There’s a whole lot of ugliness out there right now. The Ohio governor’s race is a good example. If you haven’t see the Vivek Ramaswamy ad featuring Dr. Amy Acton’s estranged birth mother denouncing her own daughter as a liar, consider yourself lucky. It’s sickening. But it appears to be backfiring. I hope so, anyway.

The backstory is that Dr. Acton, the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, says she was sexually abused by her stepfather as a child, and that her mother knew this and did nothing. Dr. Acton’s brother corroborates this. Years ago the stepfather was indicted for the rape of his stepdaughter by a grand jury, but he and the birth mother fled the state, and he never faced a trial. The stepfather died in 2004. Dr. Acton and her birth mother have not spoken to each other since 1978.

So now the Ramaswamy campaign is using the stepmother, who still carries an obvious grudge against Dr. Action, as their closing argument in the campaign. This is from Politico:

MAGA influencers and allies of Ramaswamy, including Donald Trump Jr., quickly seized on the video as a potential political kill shot in the governor’s race.

That shot backfired spectacularly.

And the backlash crossed partisan lines.Meghan McCainblasted the attack as “dastardly,” while Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee’s longtime aide Dan Hauserdeleted his own post sharing the video after learning more about Acton’s past.

The video prompted a broad resurfacing of the devastating family history behind it, including Acton’s own harrowing account of childhood sexual abuse by her stepfather, who faced criminal charges even as her mother remained married to him.

Even Republicans close to Ramaswamy are recoiling. “It’s so gross to forsake family members for politics,” a Republican operative close to the campaign told Playbook. “I think it’s bad. It’s just morally bad.”

And there’s a political risk. The operative pointed out the video won’t play well with women “because a lot of women are gonna say, ‘What normal mom would participate in an attack ad on their own child?’”

It’s exactly the kind of closing argument Trump’s political operation knows is not moving the needle, as Republicans lean harder into culture-war attacks and personal scandals in the final stretch.

Early voting in Ohio began October 6, so votes have already been cast. And while there are only 13 days until the midterm election, that does give the Acton campaign some time to respond. According to the New York Times, “The Acton campaign quickly released its own ad featuring Dr. Acton’s brother saying he was abused, but his sister was abused far worse as she sought to protect him.”

More ugliness, entirely on our part: The Telegraph is running a story headlined Ukrainians Turn on US after Russian Strike Kills Baby in Pram. I can’t read the article without wading through several pages demanding I subscribe to the Telegraph. But I do not blame the Ukrainians one bit. As I’ve argued in recent posts, Trump has made the U.S. an ally of Russia against Ukraine. This is disgraceful and disgusting. Our reputaqtion as a nation has been utterly trashed.

Here’s something I don’t think the Republicans thought out carefully enough when they passed the Big Ugly Bill: Those of us on Medicare Advantage plans by now have gotten letters detailing how our current plan will change in 2027. And for millions of seniors the news is that their current plan will no longer exist in 2027. Plans in 40 states are just plain evaporating.  An estimated 4 to 5 million seniors across the country are losing their plans. They’ll still have basic Medicare, but they’ll lose the extra benefits like presciption drug coverage they’ve been getting, usually without paying extra, with Medicare Advantage. Their Eliquis presciptions, for example, will go up to $470 a month. I understand a lot of rural areas will have no Medicare Advantage plans at all now. And I suspect those that will continue into 2027 may cover less than they did or require higher co-pays. Just one more reminder how the Trump Administration is not working for you.

On a personal note, it does’t look like my current benefits will change much at all, but I still need to verify that all my current providers will still take my insurance.

Spreaking of not working for us, yesterday Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Cameron Hamilton let it slip that in the future states will  have to take care of disasters on their own. Which makes me wonder why there’s a federal government at all. But I guess they still run the military.

But see ‘I was terrified’: Military families describe their harrowing evacuation from a Navy base in Bahrain by Priya Sridhar at MS NOW. Our armed forces under Trump and Hegseth are in serious trouble, and Trump and Hegseth are covering up a lot of their incompetence.

Oh, and if you missed the story about how Alina Habba got a $50 million deal while she was working for the Department of Justice to get some guy a pardon from Trump, here it is.

