This post will be a change of pace. In this episode, Oklahoma discovers it isn’t Texas. Let me explain:

Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, is a right-wing MAGAt Christian nationalist wackadoo who wants Oklahoma public school lesson plans to reflect his beliefs. This is the same guy who tried to force his state to buy over 5,000 Trump edition Bibles, a plan later rescinded. He helped approve a Catholic charter school, to be funded by Oklahoma taxpayers, until the Supreme Court shot it down earlier this year (but just barely). A couple of days ago he announced he was going to be rolling out an “anti-woke” test for teachers moving to Oklahoma from “left-wing states.” This test was developed in association with Dennis Prager’s PragerU. Of course it was.

Walters fervently believes that American history is all about conservative Christianity. He also believes that Donald Trump rightfully won the 2020 election. These are things he wants to be sure all Oklahoma public school students learn and believe, also.  According to Oklahoma Watch,

The social studies standards call for high school students to study the 2020 elections by looking into election fraud theories such as batch dumps and mail-in balloting risks using graphs and other information. 

They’re also infused with references to Christianity, calling for students as young as first grade to study Bible stories such as Moses and the Ten Commandments. 

High school students are expected to learn how Christianity and the Bible influenced America’s founding fathers.

Last year Walters issued a directive saying that all Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible and the Ten Commandments in the grades 5 through 12 curricula, effective immediately. In making this announcement, Walters said,

The Bible is one oft he most historically significant books and a cornerstone of Western civilization, along with the Ten Commandments. They will be referenced as an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like, as well as for their substantial influence on our nation’s founders and the foundational principles of our Constitution. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.

Someone might point out to Walters that the Ten Commandments are in the Bible, but let’s go on.

It appears that Walters is running into a big glitch in his plans. Textbook publishers are refusing to produce textbooks to his specifications. This is as much about money as principles, I’m sure. Oklahoma has fewer than 700,000 public school students, which makes it a very small market as far as textbooks are concerned. The textbook publishers do not want to produce a K-12 social studies series. including teacher’s editions and countless ancillaries, that can be sold only in Oklahoma.

Primary and secondary school textbooks are colorful, heavily illustrated beasts. Although printing technology has changed a bit since I was in publishing, I believe it’s still generally true that much of the cost of producing such books in in “pre-press,” all the steps books go through to prepare for printing. And those steps are a lot more complicated and expensive for color. The pre-press cost is the same whether you’re printing a thousand books or a million books. And, of course, the cost of writing, editing, designing, and illustrating are the same no matter how many copies you print. So if you’re doing a relatively small print run the cost per book is much higher. It may be so high, in fact, that you’d never be able to sell those books at a price that would make any profit.

Texas has about five and a half million public school students. Publishers will jump through hoops for Texas. Oklahoma, not so much.

Anyway, the state is now going through adoption of social studies textbooks. A lot of states — I don’t know if they all do — stipulate that public schools may only use textbooks that have been “adopted” by a state adoption committee. Oklahoma’s textbook adoption committee is headed by Kendra Wesson, who was removed from the State Board of Education by the governor.

Gov. Kevin Stitt replaced three state Board of Education members, including Wesson, on Feb. 11 while complaining the board had fallen victim to “needless political drama.” The three removed members had voted with Walters to advance a now-defeated proposal to have public schools collect students’ immigration status, an idea Stitt opposed.

How Christian. Anyway, a number of publishers have opted out of even submitting  textbooks to Oklahoma. Notable among these is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one of the biggest. (The company and a few others withdrew from Oklahoma in 2023 amid the state’s review of math textbooks. Apparently Moms for Liberty was making a stink about the math books being too woke.) Some smaller publishers decided not to take the risk of hiring the substantial staff of writers, editors, and graphic artists needed to create a textbook series when there was a substantial risk of failing to meet state standards. “That’s a huge gamble for a small publisher,” one publisher said.

Others have addressed the issues Walters wants them to address, but not in the ways Walters wants them to address the issues. For example, Walters wants students to be taught that the Covid-19 virus was created in and somehow released from a Chinese lab. According to Oklahoma Watch, the textbooks submitted for adoption say that the virus appeared to have originated near Wuhan, China, without mentioning the lab.

