Trump ‘Bored’ With Iran War?  Yep, just like FDR was ‘bored’ with WW II:

Patience is not Trump’s strength. One outside adviser, who speaks with him regularly, told me the president is “bored” with the war. Others believe he is frustrated at Iran’s intransigence. And while Trump at times feels detached from the political concerns of his party, Republicans have been inundated with complaints about rising prices, particularly at the gas pump. Many in the GOP were already preparing themselves to lose the House; the longer the war goes on, they believe, the more likely it is that the Senate could flip too.

Despite the negotiating impasse, Trump is reluctant to resume hostilities, aides and advisers have told me. There is concern about the dwindling supply of American munitions, and Trump this week expressed reluctance about killing more people. Some U.S. allies in the region (including, at times, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) have voiced concern that the resumption of American attacks would make them, once more, targets of Iran’s retaliation. Yesterday, Iran opened fire on U.S. naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. retaliated by striking sites in Iran. But despite the spasm of violence, Trump insisted that the cease-fire was still in place and downplayed the strikes as “a love tap.” He also, advisers have indicated, wants to tamp down any military action ahead of his trip to Beijing next week to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. China has broadcast its unhappiness with the war and the closing of the strait; Trump wants to be able to claim that the fighting is ending as he pursues new trade and business deals with Xi.

As a further complication, the U.S. has largely exhausted its list of significant military targets, advisers have said. To continue to escalate, which is Trump’s signature move, he’s had to threaten civilian targets such as power plants, bridges, and even desalination plants. At one point, he threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight,” an overt threat to commit war crimes. Trump also has options for a limited ground invasion—seizing highly enriched uranium or attacking Kharg Island, a hub of Iran’s energy sector—but he is leery about risking the lives of American troops.

And so Trump keeps issuing deadlines to force Iran to cave, but Tehran keeps calling his bluff. For weeks now, Trump has blustered about resuming attacks but, each time, has found a way to back down. With the exception of a few hawkish voices, most in Trump’s orbit remain reluctant to restart the attack even as the stalemate continues. With the naval blockade in place to counter Iran’s closing of the strait, the administration on Monday unveiled Project Freedom, which deployed the U.S. Navy to help some ships escape the waterway. Although a few ships managed to cross the strait on the first day, Trump quickly abandoned the plan. Iranian forces fired on a South Korean cargo ship, there were clashes with U.S. warships, and the Pentagon said it destroyed seven small Iranian boats. But administration officials did not want to risk a major escalation of hostilities, particularly a possible attack on an American naval vessel. Some Gulf allies, fearing retaliation, moved to cut American access to their bases and airspace.

I, for one, don’t mind a war being halted due to Presidential boredom.

‘Alligator Albatross’.  Sad:

Remember when Alligator Alcatraz, Florida’s massive immigrant detention center, opened? It was just last summer, and President Donald Trump toured the facility. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gushed over how great it was that it was “isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife.” Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem declared that the federal government would fund it with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds and boasted about “our partnership with Florida.”

But the good times didn’t last, and now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems positively sweaty, desperate to get rid of the thing, saying it was always temporary and that there was always a plan to wind it down. And possibly very soon.

DeSantis is right to be worried. This expensive abomination hangs firmly around his neck and his neck alone. Florida fronted its cost, but the state was supposed to be reimbursed to the tune of more than $600 million from DHS. 

But then came the lawsuit alleging that the federal government skipped the required environmental review, at which point both Florida and the administration said that the federal government had nothing to do with it at all, why would you possibly think that?

That argument won the day at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and that’s allowed the detention center to remain open, but now DeSantis is the dog who caught the car. He has permission to keep running his concentration camp, but he has to pay for it. If the federal government reimburses Florida or starts covering costs in other ways, the environmental review problem likely can’t be sidestepped. 

Now, DeSantis is saddled with it, and the state is spending over $1 million per day to run the thing. DHS has apparently soured on it as well, though why they get to weigh in when we’re pretending they have nothing to do with it is a bit of a mystery. DeSantis is now saying that it would be “great” to unwind the entire thing and turn the space back into a training airport.

It would be great not to have prisons holding people who mostly are a threat to nobody.

Conservative County Battles ‘ICE Warehouse’.  Doesn’t get much redder than rural western Maryland.  However:

HAGERSTOWN, Md. — In January, the Department of Homeland Security bought an 825,620-square-foot vacant warehouse a few miles outside of this small Western Maryland city, hoping to turn it into a processing facility for immigrant detainees. As news spread in the coming days, stunned residents asked one another how they could stop the Trump administration’s plan. Many of them found their way to Patrick Dattilio.

Dattilio was running a new Signal group for locals inspired by the resistance in Minnesota who wanted to fight the president’s deportation campaign. At first, the group, Hagerstown Rapid Response, had only been picking up one new member every couple of days.

“You could maybe wave it away and say it wasn’t here for a while,” Dattilio, 38, said of the immigration crackdown. “But the warehouse changed everything.”

Suddenly, Dattilio could barely keep up with requests to join. For his day job, he works remotely as a software developer, so he was able to write a bot to help screen would-be members of the group. Membership quickly grew to 100. Then 500. Everyone wanted to know how they could pitch in.

People volunteered to research city and county codes, pull water and sewer documents and file public record requests. An Uber driver took routes near the warehouse to keep tabs on activity there. The group even attracted two drone operators to do surveillance from afar. In a city where the only regular protests used to take place outside the downtown abortion clinic, warehouse opponents were now descending on county board meetings while Rage Against the Machine blared outside.

The Western Maryland warehouse is part of a broader Trump administration plan to convert several industrial spaces around the country into detention centers. The purchases have drawn bipartisan pushback in many communities, with residents worried about effects on the local environment, infrastructure and tax base. But nowhere has the resistance been so fierce and organized as in Hagerstown and surrounding Washington County.

