The Conversation -- August 8, 2025
One of Trump's media toadies asks Baby Trump if "the hate-trump business model is going out of business":
Trump Secretly Advances Military Dictatorship. Helene Cooper, et al., of the New York Times: Donald “Trump has secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that his administration has deemed terrorist organizations, according to people familiar with the matter. The decision to bring the American military into the fight is the most aggressive step so far in the administration’s escalating campaign against the cartels. It signals Mr. Trump’s continued willingness to use military forces to carry out what has primarily been considered a law enforcement responsibility to curb the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs. The order provides an official basis for the possibility of direct military operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels. U.S. military officials have started drawing up options for how the military could go after the groups, the people familiar with the conversations said.... Directing the military to crack down on the illicit trade also raises legal issues, including whether it would count as 'murder' if U.S. forces acting outside of a congressionally authorized armed conflict were to kill civilians — even criminal suspects — who pose no imminent threat.” Thanks to Ken W. for the heads-up.
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Marie: You know how some of us like to kid ourselves that Trump will at least mostly adhere to the Constitution? I don't think we can get away with that anymore: ~~~
~~~ Nicole Markus of Politico: “... Donald Trump on Thursday said he was ordering a 'new and highly accurate CENSUS,' saying it will be based on the 'information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024.... People who are in our country illegally will NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS,' he wrote in the Truth Social post announcing the move. The census is a constitutionally mandated count of every person in the United States every 10 years, which was last conducted in 2020. A full census has never been conducted mid-decade in this manner, nor has one ever excluded noncitizens from the count. Censuses are immensely important in American governance; each count determines how many House seats every state gets through a process called apportionment, and the results of the census help direct billions of dollars in federal, state and local funding. Trump has been trying to include a citizenship question on the census since his first term, though the Supreme Court struck the effort down on procedural grounds in 2019.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Steve Benen of MSNBC: “The language of the U.S. Constitution is unambiguous when it comes to the decennial census: The government is responsible for counting 'all persons' in the United States as part of a process that’s conducted every 'ten years.' There are no asterisks. There is no fine print. The first census was in 1790, and the count has been conducted every 10 years since, including one in 2020. Donald Trump, however, apparently has a new plan in mind that runs counter to our constitutional system.... The president and his party are so desperate to maintain power at all costs, they are exploring every possible avenue to rig the political process so that Republicans can’t lose, even if voters want them to.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Heather Cox Richardson has similar thoughts, steeped in her knowledge of U.S. history.
Control Freak/Authoritarian Begins Takeover of Washington, D.C. Chris Cameron of the New York Times: Donald “Trump has ordered an unspecified number of federal law enforcement agents to be deployed in Washington, D.C., days after threatening a federal takeover of the city and claiming that crime there was 'totally out of control.' Washington’s crime rates — ranging from violent crime to thefts and burglaries — have been falling significantly, but the order follows the president’s effort to paint the nation’s capital as rife with violent crime.... 'If D.C. doesn’t get its act together,' Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday, 'we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City.' The deployment, starting Friday at 12:01 a.m., would include law enforcement officers from a wide swath of agencies across the federal government.” See also related story, linked below, on Jeanine Pirro's effort to harden D.C. anti-crime laws.
Control Freak/Authoritarian Takes Over Grant Funding. Good-bye, Science. John Timmer of Ars Technica: "On Thursday, the Trump administration issued an executive order asserting political control over grant funding, including all federally supported research. The order requires that any announcement of funding opportunities be reviewed by the head of the agency or someone they designate, which means a political appointee will have the ultimate say over what areas of science the US funds. Individual grants will also require clearance from a political appointee and 'must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.' The order also instructs agencies to formalize the ability to cancel previously awarded grants at any time if they're considered to 'no longer advance agency priorities.' Until a system is in place to enforce the new rules, agencies are forbidden from starting new funding programs. In short, the new rules would mean that all federal science research would need to be approved by a political appointee who may have no expertise in the relevant areas, and the research can be canceled at any time if the political winds change. It would mark the end of a system that has enabled US scientific leadership for roughly 70 years." See related story, linked below, about how Energy Secretary Chris Wright is going to "update" those old overly-sciency climate reports.