Regarding the 2020 elation,

an Advanced Placement textbook titled “By The People, A History of the United States,” published by Pearson, makes no mention of sudden batch dumps or mail-in ballot concerns. It states: “The Trump campaign submitted a total of 63 lawsuits claiming voter fraud, but none of them, including several that reached the Supreme Court, resulted in a finding for the campaign.” 

Not all of the publishers are submitting traditional printed and bound textbooks only. Some of them have online supplements that can be edited and adapted by teachers who want to add more stuff about, say, Jesus.  And some publishers are moving toward ditching the printed and bound books altogether and offering a mix of digital and print media that also can be modified as teachers (or adoption boards) wish. But I take it the customers have to explicitly state what they want these materials to say; the publisher isn’t going to go through twenty-seven revisions trying to please the educators. So will teachers be responsible for writing textbooks?

There’s more. Legal efforts to stop Walters’s highly biased curriculum standards are ongoing, although it doesn’t look like anything will be resolved before the next school year.

Recently the State Board of Education met in Ryan Walters’s office. A television in the room was left on during the meeting, and some members said they saw nudity and lewdness on the television. The Oklahoma Speaker of the House is calling for an investigation.

The State Board of Education is also distressed that Oklahoma recently was ranked 50th among the 50 states in education. Note that Walters was state Secretary of Education from 2020 to 2023, when he was elected to his current gig. His Wikipedia page reveals a lot of people have not been happy with him.

See also a recent op ed in The Oklahoman, Oklahoma educators are not the enemy, but Ryan Walters keeps dragging them down. The author, Mark McBride, is a Republican and a former member of the state House of Representatives. Let’s just say Mr. McBride has no use for Ryan Walters.

It appears the “birthday book” containing the letter from Trump to Epstein described in the Wall Street Journal is in the possession of the lawyers handling the Epstein estate.

Congress should subpoena this asap, before the Department of Justice gets hold of it and destroys it.

Today Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is scheduled to meet with the imprisoned Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison near Tallahassee. Maxwell’s brother Ian Maxwell told the New York Post that his sister “will be putting before that court material new evidence that was not available to the defense at her 2021 trial, which would have had a significant impact on its outcome.” Naturally a lot of us are assuming the DoJ will offer her a deal if she’s willing to say that Trump is innocent. Liz Dye wrote at Public Notice,

In 2020, the government pointed to Maxwell’s “willingness to brazenly lie under oath about her conduct” as a reason to deny her bail. Now, with her entire life in the government’s control, it turns to her as a source of truth. Or, if not truth, a story that can help the president out of this jam.

Also, in spite of being supposedly on vacation, yesterday the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena the DoJ for the Epstein files. The Committee also voted to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell to sit for a deposition. Too bad Todd Blanche will get to her first.

And in a too-obvious attempt at distraction, Tulsi Gabbard says she has a ton of evidence that former President Barack Obama engaged in “treason” by trying to rig the 2016 election. FactCheck  says Gabbard’s claim is nonsense. And it doesn’t seem to me to be getting much traction in the news, but I don’t know what’s going on on  in Right-wing media.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about Stephen Colbert being cancelled, eventually, whenever his contract is up. Per Liz Warren, Paramount is desperate for Trump to approve a merger with Skydance Media. And it appears Colbert’s firing was part of the deal, which looks a whole lot like a bribe.

Paramount had already agreed to pay Trump $16 million in an utterly baseless lawsuit that in normal times would have been laughed out of court. Then Colbert, who dominated the ratings in his time slot, got canceled. No way was that a “financial” decision. Then yesterday Trump casually announced that he “anticipates” the new company will be giftng him another $20 million in PSAs, advertisements, or similar program.

And I’m not the only one who sees this as a shakedown. Who wants to bet that no one at Paramount or Skydance made such an offer? And that Trump just let it be known that the price just went up? This is the same trick he pulled to get Qatar to give him a free jet plane.

Liz Warren is investigating the mess as obvious bribery, but of course the Senate will not be joining her as long as it’s controlled by Republicans. It’s also not cleat to me who exactly is supposed to benefit from all the free media time. Trump himself? That would seem to violate the emoluments clause, as if Trump cared. The federal government? The Trump Presidential Library?

