So Trump’s financial disclosure statements show he made something like $2 billion last year while most Americans suffered financially. And if this were any other POTUS, or at least a Democratic one, this would be a massive scandal. But it’s Trump, so … NBC News:

The figures from 2025 — the first year of Trump’s second term — were disclosed to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in a 927-page document. By comparison, President Barack Obama’s final disclosure form was eight pages, while President Joe Biden’s was 11. Vice President JD Vance’s form for last year is 17 pages.

I understand the biggest source of income for Trump is in crypto. But as I understand it, he’s not making money from investing in crypto but in selling it. The people buying the stuff from Trump are losing their shirts, apparently. Associated Press:

Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling “governance tokens” and “stablecoins” and other crypto assets. Another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face.

Both the tokens and the meme coins have plunged in value since his sales, partly because they are so difficult to value. Governance tokens, for instance, confer to holders only the power to vote on certain management policies at a company, not equity stakes, and so typical valuation measures don’t apply.

I don’t understand any of this, and I doubt many of the people who bought this stuff understood it either. More from the AP:

He took in tens of millions from new property holdings in foreign countries eager to please a man with power over where to deploy the U.S. military and how much to charge in tariffs. And he got tens of million more suing media companies worried they could lose their broadcast licenses or not get deals approved by his regulators.

Ever the salesman, Trump even made big money off the smallest of things, pulling in millions by slapping his name on Bibles, guitars and watches — the latter alone bringing in $4.7 million.

Has any president ever directly profited from selling his personal branded merch while in the White House? Not that I can remember.

Profits at Trump’s golf courses and other properties also are up, I understand. And he’s made some money in the stock market, sometimes putting money into businesses that were subject to his regulation decisions.

See the New York Times, The Key Ways Trump’s Financial Interests Intersect With Government Policy. It begins,

When President Trump’s annual financial disclosure was released on Tuesday, it showed that he reaped at least $2.2 billion from his various businesses last year, a singular haul for a president. Many of the gains stemmed from ventures that intersect with his administration, posing unparalleled potential conflicts of interest.

And  here’s just one example:

The Trump Organization has announced new international deals in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, licensing the family name in exchange for payments from government-backed developments. Both countries are key U.S. allies in a region that has been upended by the war with Iran. Last year, Qatar gave the U.S. a Boeing plane that Trump began using this week as Air Force One.

The earnings were $14 million for these new deals and a total of at least $37 million from all the Middle East deals.

But there’s so much more. It’s a gift link, so do read it all.

And then there’s Trump’s badly flopping 250th Anniversary observance. Today Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee accused Trump and his cronies of misleading donors. If you hadn’t figured it out already, there are two organizations competing for donations and attention that had planned to put on celebrations. One is America 250, which was established by Congress a decade ago to plan nonpartisan celebrations nationwide. The other is Freedom 250, being run out of the White House, which is putting on the stupid “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall, the concert series that was canceled because all the acts bailed out, and that garish UFC match at the White House.

I understand that a lot of the money that had been allocated for America 250 was cut by DOGE last year, so a great many plans for local celebrations around the country had to be scaled back. And some was “redirected” by Trump toward his own projects. But the Democrats documented that a lot of people who had planned to give money to America250 were tricked into giving it to Freedom 250. WaPo:

The donors meant to give money to America250, a congressionally chartered initiative to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial, according to Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee. They instead were given routing and account numbers that directed their funds to Freedom 250, which President Donald Trump established last year to organize anniversary events, the report says.

Trump is planning a big whoop-dee-doo this Saturday, the 4th. But the weather service is saying the day could be the hottest in recorded history for the D.C. area, which is bound to keep the crowds away. I was in D.C. on a 4th of July many years ago, and it was seriously hot then but nothing like what it’s going to be on Saturday. Heh.

A DSAer knocked off a15-term House incumbent Dem in Colorado primaries yesterday, and the centrists are in a panic. And Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser won the Democratic primary race for governor over Michael Bennet, a three-term incumbent U.S. senator. WaPo:

Weiser tweaked Bennet for voting to confirm eight of Trump’s Cabinet members. Bennet stood by his votes, except for the one to confirm Energy Secretary Chris Wright. He argued his support was necessary to help the state secure federal resources.

Update: And I see we have a request for the dancing banana.