Jacob Bogage & David Lynch of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump celebrated the start of his long-awaited tariffs Thursday, declaring that money was “flowing into the USA at levels not thought even possible!” — though economists say the cost of the import taxes will probably get passed on to U.S. consumers and businesses. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the federal government could collect $50 billion a month in tariff revenue, which Trump administration officials hope will be a boon to the U.S.'s dismal financial health. U.S. stocks were mixed in late-morning trading Thursday, as investors appeared unbothered by the new taxes.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Paul Krugman on why a delusional Trump is worse than the trade "deals" he thinks he made -- but didn't. "... I don’t think we should feel reassured about Trump’s trade delusions because he’s lost touch with reality across the board.... Trump will be the last person to recognize that there are limits to his ability to bully the world, on trade or anything else." MB: I think the big danger is psychological. When Whiney Baby finds out his "deals" were unenforceable or unworkable chimera, he will feel he's been betrayed. That will cause him to lash out in ways he thinks are most damaging. I don't mean I think he would, you know, nuke Brussels, but he would certainly double or treble the already-ridiculous tariffs & he might do things like abandon NATO.
Andrew Ackerman of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump announced of social media on Thursday that he would be nominating his economic adviser Stephen Miran to the Federal Reserve board, in his first bid this term to shape the institution that he has aggressively pushed to lower rates. Miran is the chairman of the Council Economic Advisors and Trump said he would serve just through Jan. 31, through the end of the current vacancy.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Colby Smith & Tony Romm of the New York Times: “Mr. Miran served at the Treasury Department during the first Trump administration..., before joining Hudson Bay Capital Management, a hedge fund, as a senior strategist. Mr. Miran donated to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, federal campaign records show. Since returning to the administration, Mr. Miran has overseen work at the White House to produce research about the economic effects of the president’s policies. In that role, he has been unwavering in his support for Mr. Trump’s agenda, at times producing reports that economists have questioned. In particular, Mr. Miran has echoed Mr. Trump in maintaining that high tariffs would not cause consumer prices to rise significantly.” MB: Behind the green eyeshades is a magical thinker.
Stephanie Dhue & Sharon Epperson of CNBC: "... Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to increase the availability of alternative assets in 401(k) plans. The order instructs the Department of Labor to reexamine its guidance to employers and plan administrators on incorporating such assets into retirement plans. Alternative investments are a broad category that includes real estate, cryptocurrencies and private-market assets, among others.... Although an executive order to independent agencies does not change policy, it is a strong signal of Trump’s priorities and support of alternative investments in retirement plans.... Some financial advisors are concerned that 401(k) investors lack the knowledge or experience to incorporate these more sophisticated, and often more costly, investments into their portfolios."
Michael Bender & Anemona Hartocollis of the New York Times: Donald “Trump on Thursday ordered his Education Department to collect data on the race, gender, test scores and grade point averages of college applicants in an effort to scrutinize whether universities are giving minorities preference in admissions. The move would provide the government with information that has long been on the wish list of conservative activists in search of evidence that schools have been dodging a 2023 Supreme Court decision that largely barred the consideration of race in college admissions. Admissions data has increasingly become a focus of the Trump administration as part of its effort to shift the ideological balance of academia, which the president views as hostile to conservatives.... Justin Driver, a Yale Law School professor, said the changes were 'another catastrophic blow in the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on American higher education.'”