The most energized warehouse opponents have no background in activism or politics — just a shared sense of dread about where the country seems to be headed and how their community figures into the administration’s plans. Dattilio grew up in Hagerstown, earned a degree in computer science from the University of Maryland, and returned to marry his high school girlfriend. He has four children between the ages of 4 and 10. His family has been in the area for 120 years.

He can’t shake the idea of Hagerstown becoming shorthand for “concentration camp.”

The western Maryland warehouse is one of 11 across the country that DHS has acquired for a total of around $1 billion. Several other purchases have been scuttled, largely due to local pushback. Washington County residents couldn’t stop the warehouse sale there because Trump officials carried it out in secret. 

They did so by using a government procurement process designed for military emergencies, sidestepping normal procedures and avoiding scrutiny. The administration not only bought the Hagerstown warehouse for $102 million but also awarded hundreds of millions in related contracts before anyone knew to call their senator.

“Netanyahu, being the conman that he is, used Venezuela as an example,” Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, said. “He said to him: ‘Look what you did in Venezuela. It was painless. It was effortless. It was beautiful. You changed the regime.’

“Then he begins bombarding Trump with intelligence data showing that Iran had expanded its missile production and its missile-launching capabilities, and still has 450kg of highly enriched uranium,” Pinkas said.

With the help of the Mossad director, David Barnea, Netanyahu portrayed the Tehran regime as an overripe fruit ready to drop from the branch.

“He told Trump: ‘The Iranian economy is in shambles. The people are on the precipice of revolt. The Revolutionary Guards are losing control. Life in Iran is intolerable. This is our time,’” Pinkas said. “‘What we could do together is bring down the regime … think that together, jointly, we can win the war in three, four days.’”

It takes a con to out-con a con.  Trump never had a chance.

What do you want to talk about?

That Fucking Refinery.  In order to ‘fix a problem’, they apparently have no choice but to emit toxic sulfur dioxide for several weeks.  I’m with Speaker Minor-Brown on this one:

  Delaware City Refining Company will be emitting significantly higher-than-normal amounts of sulfur dioxide for several weeks.

The Department of Natural Resources said Thursday that the company has informed the state that it is making repairs on its coker carbon monoxide boiler. The refinery will shift from a primary pollution control process to secondary emissions control.

The refinery also switched to secondary emissions control for 17 days last year. DNREC said it will issue appropriate penalties for expected violations of emissions standards.

State House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown, D- New Castle said in a statement that it is “incredibly disappointing and extremely unacceptable” that the refinery is once again “putting our community in harm’s way.”

By many accounts, this was not an unavoidable accident, but instead the result of decisions made by the refinery, including the decision to delay necessary maintenance despite clear warnings and opportunities to act sooner.

“I’m looking at this situation not only as a lawmaker, but as a parent raising my children just a few miles away. Families in our community deserve to feel safe in their homes and confident that their health and safety are being protected – period, end of story.

Minor-Brown’s district includes Delaware City Refining Company.

Wilmington City Council Doubles Down On Stupidity:

Wilmington City Council voted to remove City Councilman James Spadola from his at-large seat, but he’s been saved by a court ruling.

City Council voted 8-1 (2 absent, 2 present) to remove Spadola via a resolution saying that when Spadola announced a party switch from Republican to Democrat last year, he worked around “legislative intent” that one member of a non-majority party should be on council.

What is not in Wilmington’s charter to govern is whether the person who is the non-majority party member has to actually remain in that party while they are in office.

Spadola sued Council President Trippi Congo on Monday arguing there was no legal grounds for council to remove him from office.

Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick held a hearing on Thursday, with Congo announcing before discussion on the resolution that they could vote, “but if it’s passed, it would be stayed until the case is finally resolved.”

Spadola said he’s been frustrated by a body made up entirely of members of his new party.

“I joined the Democratic Party because it is a big tent party (well. that’s a lie), and despite the lack of inclusiveness that this council may be showing me, I have full faith that the rule of law will prevail.”

OK, kids, you’re smart.  You know that Spadola switched parties because he has political aspirations that could not be realized as a Rethug.  (Raising the question, why was he a Rethug for so long?  But I digress.)  Kids, you also know that Wilmington City Council is not doing this because they believe that defending the rights of the Republican Party is essential for a functioning democracy.  As if the city has a functioning democracy.  They’ve focused their Solomoronic wisdom on the task of killing Spadola’s political aspirations in their infancy.  Making said aspirations far more likely for success than if they’d just done nothing.  

Have I missed anything?

Hospital Price-Gouging–It’s Not Just About ChristianaCare–It’s Nationwide:

The largest corporate health care hospitals in the country are consolidating their power and using it to rip off patients, a new study from Families USA shows. Released amid the GOP’s manufactured affordability crisis, the study shows that health care executives at a handful of corporations are setting “high and irrational prices” in every state and charging patients almost three times what Medicare pays for the exact same service.

The 15 largest systems charged an average of 282 percent more than the Medicare rate, the study found, resulting in $22 million in profit per hospital per year.

The reason hospital executives can do this is because they are consolidating at a rapid clip, buying up independent providers, and jacking up prices at will. Five or fewer corporations in 42 states and the District of Columbia “controlled at least half of all hospital care in 2023,” researchers found. In almost half of all states, just three corporations controlled the majority of hospital care. Hospital executives have no competition or regulations to discipline their price-gouging, so they “can charge basically whatever they want, because they can,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA.

…The reality is that the lack of hospital regulation is a bipartisan failure. GOP policies, Democratic inaction, and rapacious health care executives are all to blame.