So birthright citizenship is safe. Trump meltdown on the way … Thomas, Alito, and  Gorsuch dissented. Kavanaugh quibbled with the majority opinion reasoning but voted with the majority anyway. Here’s the decision. I haven’t read it yet.

Skimming through social media comments, I’ve noticed an alarming number of people who think the Supreme Court has just created some radical new policy regarding immigrants. One commenter worried that Hispanic people born here before the decision would now suddenly become citizens, as if they weren’t already citizens. I swear, ignorance is killing us.

In other decisions, SCOTUS allowed states to ban transgender athletes from competing in their schools. And in In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the Court ruled 6-3 with the Republicans (big surprise) that federal limits on coordinated campaign expenditures by political parties violate the First Amendment.

I’ll post more here if I see any juicy reactions or commentaries.

Update: I’m seeing news stories saying Alito is retiring. I’m also seeing news stories retracting the stories that Alito is retiring.

Update: I haven’t heard of any reaction from Trump, but the rest of MAGA is having a meltdown. You’d think the SCOTUS had created some new immigration law rather than just uphold what’s been in the bleeping Constitution since 1868.

Update: Mike Johnson and some others are seizing on Kavanaugh’s opinion, which (I understand) is that the President has no authority to change birthright citizenship, but Congress could. Again, I haven’t found Kavanaugh’s opinion in all the mountain of writing about this decision today. But that’s what I’ve read.

So that’s going to be the next attempt. The problem is that it appears to be the clear opinion of five of the justices that birthright citizenship is guaranteed in the 14th Amendment, period, and the Constitution can’t be overwritten by legislation alone any more than it can be overwritten by executive orders. But I bet they’re going to try. See Johnson Follows Kavanaugh’s Lead, Says Congress Will ‘Deal With’ Birthright Citizenship by Nicole LaFond at TPM.

SCOTUS is dumping a ton of decisions before its summer recess. Among these is the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara. I like the name. Tomorrow is the last day before recess. Are they waiting until the last minute before they dash out the door before bombing the 14th Amendment? Stay tuned.

I’ve been following along on SCOTUSblog. It hasn’t been all bad news so far. The Court will not hear Trump’s appeal of the $5 million a jury awarded to E. Jean Carroll. (Trump’s reaction is unhinged.) They upheld a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and received within five days after. They stopped Trump from firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.

However, John Roberts’s campaign to implement the Unitary Executive Theory continues. Kate Riga writes at TPM:

The Supreme Court cast its long-telegraphed death blow to independent agencies Monday, confirming that the president can fire at-will civil servants that were meant to be insulated from political backlash. In a second opinion, though, the Court gave the Federal Reserve a special carveout from this new reality. 

The odd baby-splitting in the combination of Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook — both authored by Chief Justice John Roberts — reveals the right-wing Court’s priorities: It may be sanguine about the demolition of agencies mostly used to regulate big business and protect worker rights, but is far less willing to let President Trump take over the Fed and unleash global economic chaos. 

Translation: The Chief Justice draw the line as far as his personal financial investments are concerned. See also Josh Marshall’s commentary, The Supreme Court’s Corruption Must Be Broken.

And see also Paul Krugman:

… but much more important is Humphrey’s Executor, which is the generations-long precedent that says that when Congress creates an independent agency, it is independent. It’s able to make decisions.

Of course, the president has some role. Typically, the president can choose the agency’s head subject to congressional approval, but the president can’t just go and fire officials that he doesn’t like for whatever reason or for no reason, because the agencies that operate the U.S. government and basically run our society are supposed to be professional. They’re supposed to be following their legal mandate. They’re not supposed to be personal tools of a dictator in the White House.

Well, the court just scrapped that. Now, lawyers, people who are legal experts, can do a better job of explaining just what went down. But what I think is important to understand is not only does this give essentially dictatorial powers to the occupant of the White House, but it also makes it extremely difficult for the economy to function. It makes it extremely difficult for society to function.

John Roberts (and the justices who agree with hm) seem to have a cognitive dysfunction that doesn’t allow him to anticipate the effects of his decisions. Or else he doesn’t care. Citizens United anyone? Of course it had a corrupting influence on politics. Gutting the Voting Rights Act brought on a return of Jim Crow in several southern states. Now Trump can merrily destroy whatever federal agencies are still functioning. No skin off Roberts’s nose, I guess.

