the justice system or any government institution.

When Trump ran for president in 2015, the FBI had known for 13 years that Trump was working with Russian organized crime, funded by Russian elites. After all, his closest connection to Putin was THEIR informant.

But they knew about his Russia ties even before this.

They knew about the Russian mafia members they caught doing business in Trump Tower in the 90s.

They knew about Trump’s Fourth of July trip to Moscow in the 80s. (Reports have surfaced for years that Russia has been grooming DJT since at least 1987l

They knew about most if not all of Trump’s other transnational crime connections documented on Trump File.

They knew about this, and they didn’t stop him. They didn’t warn us. They didn’t open THEIR file on Donald Trump in 2016 and send it to the Justice Dept. to hold him accountable or protect us.

In fact, they helped him. But that’s another set of stories.

There’s a public file on Trump now. It’s our website – countless hours of research organized by when these events took place. You can help us keep it going by donating at TrumpFile.org/donate

Thank you for reading and sharing!

Trump 2.0 and Surviving It

By Connie Wilson

On May 28, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Local, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Donald J. Trump as a loser

“Trump’s impatience makes him not only an unreliable negotiator; it makes him a weak one.”

When he spoke with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier this month, Trump was desperate to notch a win, having already claimed without any evidence to have struck 200 trade deals (more than the number of countries the U.S. recognizes in the world). Those 2 lines courtesy of David A. Graham in “The Atlantic.”)

Other countries have now branded DJT as TACO, which means “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

How does that make you feel about the poorly-conceived, ham-handedly executed series of executive actions that pass for United States policy these days?

It’s hard to believe that we are all going to have to endure over 3 more years (3 years and 7 months) of the convicted felon now crapping up the Oval Office with tacky gold stuff, but there you have it, folks. The GOP in office can’t be counted on to do anything constructive. Destruction they have down. That’s why we’re in a world of hurt right about now.

Trump behind bars

See “American Dharma,” Errol Morris’s interview with Steve Bannon to learn how the GOP and Steve Miller and Project 2025 were being prepared for decades to ruin our once-great country. And now, thanks to some bad decisions on the part of the Democratic party and some worse decisions on the part of U.S. voters, we’re stuck with this guy (who claims he is going to run again in 2028).

I seem to be the only one that I personally know who really feels strongly about global warming and wants a government that will do everything in its power to keep our volatile weather from killing us. I have nothing against gas-guzzling autos, per se, but I have a lot against a tornado leveling my house (and me). And don’t look for help from FEMA now that DJT is in the process of ruining every government agency.

All I’ve heard from DJT are catch-words and buzz-phrases like “Drill, baby, drill!” Those are the catch words and buzz phrases that got us into this mess in the first place.

Steely Dan, the new Prius.

I’ve read that there are creative suggestions to help prevent the melting of the glaciers. I’ve done my part by driving a Prius since 2000 (7 at last count). However, the others (and, by this, I mean other countries and our own country), with the exception of that Swedish girl who keeps grabbing the spotlight to trumpet her concerns about global warming, seem to be doing nothing at all. What about distributing some white marbles on the glacial ice to reflect the sun’s rays and help prevent melting. No? (I read it actually could work, but there are concerns.)

Let me know how you’re coping with this worse-than-the-Pandemic period of time dealing with DJT.

Are You A Member of the Resistance? We All Need to Speak Up!

By Connie Wilson

On May 28, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Donald J. Trump giving “Loser” sign

[From Opinion Columnist M. Geesen in the “New York Times” (5/28/2025)]:

Columnist Geesen first sketched his background and experiences watching Russia become an autocratic state: “

“Living in and reporting on Russia when Vladimir Putin took and consolidated power, I was shocked many times. I couldn’t sleep in September 2004, after tanks shelled a school in which terrorists were holding hundreds of children hostage, and I was shocked when Putin used this terrorist attack as a pretext to eliminate elected governorships.” Geesen added: “I was shaken when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. My world changed when three very young women were sentenced to jail time for a protest performance in a church in 2012, the first time Russian citizens were imprisoned for peaceful action. I couldn’t breathe when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. And when the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was poisoned in 2020, arrested in 2021 and almost certainly killed in prison in 2024. And when Russia again invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Along the way there were many smaller, yet also catastrophic, milestones: the state takeovers of universities and media outlets, the series of legislative steps that outlawed L.G.B.T.Q. people, the branding of many journalists and activists as “foreign agents.” The state of shock would last a day or a week or a month, but time went on and the shocking event became a fact of our lives.”