Families USA found that the biggest factor in price is whether a hospital is independent. At a press conference about the report, one of the speakers, West Virginians for Affordable Health Care Executive Director Ellen Allen, recounted how she herself has seen an increase in fees since a practice she goes to was taken over by a larger system, including a new charge tacked onto the bill that wasn’t there before the takeover, though the service was the same.

Independent hospitals charged less than corporate ones, the study found, though still well above the Medicare rate. Those smaller hospitals charged 221 percent above Medicare, a 61-percentage-point difference.

Families USA called on Congress to enact “site-neutral payments,” so costs are the same everywhere; require that hospitals and health plans give patients “full price transparency”; ban anti-competitive practices between hospital systems and insurers; strengthen oversight of nonprofit hospitals; and cap prices and inflation relative to Medicare benchmarks.

Lobbying reports and other documentation show that the executives of these massive corporate entities will fight all of those measures. The industry as a whole has already spent a fortune lobbying the government this year…

I trust you’ll find this useful, just in case you were wondering why hospital care cost containment initiatives have ground to a halt in Delaware…

Trump Tariffs Illegal–Again:

A panel of federal judges on Thursday found President Trump had violated the law when he imposed a 10 percent tariff on most U.S. imports, dealing yet another legal setback to the White House in its efforts to wage a trade war without the express permission of Congress.

In a split ruling, the Court of International Trade found that Mr. Trump had wrongly invoked a decades-old trade law when he applied those duties beginning in February. The president imposed the levies after his previous set of punishing tariffs was struck down by the Supreme Court.

The decision appeared to place, for now, new limits on Mr. Trump’s trade powers, which he has wielded aggressively in hopes of resetting relationships with allies and adversaries, raising new revenue and encouraging more companies to make their products in the United States.

Trump Gets Put In His Place By–Saudi Arabia:

President Trump’s announcement on Sunday that the U.S. military would escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz angered Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who denied U.S. access to Saudi airspace and American bases in the country, according to a person briefed by Saudi officials and a U.S. military official.

Prince Mohammed’s action stunned U.S. officials and forced Mr. Trump to abandon his plan, according to a U.S. military official familiar with the sequence of events. The Saudis have since lifted the restrictions on the bases and overflights, but still have not agreed to permit the use of its territory in support of “Project Freedom,” as Mr. Trump named the naval operation, the U.S. official added.

“Oligarchs Of The World, Join Hands, Board The Bribe Plane, Bribe Plane”:

So, how are you planning on celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday? Have you been yearning, hoping against hope that President Donald Trump will get his luxury bribe jet from Qatar up and running by the Fourth of July? You are in luck!

The Air Force, which apparently doesn’t have enough to do these days despite being in a war and all, is racing to meet the July 4 deadline for Trump to fly around in his fancy new plane. You will not be surprised to learn that they were trying to make it by June 14 so Trump could get a present on his birthday.

Does having your taxpayer dollars go toward fixing up the bribe plane just so Trump can take it with him when he leaves office make you feel like a Real American Patriot?

Speaking of … how much did you pay for this? No one knows! The cost is secret!

It might be $400 million, it might be $1 billion, which is a comically big range. But according to Trump, spending millions of taxpayer dollars to turn the flying bribe palace into Air Force One is actually a way to save tax dollars.

It’s not clear how we’re saving anything when we know that Trump already diverted $934 million from money dedicated to modernizing nuclear missiles into an unidentified and classified project that everyone knows is the plane.

It would be inhumane of me to leave that earworm (not to be confused with RFK’s brainworm) unplayed. So:

What do you want to talk about?

Dover’s House Of Hope Facing Possible Closure:

A Delaware emergency shelter that has served nearly 100 women in the past year — many fleeing violence, battling untreated mental health conditions or facing homelessness — is now at risk of shutting its doors.

At House of Hope in Kent County, leaders say funding shortfalls could force difficult decisions in the coming months. The 16-bed shelter is the only one of its kind serving women in the county, and is one of three in the state.

The shelter offers the women who live there more than just a bed. It provides short-term housing and support for those with nowhere else to turn.

“While they’re here, they can still stay here up to 45 days. And we provide case management,” said Larry Merchant, the shelter’s board chair. “We help them get résumés, Social Security cards, IDs. We are not a clinical facility. We don’t offer mental health, but we give them the right resources where they can receive mental health if they need it.”

According to Merchant, the need for that support has changed dramatically over time.

“Thirty years ago, the homeless population tended to be people who had been through a divorce, a major family crisis, or had unpaid medical expenses, and they ended up homeless,” he said. “Over the years, I’ve seen that progress more towards, quite honestly, people with untreated mental health, domestic violence backgrounds, substance abuse backgrounds, and simply the inability to afford housing.”

And the broader issue, he said, is simple.

“Housing, period, is an issue,” he said. “Affordable housing is the issue.”

You’d think that Kent County legislators would ensure funding for such an essential service.  Looks like you might think wrong.

A Corrupted Justice Department:

Jack Smith, the special counsel who twice indicted President Trump, accused the Justice Department of having been “corrupted” by Trump loyalists he claimed were demolishing its credibility and seeking to undermine the rule of law.

Mr. Smith’s remarks, made last month in a private discussion at the Cosmos Club in Washington, represented his sharpest criticism of the department since leaving his post early last year. They came at a time when Mr. Trump is demanding Mr. Smith be prosecuted for his work as special counsel — an outcome Mr. Smith believes is likely, according to people familiar with his thinking.

“We have a Department of Justice today that targets people for criminal prosecution simply because the president doesn’t like them,” Mr. Smith said in the hourlong discussion on April 20, according to a video obtained by The New York Times.

No Need To Take His Word For It:

The FBI acts on more than 2,000 search warrants every year. So why was the one that federal agents executed Wednesday in Portsmouth so different that it drew national attention?