Here's Just One Bribe Donald Trump Accepted. Kenneth Vogel, et al., of the New York Times: In late February 2025, Oliver Burckhardt “donated $5 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump political committee, that paved the way for him to attend the event.” On March 1, he attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, where he got face time with Donald Trump & told Mr. Trump about pricey bandages his company Extremity Care makes. Mr. Burckhardt also gave Mr. Trump “a flier urging the Trump administration to reverse a plan to restrict Medicare reimbursement for the bandages and criticizing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for having 'rammed through a policy that would create more suffering and death for diabetic patients on Medicare.' The next morning, Mr. Trump posted the flier on his social media site.... About one month later, the Trump administration announced it would delay until next year the Biden administration plan to limit Medicare’s coverage of the bandages, known as skin substitutes, saying that it was reviewing its policies.... The February donation by Mr. Burckhardt’s company, which was revealed in a report filed late last week with the Federal Election Commission, was among dozens of seven- and eight-figure contributions to MAGA Inc. from donors, many of whom were rewarded with presidential face time to plead for their causes.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Marie: One of the oddest things about the Epstein cover-up is that the cover-uppers don't seem to recognize that Trump's conspiracy-centered-QAnon-loony base is extremely capable of conjuring up conspiracy theories. It's what they do. The answer to why Trump is hiding the Epstein files is the Occam's Razor of conspiracy theories. Why would you hide information about pedofiles? Because the information implicates you. It's effing obvious! Bill Kristol gets it: ~~~
~~~ Bill Kristol of the Bulwark: “It’s worth recalling that after reviewing the files, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel ordered FBI agents to black out every mention of Trump, according to Bloomberg News. Why did they do that? After all, if Trump only pops up occasionally in the files as an innocent bystander, or as a subject of third-party hearsay with no supporting or corroborating evidence, why the need to blackout the mentions? If Trump did nothing 'concerning' while spending time with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein — as Ghislaine Maxwell is reported to have told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche before being moved to a far nicer federal prison facility — then what’s the problem? Why not just release the files, let Trump debunk whatever unverified suggestions may be in there, and avoid accusations of a coverup? Perhaps because the files tell us more about the Trump-Epstein relationship? Perhaps because they suggest Trump has something to hide? That would be the simplest explanation of Trump’s own behavior over the last several months. That would be the simplest explanation of the behavior of Bondi and Blanche and Patel.... [JD Vance's] dinner was canceled. But the coverup is still on.” (Also linked yesterday.)
About that "Epstein situation" meeting JayDee planned to hold at his residence? Before the meeting took place, the plan was leaked. So in answer to a reporter's question in the Oval, JayDee said there was no planned meeting and the whole story -- which he attributed to CNN's bad sourcing -- was "fake news." Evidently that was a porkie: ~~~
~~~ Kristen Holmes of CNN: “A much-anticipated meeting between Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Vice President JD Vance and others was moved from Vance’s residence to the White House Wednesday night after intense media coverage, a source familiar with the logistics told CNN. They discussed a number of topics, including the Jeffrey Epstein case and potential next steps, the source said. The meeting was originally planned to take place at Vance’s DC home and was also supposed to include White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, CNN previously reported.”
Lisa Friedman & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times exonerate JayDee: “Military engineers raised the levels of a river in Ohio so the Secret Service could provide security to Vice President JD Vance during a family boating trip, agency officials said Thursday. Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, said the vice president had not been aware the request had been made to alter the water flow into the Little Miami River on Aug. 2.... The boats used by the Secret Service for security or an emergency evacuation are usually motorized and need deeper waters to operate, [a Secret Service spokesman] said.... During [a scouting mission for the excursion], one of the local public safety boats ran aground, an indication that the water level was too low for that vessel.”
Marie: Right after Kristi Noem's good squad forcibly ejected Sen. Alex Padilla from what was supposed to be a press conference in a federal building, wrestled him to the floor and cuffed him, JayDee Vance referred to the Senator as “José Padilla.” Vance's press person tried to put this off as Vance “misspeaking” and said Vance “must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.” I was certain Vance meant the “José” to be understood as a racial slur. I see Sen. Padilla agrees with me: ~~~
~~~ If Usha doesn't get out soon, I'll have to suspect she deserves JayDee.