Paramount/Skydance may have been better off not merging.

In other entertainment news: Apparently some people in Congress are just now noticing that one of the provisions in the recently passed Big Ugly Bill has renamed the Kennedy Center for Melania Trump.

It appears that at the moment New Jersey does not have a U.S. Attorney. David Kurtz at TPM explains,

Attorney General Pam Bondi immediately canned the career federal prosecutor New Jersey federal judges had named U.S. attorney to succeed Alina Habba when her 120-day interim term ended. In explosive language, Bondi ripped the “rogue” judges, even though the chief judge was a Bush II appointee and the practice of judges naming U.S. attorney replacements is enshrined in the law. Bondi deputy Todd Blanche went farther, accusing the judges of “backroom” collusion and pursuing a “left-wing agenda.”

Habba’s nomination for the permanent position is stalled in the Senate. It’s not clear what the White House’s next move will be to fill the position. The interplay of various laws that govern filling the U.S. attorney position is exceedingly complicated. If you’re wanting the full explanation, the leading expert on vacancies weighs in here.

Desiree Leigh Grace was the first assistant U.S. attorney under Habba before the judges elevated her to the top spot. She wasn’t just removed as U.S. attorney by Bondi but fired from the Justice Department entirely, Politico reports.

As I said yesterday, I know absolutely nothing about Desiree Leigh Grace. Kicking her out of the DoJ seems harsh.

Recommended read: Fear Comes to America

Update: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Trump was informed in May that his name is in the Epstein files. There’s no indication what the files said he was doing in the files, just that he was in them. I don’t have a subscription to WSJ so I’m linking to a news story about the news story. Also, a judge has denied Trump’s request to release Epstein grand jury testimony, which probably wouldn’t have told us anything new anyway.

While we were all focused on the Epstein files, the ICE prisoners in El Salvador were moved to Venezuela and released. I don’t believe one event is connected to the other. But I’m just now trying to sort out why the men in CECOT were moved. It was part of a deal in which Venezuela released some American prisoners, apparently. So all the prisoners Trump had shipped to CECOT are now free in Venezuela. The American Immigrant Council has a good rundown on the whole episode.

You may dimly remember that, way back when, some courts placed contempt charges on the Trump Administration for shipping the men out of the country after the courts had said they couldn’t. The D.C. Court of Appeals “temporarily” halted the contempt charges. And then the D.C. Court of Appeals sat on the matter and didn’t act until yesterday, when it made some noises about all parties submitting briefs about outstanding issues, apparently so the court can close the case and file everything away in the Dead Zone. David Kurtz has more details.

Whether any of the men will be allowed to return to the U.S., assuming they still want to, is another matter. But Trump won’t be POTUS forever.

Until then — word is that Mike Johnson will be sending the House on vacation tomorrow, which is early, in order to avoid a vote on releasing the Epstein files. He must think the vote would pass. The House will be on vacation until September 2.

Trump is on a new tear about how he needs to “go after” people for “treason,” starting with President Obama. According to Trump, President Obama was behind a plot to steal the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton. I don’t know that President Obama would really have gone out of his way for Hillary, but whatever. See Trump Goes Full Fascist: ‘Whether It’s Right or Wrong, It’s Time to Go After People’ at Rolling Stone. Also, AG Pam Bondi also approved a new probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails. I am generally loathe to label every bizarre thing Trump does as a distraction, but I believe these would qualify as attempts at distraction. He’s desperate to get the focus off the Epstein files.

On the plus side, Alina Habba is no longer a U.S attorney. A panel of judges declined to allow her to continue in the temporary position, which ran out today. She’s been replaced by her top deputy, Desiree Leigh Grace, about whom I know absolutely nothing. Habba had been nominated to hold the position full time, but the Senate hasn’t gotten around to considering her nomination as U.S. attorney in New Jersey. And New Jersey’s senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, are not about to support her. I don’t even have to look that one up. Do read what Steve Benen wrote about her.

Why it’s almost certain Trump will TACO on the suit he filed against Rupert Murdoch..

This is very different from other suits he has filed against media outlets or law firms or anything else.  The litigation process would expose Trump mercilessly regarding his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Trump would be deposed, under oath, about that relationship. And every time there is a new development in the case, however minor, the news cycle will once again review everything that is publicly known about that relationship.