Geesen, at one point, noted that most Americans (or Russians) did not stay on top of the carnage being wrought. Daily life took over and the need for stability overtook the need to remain informed about such outrageous acts.

That theme was further reinforced for me by a documentary I viewed at Sundance entitled “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” The young Russian teacher, Pavel “Pasha” Talenkin, who gave up his entire life and family in Russia to show the world what is going on in Russian schools—the brainwashing, the indoctrination. Pasha has fled the country, leaving behind his only family (his mother) and is awaiting word on his request for asylum elsewhere.

Pasha cannot go back, as he will be imprisoned for merely taking film of what goes on in the Russian schools today, sort of a throwback to the Youth movements of the Nazis. I also have viewed the Oscar-winning films of this year and last year, “20 Days in Mariupol” and “No Other Land” (about the Gaza Strip).

HASTE MAKES WASTE

Elon Musk.

It is true that the breakneck pace of these catastrophic events make it hard to stay on top of what is really going on. After a while—even though Masha in the “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” documentary loses her brother to the Russian invasion of Ukraine Masha says, “I could care less about the war as long as it doesn’t impact me personally.” This seems to be the main opinion of the town.

And that, my friends, is sort of the message of a second editorial in today’s “New York Times,” excerpts of which will follow these final words from Geesen:

“The United States in the last four months has felt like an unremitting series of shocks: executive orders gutting civil rights and constitutional protections; a man with a chain saw trying to gut the federal government; deliberately brutal deportations; people snatched off the streets and disappeared in unmarked cars; legal attacks on universities and law firms.

Unlike the Russian autocratic breakthrough (or, for that matter, the Hungarian one, which has apparently provided some of Donald Trump’s playbook), the transformation of American government and society hasn’t been spread out over decades or even years. It’s been everything everywhere all at once.

And now that has become familiar. I’ve reported on many wars, and I’ve seen how they come to feel routine — to the people living through them, the people reporting on them and the people reading about them. Wars have a limited repertoire: bombings, shellings, offensives, counteroffensives, body counts. After the initial shock, few people keep track of the shifting front line.”

Says Gleeson: “In this country, too, fewer and fewer things can surprise us. Once you’ve absorbed the shock of deportations to El Salvador, plans to deport people to South Sudan aren’t that remarkable. Once you’ve wrapped your mind around the Trump administration’s revoking the legal status of individual international students, a blanket ban on international enrollment at Harvard isn’t entirely unexpected.

Once you’ve realized that the administration is intent on driving thousands of trans people out of the U.S. military, a ban on Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care, which could have devastating effects for hundreds of thousands, just becomes more of the same. As in a country at war, reports of human tragedy and extreme cruelty have become routine — not news.”

FORMER HARVARD PRESIDENT/AUTHOR SPEAKS OUT

January 6th.

Drew Gilpin Faust, the author of “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War” and a former President of Harvard University also wrote an opinion piece for the NYT, entitled, “We Are Not Being Asked to Run Into Cannon Fire. We Just Need to Speak Up.”

“At a moment of national crisis that is frequently compared to the divisiveness and destructiveness of the Civil War era, we should look anew at the responses of Frederick Douglass and Lincoln handed down to us. Between 1861 and 1865, some 2.7 million men, almost all volunteers, took up arms to preserve the Union as a beacon of democracy at a time when representative government seemed to be fading from the earth. Today democracy is once again under worldwide threat, assailed as disorderly and inefficient by autocratic leaders from Budapest to Moscow to Beijing, leaders our own president openly admires. Yet in 1861, ordinary men from even the remotest corners of the Union risked their lives because they believed, as Lincoln articulated for us all, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

“They died for their country. … They died for their country,” Frederick Douglass repeated in helping establish what is now known as Memorial Day. “They had fought against the “hell-black system of human bondage” and for a nation that embodied “the hope of freedom and self-government throughout the world.” Americans must not forget that this was why the dead had laid down their lives in numbers no one had anticipated or could even have imagined.”

I, for one, shall continue to speak up.