Finally, you may have heard that last week the DoJ sent California a list of alleged noncitizen voters on a thumb drive (with the password on a sticky note) and demanded that the state not allow those people to vote without verifying their citizenship status. This is from last week:

The US Department of Justice sued California on Thursday, seeking a court order to prevent the state from tabulating certain ballots cast in the midterm elections.

The suit came two days after the department made a specious demand to the state. On Tuesday, the department sent election officials in Los Angeles county a thumb drive with a handwritten password purporting to contain the names of noncitizens registered to vote. The department asked officials to confirm the citizenship of anyone on the list and set aside ballots from those whose status could not be confirmed. It gave the state 48 hours – an extremely narrow window – to take action. It did not provide details on how it came up with the names on the list. In its lawsuit, filed in federal court in the central district of California, the justice department said it had provided the state with more than 20,000 names of likely noncitizens.

Today David Kurtz at TPM tells us DOJ’s List of Noncitizen Voters Exposed As Crap.

The top election official in Los Angeles County has done a preliminary review of the Trump DOJ’s purported list of alleged noncitizen voters and found it to be … shoddy. Surprising absolutely no one.

Out of DOJ’s list of 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters in California, more than 7,000 had Los Angeles County addresses. Dean C. Logan’s office took a sample of 200 of those L.A. voters and found that 1/4 may have been born in the United States, nearly 1/2 were cancelled or inactive voters, and nearly 3/4 had never voted, according to a new court filing:

On Monday, the Trump DOJ announced charges against 28 Californians for voting crimes, far fewer than the earlier 20,000. But during a press conference, a Trump DOJ official admitted that there may be U.S. citizens mistakenly on their list of 20,000 of suspected “illegal” voters. Do tell. And there has been other reporting that most of the people on the list were registered Republicans.

So basically the DoJ just pulled some random names of Californians off something and put them on a thumb drive and sued California about it. They are probably trying to set up a pretense for challenging the midterm election results. But why California? I would think they would be going after a state that could flip either way. I understand the Democrat is way, way ahead of the Republican in the governor’s race in California, and neither of California’s U.S. senators is up for re-election this year. WTF?

Yesterday there was a headline in the New York Times — Trump Offers Putin Economic Relief in Hopes That Russia Will Return the Favor. So the U.S. is just a supplecant nation to Russia now.

Trump waived all of the sanctions against Russia in the recently passed Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which of course he doesn’t have the constitutional authority to do. And this was done in a desperate attempt to lower gas prices before the Midterms, which are 16 days away. And early voting has already started in several states. How is this even supposed to work?

The fourth “K” (see last post) was fired today after only five days in the job of White House Press Secretary. Katie Zacharia was offered the job just a week ago. Per the New York Times: “She was not a deft communicator.” For the Times, that’s going out on a limb. But I suspect she will enjoy holding the record as the shortest-serving White House Press Secretary for a long time. See also Anthony Scaramucci Weighs in on Katie Zacharia Breaking His Record,

Alexandra Petri predicted that since Trump chooses White House Press Secretaries by turning on the teevee and pointing, Zacharia’s replacement will be a Kalshi commercial.

For another bad idea that thankfully died on the vine, Pentagon Pete’s plan to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan on YouTube has been canceled. Apparently Trump was for it, but then got swamped by pushback from Congress and even from some of his own staff, and he has nixed it. The livestreaming, anyway. The execution by firing squad is still on. I hate the death penalty. It’s barbaric.

The big story today, IMO, regards Ukraine being cut from Starlink. We’ve known this for a while. Was this Elon Musk’s decision? Apparently not. It’s near certain that the order came from within the White House. But reporting is contradictory. Trump is denying he ordered anything to be cut off from Ukraine. Musk says that Starshield systems are controlled by the U.S. government, Hafiz Rashid writes at The New Republic that Elon Musk and Trump Were Both in on Ukraine Starlink Shutoff. Sounds about right.

Tech CEO Elon Musk reportedly approached President Trump on slowing down his Starlink communications service in Ukraine earlier this week, contradicting both Musk’s statement that it was Trump’s idea and Trump’s statement that he has no idea who did it.