Further, Trump’s burden to prove he was damaged is impossibly high if the birthday letter is authentic. And as I wrote yesterday, I very much doubt the Wall Street Journal would have gone ahead with the story if there were any doubts at all about the authenticity of the letter.

In short, it appears Rupert Murdoch is at very little risk here, other than having to pay lawyers. One can’t say the same for Trump.

Do see Trump meets toughest opponent: his own base at Axios, by Neal Rothschild. It seems the base is suffering from whiplash over several new developments.

The Wall Street Journal story about Trump’s birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein has pretty much eaten the news cycle. Right-wing media and websites are still pretending the story is a hoax. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is typical:

Want to know why Americans rate media credibility below that of used-car salesmen? The Wall Street Journal gave us a great demonstration last night. And now Donald Trump will make yet another example of a media company — this time, the Murdochs.

It’s a nothingburger, Morrissey says, even if the letter is authentic. And now Trump is going to sue the Wall Street Journal, and the Murdochs are going to be sorry!

Trump did indeed threaten to sue the Murdochs, claiming he didn’t write the letter and the story is false. Except I do know something about the newspaper biz, and I know that the big newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times have their own in-house lawyers. And one of the things those lawyers do is review controversial scoops to be sure the newspaper isn’t opening itself up to a lawsuit. I very much doubt the Wall Street Journal would have run with the story if there was any doubt whatsoever that the letter was authentic. Further, it’s my understanding (the original story is behind a subscription paywall, so I haven’t read it) that the WSJ story draws no conclusions but simply reports what’s in the letter.

And I also know a little about libel law. Truth is a near-absolute defense. The only exceptions I could find involved private citizens, not public figures, who argued that something published about them might have been true, but was done maliciously for no purpose other than to harm them. Where public figures are concerned, especially elected officials, the public’s right to know prevails. I’m sure the WSJ lawyers made sure the story as published was liability-proof.

My guess is that Trump will be talked out of filing the suit, because a suit would open up a big can of worms labeled “discovery.” Most likely he’ll go through a period of saying he’s “thinking” of filing a suit, and then he’ll just fail to get around to it.

[Update: I was wrong; he filed a suit today already. This is a stupid move on his part, IMO. This difference here is that this is going to keep the Epstein issue in the news, and is likely to bring about more leaks and revelations.]

The letter itself is beyond creepy but doesn’t absolutely prove that Trump did anything criminal or knew about Epstein’s sex-trafficking activities. It sounds a bit like something a precocious 15-year-old would produce, and Trump must have been about 56 at the time. And as Trump is a known sexual predator this isn’t really telling us anything about him many of us hadn’t already realized. Whether this will put any cracks in the Right’s pathological denial of what sort of man Trump really is remains to be seen.

Trump’s other response to the story was to order AG Pam Bondi to release any “pertinent” grand jury testimony — subject to court approval — that helped indict Epstein of sex trafficking. Josh Marshall points out the problems with this idea:

First, grand jury testimony is secret and unauthorized release of it is a serious crime. Judges can under some circumstances allow the release of grand jury testimony. But they rarely do. So “subject to Court approval” makes this whole statement basically meaningless. At most it’s a way to blame some judge for the coverup.

Second, agreeing to release only the information Trump or Bondi find “pertinent” makes the whole thing not only meaningless but laughable. My defense attorney will allow the jury to see all the pertinent information from the investigation!

Third and most importantly, no one has ever talked about grand jury testimony. It’s not even clear what testimony he’s referring to. To the extent anyone knows just what the government has, the focus has always been on materials confiscated from Epstein during the 2019 investigation and especially what was taken from his residence and safe when he was arrested. So the whole “grand jury testimony” thing is a silly red herring.

Someone on MSNBC last night said that Ghislaine Maxwell has an appeal of her conviction pending, which makes the release of any Epstein testimony even more unlikely.