I guess they’re done for today. Tomorrow we’re supposed to get the decisions on birthright citizenship, transgender athlete bans, and a challenge brought by Republicans to how much money candidates can spend in coordination with their political party. I’m gong to assume the Republicans will win that one.

The winner of my House district’s primary, Cait Conley, is the candidate the Democratic establishment wanted. And I think she can beat Mike Lawler in the general, although of course a lot can happen between now and November.  But I’ve bumped into some younger progressives in the district who swear they will not vote for her, because she’s not pure enough on one issue or another. And I don’t disagree with them as far as the issues are concerned, but House Democratic majority, folks. The bigger, the better. Vote Blue No Matter Who.

Now I think some other people need to hear that same message. See, for example, After wins by democratic socialists, centrist Democrats unite to push back by Matthew Choi in WaPo. (I appear to be out of gift links, but maybe you can read some of it.)

Thirteen Democratic House members and candidates announced their support Thursday for a centrist initiative aimed at pushing back against the party’s tilt toward democratic socialism. …

… “They should not be the face of our party,” said Jessica Killin, a Democratic candidate running in a competitive Colorado district. “We need to be organized and clear in our vision.”

Killin is one of the 13 who signed on to the “Promise to America” initiative that commits candidates to a set of centrist principles, including capitalism, fiscal discipline, strong borders and pride in the United States.

Yeah, that sets up such a strong contrast to Republicans, right?

Part of me does appreciate that Republicans are absolutely going to seize on the flakier DSA candidates and hang them about the necks of every Democrat running everywhere. Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of the Mamdani-endorsed candidates who won on Tuesday, is a bit much even for me and will probably serve nicely as this year’s “defund the police.” But it appears I’m not the only Democratic voter who has had it with the centrists. Michelle Goldberg writes in the New York Times,

Many Democratic primary voters, however, are in no mood for defensiveness. As they see it, they’ve been failed by a cautious, compromising establishment, and they’re going to overthrow it. The Democratic version of the Tea Party is here, with dramatic implications for the midterms and possibly the next presidential election. As Mamdani said at a rally at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater last week, people are asking when the race for 2028 begins. “It starts now,” he said.

then later, Goldberg writes,

That means the 2026 midterms could end up being a giant national experiment that tests the populist left’s theory of victory. For years, it has argued that Democrats have failed because, in thrall to corporate interests, they let themselves become the party of the status quo. Unable or unwilling to galvanize voters with an economically progressive alternative to the right, they’ve offered only timid, business-friendly incrementalism. Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, the organization that recruited Avila Chevalier to run for Congress, told me that too often, the Democratic Party “tries to stymie big and bold ideas” in favor of technocratic pragmatism. “I think what voters have really made clear, particularly this past year, is that they are desperate for bold, visionary leadership,” he said.

What I’ve been saying for at least a couple of decades.

See also A Far-Left Freedom Caucus Would Be a Nightmare for Jeffries by Paul Kane at NOTUS. It begins:

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York) has a message for the far-left Democrats who won in Tuesday’s primaries and are all but guaranteed to join Congress in January: tone it down.

But Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), the liberal icon whose 2018 upset win inspired this movement, had a very different message directed at the old-line Democrats: welcome these incoming progressives with open arms, or else they’ll spark ideological clashes.

This is worth reading. It quotes AOC,

“My hope is that they are not met with the hostility and the cruelty, frankly, that I experienced, and I think that a lot of that can inform what happens afterwards,” she added, noting that they should be respected for having won their districts just like everyone else.

I hadn’t realized she’d been dissed so badly when she first came to the House in 2019. But, yes, the DSAers were elected like everyone else, and should they win in November their constituents expect them to deliver what they ran on, or at least be seen trying real hard. Once again, it looks like the centrists are the real clogs in the machine who insist their timid, incremental approach is the only legitimate one and everybody had better get with their program. And the centrists will still be the whopping majority in the House, so it’s not like they’re going to lose control in the near future.

Update: Josh Marshal comments on this very same theme. See ‘Centrists,’ This Is on You.

On to the outrage du jour. So Congress passed a bipartisan housing bill. Yes, it actually did something intended to be useful. The bill would have done some good. But Trump is refusing to sign it, naturally.