I have taken to gifting people with a copy of “BEE GONE,” my book warning about DJT, and saying, “Now you’re a member of the Resistance,”

How about you?

Dana Milbank Nails Trump’s Actions in the “Washington Post”

By Connie Wilson

On May 27, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Dana Milbank in “The Washington Post” nailed the embarrassing, cruel and lawless tack our current Chief Executive continues on, undeterred by public opinion or accepted norms of behavior. By all means, disparage your predecessor at a time when he has just been announced with a life-threatening cancer. Go ahead and invite the leader of another country to the White House Oval Office and attempt to humiliate them with gerrymandered facts and–in this case—an actual video montage of white crosses that had nothing to do with what DJT presented them as being. I was always embarrassed by “W,” but it had more to do with evident stupidity than criminal intent. I actually had a keyring that counted down the number of months, days and years until “W” would be out of the White House. Where is that watch when I really need it? And can we trust that THIS guy will even leave when his time is up, since he rarely does anything we expect our Chief Executive to do to represent the true feelings of the United States as the one-time leader of the free world. (Are we even the leader of the Free World any more?)

Read Dana Milbank’s to-the-point summation of this week’s embarrassing, illegal and humiliating acts by Donald J. Trump below:

“Turn the lights down and just put this on,” President Donald Trump commanded his aides. It was time for another Oval Office ambush of a foreign leader, this time South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. He then narrated a video, which, at one point, showed white crosses lining a roadside, which Trump portrayed as a mass grave for White South African farmers, murdered in what Trump has errantly described as a “genocide.”

“Now, this is very bad. These are the — these are burial sites right here. Burial sites,” Trump said. “Each one of those white things you see is a cross, and there’s approximately a thousand of them. They are all White farmers. … And it’s a terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it. Both sides of the road, you have crosses. Those people were all killed.”

Ramaphosa looked baffled. “I’d like to know where that is,” he said, “because this I’ve never seen.”

And there’s a good reason for that: It doesn’t exist.

The video was not of graves at all but of a symbolic protest five years ago. It has been promoted on X recently, including by one overtly racist account in South Africa to which Trump sidekick Elon Musk subscribed. “This is what Elon wanted,” Trump explained.

Trump seemed genuinely to believe that the phony graves were evidence of an actual atrocity — much like when he presented as genuine an obviously Photoshopped image purporting to show the characters “MS-13” tattooed on the knuckles of the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego García.

But Trump’s confusion went beyond the fake graves: He also confronted his visitor with video of two Black men he portrayed as South African government “officials” saying vile things such as “Kill the Boer.” As South Africa’s (White) agriculture minister patiently explained to Trump, those two men are opponents of the government. Apparently Trump didn’t know that, either.

If all this weren’t awkward enough, Trump, prompted by a reporter, explained why the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, needed to rely on charity from Qatar in the form of that donated 747 (which, it turns out, Trump had solicited): Qatar’s royals needed to “help us out because we need an Air Force One.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” Ramaphosa told him.

“I wish you did,” Trump replied. “I’d take it.”

EMBARRASSING

This is just embarrassing — maybe not for our president, who seems incapable of such a sentiment, but for the rest of us. Everywhere I looked this week, I cringed for my country.

Asked to comment on former president Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis this week, Trump twice remarked that the cancer must have been growing a long time “to get to Stage 9” (there is, of course, no such thing) while also boasting about himself: “I did a very complete physical, including cognitive test. I’m proud to announce I aced it.” Earlier, Trump had revealed that he doesn’t seem to realize that a doctorate in education is not the same thing as a degree in medicine, something that most high school students would know.

On Capitol Hill, even Republicans are growing embarrassed that a credulous Trump is being outmaneuvered by Russia’s Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. “That guy is stringing President Trump along. We don’t appreciate it,” Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) told Semafor. Sen. Todd Young (Indiana) said that “it’s pretty clear to me that Putin has been jerking us around for months.” And Sen. Mike Rounds (South Dakota) remarked that “nobody likes to see somebody try to play the president.”