Do read Why Trump Can’t Shake Jeffrey Epstein by Ezra Klein at the New York Times. It brings the QAnon believers into focus to show why they so stubbornly stick with Trump. They sound a lot like an apocalypse cult that is absolutely certain Jesus will return in glory on such and such a date. The faithful leave their jobs and give away their possessions to be ready. And then when the great event fails to happen, and they are ruined, they just assume they got the date wrong and choose another date. Their faith in this glorious thing has become so central to their lives and self-identities that they can’t give it up.

But Trump is worse than the Jesus who just doesn’t show up. He’s betraying these people with every policy decision. For example, some apparently believed Trump would release the government’s secret cure for cancer, which they had, so they wouldn’t have to die. Instead, he ended a lot of promising cancer research by cutting off funds. Because of Trump, a whole lot about life in the United States is going to get a whole lot harder, especially if you don’t have much money.

In other news — nobody believes that CBS cancelled it’s top-rated Late Show With Stephen Colbert for “financial reasons.” Colbert will still be on until his current contract ends in May. Then no more Late Show. I assume CBS will fill the time with old movies. I am hoping Colbert gets picked up by one of the cable companies, like HBO or Comedy Central.

And this morning Trump’s cuts to NPR, PDS, and foreign aid passed in the House, which means the cuts just need Trump’s signature to become law.

Update: See Marcy Wheeler, Pam Bondi Reportedly Created 1,000 Witnesses to the Jeffrey Epstein File. That must be the file that was on Bondi’s desk that later was determined to not exist.

Earlier today there were headlines saying Trump war preparing to fire Jerome Powell as head of the Federal Reserve. I take it that Trump has TACO’d on that plan already. But Powell’s term ends in May 2026, and it’s a sure thing that Trump will appoint someone else to the Fed who will let Trump dictate monetary policy. So we’re doomed eventually.

Trump wants the Fed to cut interest rates to goose the economy. But this would also goose inflation, which is already heating up again because of Trump’s stupid tariffs. So whatever is left of the U.S. economy by then Trump will effectively kill off.

At Talking Points Memo, Hunter Walker reports that Millions of Dollars and Diverted Disaster Resources Were Used to Build ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’  Apparently Rhonda Santis  tapped Florida’s disaster response account to build Trump a prison camp.

And the Houston Chronicle blasts Homeland Security Secretary Gnome for her gross mismanagement of FEMA and the botched federal response to the recent floods.

Trump continues to play the cornered rat over Jeffrey Epstein. Now the Epstein files are a Democratic hoax.

Got that? If you’re a MAGA still talking about Epstein Trump doesn’t want your support. You’re dead to him. So straighten up and do as you’re told.

Trump is a case study in Acting Guilty, in other words.

Josh Marshall asks What Is He Doing?  Calling the files a Democratic hoax begs the question of why the Democrats went to all the trouble to create a hoax and then not leak it. Because clearly there was something that people in the Trump Administration were calling “Epstein files” that suddenly had to be erased from collective memory. The best explanation for Trump’s lame handling of this controversy, Josh suggests, is that Trump is a one-trick pony. Blaming the nefarious Dems and calling the controversy a hoax is what he always does.

Like you, I’ve been at this Trump thing for way too long to let myself think this is the pivot where his magic wears off. But I’m kind of struggling to come up with another theory of what’s happening. I don’t think he’s going to be able to sell the idea that there’s some damning information out there but that it was created by Obama to frame him. I guess you could say, “Why, Josh? It’s worked again and again.” And that’s true. But he’s in charge. He’s got an Attorney General who will do whatever he asks. Why not release the proof about what Obama and Hillary did? But he’s going both with the “I was framed” story while the people who run his DOJ and FBI are saying they’ve looked at the materials and there’s nothing there.

So they aren’t keeping their stories straight. It’s just a mess.

I had not realized that Jeffrey Epstein had become so central to the MAGA fantasy universe. Apparently this really is blowing up MAGA. Trump is even being slammed by his followers on Truth Social. This is turning into a big deal.

The best thing I’ve read so far is by David French, MAGA Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Jeffrey Epstein. This looks beyond just the current roiling of MAGA to the probable eventual breakup of MAGA and what this will do to the Republican party. Just read it. And let me know what you think.