The Telegraph, citing four anonymous sources, reports that Musk proposed slowing down Starshield, the military-grade version of Musk’s Starlink satellite communications system, and that Trump agreed. The move hindered Ukraine’s drone defenses of Russian attacks, and came while Trump is upset with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s decision to target Russian oil refineries and infrastructure after Trump lifted sanctions on Russian fuel. After Ukraine’s Starlink access was restricted, Russia launched a massive aerial attack on Wednesday that continued into the next morning.

Again, we’ve become allies of Russia against Ukraine. Trump and Musk are both denying they had anything to do with this. Sure.

The big headline at the New York Times is “Soaring Energy Prices Push U.S. Inflation Higher.” And in usual NYC understatement, one of the subheads is “Surging inflation complicates Trump’s final push to sell voters on a strong economy.” Gee, ya think?

It really looks like Trump’s world is falling apart. He was humiliated by a half-empty rally in Youngstown, Ohio, Monday night. His Russian diesel “deal” is being opposed even by Republicans. Yesterday he was downplaying the plan as “not really a deal with me.” The revised story is that none of the diesel is coming to the U.S. but it for the rest of the world. Meanshile, Trump’s War gets messier as Iran-backed Houthis strike Saudi oil facilities.

Charlie Cook of the Cook Politico Report says that Trump has gone from “very unpopular” to “toxic” to “radioactive.”

As part of his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, Trump was scheduled to sit for a deposition with the BBC’s lawyers this Friday. But yesterday Trump’s lawyers canceled the session. And they said he won’t be available for more than two months. By some coincidence, the discovery period ends in two months. The Trump offspring also are dodging subpoenas in the case. The BBC is trying to get the case, which was filed in a court in Florida, dismissed.

It gets messier. There are reports the recently fired Kimberly Guilfoyle is thretening to expose Trump family secrets. That might just be gossip, but if anybody knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak, it’s Guilfoyle.

And then there’s the new press secretary. I though y’all would get a kick out of this.

The best answer I saw was KKK + K. Another good one was The Clairols. Mine was The Roots (Are Showing). But it kind of brings home how much Trump isn’t really hiring staff  as much as casting people in the television show he is producing in his head. Aparently the role of “press secretary” must go to a blond woman. The new one, Katie Zacharia, was so inept in her debut yesterday that the world is just making fun of her. Among other issues, she has been claiming to be a corporate lawyer but can’t provide proof she ever passed a bar exam. See also Hi, I’m Your New Press Secretary, and It’s My First Time Reading Words Out Loud by Alexandra Petri at The Altantic.

While we all weren’t looking it appears the U.S. is now an ally of Russia against Ukraine. There wasn’t exactly a formal announcement of this, but I don’t see any other way to look at events over the last several hours.

Yesterday Trump very proudly announced that he and Vlad Putin had reached a great deal. The U.S. is suspending sanctions on Russian diesel exports  until April 7  Putin agreed to release 300,000 tons of diesel immediately “to the American and global marketplace,” followed by 500,000 tons in November and another million after that.

Trump then wrote on Truth Social that another three million tons of Russian diesel would be delivered “within a short period.” But this depended on the condition of Russian refineries, which have been attacked by Ukraine. Whether the three million tons were really part of the deal or just Trump not knowing how many zeros are in three million I cannot say. But commentators I saw on the teevee said that the Russian diesel would’t make a whole lot of difference to the price of diesel in the U.S. There’s a headline at Barron’s that calls the deal “a drop in the bucket that won’t move the needle on prices.”  But it would make Putin a lot of money. So it’s a stupid deal. I feel for farmers and others who are being ruined by diesel prices who may now get their hopes up there will be relief soon. There won’t.

And then there’s the little matter of the sanction Trump suspended, which was imposed by Congress. Many senators are not happy, and not all of those senators are Democrats.

Less than a month ago the Senate passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, intended to toughen up sanctions on Russia. The late Miss Lindsey’s sister, Darline Graham, was given a big role in introducing and passing the bill, and so far it’s been her big moment in the Senate. Darline is currently in a neck-and-neck race with Dr. Annie Andrews for the Senate seat. One might argue Trump’s suspension of one sanction undermines Darline a tad.