Adam Goldman, et al., of the New York Times: “The F.B.I. is deepening its purge of employees, forcing out senior agents like a former acting head of the bureau and another whose recent ascent had angered Trump supporters.... Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as the acting director in the early days of the Trump administration, was among those being told to leave by Friday.... Also being ousted this week is the head of the F.B.I.’s Washington field office, Steven J. Jensen.... Mr. Jensen had been a target of conservatives because in overseeing the bureau’s domestic terrorism operations section at the time, he played a key role in responding to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.... Mr. Driscoll ... had become an unlikely champion of the bureau after accidentally being catapulted to the director’s chair on Inauguration Day. He resisted demands to turn over the names of F.B.I. agents who had worked on the investigation into the Capitol attack, fighting off what was seen as a possible purge.... Mr. Jensen’s ouster, in particular, is an embarrassing chapter in Kash Patel’s tenure as director given that he had promoted Mr. Jensen and defended the decision on national television. Other agents being forced out are Walter Giardina and Christopher Meyer, both of whom had worked on cases involving Mr. Trump.... In addition, Spencer Evans, a senior agent who had already been pushed out of his post overseeing a field office in Las Vegas and forced to take a new position in Huntsville, Ala., was dismissed.onavirus vaccine when he worked as deputy assistant director for human resources at F.B.I. headquarters.” (Also linked yesterday.) A CBS News story is here. ~~~
~~~ ⭐ MEANWHILE. Tom Dreisbach of NPR: "Less than five years after urging rioters to 'kill' police at the Capitol, a former Jan. 6 defendant is working as a senior adviser for the Department of Justice, which has been dramatically remade under the second Trump administration. NPR has obtained police bodycam footage from multiple angles of the former defendant and current administration official, Jared Wise, berating officers and calling them 'Nazi' and 'Gestapo.' NPR located the footage, which has not previously been published, in a review of thousands of court exhibits from Jan. 6 criminal cases, obtained through legal action by a coalition of media organizations. The Department of Justice had introduced the footage as an exhibit in Wise's trial. NPR also obtained the transcript of Wise's testimony, in which he acknowledged that he repeatedly yelled 'kill 'em' as officers were being attacked and tried to explain his actions. Wise was not convicted of any crimes related to Jan. 6, due to ... [Donald] Trump's order to end all Capitol riot prosecutions." It's worth reading the full article. (Also linked yesterday.)
Frances Vinall of the Washington Post: “The United States is offering a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday, calling the leader 'one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.' The previous Trump administration in 2020 indicted Maduro on narcoterrorism and related charges and announced a $15 million bounty, which later went up to $25 million. It remains unlikely that the U.S. would be able to arrest Maduro while he remains in Venezuela, short of engaging the military, but the reward limits his ability to travel and increases pressure on the authoritarian socialist ruler already isolated from much of the world.” The AP's report is here.
It never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it. -- Pete Hegseth, announcing DOD would be reinstalling a Confederate statue in Arlington National Cemetery ~~~
Most countries don't celebrate traitors. -- Marie Burns ~~~
Jenny Gathright & Meagan Flynn of the Washington Post: “U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed prosecutor who handles most of D.C.’s adult crime, intensified her focus on the D.C. Council this week, calling on city lawmakers to amend policies focused on second chances for criminal offenders as the Trump administration accuses the liberal city of being soft on crime. Pirro sent council members a letter Wednesday, asking them to reverse or adjust a set of laws that expand options for people with criminal convictions to have their records sealed, and allow people to seek shorter or reduced sentences for crimes committed while under the age of 25. At a news conference Thursday, Pirro said young people in D.C. are committing too much crime and are being 'coddled.'”
~~~ Racist ... Joe Heim of the Washington Post: “A Confederate memorial removed from Arlington National Cemetery in 2023 will be reinstalled, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday. The sculpture had been removed as part of a congressionally mandated effort to rid military bases and sites of Confederate names and images. The decision is the latest in a series of moves by ... [Donald] Trump’s administration to restore Confederate names and symbols that had been discarded as part of the nation’s racial reconciliation efforts following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.... The 32-foot bronze statue commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy was unveiled at a ceremony presided over by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, almost 50 years after the Civil War ended.” MB: It's hard to find a more racist organization that the Daughters of the Confederacy or a more racist 20th-century president than Wilson. ~~~
~~~ AND Homophobic. The Cruelty Is the Point. Konstantin Toropin of the AP: “The U.S. Air Force said Thursday it would deny all transgender service members who have served between 15 and 18 years the option to retire early and would instead separate them without retirement benefits. One Air Force sergeant said he was 'betrayed and devastated' by the move. The move means that transgender service members will now be faced with the choice of either taking a lump-sum separation payment offered to junior troops or be removed from the service. An Air Force spokesperson told The Associated Press that 'although service members with 15 to 18 years of honorable service were permitted to apply for an exception to policy, none of the exceptions to policy were approved.' About a dozen service members had been 'prematurely notified' that they would be able to retire before that decision was reversed....” Thanks to RAS for the link. ~~~
~~~ Mare: More evidence that a person has to be a super-jerk to take a job in Trump's administration. Even a weasly person who is askeert trans people will give him cooties & maybe cut his sperm count, has to know that all service members are entitled to the retirement benefits they've earned.