[Update: Steve M is skeptical that MAGA is going to break up. It may not just yet. But there’s been one nativist right-wing movement after another in the U.S. for about as long as there has been a U.S. In the antebellum period there were Know-Nothings, and after the Civil War came the Ku Klux Klan. And then in the early 20th century the Klan flared up again. After World War II came McCarthyism and the pseudo-conservatives that Richard Hofstadter wrote about in the 1950s and 1960s. More recently there was the Tea Party. These movements are not identical and didn’t focus on exactly the same issues, but in many ways it’s all one pathology, complete with nutty conspiracy theories. MAGA is just the newest version. If the past is our guide, MAGA will collapse eventually, and then after some period of time it will reform as something else around some other personality or issue.]

And see also Dave Weigel, Why MAGA can’t move on from the ‘Epstein files’. (Note that Weigel has left WaPo and is now writing for Semafor. WaPo has lost nearly all of its best editorial writers, IMO.  Way to go, Jeff Bezos.)

As far as I can tell, the MAGA faithful are still refusing to consider that the coverup is about protecting Trump. Mehdi Hasan put together a video documenting how close Trump and Epstein were for many years. They had a falling out a few years ago, but not over Epstein’s well-documented vices.

And see also MAGA cares more about Jeffrey Epstein than dying without Medicaid, which explains everything by Will Bunch.

I wasn’t initially planning to write about Epstein because in a moment of unAmerican raids on immigrants by masked secret police and GOP boasting about its new concentration camps, a sex scandal — even one that touches Trump — didn’t feel so important. But watching the MAGA implosion in recent days has made me realize I was wrong — as are the parade of Democratic elected officials who go on MSNBC to declare that any story not about Medicaid cuts is “just a distraction.”

In other news: The Miami Herald is reporting that  Hundreds at Alligator Alcatraz have no criminal charges, Miami Herald learns.  No surprise, but habeas corpus has not lawfully been suspended. This means those hundreds of incarcerations are unlawful.

In more other news: See Trump Is Gutting Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Response in the New York Times. As I wrote in the last post, Trump seems to think natural disasters just don’t ever happen, and if they do happen it’s something no one could have seen coming. This act is going to get real old if people stop getting timely warnings about hurricanes and the other major storms that do happen every year. Trump doesn’t seem to grasp he’s setting up his own administration to fail at something that can kill him politically.

This is a must-watch bit from Chris Hayes’s show last night. Trump has a long history of being absolutely astonished that there are such things as natural disasters. Who could have known?

See also Trump and Noem’s attacks on FEMA blew up in the most predictable way. The plan had been to abolish FEMA and expect states to take care of their own disaster relief. Apparently this is being re-thought. I’m not sure Trump is capable of remembering what he is supposed to be re-thinking from one hour to the next, though.

Let us not forget how he cut the pandemic early warning program before the Covid pandemic. Trump’s standard plan is to wait until there’s a fire, and then if no one else puts it out he’ll maybe start organizing a fire department. While being astonished (note accordion movements with his hands) that there are such things as fires. Nobody ever saw a house burn down before!

I’ve read that the flood in Kerr County, Texas, was in a 100-year flood zone. This  means the chance of a flood in any given year is very small, but not nonexistent.

And file this one under What the Bleep Is Wrong With These People?

A Texas county devastated by deadly flooding earlier this month rejected federal funds in 2021 that could have helped install a flood warning system, with local officials and residents arguing they didn’t want to be “bought” by the Biden administration.

As far back as 2016, officials considered a $1 million siren and gauge system to warn both locals and the flood-prone region’s many visitors, the Texas Tribune reported. But despite multiple meetings and FEMA grant applications, funding efforts repeatedly stalled, first due to missing mitigation plans, then due to shifting priorities after Hurricane Harvey.

In 2021, the Biden administration awarded Kerr County $10.2 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, which could have been used for flood prevention infrastructure. But commissioners, facing political pressure from conservative residents, opted not to pursue a warning system.

At an April 2022 meeting, one citizen called the White House a “criminal treasonous communist government,” urging the county to reject the money altogether. Others echoed that sentiment, saying they didn’t want the federal government’s help.

“We don’t want to be bought by the federal government, thank you very much,” a resident said. “We’d like the federal government to stay out of Kerr County and their money.”

While the county ultimately kept the funds, they allocated the majority, about $8 million, to sheriff’s department upgrades and public employee stipends.