It’s not just because agents raided the office and business of a politician. It’s because that particular politician is arguably the most powerful political figure in Virginia — one who lately has had a national impact. Here’s a quick summary of what to know about the “law enforcement action” conducted at the office and business of state Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth.

Then There’s This:

The FBI has reportedly launched a criminal investigation into whether information was leaked to a reporter for The Atlantic, who wrote that FBI Director Kash Patel’s quote “excessive drinking” was causing deep concern in the bureau.

Carol Leonnig is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter.  She left the Washington Post when Bezos imposed his stamp on the paper’s editorial slant.  Here’s what she says:

Amna Nawaz:

So I want to start with the news that you broke, that the FBI is investigating Sarah Fitzpatrick. That’s “The Atlantic” reporter behind that Kash Patel story.

And I want to start by putting to you what the FBI assistant director had to say in a statement about your report. He said: “This is completely false. No such investigation like this exists. The reporter you mention is not being investigated at all. Every time there’s a publication of false claims by anonymous sources that gets called out, the media plays the victim by investigations that do not exist.”

Carol, what’s your response to that?

Carol Leonnig:

My response is that we stand by our reporting.

We have been told by multiple sources that, at the director’s instruction from his executive suite, a unit in Huntsville, Alabama, was ordered to begin investigating and reviewing this “Atlantic” reporter’s contacts, her — and begin potentially looking at her phone, metadata, and social media contacts.

Again, we don’t know the status of what the FBI has obtained, but we know that they have been ordered to open this investigation. We also — I want to emphasize something for viewers of your show who probably don’t deal with the Department of Justice and the FBI every day.

When the FBI and the Department of Justice open investigation, it’s based on typically a predicate that they have reasonable belief that a crime has occurred. And, in this case, the FBI agents are raising concerns about whether or not any such predicate exists to open this investigation.

Typically, when there’s an investigation of a leak, it’s criminal because classified information has been released. And there’s a big question mark here about what potentially is classified, and there’s a big question mark as well about why the FBI has to start with a reporter, when usually that is the sort of step of last resort.

From The ‘Satire Is Dead’ Department–Ka$h’s Stash:

A personalized bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon engraved with the words “Kash Patel FBI Director,” as well as a rendering of an FBI shield, obtained by The Atlantic (The Atlantic)

One of J. Edgar Hoover’s greatest reforms at the FBI was his embrace of fingerprinting. During the 1930s, visitors to the FBI offices in Washington, D.C., received souvenir fingerprint cards featuring his name. The men who succeeded him as FBI director were more discreet and judicious, mindful of the cult of personality that had developed around Hoover. They generally avoided giving out branded swag.

But then came Kash Patel.

President Trump’s FBI director has a great deal of affection for swag. Merchandise for sale on a website he co-founded—still operating, nearly 15 months into his term—includes beanies ($35), T-shirts ($35), orange camo hoodies ($65), trucker caps ($25), “government gangsters” playing cards (on sale for $10), and a Fight With Kash Punisher scarf ($25).

One thing not for sale is liquor, because liquor is something Patel gives away for free.

Last month, I reported that FBI personnel were alarmed by what they said was erratic behavior and excessive drinking by Patel. (The FBI director has denied the allegations and filed a defamation suit against The Atlantic and me.)

After my story appeared, I heard from people in Patel’s orbit and people he has met at public functions, who told me that it is not unusual for him to travel with a supply of personalized branded bourbon. The bottles bear the imprint of the Kentucky distillery Woodford Reserve, and are engraved with the words “Kash Patel FBI Director,” as well as a rendering of an FBI shield. Surrounding the shield is a band of text featuring Patel’s director title and his favored spelling of his first name: Ka$h. An eagle holds the shield in its talons, along with the number 9, presumably a reference to Patel’s place in the history of FBI directors. In some cases, the 750-milliliter bottles bear Patel’s signature, with “#9” there as well. One such bottle popped up on an online auction site shortly after my story appeared, and The Atlantic later purchased it. (The person who sold it to us did not want to be named, but said that the bottle was a gift from Patel at an event in Las Vegas.)

Backwards reels the mind.

It’s 8:34 am?  I need a drink.

What do you want to talk about?

Rep. Spiegelman Tries To Justify Free Trips By Introducing Legislation To ‘Clarify’ What Is Already The Law.  Hey, as long as it brings more public scrutiny to these junkets, I’m all for the introduction of the bill, if not its passage:

The revelation by WHYY News last month that several Delaware lawmakers have failed to disclose free trips to Taiwan as gifts has led one legislator to propose a bill requiring travel worth more than $500 to be reported to the public.

Delaware law requires that all 62 state lawmakers and about 300 other state officials, including judges, must file an annual financial report. The report must include any gifts worth at least $250, as well as creditors, investments, sources of income and business interests. WHYY News has obtained all the reports filed for 2025.

State law defines a gift as “a payment, subscription, advance, forbearance, rendering or deposit of money, services or anything of value unless consideration of equal or greater value is received.“

But now state Rep. Jeffrey Spiegelman — who didn’t disclose two previous trips to Taiwan but did report his free 2025 trip to Israel — says he’s trying to clarify the law to eliminate any confusion around what officials must include on the forms filed with the Delaware Public Integrity Commission. Spiegelman said the recent reporting by WHYY News about disclosing the trips spurred him to act.

The weeklong trips to Taiwan, which Spiegelman took in 2019 and 2023 with a handful of legislative colleagues, have been paid for by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. Part of Taiwan’s government, the agency has taken about five Delaware lawmakers a year since around 2010.

None of the state senators or House members have ever disclosed the trips to Taiwan, however, according to financial reports reviewed by WHYY News and interviews with lawmakers.