Leo Shane of Military Times: “Veterans Affairs leaders on Wednesday announced plans to terminate nearly all of its collective bargaining contracts with federal unions, upending employment agreements for hundreds of thousands of department workers. The move affects members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the AFL-CIO (AFGE), the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).... In a statement, VA Secretary Doug Collins attacked the unions as inefficient and harmful to veterans’ care.... '[The] decision to rip up the negotiated union contract for majority of its workforce is another clear example of retaliation against AFGE members for speaking out against the illegal, anti-worker, and anti-veteran policies of this administration,' [AFGE National President Everett Kelley] said.”
David Fischer of the AP: “A federal judge on Thursday ordered a temporary halt to construction at an immigration detention center — built in the middle of the Florida Everglades and dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz' — as attorneys argue whether it violates environmental laws. The facility can continue to operate and hold detainees for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but workers will be barred from adding any new filling, paving or infrastructure for the next 14 days. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued the ruling during a hearing and said she will issue a written order later Thursday. Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe have asked Williams to issue a preliminary injunction to halt operations and further construction. The suit claims the project threatens environmentally sensitive wetlands that are home to protected plants and animals and would reverse billions of dollars’ worth of environmental restoration.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Mark Oliver of the Guardian: “The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, is facing growing criticism from scientists who say their 'worst fears' were realized when Wright revealed that the Trump administration would 'update' the US’s premier climate crisis reports. Wright, a former oil and gas executive, told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins earlier this week that the administration was reviewing national climate assessment reports published by past governments. Produced by scientists and peer-reviewed, there have been five national climate assessment (NCA) reports since 2000 and they are considered the gold standard report of global heating and its impacts on human health, agriculture, water supplies and air pollution. 'We’re reviewing them, and we will come out with updated reports on those and with comments on those reports,' said Wright, who is one of the main supporters of the administration’s 'drill, baby, drill' agenda to boost fossil fuels, which are the primary cause of the climate crisis. Wright was speaking days after his agency, the Department of Energy, produced a report claiming concern over the climate crisis was overblown. That energy department report was slammed by scientists for being a 'farce' full of misinformation.”
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: “Under the current Supreme Court’s vision of a rigidly colorblind Constitution — indifferent to either racial inequality or the mechanisms of color caste — the answer is very likely to be yes [to the question of] 'whether [Louisiana’s] intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.' There is also the matter of Chief Justice John Roberts, who has led the court’s effort to curb, limit and undermine the Voting Rights Act. One assumes that having gotten the court to strike down one part of the law in 2013, he is eager to get it to strike down another, considering his decades-long hostility to the law, which has been in his sights since he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration....
“If by American democracy we mean a pluralistic, multiracial society of political and social equals, then American democracy as we know it began with the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 60 years ago [Wednesday]. It’s this America that Donald Trump and his movement hope to condemn to the ash heap of history. It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.... The Supreme Court’s war on the Voting Rights Act precedes Trump but it is simpatico with his aims.”