But it gets better. Trump’s next move was to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy :to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure used to produce and distribute diesel, saying the attacks are causing a global shortage. The part about Ukraine being in a war with Russia for its existence as a nation seems to have slipped past Trump’s attention.

So now, having stabbed Ukraine in the back, Trump is saying that Ukraine had better get a new leader. That should make Zelenskyy president for life. And Trump is blaming Zelenskyy for high diesel prices. There are a lot of factors impacting diesel prices, and the Russia-Ukraine war is one of them, but I suspect Trump’s mess in Iran is at the top of the list.

I see also that Andy Burnham, the UK Prime Minister, called Zelenskyy today. The PM assured Zelenskyy that the UK would continue to strengthen its sanctions on Russia and take action to constrain the Russian war machine. I hope President Zelenskyy gets other such calls. But it’s another sign of the times of how isolated Trump is, and how isolated he has made the U.S. And I’m sure Trump has no clue.

At The Atlantic, David Frum tells us (as if we didn’t know) that Trump is an easy mark for Putin.

For the American truckers and farmers Trump claims to be serving, the deal means little or nothing. Trump may not know or may not care that his latest gambit will not reduce diesel prices. His poll numbers are plunging to Herbert Hoover levels. He needs a last-minute electioneering gimmick.

But while the deal will not benefit American consumers, it has immense consequences for others. For Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the deal is a potential lifesaver. For war-ravaged Ukraine, it is the most outrageous and heartless Trump betrayal to date. For Trump’s entourage, the deal promises corruption opportunities on a multibillion-dollar scale. And for people trying to understand the Trump presidency, the deal is further proof of the accusation that Nancy Pelosi flung in Trump’s face in 2019: “With you, all roads lead to Putin.”

I encourge you to read this article. Trump’s “entourage,” in particular Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, have been trying to work a Russia-Ukraine deal that somehow includes some special sweeteners for special Trump donors and some Middle Eastern groups that do business with Kushner and Witkoff. One suspects it’s understood that some of those sweeteners will make it into the pockets of Kushner and Witkoff eventually. Meanwhile, Ukraine is being told to suck it up and make concessions. Or just surrender; that would be great.

Another thing I learned from Frum’s article is that the U.S. actually produces more diesel than we use. Of course, the price is set by global markets.  But if Trump weren’t pouring how many billions of dollars into  his stupid war, maybe the government could provide relief to farmers and businesses that use kiesel with subsidies or something. That might actually help. But then if Trump hadn’t started the stupid war the price of diesel wouldn’t be quite so high.

But here’s a new development — Axios reports that House Republicans are moving to block Trump’s oil deal.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) vowed Saturday to force a House vote to block Russian oil purchases, challenging President Trump’s diesel deal with President Vladimir Putin.

Why it matters: Trump has touted the deal as a way to lower fuel prices, but it could also provide revenue for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Driving the news: Fitzpatrick, co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, said he would introduce the “Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Act” and force a vote through a discharge petition.

“It will be forced to the Floor via discharge and it will pass overwhelmingly,” Fitzpatrick wrote on X.

Retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) tells Axios he has “already agreed” to sign the petition.

Well, okay, not a lot of Republicans, and considering the House is hardly ever in session any more this will probably go nowhere. But it’s still interesting.

Update: Today (Sunday) Trump announced that Putin and Zelenskyy have agreed to an “energy ceasefire,” meaning they have agreed to stop attacking energy facilities. But President Zelenskyy, when asked about it, says this was news to him. Zelenskyy says he will agree to it if Putin agrees to it. But whether Putin has agreed to anything isn’t clear. Trump made a similar announcement last month, but neither party confirmed that there was a deal. Both Russia and Ukraine continued attacking energy infrastructure.

Update: Russia strikes power plant in Ukraine after Trump announces energy ceasefire. So much for that.

Tomorrow we should hear who will be awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, Then we can all make fun of Trump for not getting it.