Some lawmakers suggested that the commission had advised them that the trips didn’t need to be reported, and that colleagues reinforced such guidance, but none could provide a document that said disclosure as a gift wasn’t necessary. Spiegelman and others who have gone to Taiwan, about 8,000 miles from Delaware, said they don’t know how much the trips cost.

The weeklong trip to Israel, where Spiegelman was joined by fellow GOP Rep. Bryan Shupe and three Democrats — Rep. Melania Ross Levin and Sens. Trey Paradee and Darius Brown — cost $6,500 and was paid for by the Consulate General of Israel in New York, according to 2025 financial reports.

Commission Chair Ron Chaney said last month that lawmakers must disclose trips “paid for by third parties as gifts on their financial disclosure reports,” in compliance with the financial reporting law. “Legislators with questions about how to report a specific trip, or who believe they were told something different in the past, are encouraged to contact the [Delaware Public Integrity Commission] directly.”

To put my skeptical spin on it, the law already requires legislators to report these trips as gifts.  But the people who wrote the law apparently don’t know this, so they allegedly go to the Public Integrity Commission and ask, ‘Do we really have to report these trips?’  They then claim, without substantiation, that the PIC said that they didn’t.

Got it.

How Fucking Stupid Are Stock Traders?  Every day, our Insane Clown President makes yet another proclamation over the state of the Iran war, and they react like lemmings:

Oil prices fell sharply on Wednesday after President Trump announced that the United States was pausing a days-old U.S. operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz and claimed there had been “great progress” toward a deal with Iran.

Markets had been uneasy after a sharp increase in oil prices on Monday, when Mr. Trump announced the naval operation in the crucial oil and gas shipping route, prompting Iran to escalate its threats and putting further pressure on the already fragile truce.

This happens every day although (a) nothing he says is the truth, and (b) he says something diametrically opposite the following day.

Trump Delivers Insane Speeches To Nonplussed Audiences:

Small Business Summit:

President Donald Trump derailed his own speech Monday to insist how mentally healthy he is, following new poll data showing that a record high of Americans think he’s lost his mind.

“I feel the same as I felt 50 years ago, I don’t know,” Trump told the audience at a small-business summit at the White House.

“I’ll say, ‘I’m not feeling well’—well, someday, I might say that to you, and you’ll be the first to know. Actually I won’t have to say it, because you’ll be able to see it, just like you did in the last administration,” Trump said.

Trump continued ranting about his pitch to require candidates for office to take cognitive tests. “No president has ever taken one except me, and I’ve taken three of them. And I’ve aced each one,” he said.

Trump went on to describe the test, which sounds a lot like the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a 10-minute assessment designed to identify signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s. It is not a test for intelligence.

“You know the first question is very easy. They always show the first question, it’s: You have a lion, a bear, an alligator, and a—what’s another good—a squirrel, OK? Which is the squirrel?” Trump said, claiming the questions got increasingly complex.

He then veered into a tirade against California Governor Gavin Newsom before resuming his point. “I think everyone in this room is brilliant, but nobody’s gonna get all 30 questions correct. Nobody. ’Cause when you get to those last questions they’re pretty hard, you got to be pretty sharp.

“One doctor said, ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone get all questions right.’ That’s a doctor, who does this stuff for a living. And I did it three times. So, I don’t know. I think I’m done with those days, I’m tired of taking those tests,” Trump said.

Trump segued again, insisting on the importance of picking an intelligent leader during times of war. He went on to claim that his military campaign in Iran only lasted six weeks, though the Strait of Hormuz has been closed for more than two months; that the Vietnam War lasted 19 years, even though the U.S. was only really involved for eight; and that the war in Iraq was 10 or 12 years long, when, again, it was really only eight.

Remember, kids, he was addressing a small business summit.

Speaking of kids:

President Trump thinks that an event where he is surrounded by children is the best time to discuss the Iran war and then doze off.

On Tuesday, at a signing ceremony in the Oval Office to restore the Presidential Fitness Award (Was Ronald McDonald there?), Trump went off on a tangent on the war while thanking some members of his Cabinet, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, whom he praised for a press conference earlier in the day.

“That was really great, and you’re doing very well,” Trump said from his seat at the Resolute Desk, turning to Hegseth. Then he abruptly changed the subject to Iran.

“They don’t like playing games with us. They don’t like it at all, you’ll see that. As time goes by, you’re gonna see it. I think you’ve already seen it; we’ve basically wiped out their military in about two weeks,” Trump added, with kids and senior officials on either side of him. Later, Trump went further, describing Iran’s leaders as “sick people” and “lunatics” that he would not allow to have a nuclear weapon.

Then Trump thanked Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but as Kennedy spoke about how “grateful” he was for Trump’s decision to restore the fitness test, the president fell asleep.

I, um, see no need to state the obvious.

Not Obvious To The Trumpbots In Indiana, Though:

President Donald Trump flexed his grip on the GOP base in Indiana on Tuesday, vanquishing a majority of the Republican state senators who had dared cross him on redistricting.

It was a show of force in the year’s first major test of Trump’s power over the GOP. Trump-aligned groups dumped millions against the eight GOP lawmakers who blocked his effort to gerrymander the state. And on Tuesday night, at least five lost reelection.

This is a good sign.  Trump is radioactive.  Won’t see Indiana flip any time soon, but fealty to Trump is a flat-out loser in a whole lot of other contests.  Steve Bannon, of all people said it best:

“That’s $13.5 million we didn’t have [available] to spend on Virginia,” said Steve Bannon, the War Room host who broadcasted his show into an Indiana hotel ballroom last September to whip support for a redraw. “That same cash backing the MAGA grassroots in voter engagement and canvassing saves four seats — stopping Spanberger cold in her tracks.”

Sad.

What do you want to talk about?