MORE GRIFT

Vietnam is in talks with the Trump Organization to build a new Trump Tower in Ho Chi Minh City, Reuters reported — a transparent attempt to buy Trump’s favor while it tries to persuade him to drop tariffs he imposed against the country. Vietnam just approved a $1.5 billion golf project by the Trump Organization, and has offered favorable terms to Musk’s Starlink internet service. Closer to home, Trump held a black-tie dinner Thursday night to celebrate the top investors in his meme coin, who have collectively expanded his personal wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Asked this week for his thoughts on the first American pope, Trump turned it into a celebration of himself. The pope’s brother “is a major MAGA fan,” Trump said. “He’s got MAGA and he’s got Trump, and I look forward to getting him to the White House.”

TRUMP LOVES TRUMP

In a “briefing” this week at the White House for young children, press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a moment of candor when one of the tots asked, “Which is Donald Trump’s favorite president, besides himself?”

“A good question,” Leavitt said, “because it would be, uh, probably, himself.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, presiding over the administration’s deportation of migrants without due process, shrouded herself in glory this week when Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) quizzed her: “What is habeas corpus?”

“Well,” Noem replied, “habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”

Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey) continued the quiz, asking whether Noem knew which article of the Constitution mentioned habeas corpus.

“No, I do not, sir.”

In New Jersey, a federal judge scolded prosecutors for their “embarrassing” decision to drop charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka just a few days after charging him with trespassing at an immigration detention facility. The judge said that after this “worrisome misstep,” the U.S. attorney’s office, run by former Trump lawyer and campaign adviser Alina Habba, “must operate with a higher standard.” But Habba’s office has now filed assault charges against a sitting member of Congress, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-New Jersey), in the same incident and is threatening charges against two other lawmakers. Trump cheered this banana republic roundup of political opponents, following a similar move against a Wisconsin judge, saying that “the days of woke are over.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) introduced a resolution to expel McIver from the House, saying McIver “must be held accountable to the highest standards of conduct in order to safeguard the public’s faith in this institution.” This came a day after Mace upheld those standards in a committee meeting by displaying a nude photo of herself taken by her “predator and rapist” former fiancé. “This naked silhouette is my naked body,” she explained to the panel.

THE BIG BAD BILL

But perhaps the biggest embarrassment was the ugly way in which the House passed Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” full of tax breaks and cuts in help for the poor: during an all-night session on the House floor, following an all-night session the night before in the House Rules Committee.

The frantic rush allowed the Republican majority to pass the gargantuan bill, packed with last-minute provisions to buy the votes of holdouts, before there could be a final assessment of how much the bill would increase the federal debt (somewhere around $4 trillion), how many people would lose their health insurance (10 to 15 million) and at least some of their food assistance (also north of 10 million)

In the absence of such relevant information, the administration filled the vacuum with fantastical ideas. Trump promised that working-class people “won’t lose health insurance.” Leavitt claimed the bill “does not add to the deficit.” Trump further said the bill, which cuts some $300 billion from food stamps, “is going to give everybody much more food.”

The markets weren’t fooled. Moody’s Ratings downgraded U.S. debt, specifically warning about continued high deficits “from current fiscal proposals under consideration.” Bond yields spiked on Wednesday, while stocks and the dollar fell, as a “sell America” sentiment took hold among investors. But lawmakers went ahead anyway in the wee hours, forcing the bill through the House just hours after the final package was introduced, before quitting town for an 11-day recess.

This is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. In fact, it’s embarrassing.

To be sure, “embarrassing” isn’t the only adjective that comes to mind. There’s also “lawless.”

LAWLESS

A federal judge this week said the Trump administration had “obviously” and “unquestionably” violated his order requiring detained migrants be given a reasonable chance to challenge their removal. Instead, seven migrants from Mexico, Cuba, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam were deported to South Sudan, which is on the verge of civil war, on just hours’ notice. The administration continues not to comply with court orders requiring it to arrange the return of other migrants who were improperly deported. Though the Supreme Court made it easier for the administration to revoke the legal status of 350,000 Venezuelan migrants, Trump’s lawyers continue to pile up court losses, most recently in their attempts to shut the Education Department and take over the U.S. Institute of Peace; at least 171 rulings have temporarily blocked the administration’s actions, in the latest New York Times tally.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division abandoned investigations into several police departments over misconduct. Instead, the DOJ is investigating Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson because he touted how many Black people he hired, the Chicago Tribune reports. Justice also agreed to send nearly $5 million in taxpayer dollars to the family of Ashli Babbitt, killed during the Capitol riot as she attempted to break into the House chamber where lawmakers were sheltering.