Sometimes the government isn’t the problem, folks. And sometimes it is. Secretary Gnome is doing a terrible job. FEMA is much less useful because of her.

(I saw her name spelled Gnome in a chryon a few days ago. So that’s her name now.)

We know that there will be tornadoes and hurricanes this summer. There will be wildfires. There could be more floods. There could be earthquakes. I understand the New Madrid Seismic Zone has been acting up lately. We don’t know exactly what will happen,, but these things do happen. Hurricanes and tornadoes in particular always hipper, somewhere in the U.S., every year. Yet they catch Trump completely by surprise, as if he never heard of such things before. .

Update: Steve Bannon is telling his followers that the GOP could lose 40 House seats over the Epstein files sideshow. Not over stripping health care from millions of people or slowing up the deficit on tax cuts for the rich or anything else they’ve been up to. Bleeping Jeffrey Epstein. They’re like children.

Gallup has some interesting data on immigration. It’s getting more popular. No, really.

 Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. At the same time, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.

These shifts reverse a four-year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in 2021 and reflect changes among all major party groups.

Also,

In addition to supporting increased or stable immigration levels, more Americans now favor offering undocumented immigrants pathways to citizenship, while fewer support stringent measures to deter or reverse illegal immigration.

Gallup attributes this change to a drop in illegal border crossings. Maybe. But I’ve always seen “illegal immigration” as two separate issues. Border security is one issue, and treatment of undocumented immigrants who have made the U.S. their home is a another issue. Why are people getting more sympathetic toward immigrants, undocumented and otherwise? Could it be that the ICE vibe is turning people off?

Josh Marshall has more to say:

A new Gallup poll taken over the month of June shows Trump support on “handling the immigration issue” now stands at 35% with 62% opposing. Needless to say that’s a very, very low level of support, especially on what is viewed as Trump’s sheet anchor issue. Unsurprisingly these numbers break down along sharply partisan lines, with essentially no support from Democrats, 28% support from independents and 81% of Republicans. (I’m focusing on this new Gallup poll. But the trend is evident and often in even starker terms from other pollsters. Gallup has if anything tilted, in methodological terms, slightly GOP-friendly in recent years.) Along with these numbers we also see a strong shift, much as we did in Trump’s first term, with more atmospheric support for immigration. Gallup shows a sharp uptick in the number of Americans who believe immigration is a net positive for the United States and who support various policies to open pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

My impression is that Stephen Miller is the one who’s really driving immigration policy, while an increasingly feeble-minded Trump just signs off on things. But it appears they both sincerely believe that most Americans actually enjoy seeing videos of the ICE arrests and hearing about the nasty places people are being sent. Yes, with MAGA the cruelty is the point. But most Americans aren’t MAGA. Are there plans to evacuate detainees from Alligator Alcatraz in the event of a hurricane? I’m guessing not.

There are also plans to start denaturalizing citizens like never before. Denaturalization has happened before, but it’s a rare thing. Now I take it the DOJ is actively looking through the records of naturalized citizens even for innocent discrepancies that would allow that individual to be denaturalized and deported. It doesn’t matter if they have no criminal records and are hard-working members of their communities. There are no good naturalized citizens in MAGA world, except for Melania. I expect them to go after Zohran Mamdani, who needs to keep his ass in New York City for the next few months. He may be safer there.

And I’m just seeing new headlines that a California farm worker died as a result of an ICE raid. The individual fell from a 20-foot building. This seems — unnecessary. This must be peak growing season in California. These raids really could impact the food supply.

Meanwhile, it’s been fun to watch MAGA tear itself apart over the Jeffrey Epstein issue. I hadn’t realized Epstein was so central to the MAGA fantasy universe. And now Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino is so upset with the DoJ over their attempt to sweep the Epstein controversy under the rug that he may resign. To which I say, bye.  But I guess the MAGAts really did notice that AG Bondi had gone from saying the Epstein files are on her desk to saying they don’t exist. And the video that is supposed to show the door to Epstein’s jail cell on the night he died has been “modified,” according to Wired.

Now let’s see if these geniuses can figure out who is being protected. And it looks like Laura Loomer would be a no. She has not.