Delaware Cops Doing Delaware Cops Things. Utterly disgraceful:

Delaware Pastor Tony Neal said he turned his life around in the early 1990s after leaving prison. But his criminal record prevented him from being allowed to attend his son’s U.S. Air Force graduation ceremony in 2014.

“That was hurtful,” the Georgetown resident said. “One of the greatest moments of my life [and] because of my past, it seemed like my kids had to pay for it, and I just felt it wasn’t right.”

A criminal record can be a barrier in many areas, including employment, housing and education. The 2021 Clean Slate Act aimed to give Delawareans a second chance by automatically expunging low-level offenses from their records. The goal was to expand access to jobs and living wages so families could rise out of poverty.

But the promise of Delaware’s Clean Slate Act has yet to be realized almost a year and a half later because state police have not automated the process, leaving hundreds of thousands of individuals unable to move on from their pasts. This is while a similar law in Pennsylvania clears millions of cases annually. The situation has outraged criminal justice reform advocates, civil rights groups and even Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer.

“It’s reprehensible that in 2021 we passed a law to automatically expunge records, and here we are in 2026 talking about how it still hasn’t gotten done,” Meyer said last week on “Ask Governor Meyer,” a call-in show hosted by WHYY and Delaware Public Media.

The Clean Slate Initiative is a national bipartisan effort to pass record-sealing laws in all 50 states and in Congress. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have passed versions of it, with Pennsylvania being the first state, with implementation starting in 2019. Delaware passed it two years later.

The Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security had three years to prepare for the law’s implementation in August 2024, including developing the processes to automatically expunge records on a monthly basis. Delaware expunges or destroys the records, while Pennsylvania seals them from public view. While some documents are destroyed, Delaware does keep an official electronic record.

The Delaware Criminal Justice Information System estimated that 290,980 adults with 594,537 cases would immediately be eligible, according to the bill’s fiscal note.

Charges eligible for a free automatic expungement include marijuana possession, underage drinking, some misdemeanors and a few felonies. Some offenses can be removed immediately, and others require a waiting period.

Delaware has cleared fewer than 19,000 cases since August 2024, with other states far outpacing that rate. Pennsylvania sealed over 34 million cases in its first year.

Let’s do the math.  Law was passed in 2021.  Police had three years to develop procedures to implement it.  An approximate 594,000 cases eligible, only 19,000 cleared. By my calculations, that’s less than 3.2% of all cases.  Here’s why:

That’s because the Delaware State Bureau of Identification, where criminal history information is centrally stored, is manually reviewing each case that has been identified as eligible for automatic expungement. That’s leading to just a fraction of eligible cases being approved.

Cue the cop arrogance:

In a statement, Delaware State Police spokesperson Tyler Wright argued they were meeting the requirements of the law and defended the manual review as a matter of public safety. He said the list from the Delaware Criminal Justice Information System also includes ineligible records, requiring the extra scrutiny.

That’s, what’s the word I’m looking for, a lie.  The police have taken it upon themselves to deny something over 250,000 Delawareans rights granted to them by the General Assembly and the Governor.

Tell me again, who polices the police?

More Trump Shit.  Y’know, I sorta understand why the press doesn’t headline these disgraces every day.  He commits so many that it’s become normal.  Anyway, two more for you:

Trump Drops Toxic Waste At  A Public Golf Course:

Soil at a public golf course in Washington where the Trump administration dumped debris from the demolition of the White House East Wing has tested positive for lead, chromium and other toxic metals, according to data released by the National Park Service.

The data, which the Park Service published on its website last week, showed relatively low levels of these contaminants in the soil at East Potomac Golf Links.

Yet the dump raised questions about the decision by the Trump administration to bypass environmental laws when it dropped truckloads of mud, rebar, plaster and other debris in the middle of the popular public course near the Jefferson Memorial.

The president is planning a sweeping overhaul of the 105-year-old golf course, where generations have played in view of monuments and memorials at bargain rates that currently run $42 for 18 holes on weekdays. Mr. Trump wants to transform it into a championship course, which would likely spell the end to an existing mini-golf course as well as a surrounding roadway that is popular with cyclists and runners.

How can he just do stuff like this?

Trump Pushes Stolen Election Fantasy In Georgia:

The Justice Department has demanded the identities of every worker who staffed the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga., according to court records, escalating an ongoing federal investigation of the 2020 vote in Georgia’s most populous county that relies on false and debunked claims.

The demand targets employees of Fulton County elections as well as volunteer poll workers, who likely numbered in the thousands during the 2020 election, according to court records.

The demand, which came via a federal grand jury subpoena, appears to be the latest effort by President Trump and his administration to use the investigative power of the federal government to pursue false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. With midterm voting underway in many states, including Georgia, the effort risks further undermining public confidence and sowing chaos among voters.

It is not known what the Justice Department intends to do with the names of election workers. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

‘Drugs For Rethugs’ Scheme Deep-Sixed By Trump’s DOJ:

To the narcotics agents investigating drug smuggling in Puerto Rico prisons, it seemed at first like a typical scheme: associates of an inmate gang sneaking drugs into the prison, gang members distributing them inside and bank records showing the money flowing.

Then the agents discovered something unusual.

Leaders of the prison gang known as Los Tiburones, or the Sharks, were selling drugs to inmates not only for money, but for their votes. Specifically, votes for now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a longtime Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump, investigators found.

To make sure the inmates — many of whom were addicted — complied, the gang’s leaders threatened violence and to withhold drugs, the investigators learned. Corrections employees in on the plan looked the other way as the gang, formally known as Group 31, ran the enterprise.

What at first seemed like a routine drug case had turned into something bigger. Puerto Rico, along with just a couple of U.S. states, allows inmates to vote. Puerto Ricans living in the territory can vote in all contests except federal general elections. It is a felony to willfully offer money or gifts in exchange for support at the polls. A conviction carries fines of as much as $250,000 and imprisonment of up to two years.