Does anybody remember María Corina Machado, last year’s winner? Who foolishly gave her prize to Trump, probably with the expectation that he would help her opposition party gain power in Venezuela? I checked on what Machado has been up to lately. Not a whole lot, other than taking a lot of meetings. I understand that after the U.S. military removed Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, some U.S. lawmakers argued for installing Machado’s party in power. But guess who blocked that? Trump, of course. He’s got the indefinitely interim president Delcy Rodríguez in place who is letting Trump have access to a lot of Venezuela’s oil, and that’s all he cares about. And Delcy Rondriquez refuses to allow Machado to return to Venezuela.

I bet she’s really sorry she gave Trump her peace prize.

In other news, today the Trump Administration announced that Microsoft and some other tech companies, including Adobe, are cut off from a program that allows skilled foreign workers to apply for permanent residency in the United States.  Immediately I didn’t think what did Microsoft do wrong? I thought, why is Trump pissed at Microsoft? Here’s the basics:

Vance framed the move as necessary to protect U.S. workers from unfair wage competition.

“Our message to Microsoft is, you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance said at a news conference announcing the penalties. “You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”

Vance did not present evidence that Microsoft had laid off U.S. workers and replaced them with foreign employees through the H-1B program.

I assume reporters are looking into this now. But get this part:

Trump was scheduled later Thursday to present Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honor given by the U.S. for technological achievement.

Nadella, who was born in India, previously worked in the U.S. on an H-1B visa. He surrendered his U.S. permanent residency in 1994 and applied for the visa so he could bring his wife to the U.S., an unusual immigration story he recounted in his 2017 memoir.

By now you’ve heard that Trump thinks it would be just fine if an enemy took out Los Angeles or San Diego. This was in a rally in Nebraska. I found a transcript of the entire talk.  Like most of Trump’s talks, it’s basically incoherent.

The outrageous comment, in full: “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with and they might keep going a little long.”

But leading up to this, he wasn’t talking about Iran but about the midterms. Here’s the larger context, from a transcript:

Well, they’re all saying we’re in trouble in the midterms. They can take all the stuff that we gave you, the biggest tax cuts in history, a great border, best border we’ve ever had. All the things that we did, I could write, I could name, I could stand here for 20 minutes and talk to you about it. It could all be taken away if you start losing a couple of little elections. It’s all gone. All of your tax cuts will be, your taxes will be double, triple. You’ll end up in a depression. You’ll end up in a depression with these people. But early voting is underway right now, on early voting or on election day, November 3rd, you go out and vote, you got to go out and vote. And we want to make it as Kamala would say. Did you hear her the other day? Kamala, she said, “We have to make the election too big to rig.” She stole my line.

She got killed even by the Democrats on that one. Can you imagine Kamala? She’s about two years late. She said, Did you hear that? She said, “We have to make the election too big to rig.” I said, “I can’t believe she…” She stole my line. She stole a lot of things that didn’t work out too well. But I want to see a tremendous victory. You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did. And again, remember with the word just artificial, it’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with and they might keep going a little long.

So he’s free-associating, I assume, and he jumped from the midterns to … what? Iran,I guess. The next paragraph appears to be about Iran.

They always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it, let me tell you. They need it, but it’s going to end very soon, and it’ll end one way or the other and your gas and your gasoline and all of the things. And don’t forget, we also took on a country known as Venezuela. They never talk about that. They never talk about Venezuela. And we’re taking in hundreds of millions of barrels of oil every week. We’re pouring oil. We’re pouring oil into this country like nobody’s ever seen before. We took it over. China left. Russia left. They all left because they wanted them to leave, but they all left and we took over Venezuela. One hour and 48 minutes it took us. Nobody killed. Nobody killed. They don’t talk about that.

Poor baby. But as I learned and reported in an earlier post, the U.S. is getting hundreds of thousands, not millions, of barrels of oil from Venequela every day. Meanwhile, the National Petroleum Reserve is down 429 million barrels.

But back to letting “them” take out Los Angeles and San Diego. California is pissed. And Republican candidates for office in California are now scrambling to put distance between themselves and Trump. :

Jim Desmond, a member of San Diego County’s board of supervisors who was endorsed by Mr. Trump in his campaign to represent California’s 48th congressional district, said he “vehemently” disagreed with the president.