As near as I can tell, the main virtue of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing bill is that it would have restricted large institutional investors from buying single-family homes to turn into rentals. In some cities, especially in the South, investors have bought up as much as 25 percent of the single-family homes. They drive up rental rates and also make it harder for regular people to buy a house. The bill also made changes to federal rules to make it easier and cheaper for developers to build more housing. The bill is far from a quick fix, but over time it could have done some good. And it was genuinely bipartisan.

There was supposed to be a signing ceremony this afternoon. But Trump called it off.

“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social.

You remember the Save America Act. It is intended to disenfranchise large numbers of people by creating a ridiculous documentation hurdle for voting. This is to cure the (nonexistent) in-person voter fraud problem. It also mandates that all states submit their voter lists to a Department of Homeland Security tool that has been found to erroneously flag U.S. citizens.

The bill passed in the House, but it stalled in the Senate, five times. It wasn’t just that it couldn’t clear the Senate’s notorious 60-vote threshold. Some Republican senators actually voted with the Democrats.  I suspect they recognized that the barriers would impact their voters as badly as Democratic ones, a point lost on Trump. See also Some Republicans dumbfounded over Trump’s housing bill move: ‘What a s— show’.

Apparently news that Trump refused to sign the housing bill reached Congress as a bunch of congress critters were giving a press conference about the bill and how much help Trump had been in getting it passed. Hah.

So is the housing bill dead? It can still become law without Trump’s signature, a couple of ways.  As I understand it, as long as Trump doesn’t actually veto it, and if Congress stays in session for the next ten days (excluding Sundays), the bill automatically becomes law. And that’s probably what will happen. The other way is for a supermajority of both the House and Senate vote to pass it again, and I don’t see that happening.

And I don’t see the Senate passing the Save America bill. Trump seems to think that if he can throw a big enough tantrum he can get whatever he wants. But the Senate math hasn’t changed. The votes aren’t there.

A couple of hours after announcing he wasn’t signing the housing bill, Trump had a closed-door lunch meeting with Senate Republicans. Yelling was reported. I wrote yesterday that there appears to be a growing tension between Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and I think if Trump isn’t careful this could turn into a rift with other Senate Republicans.

From Politico:

Sen. Thom Tillis, a retiring North Carolina Republican who hasn’t been shy about leveling criticism toward Trump, said he didn’t understand why the president was “holding a bill that’s ready for signature hostage, [for] a bill that will never pass in this Congress. Makes no sense to me.”

Also, this happened today:

A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote.

Trump had tried to change election laws through executive order, but that is way outside a president’s actual constitutional power. But speaking of not having constitutional power, today the Postmaster General said that U.S. Postal Service could refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that fail to turn over voter rolls to the Trump administration.

But here’s an idea I agree with:

Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) is calling on President Donald Trump to personally pay back taxpayers for the millions he spent revamping the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which is now a cesspool of algae and chunks of blue sealant.

Why stop with the Reflecting Pool? Someday I want Trump to personally pay for restoring the Rose Garden, and the East Wing, and demolishing the Marie Antoinette Memorial Airplane Hangar and the garish Arc de Trump. He didn’t get authorization or go through proper channels for any of that, so the cost of putting stuff back as it should be shouldn’t fall on taxpayers. It should fall on him, or his estate. Whichever applies. And if he refuses, the feds can seize  his properties.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the Reflecting Pool fiasco is what finally collapses the Trump Administration. The Iran debacle is much more serious, yes, but to most Americans I suspect it’s a bit of an abstraction, and complicated. But the Reflecting Pool is simple. Trump bragged about how he was going to fix it, and obviously he made it worse. It has become a national joke. And Trump’s frantic excuses about vandalism aren’t helping him, I don’t think.

But here’s a nice surprise. The Senate passed a war resolution today.

The Senate for the first time approved a war powers resolution Tuesday seeking to block U.S. military action against Iran, as lawmakers warily watch President Donald Trump’s efforts to resolve a conflict that the administration launched on its own and now needs Congress to fund.

It was the 10th time the Senate has tried to stop the war, and the outcome, on a vote of 50-48, was a stunning turnaround from past efforts. While the resolution is largely symbolic, and does not fully carry the force of law, it reflects the growing concerns from a number of Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate over both the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran to end it. The House approved the resolution earlier this month.