Investigators had gathered solid evidence of election fraud implicating both inmates and staff, and they were working toward determining whether González-Colón or her campaign was involved, four people with knowledge of the case told ProPublica. They requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

But as federal prosecutors prepared an indictment against the inmates and staff in November 2024 — just days after Trump won the election and González-Colón clinched the governorship — they received a surprising directive. Their bosses in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico instructed them to exclude the voting-related counts against the inmates and all charges against the prison staff, an investigation by ProPublica found.

In December, they filed an indictment charging 34 inmates and associates with crimes including drug distribution resulting in at least four overdose deaths, money laundering and possessing a firearm. And while prosecutors described the drugs-for-votes scheme in the court filing, they did not include a single charge related to it.

Soon after Trump took office, the lead prosecutor, Jorge Matos, was told by a supervisor to take the investigation no further, according to four people familiar with the case.

“Before the election, it was definitely full steam ahead,” said one person familiar with the case. “After the election, that all changed.”

ProPublica, already working on their next Pulitzer.

BTW, does anybody here give two shits about the Bezos Wretched Excess Met Gala?  Didn’t think so.

What do you want to talk about?

Melanie Ross Levin Owes Us An Apology.  Kids, here’s what the State Rep wrote on her Facebook:

What is it like being a Democratic Jewish legislator?  It means dealing with antisemitism on a regular basis from the left.  And EVERYONE who has done this to me in Delaware is associated with the Delaware Working Families Party.  See comments in the post below.

I’m forced to stop there.  Why?  Because there WERE no comments supporting her false accusation in the post below.  NONE.

So, what exactly were you trying to do here, Representative, other than attack a successful political movement that has targeted, among others, some of your Delaware Way buddies?

I’m a member of the Working Families Party, as are several other Jews, I serve on my local Democratic committee, and yes, I’m a Jew.  I criticized your taking part in a photo op paid for by the Israeli government.  Perhaps you were referring to that.  Let me make the point now that I made then:  Being anti-genocide is not synonymous with being anti-semitic.  Ideally, the two terms would be polar opposites of each other.  My youngest daughter belongs to this movement:

We’re here to make a home for Jews who find themselves at odds with the State of Israel, and to educate allies on how to be in solidarity with Palestine while in a strong community with their Jewish friends.

Are they anti-semites too?

You made a smear of the Working Families Party.  Didn’t try to substantiate it. You owe them an apology.  And all of us an explanation as to what antisemitism you’ve allegedly been the victim of.

Really, Must We?  Doesn’t Wilmington City Council have more important issues to address?

The political fight over the Wilmington City Council’s partisan makeup is escalating, and could end up in court.

City Council President Earnest “Trippi” Congo last week proposed a resolution that would remove his colleague, Councilman James Spadola, from his seat.

Congo’s current proposal to declare Spadola’s council seat vacant states that the intent of the city’s charter is to ensure representation for minority parties. The resolution also states that Spadola was elected over other candidates because of his party affiliation, and claimed that his choice to become a Democrat has “disenfranchise[d] approximately 15% of non-majority voters.”

Oh, Jesus.  Ya wanna make a political martyr out of Spadola?  If you do, you’re an idiot.

The Death Loop If Ever There Was One.  Insanity is the President of these here United States repeating the word ‘Winning’ over and over again on an hour-long loop:

Remember, kids, THE WHITE HOUSE put this out, along with the phrase, ‘Can’t stop, won’t stop’.  Why didn’t Abe Lincoln think of this?

Is George Bush-Stink Sinking Cornyn? A strange dynamic in, where else, Texas:

In their primary runoff for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, John Cornyn can say that Ken Paxton is divorcing his wife, that he’s alleged to have had multiple mistresses, that his own senior staff has accused him of corruption. All that is damning and true. But Paxton can make one charge that is more powerful than anything Cornyn can pin on Ken, and which may well push the attorney general over the line on May 26: John Cornyn was in office twenty years ago. There’s really no getting around that. It’s on his Wikipedia page.

The problem with the senior senator, as one representative online poster put it this week, is that he’s “a corporate hack who was an instrumental member of the Bush/Rove machine” and “the last vestige of those hacks other than [Greg] Abbott.” The problem for Cornyn is that the sentiment above wasn’t shared by a bleeding-heart Austin liberal with a long memory of the Bush years and a Coexist bumper-sticker, but by someone who identifies as a Texas conservative.

The expectation might be that the Texas GOP has golden statues to Bush in every place it meets. It does not. A substantial portion of Republicans in the state are out to seek and destroy any last trace of the party left over from the Bush era—between 1994 and 2004 or so. When it was reported on April 15 that Bush had donated $5,000 to Cornyn’s campaign, the signal fires went up through the right-wing movement. (Even though it was a minor sum from a private citizen in a very expensive race—pro-Cornyn organizations, along with his campaign, spent $17 million in the first quarter of 2026.) “[The] old guard is all over Texas trying to claw back control and push out America First candidates,” wrote Kambree Nelson, a pro-Paxton influencer. “Bring it.” Another MAGA influencer posted a picture of an aged Bush and wrote that “voting for this RINO twice and defending him for 10 years after he left office was the worst political decision I’ve ever made.”

How The Tech World Turned Evil.  Some pieces lend themselves to judicious excerpting.  This is not such a piece.  It’s a perfect long-form Sunday morning read.  Read it, you’ll learn a lot.  BTW, this was recommended by one of our favorite readers.  Feel free to make similar recommendations.