“No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage,” he wrote in a post on social media.

His Democratic opponent, Marni von Wilpert, a member of San Diego’s City Council, highlighted Mr. Desmond’s ties to the president.

“It’s indefensible that Jim Desmond continues to support Trump’s war and continues to be backed and funded by a President who jokes about the 1.4 million people in San Diego being ‘taken out’ by a foreign adversary,” she wrote in a social media post.

I don’t know if Mr. Desmond had a reasonable hope of being elected, but if he did before, he sure doesn’t now.

Of course, the White House doesn’t think this is any big deal.

White House spokesperson Steven Cheung defended Trump on Tuesday. “The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” he wrote. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”

Trump also posted about the rally on Tuesday morning. “My Rally crowds and enthusiasm are unbelievable!” he wrote. “Nobody has ever seen anything like it.”

The midterms can’t come fast enough.

In what looks to me like a bare-assed attempt to prop up his poll numbers and possibly buy midterm votes for Republicans, Trump has announced he is sending $90 checks to most seniors and $500 checks to nearly a million Affordable Care Act enrollees.

As I understand it, the senior checks are going to Medicare Part B enrollees whose Medicare premiums are deducted from their Social Security income. That would not include me, since my Medicare premium is paid by Medicaid.

The payments, which I don’t believe were authorized by Congress, are coming from a  $2 billion Medicare Improvement Fund that Congress created in 2008 to improve Medicare services. Trump called the fund a “pointless ‘Slush Fund'” in a Truth Social post. The White House said the improvement fund has never been utilized. It may be the fund has never been utilized — I don’t know — but surely that money could have been better spent than just sending a one-time $90 check to seniors that won’t even cover half of the standard monthly premium deduction. Seems stupid to me.

The Treasury Department has already begun sending out the one-time $500 checks to  more than 950,000 Obamacare enrollees in 30 states that use the federal exchange, healthcare.gov. The remaining states have their own state-run exchanges.

These checks are being funded through unspent user fees paid by insurers. Insurers offering plans on the federal exchange pay a percentage of collected monthly premiums to fund IT infrastructure, call centers, and consumer outreach. So I guess Trump isn’t spending that money on IT infrastructure, etc.

The checks are going to people who have not qualified for subsidies in the past because they make too much money. In other words, the checks are going to upper-income people. Trump has said that these Obamacare policyholders were “wrongly overcharged” during the Biden administration. While most of the $90 checks going to seniors will actually be direct deposits, the $500 checks are going out in the mail with a letter from Trump.

In his letter, Trump wrote, “For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov. That money belongs to hard-working Americans, not the Government, and now, I am returning it to you!”

“You have paid into this flawed System, and now you are finally getting something back,” he wrote, listing his efforts to root out fraud, reduce drug prices and boost spending on rural healthcare.

So upper-income people who hadn’t qualified for subsidies are getting a $500 “reimbursement” check from Trump because other, poorer people used to get subsidies so they could afford healthcare. $500 won’t come anywhere close to the difference between subsidized and unsubsidized premiums over a period of years, It also won’t make up for the fact that a now-smaller risk pool means everybody’s premiums have gone up. So the people who weren’t getting subsidies must have seen premium increases since the Big Ugly Bill passed.  I can’t say how much those upper income people will be impressed by $500 checks..

Oh, and hospitals all over the country are really struggling because of Trump’s cuts. There are been six closures this year, but many more hospitals have but back or eliminated emergency, obstetrics, and other departments. And there are estimates that hundreds of hospitals will be at risk of closure next year, especially in rural areas.

In other news — and this is actually a bigger deal than Trump’s “love me” checks — do read U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies at the New York Times. It begins:

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.

I hope there’s some way to prosecute all of them eventually.