David Goodman & Julie Bosman of the New York Times: “Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said on Thursday that the F.B.I. had agreed to his request to help track down dozens of Democratic Texas state lawmakers who left the state to prevent a vote on a redistricting plan. The activation of federal agents could create a standoff between the Trump administration and state leaders in Illinois, where many of the absent Democrats have taken refuge. But Mr. Cornyn’s statement was also issued with a political backdrop. Locked in a tough Republican primary fight, Mr. Cornyn and his opponent, Texas’ hard-right attorney general, Ken Paxton, have been competing for days to look tough with the runaway Democrats. By Thursday afternoon, it was still not clear whether federal agents actually planned to take action in the case. 'The reality is that all that he has said is that the F.B.I. has been authorized to locate the House Democrats — nothing more,' Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, told reporters at the Illinois State Fair on Thursday, accusing Mr. Cornyn of 'a lot of grandstanding.'” (Also linked yesterday.)
“Women Are Going to Die." Jeanna Smialek & Stephanie Nolen of the New York Times: “The Trump administration’s plans to incinerate $9.7 million in birth control pills and other contraceptives stored in a Belgian warehouse have left European governments struggling as they try to prevent the destruction.... The decision to destroy the contraceptives has created alarm in Brussels and France as politicians scramble to figure out if the supplies have physically left the warehouse and how they can prevent their destruction.... 'U.S.A.I.D. was allegedly dismantled to prevent future wastage and to deliver value for money for the American people,' said Sarah Shaw, the associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices. 'It’s just egregious that they’re willing to waste $9 million worth of contraceptives that are so desperately needed.'” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: European governments are not "struggling." They hate us for our cruelty. As they should.
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Israel/Palestine, et al. Adam Rasgon, et al., of the New York Times: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel planned to take control of all of Gaza, bucking the advice of the Israeli military and warnings that expanding operations could endanger the hostages being held there and kill more Palestinian civilians. Mr. Netanyahu made the comments in an interview with Fox News ahead of a security cabinet meeting on Thursday to discuss a proposal to expand military operations in Gaza. They came as talks to achieve a cease-fire and the release of the hostages have hit an impasse, with Israeli and Hamas officials blaming each other for the deadlock. When asked whether Israel would take over all of Gaza, he responded, 'We intend to.' Mr. Netanyahu said the move would 'assure our security,' remove Hamas from power and enable the transfer of the civilian administration of Gaza to another party.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ This story has been updated. New Lede: “The Israeli government early on Friday approved a plan to expand the war by taking control of Gaza City, a pivotal and risky decision that went against the recommendations of the Israeli military. After 10 hours of deliberations, a majority of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet backed his proposal, according to a predawn statement from his office. At a later stage, the military is expected to push into central areas of the enclave where Hamas is believed to be holding Israeli hostages and where Israeli troops have largely refrained from operating before. But the government announcement did not explicitly pledge to do so.... The plan also allows for the provision of humanitarian aid to the civilian population 'outside the combat zones,' it said.” An AP story is here. ~~~
~~~ Courtney Kube, et al., of NBC News: “Commercial satellite images show the Israeli military building up troops and equipment near the border with Gaza that would support a possible new ground invasion of the Palestinian enclave, according to three U.S. officials and a former official who viewed the imagery. The images show troop movements and formations that the four sources recognized as signs of an imminent major ground operation.”
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Reader Comments (12)
Marie,
I really don’t know how you do it.
Some years ago, while working at a TV station, I inherited the job of fulfilling a requirement of our FCC license, which was to catalog the various areas of coverage the station provided through daily on-air news programming, local events, state and municipal coverage, etc.
The absolute worst were the crime reports. The coverage of stuff like stolen cars, drug arrests, B&E’s, DUI’s, assaults, and domestic disputes that required law enforcement involvement and were big enough to warrant a TV news report were all bad enough (especially in that, having to review all that crap makes one realize how many assholes there are out in just your part of the world).
But the worst of the worst were the child molestations, the sexual and physical abuse of sweet little children, the sex trafficking, the thousands of megabytes of kiddie porn found on some preacher’s laptop or pictures stashed in some guy’s desk.
Luckily, I only had to do this once a month. (I’m guessing the new FCC is only interested in whatever outrages the MAGA horde, and they sure don’t seem all that interested in sex trafficking, so…)
But you do this kind of thing every day. Seriously, I don’t know how you do it without a bottle of Bushmills on the desk.
This is where I go first thing, every morning. Sometimes pretty early in the morning. Some mornings I get cranky if the new day’s links aren’t up by 6:00 AM. “C’mon Marie, what’s the holdup? Squarespace acting up again?” But that’s just my somewhat OCD personality kicking in, it’s how much I rely on RC to start my day.
But then I scan the stories, and it’s like I’m right back going through horrors for the FCC. Every day now, the horrific bullshit from MAGA hell makes my skin crawl. And I just don’t know where to start. Each of the horrible Trump actions deserves commentary, deserves some kind of response, but the bandwidth isn’t there for all of it.
Still, it’s nice to read your occasional editorial asides, and the comments from our brother and sister RC denizens.
We’ll get through this (I hope), and I’m sure I’d survive without RealityChex, but it would be a helluva lot harder.
So thanks for all your hard work. I hope it provides some therapeutic/cathartic benefit for you. And thanks to all youse guys out there for your thoughts and comments on the sad state of our poor country.
We’ll get through this together. And save that Bushmills for the day Fatty waddles back to his cheesy lair.
So…
I know I’ve made this point before, but just imagine the Vesuvius of vitriol that would spew out the top of each and every thick MAGA skull were a Democratic president, Biden say, or Obama, or a future President Ocasio-Cortez (I wish) to pick a (non-white) BLM protester, who had been arrested for harassing police and importuning other protesters to “Kill them!”, halt his prosecution, give him an unconditional pardon, then hire him as a big mucky-muck at the Justice Department, give him an office, a cushy bullshit job and big salary, and give law and order the back of their hand.
Just imagine!
Fox would implode. Nazi influencers would produce thousands of hours of hair on fire, nuclear fission level podcasts. PoT congressional weasels would demand firing squads for anyone remotely connected to this outrageous injustice. The Supine Court would call its righty-right members back from their billionaire funded holidays for a special session to put on the warpaint and use for precedence every scrap of legal woo-woo going back to clay cuneiform tablets found in some dry desert ditch to right this horrible wrong against Jesus, god, and country.
But Fat Hitler does it and….
Nothing.
An economist is only one of the many things I am not, but....
On Krugman: Do hope someone follows what exactly happens to all these trade deal "slush funds" Krugman claims might not exist. If the Pretender can do "anything he wants" with what Krugman calls his imaginary 600 billion the EU is giving him, I'd like to know what imaginary things he does with it.
And on IRA assets. I'd think that allowing (encouraging, inviting) alternate "assets," especially crypto, into the mainstream of finance would automatically dilute the value of the dollar, which per Krugman is an American asset the Pretender in his trade deals is pretending to protect.
Gil Duran, who focuses on those other t**** donors and influencers - the Silicon Valley billionaires - in The Nerd Reich highlights an essay in The Wall Street Journal (and provides a gift link) written by playwright and "all-out Trumper and Fox channel regular," David Mamet, asking Did David Mamet Just Roast Peter Thiel's New Zealand dreams?
In the WSJ, Mamet criticizes "the fantasies of [billionaires] escaping into island bunker fortresses as the world falls apart around them....pointing out the flawed thinking of billionaire doomers who hope to ride out a future apocalypse in luxury and style."
Jonathan Chait, in The Atlantic, points out that Republicans used to trumpet the innovation of the American medical sector. Now they’re taking a meat axe to it.
"In Donald Trump’s second term, Republicans haven’t given up their opposition to universal coverage—far from it—but they have mostly stopped singing the praises of American health-care innovation. Indeed, they are taking a meat axe to it, slashing medical-research funding while elevating quacks and charlatans to positions of real power. The resulting synthesis is the worst of all worlds: a system that will lose its ability to develop new cures, while withholding its benefits from even more of the poor and sick."
@Akhilleus: As to your second point re: a Democrat doing something akin to what Trump & Co. have done -- that is, pardoning violent criminals & rewarding at least one of them with a DOJ job (not to mention firing agents & lawyers because they worked on prosecuting the violent criminals) -- well, yes.
But it doesn't have to be a "Democrat president" who is guilty of some unseemly act to cause the right to go crazy. It doesn't have to be an official act of any kind. Look what happens when a couple of hoodlums from Maryland -- not with any known association to the Democratic party or to D.C. Democratic officials or even to D.C. itself -- rough up Big Balls.
Not only does Trump jump up & down and claim that the act of these Maryland teens is so heinous that it proves Democrats can't run the city, he uses their crime as an excuse to rush his own goons into the city to police it. That is, it doesn't take even a minor bad act on the part of Democrats to cause a Republican president* to react with radical abandon -- to take away the rights of all of the people in a major U.S. city to select their own leaders who can make their own policing decisions. The people themselves don't have to do anything wrong to lose their rights. Nothing. No, a couple of random outside agitators -- with no connection to the city itself -- can overturn home rule for 700,000 citizens. When a GOP president* is the decider.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/us/trump-military-drug-cartels.
That'll fix it.
I'm thinking that it won't be long before the census will only be
counting Caucasian Men, over six feet tall, blue eyes, some hair,
only English speaking, must be Republican or had voted for fatso
for president*
Marie: Ja, you know, what happened to Big Balls is reminiscent of the Horst Wessel killing, which the Nazis glorified to justify reprisal campaigns against (name an enemy). Soon we may have "The Ballad of Big Balls" as a rally marching tune, along with "YMCA".
Hopium
Dummymander
"Election data analysts have tested whether a new gerrymander of Texas House districts would guarantee success for the GOP and the answer is, well, no. The state's current unfair maps have given Texas Republicans a 25-13 edge in House seats. The idea behind the dummymander is that a party can only fuck up districts so much before they start accidentally making other districts a little more competitive and susceptible to the opposition party in a sweep election cycle – like the one we might see next year. Texas Republicans might think they're creating five new GOP seats in a normal election year; what they might be doing is creating a few more Democratic seats if voters reject Republicans the way they have every time Trump – that magical being, that American talisman – is not atop the ballot."
Ken,
Actually, once we’re a fully fledged totalitarian state (sometime between now and Christmas), we won’t need the census. That count is used for fair allocation of resources, proper congressional representation, and to assist anyone whose work requires an accurate population figure.
Fatty is already just making up his own economic numbers. Red state gerrymandering has outlawed fair, democratic representation, and as for the various hard and soft sciences and public health officials whose work might require accurate population and demographic information, science and public health activities have been handed over to hacks and conspiracy theorists who just invent whatever figures are needed to support their fantasies.
So who needs a census?
More wag the dog…
So what, now we’re going to invade foreign nations to go after cartels? Because gee, the last time we got involved in Central America with military “advisors” (“Here, let me show you the best way to rape and murder nuns”) and sending arms to Iran to fund Contra death squads, it all went swimmingly.
And now we’re offering a $50 million reward for the capture of a foreign leader?
All this to provide cover for the Trump-Epstein Pedo File?
Maybe not. At least not solely. I’m guessing Drunk Pete is itching to “Get Lethal, y’all!” (His favorite phrase after “I’ll have another”).
And Cadet Bone Spurs certainly loves him some death dealing, long as he’s thousands of miles away.
Now he wants to take over DC and threatens to involve himself in the NYC mayor’s race while he looks for more universities to blackmail, and appoints hacks who flunked fifth grade science to be in charge of making funding decisions for scientific research. Oh yeah, and let’s build a Chernobyl facility on the moon. It’s not a hostile enough environment for life already. Could use a big ol’ dead zone. (Because when you think “Trump”, your next thought is “Safe nuclear power plant”, amirite?)
Other nations must be looking at us thinking “Holy hell! What the Christ is going on with the US? One minute they’re a great superpower, next minute it’s like the country had a stroke and they’re talking ragtime, going nuts with tariffs, putting bounties on foreign heads of state, walking around with their pants around their ankles and jabbering about stopping six wars.”
But sure. Let’s invade someone. Let’s send the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines out onto American streets to round up drug dealers.
What could go wrong? After all, every half-assed idea Trump dreams up works out perfectly.
Right?