The Constitution, of course, requires that the president “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” But Trump continues his faithless reign: halting the enforcement of federal rules and regulations he doesn’t like, cutting funds to states that voted Democratic while sending additional funds to Republican states, and combing the federal government for new opportunities for vengeance, particularly against Harvard University.

Trump, in an early-morning post this week, called for a “major investigation” into whether Kamala Harris’s campaign paid Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Bono. This is on top of legal action threatened or taken lately against other political opponents, including former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey and the New Jersey officials. When NBC News’s Peter Alexander asked Trump about his Air Force One gift from Qatar Wednesday, Trump erupted and said of the head of NBC News parent company Comcast: “Brian Roberts and the people that run that place, they ought to be investigated.”

After the Biden family disclosed his advanced prostate cancer diagnosis, a senior counselor in the DOJ, Leo Terrell, suggested that Jill Biden should be prosecuted. Responding to an X post claiming the former first lady “knew about President Biden’s health problems” and “still wanted him to run for President,” Terrell wrote: “Elder abuse! Criminal charges??”

Donald Trump Jr. was thinking along the same lines. “What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five [sic] metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup???” he posted, adding that, “without question,” the announcement of the diagnosis was an effort to distract attention from “the fact Biden was running the country as a vegetable.”

His father joined in, saying that “there are things going on that the public wasn’t informed of” — and calling for yet another investigation.

Come to think of it, “paranoid” is another relevant adjective.

At one White House briefing this week, Leavitt gave the first question to a “correspondent” from the outlet ZeroHedge, which promotes far-right conspiracy theories. The questioner asked about one such fantasy known as the “Clinton body count,” which holds that Bill and Hillary Clinton have murdered many people. He then went on to propose that Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking was done “on behalf of intelligence agencies, and even potentially as part of a blackmail ring with potential ties to the Israeli government.”

Leavitt offered no refutation.

CRUEL

Bee Gone

Add “cruel” to the adjectival assortment.

In the Oval Office this week, when asked about the “devastating impact” in Africa caused by the administration’s shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Trump replied: “Well, it’s devastating.” He went on to complain: “Europe doesn’t help. Europe hasn’t given anything.” (European Union nations collectively gave more in foreign aid than the U.S., even before Trump shut USAID.)

He seemed equally unmoved about the effects of his “big, beautiful bill,” which, the Congressional Budget Office found, would cut the income of the poorest 10 percent of Americans while raising the income of the wealthiest 10 percent — and that was before last-minute changes that accelerated cuts to Medicaid and added new tax breaks favoring wealthy homeowners.

The mammoth bill followed a familiar trajectory toward House passage. Members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus complained that it added trillions to the federal debt. Moderates demanded larger tax breaks and objected to the huge cuts to Medicaid. They called each other names. The whole thing appeared to be collapsing.

To win them over, Trump went to Capitol Hill — and talked about himself, proclaiming, among other things, that he is “a man of God” and that “there’s nobody like me as a fiscal hawk.” Probably none of this persuaded Republican holdouts. But something else did: The White House issued a statement saying any defection would be the “ultimate betrayal,” and Trump delivered similar threats in person. Republicans cowered. It was approved by a single vote, with two Republicans in opposition, one voting present, one absent and one falling asleep in a back room.

Democrats tried to make the majority squirm, forcing votes during a 19-hour Rules Committee meeting on several of the 537 amendments that had been filed. Republicans blocked one amendment limiting the tax cuts to people who earn under $400,000 a year. They blocked another restricting the tax cuts to those who make under $10 million a year. Because the legislation hiked taxes on some, Republicans had to waive their own rule, adopted four months ago, requiring a supermajority for such increases.

The votes of some Republican holdouts had to be bought with special provisions. At the last minute, a $1.4 billion provision deregulating firearm silencers and repealing their sales tax found its way into the bill, at the request of Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia), a gun dealer.

Another 11th-hour change: The legislation requires that baby trust accounts created by the bill, in which every newborn American child would get $1,000, be officially named “Trump Accounts.”

Unofficially, they should be named “cringe accounts.”

READERS’ REMARKS for Dana Milbank’s “Washington Post” column

The comments overwhelmingly express deep embarrassment and shame over President Trump’s actions, particularly his portrayal of a misleading video to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Many commenters highlight the negative impact on international relations.