You really should read the transcript of the Time magazine interview with Trump. It’s unusual for him to be directly quoted in print without his rhetoric being cleaned up. All through the 2024 campaign I was repeatededly furious at watching Trump deliver some word salad remarks and then see it in print rewritten into sensible sentences. But here is the real Trump:

Because I do respect the free press, but I don’t respect fake news. I’ll give you an example. CNN and MSDNC, which is MS Now—they changed the name because it does so poorly. But I won the election. I won it handily by massive numbers. I won the popular vote. I won all seven swing states. They said if you won three swing states, I won all seven. I won the counties. It’s very important, 86% popular vote. Everything, and very conclusively, I haven’t had a good story on CNN for years. They’re incapable of being—they’re fake news. Same thing on MS NOW. 

In his mind, because he won the election by massive numbers, which he didn’t, any criticism of him is “fake news.” And then later:

I went to Tennessee. The crowd went wild. I went to, yesterday, to Chicago. Got the big golf tent. President’s coming. The crowd went absolutely wild. And I said—I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it but I just said a few words before the guy started playing. They asked me to make a speech. I said, “I’m not going to make a speech. I want to play golf.” But I said to him—I mean, they had to stop the crowd from—they were going crazy, 100%. There was no negative number. Did anybody write anything negative about it? Check it out.

That’s all that’s important to him. The crowd went wild! He can’t possibly be doing anything wrong!

And he says the U.S. is taking a “tremendous” amount of oil out of Venezuela and will soon replenish the strategic reserve. But that depends on what you call “tremendous.” According to Google AI, the U.S. needs 429 million barrels of oil to completely fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve back to its maximum authorized capacity of 714 million barrels. Also according to Google AI, the U.S. is importing 629,000 barrels per day from Venquela. So I calculate that Venzuelan oil will replensish the reserve in … a while. And that’s only if we don’t take more out. Then it will be … a longer while. I’m not a math whiz.And that’s also assuming that oil from Venezuela is going to the Strategic Reserve, but who knows? Don Jr. and Eric may be selling it on a black market.

In other news — Trump has lost another group that used to love him — the crypto bros. See Trump loses favor with crypto fans who call him out for cashing in by Isaac Arnsdorf at WaPo. (You may hit a paywall with this link, sorry. WaPo is having issues.)

Now the value of those $TRUMP coins has crashed, the U.S. crypto reserve President Donald Trump promised hasn’t amounted to much, and the enthusiasm for Trump in comments and message boards has turned into disappointment and animosity.

Yep. He ripped off his own supporters. And then later,

I understand some of these people lost significant amounts of money. I feel bad for them, but grifers gonna grift.

Jack Smith testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee today and apparently the senators made fools of themselves. I had to be away while it was live and couldn’t watch it, but it sounds like Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt made a total ass of himself. Which is not much of a leap for Eric Schmitt.

I was thinking not long ago that I haven’t heard much from him since he became a senator in 2023. But here is the Schmitt I remember from Missouri. Schmitt obviously thought he had a first rate gotcha in the claim that Smith had attended an N.B.A. game in Atlanta as a pretense to secretly meet with Fani Willis and other prosecutors pursuing Trump there.  But instead of being in Atlanta watching the Atlanta Hawks, Smith was at the University of Maryland watching a women’s basketball game between Maryland and the Iowa Hawkeyes. Facepalm!

Other outtakes I’ve seen just make the whole exercise look ridiculous. At one point Senator John Kennedy was grilling Smith about whether he believed in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

In other news: I’m feeling a bit left out because I’ve never seen the Trump political ads for television paid for by our tax dollars I’ve only seen bits of them, as shown in this news story:

CNBC is reporting that the ads were funded from the Homeland Security budget. Well, WSJ is reporting, but that’s behind a paywall. Here are key points:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection funded the taxpayer-backed television ads featuring President Donald Trump that have drawn bipartisan scrutiny ahead of the midterm election, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Top congressional Democrats say the administration dedicated $20 million to the effort, including funds provided to CBP through Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

Trump personally pushed for the ads and was involved in their creation, according to the Journal, as lawmakers question whether taxpayer funds were improperly used for political messaging.

Although some advertising agency was paid a ton of money for the ads the ads, I’m hearing they were produced by the White House. video team, and Trump was involved in putting them together. The White House calls them “public service announcements” and “patriotic,” but all they do is promote Trump.  I wonder how this is going over with the general public?