So what changed? Maybe nothing. Four Republican senators who have voted for curbing the war in the past voted to curb it again. These are Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. But a couple of Republican senators (Mitch McConnell, who is in a hospital, and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania) missed the vote. So I can’t claim that maybe this is a sign that Trump’s support among Senate Republicans is slipping.

But there also have been reports of a growing feud between Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.  Trump is annoyed that Thune is not as utterly obsequious as Mike Johnson. And getting legislation through the Senate, given the filibuster rules, is a lot trickier than in the House, where you just need a simple majority. So Thune hasn’t been able to deliver legislation on demand as efficiently as Johnson, and Trump blames Thune. And a rift is growing. The article linked above suggests most of the Republican senators are on Thune’s side, although they aren’t rebelling against Trump, yet.

This was primary day in New York. In my district we voted for the Dem nominee who will face Republican Mike Lawler for a U.S. House seat in November. This is a district carved out of three counties that went for Kamala Harris in 2024, and I’m reading Lawler is vulnerable this year. There were five Democratic candidates on the ballot, and they are all respectable, although I don’t expect the one I voted for (the most progressive one) to win.

Nothing seems to be going right for Donald Trump. He thought he had the Strait of Hormuz open. But Israel’s continued bombing of Lebanon caused Iran to announce the re-closing of the Strait. Then Trump posted on Truth Social, “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!” and also “You close it and you won’t have a country.”

Now apparently the Trump Administration and Iranian officials are arguing over whether the Strait is closed or not.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz is returning “back towards normal,” a day after Iranian officials signaled they would be closing the vital waterway due to Israeli strikes in Lebanon.

The Trump administration official said 67 ships went through the strait on Saturday, a slight increase from 55 on Friday as the U.S. military escorts vessels through a southern route in the channel.

But the most recent news I can find has Iran saying that “unauthorized” vessels are not being allowed through, whatever that means. And the BBC reports that “Tracking data monitored by BBC Verify suggested that at least five tankers passed through the strait on Saturday while several vessels appeared to have made U-turns in the area.” Several media outlets are reporting that it’s not clear if the Strait is opened or closed now.

Iranians and J.D. Vance are supposed to be meeting in Switzerland now , but the Iranians walked out after about 80 minutes, reportedly because of an “insulting message by the U.S. president.”  So we’re off to a great start. The Iranians are saying that the deal depends on the war between Israel and Lebanon stopping, now. We’ll see how that goes.

Trump and Netanyahu are no longer speaking, I take it. Until recently Trump was more popular in Israel than he was here, but now Israelis have turned against him. Israel is holding elections in October, and I’ve read that the Likud party had prepared an ad campaign that featured the great relationship between Trump and Netanyahu. That’s been scrapped.

Trump’s plans for the 4th of July aren’t looking that good, either. He’d promised a multi-day entertainment extravaganza featuring the likes of, um, what’s left of Milli Vanilli? Plus a whole lot of other people I don’t remember from the 1990s. Now I take it it’s been compressed to a Trump rally. Trump says also there will be “more than 300 Members of our strong and talented Military Bands, Orchestras, and Ceremonial Units, will perform Patriotic Melodies and American Classics, and my Playlist.”  Too bad Lawrence Welk couldn’t be there.  Trump is also promising the biggest fireworks display of all time, which means people should steer clear of DC because that’s bound to get screwed up, too. I just hope the celebration doesn’t kill anybody.

And then there’s the Reflecting Pool fiasco. Trump’s “cleanup” made it worst, and everything done to clean up the cleanup has made is more worse. See Science Has a Name for What’s Plaguing the Reflecting Pool by Matt Viser at The Atlantic. I assume y’all have seen that not only is the water green, the “American flag blue” paint on the bottom Trump was so proud of is peeling off and floating to the top. Trump has decided the failure of his cleanup must have been caused by vandals, so now he’s got National Guard guarding the algae. And the algae probably need to lawyer up.

Tourists have been taking away chunks of the blue paint as souvenirs. But this morning a fellow was arrested for just touching one of the floating blue blobs of peeled paint. This was David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist and cyclist from Bethesda, Maryland. Trump claimed that US Park Police had “arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Pool,” but as near as I can tell it was just the one guy. I don’t know if he’s still being detained.

And Trump is saying the pool needs to be drained again. Someone might want to explain to him he needs different contractors who know what they are doing. But I doubt he would listen.