The NYTimes ’30 Greatest Living American Songwriters’ piece really sucks.  Any piece that relegates Randy Newman and Tom Waits to also-ran status while singing the praises of, oh, Diane Warren. Lionel Ritchie, Young Thug, Stephin Merritt, Mariah Carey, and The-Dream (whoever that is), among others, is a joke.  Here’s the write-up on The-Dream:

Name a post-aughts R&B smash, and his imprint is probably on it: Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Ciara’s gyrating “Ride,” Justin Bieber’s prepubescent arrival “Baby” and Mariah Carey’s plinky “Touch My Body” and “Obsessed.” And then there’s Beyoncé, who essentially claimed The-Dream as her secret bazooka after he helped craft the hits that turned her untouchable, like “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” “Run the World (Girls),” “Flawless,” “1+1” and “XO.”

Ho-kay.  That illustrates one of the main problems with the NYTimes list–equating ‘pop success’ with being a great songwriter.

Yet another Grateful Dead ‘Tribute’ band will be appearing soon in Arden.  I got to wondering–just how many Grateful Dead tribute bands are there in the US?  Somewhere around 800, it appears.  Got me to thinking–how to promote the one coming to Arden?  Came up with ‘Featuring the 17th Highest-Rated Dead Tribute Band in the Tri-State Area’.  I laughed anyway…

Tribe From Washington State Reclaims Land–Floods It:

Scott Boyd walks through deep mud where the Stillaguamish River empties into Puget Sound, an arm of the Pacific Ocean.

This flood-prone river mouth north of Seattle changed dramatically in October when the Stillaguamish Tribe removed two miles of earthen levee. The ridge of dirt kept the river and the tides from spreading onto nearby farmland. Once a giant excavator bit into the levee to breach it, the tribe welcomed tidewater onto the land for the first time in over a century.

“Before, it was a dairy operation, and now it’s a big tidal marsh,” Boyd, a Stillaguamish tribal member and fisheries manager, says while looking out at the new 230-acre wetland.

Tidal marshes are crucial nurseries for young Chinook salmon and a focal point for efforts to bring these fish back from the brink of extinction. The Stillaguamish Tribe has been buying riverfront land in its traditional territory and removing levees to turn farmland into wetland with the hope of restoring Chinook.

Over the past 15 years, the Stillaguamish Tribe has purchased 2,000 acres of land for fish and wildlife habitat.

Under the 1855 treaty, the Stillaguamish and other Puget Sound tribes gave up almost all of their land but kept their rights to fish and hunt.

“It is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow to buy back the land that we essentially traded for the resource, the fish, but it’s what we have to do to get things back on track,” Boyd says.

What the tribe wants to get back on track is salmon.

Decades of environmental damage have left many West Coast salmon runs on the brink of extinction. Chinook salmon, the largest and most prized of salmon, is a federally threatened species in Puget Sound.

In 2025, so few Chinook salmon returned to the Stillaguamish River that the entire tribe was only allowed to catch 26 fish.

“The salmon, it has always been important to our people, to the tribe, to our way of life,” Boyd says. “These habitat projects are the best bang for our buck right now.”

50 Years Of Labor Union Documentaries:

“We better start pulling together or, by God, they’re going to bury us,” says a meat packer during a union meeting in Barbara Kopple’s 1990 documentary American Dream. It’s a desperate plea for survival; “they” are the Hormel Foods Corporation, who took advantage of union disorder to replace a huge portion of their workforce during a costly strike. American Dream sees the 1985-86 labor crisis in Austin, Minnesota, as symbolic of the state of organized labor in the United States – call it an alternative State of the Union address.

American Dream takes place in the Reagan years, characterized by an uncompromising approach to union power: in 1981, the president threatened striking air traffic controllers with termination if they didn’t return to work in 48 hours; private companies like Hormel, Phelps Dodge, and International Paper increasingly replaced striking workers; and unions lost 2.7 million members from 1980 to 1984.

The film, which has been restored and is re-released this week by Janus Films, was Kopple’s follow-up to Harlan County, USA, about the 1973 Brookside strike in a Kentucky coalmine. The film, which celebrates its 50th anniversary later this year, is a more empowering watch than American Dream. In both works, Kopple uses roving, cinema vérité camerawork to capture the standoffs in all their frustration and perseverance, an extended, condensed timeline encapsulating the pressure that emboldens workers together in solidarity, even as some grow weary of union stubbornness.

American Dream contains all the seeds for the corporate makeovers that altered the discourse surrounding unions. In Harlan County, USA, the gun thugs and mining company representatives cast their eyes downward around Kopple’s camera, bullish and resistant to the lens of the free press. By the mid-1980s, the executives are far more smiley and camera-ready, brazenly dismissing the union’s newly devised campaign against them. By the 2020s, any C-suite discussion of unions is sophisticated in its condescension; in Who Moves America, the UPS CEO Carol Tomé placates shareholders by comparing Teamster negotiations to arguing with her husband about getting a puppy. In Union, union-busting is the remit of PowerPoint-wielding consultants, like those hired to sequester Amazon employees in conference rooms and convince them not to organize. It’s a far cry from the armed posse who guard the mine in Harlan County, USA, who assaulted picketers and ultimately killed miner Lawrence Jones.

It’s harder to critique a union’s political value in a documentary full of real, impassioned voices, especially as modern films increasingly include the perspectives of immigrant and undocumented workers who receive the brunt of scapegoating and demonization. But Hollywood is not a saviour for unions. Despite the existence of guilds like Sag-Aftra, WGA and Iatse, the politics of business mostly remain. Even after it was praised on the festival circuit, Union was forced to self-distribute when buyers decided not to jeopardise a working relationship with Amazon MGM Studios. It didn’t bury the film exactly, but it certainly made things more difficult, denying it the publicity earned by a best documentary Oscar, like the two awarded to Kopple. But watching a half-century of these films, showcasing the tenacity and doggedness of organizers, you’re convinced that the union documentary is an ongoing, collaborative project – capable of being both an archive and a manual.

Only one way to sing us out: