Trump Favors Starvation As A Weapon. Not just food banks in America, but this:
Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash.
Since January, when the Trump administration issued an executive order that halted virtually all American foreign assistance, federal workers have sent the new political leaders of USAID repeated requests to ship the biscuits while they were useful, according to the two USAID employees. USAID bought the biscuits intending to have the World Food Programme distribute them, and under previous circumstances, career staff could have handed off the biscuits to the United Nations agency on their own. But since Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency disbanded USAID and the State Department subsumed the agency, no money or aid items can move without the approval of the new heads of American foreign assistance, several current and former USAID employees told me.
In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told representatives on the House Appropriations Committee that he would ensure that food aid would reach its intended recipients before spoiling. But by then, the order to incinerate the biscuits (which I later reviewed) had already been sent.
Why Netanyahu Coalition Is Endangered–‘We support genocide, just don’t make us fight’:
The future of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was thrown into doubt when an ultra-Orthodox party in Israel announced it was pulling out of the ruling coalition on Monday night. If more parties quit, they could weaken Mr. Netanyahu’s grip on power and bring Israel a step closer to its first elections since the war in Gaza began in October 2023.
At issue was a longstanding debate in the country over whether ultra-Orthodox religious students, who have long received exemptions from military service, can be conscripted. They argue that serving threatens their way of life, but many other Jewish Israelis resent what they regard as special treatment.
The issue has become more fraught during the Gaza war. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed in the conflict, prompting accusations that the ultra-Orthodox are sitting by while others die for them in battle.
You Knew This Was Gonna Happen:
The Senate on Tuesday voted to take up legislation to claw back $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting, signaling that the Republican-led Congress is poised to acquiesce to President Trump in a simmering battle with the White House over spending powers.
The 51-to-50 vote came after Republican leaders agreed to a handful of concessions to win the votes of holdouts who were uneasy with the proposed rescissions. G.O.P. leaders said on Tuesday they would strip out a $400 million cut that Mr. Trump requested to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, a move that the White House signaled it would not contest.
Even then, some Republican senators refused to support a move that they said would relinquish their constitutional power over federal spending, forcing their leaders to summon Vice President JD Vance to the Capitol to break a tie and ram the legislation through a pair of procedural votes.
“We’re lawmakers; we should be legislating,” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday night announcing her opposition to the package. “What we’re getting now is a direction from the White House and being told, ‘This is the priority. We want you to execute on it. We’ll be back with you with another round.’ I don’t accept that.”
There are always 50 Rethugs who do, though. Including Murkowski on the most consequential of all the votes. Wash, rinse, repeat. Spare me the ‘Will they, or won’t they’ narratives. They will.
DOJ Continues Wanton Lawlessness. They are merely the willing instrument of a Fascist government now:
Separately, the Justice Department has taken the unusual step of asking at least ninestates for copies of their voter rolls, and at least two have turned them over, according to state officials.
In addition, two DOJlawyers have asked states to share information about voters to implement a Trump executive order that would shift some power over elections from the states to Washington. Courts have temporarily blocked key provisions of that order, including changing mail ballot deadlines and requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship. The DOJ attorneys have asked to talk about a different provision, which has not been halted by the courts, focused on sharing information.
“President Trump and his allies are trying to lay the groundwork to interfere with a free and fair election in 2026,” said Samantha Tarazi, CEO of the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab.
I predict a 51-50 vote and/or a 6-3 or 5-4 vote giving Trump control of our elections.
Secret Police, Now Secret Lawyers. I hate to be such a downer, but information can be an enemy of Fascism:
While the Trump administration loves to boast about its immigration crackdown, it’s not eager to share the details of who is doing the cracking. And now it’s not just Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who can hide their identities. Government lawyers representing ICE get to do so as well.
On Tuesday, The Intercept reported that at least two immigration judges are allowing government lawyers to hide their names. Does anyone else get to hide their names? Of course not. When Judge ShaSha Xu declared at the start of a hearing that “We’re not really doing names publicly,” she did so only after stating her name, the name of the immigrants, and the names of their lawyers. This is necessary, per Xu, because “privacy” and “things lately have changed.”
This is basically unheard of. Courts maintain a complete record of proceedings, and identifying the lawyers involved is a core part of that. Secret lawyers are just not a thing. This leaves immigrants unable even to identify who is pushing for them to be deported. But hey, some ICE attorneys think that it is “dangerous to state their names publicly,” and some immigration judges appear to agree.
You might be wondering why immigration judges would go along with this. Immigration judges aren’t appointed and confirmed by the Senate, and they are not part of the judicial branch. Rather, they are employees of the executive branch, so their hiring, firing, and duties are dictated by the administration. That’s why they are complicit in the ruses that the administration is using to make easy arrests.
Do You Trust Christiana Care? Chair of Hospital Cost Board Sez ‘Nothing to see here’:
ChristianaCare and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) announce a new partnership beginning in spring 2026 to bring more pediatric services to Delaware and surrounding communities.
ChristianaCare’s Chief Medical Officer Kert Anzilotti says the collaboration will start in the acute care setting and aim to expand pediatric cervical services, cardiology and neurology services and neonatology among others.
“We’ll also have access to some of CHOP’s network of subspecialty care throughout the region so that some of our physicians both in the acute spaces and out in our broad network of ambulatory practices will be able to work in collaboration with some of their specialists so that we, again, can provide world-class pediatric care for the neighbors that we serve,” Anzilotti said.
The announcement is a noticeable snub for Delaware’s only pediatric hospital Nemours Children’s Health.
Former Delaware Secretary of Finance David Singleton was recently named chair of the DSHCRB, and when asked for his thoughts on ChristianaCare’s recent announcements and how they correlate to the board’s creation, he said: “I’ve been delighted to see the recent announcements by several of the hospitals, so that’s great news. We don’t regulate that, obviously. We’re there to look at their budgets, and the concern that led to this legislation is that spending by the hospitals has been growing much faster than the benchmark that they’ve been asked to meet,” Singelton said. “We certainly support excellent healthcare, and improvements are great to see, and it’s certainly not our job to look at the improvements they’re planning or to regulate those, we’re purely looking at expenditures.”
First, it doesn’t get more Delaware Way than David Singleton. Second, this seems like a pretty significant duplication of services. Competition, not cooperation. Think I’ll ask my State Senator about it–oops, that’s Christiana Care apologist (they pay his hefty pension) Ray Seigfried. Never mind.
What do you want to talk about?