Trump has also lost  his best friend in Europe, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni. He got into some kind of stupid spat with her. This was possibly because she refused to have anything to do with the Iran war.

But the man can’t get anything right these days. I wonder what he will screw up next?

Things will fall apart. Right now lots of things appear to be falling apart. Trump’s partnership or whatever it was with Netanyahu is gone, for example. And now Netanyahu faces a possible re-election defeat in October. I’m not sure how a Netanyahu defeat will play out in Israel, but if it weakens the right-wing coalition that has dominated Israel for the last 30 years or so, that would be a good thing.

I keep reading that the MAGA coalition is fracturing. There have been “MAGA is fracturing” stories going back to March and April. The war with Iran accelerated the fracturing. Initially people who had believed Trump when he promised no new wars felt betrayed. Now the rest of  the coalition feels betrayed. The $300 billion for Iranian reconstruction seems to have particularly put a lot of them off.  Republicans aren’t too happy with it, either.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), echoed the sentiment, telling reporters: “History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea. I think the president is receiving some very poor advice on this deal.”

He’s not getting advice, Ted. Trump only listens to his own gut.

And then there’s this.

Ben Shapiro, the right-wing commentator who has been a loyal soldier to Trump’s Middle Eastern military incursions, was not so measured. The Daily Wire founder had a full-blown conniption over the memorandum of understanding. Shapiro cast most of the blame on Vice President J.D. Vance, and zeroed in on reports that Israel had not been a party to the negotiations, that the U.S. and its Gulf allies would establish a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran, and that the deal will allow Iran to continue to exert financial control over the Strait of Hormuz. 

I’m not sure that the Gulf Allies are going to be putting money into Iran reconstruction. The text of the agreement says:

The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of a final deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America.

The Gulf States were not party to the agreement, and I suspect they will tell Trump to pay it himself. we’ll see. In fact, I’m wondering if the Gulf States are going to be quite so friendly to Trump going forward. They must see he’s a lame duck who can’t be trusted. But so far Mohammed bin Salman is sticking with him, as far as I can tell.

Speaking of other things falling apart, here’s a headline from the New York Times:

Who couldn’t have seen that coming? Hegseth, apparently. RFK the Lesser hasn’t weighed in yet. The outbreak is at  Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Since I’m almost out of New York Times gift links, here’s the story from ABC News:

The basic training facility for the Air Force in San Antonio, Texas, is experiencing a flu outbreak following the end of mandatory vaccination for all service members.

As of Wednesday, there are at least 159 known cases among recruits and two hospitalizations at Joint Base San Antonio, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. One source told ABC News the number of cases and hospitalizations may be higher.

The outbreak comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in April that the annual flu vaccine would be optional for all U.S. military personnel, both active and reserve.  

The Senate shows signs of a falling out with Hegseth. This is from TPM:

The Senate has tucked a provision into the must-pass annual defense bill that would drastically cut Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s personal travel budget unless the Pentagon coughs up more information on the lawless campaign of high seas boat strikes.

The bill, which passed the GOP-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee last week, is trying to force the disclosure of the unedited footage of every boat strike in the campaign. It also wants more information on the Pentagon’s investigation into the apparent U.S. missile strike on a girls school in the opening days of the Iran war.

If the Pentagon fails to provide the information, Hegseth’s travel budget would be cut by 75%. The Senate tried a similar but less draconian move late last year, which the new provision suggests didn’t succeed in obtaining the requested information.

You might remember that last year all 45 Democrats and both Independents voted against confirming Hegseth as SecDef, along with three Republicans: Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, and Lisa Murkowski. (I think McConnell has been out of f***s for a while.) This resulted in a 50-50 tie, which was broken by the Veep. Some of those Republicans who voted to confirm Hegseth must be sorry by now.

I’m hearing the Senate is tired of being blindsided by Trump. You must have heard the story that the Senate was determined to confirm Trump’s new nominee for Director of National Intelligence, a fellow named Jay Clayton. This had to be done by Friday in order to prevent Trump’s other pick, a walking dumpster fire named Bill Pulte, from becoming the acting director. Clayton isn’t qualified, either, but having Pulte as DNI is a step below putting the Reflecting Pool algae in the job.  But Trump refused to allow the confirmation to go forward. He wants Pulte to help him screw up the midterm elections. So now we’re stuck with Pulte for a few months. And I understand even a lot of Senate Republicans are pissed at Trump.

And this takes us to The Apotheosis of Donald Trump by Peter Wehner at The Atlantic. In his second term, Wehner writes, “Trump, left on his own without adult supervision, has lurched from blunder to catastrophe.”

As a result, Trump’s approval ratings have cratered. Consumer confidence has fallen to historic lows. Public sentiment is in “complete collapse” on key issues. The mood of ordinary Americans has soured, with many more dissatisfied than satisfied. For the first time, we’re seeing signs that Republicans in Congress may resist the will of the president. And Trump’s MAGA coalition, which until now has been cultlike in its loyalty, is fracturing and turning on itself. 

And then there’s Trump’s advancing age. The signs of his deteriorating health, both physical and mental, are unmistakable. There is nowhere left for Trump to go except into further decline. The question left to us is how long he will be allowed to lurch into more catastrophes? I seriously question if he’s gong to last until 2028. If Congress doesn’t reel him in, his own failing health might.

Things do fall apart.

I hear Trump is so eager to get the oil flowing again he’s telling shippers it’s okay to use the Strait of Hormuz now. The shippers are waiting to hear that from Iran. And there are still questions about mines. The economy is not expected to bounce back quickly, since a lot of oil producers shut down operations after the Strait was closed. It will take some time to get production up and running again, I understand. See also Three reasons ships are not going through the Strait of Hormuz yet at the BBC. Among other things, we’re reminded that there are a lot of ships that have been stuck in the Gulf for some time, and the first thing they’re going to do is just get outta there.

I seriously wish I had a subscription to the Financial Times. There’s a headline saying “This time, Trump and Netanyahu have really fallen out.” Sounds juicy. If any good comes from this mess, damaging Netanyahu could be it.

Now back to domestic concerns. I haven’t commented on Trump’s vulgar birthday UFC cage match party. Paul Krugman has commented, and this is worth reading. However, I also read last week that Trump believed the cage match extravaganza would impress his base, and I don’t know if that’s true. Trump’s perpetual self-indulgences on the public dime may not be playing all that well in Trump Country, considering that Trump Country is getting slammed by Trump’s Economy pretty bleeping hard.

And today we learned — well, we already pretty much knew, I think — that the Marie Antoinette Memorial Airplane Hangar, aka the “ballroom,” has already cost taxpayers a bunch of money. The Washington Post got hold of the contractor’s estimate.

But a detailed project summary prepared for the White House by the contractor more than three weeks before Trump’s comments estimated the total construction cost at $600 million — with more than half coming from taxpayers, according to a copy of the contractor estimate obtained by The Washington Post.

By the time Trump made his comments in March, the federal government had already approved more than a dozen payments to the contractor overseeing the work, Clark Construction, totaling tens of millions of dollars in public funds, according to a log of the contractor’s invoices obtained by The Post.

And then later it says,

Multiple project summaries provided to the White House by Clark Construction show that internal cost estimates have been significantly higher than administration officials have acknowledged in public comments or court filings. They also show that the work was projected to rely heavily on taxpayer dollars from the moment it was announced.

So, Trump wasn’t just mistaken. He was lying all along.

Under the heading of Our Fascist Future, see A Facebook Post Is Enough for the DOJ to Say You’re “Antifa” by Malcolm Ferguson at The New Republic. The Department of Justice indicted 15 people involved with Direct Action Minnesota for being violent Antifa members. I’m serious.

These are people who are using non-electoral tactics—many of which are legal, like observing—after watching federal agents kidnap immigrants and shoot their neighbors dead in the street. The administration even pointed to a Facebook post in which defendant Cameron Kennedy stated that they needed to become “ungovernable” as a flimsy example of antifa activity. And even with all that, it’s worth mentioning for the umpteenth time that antifa is not a cohesive, established group that exists. There is no leader, no headquarters, no yearly conference. 

There’s no evidence any of the accused caused any injury to an ICE agent. According to The Guardian, “The indictment does not allege officers were injured, though it mentions kicking a federal vehicle and knocking notes from an agent’s hands.” There’s lots of evidence ICE agents harmed a lot of people and killed a couple of them for no reason. But given the DoJ’s recent track record, there’s reason to hope none of thse people will be convicted.